Note that our friend johnpost also cherry picks what he responds to. When points are made that seriously undercut his views, he just ignores them and hopes no one will notice.
We notice.
johnpost, I’m truly sorry you failed to heed my suggestion that you stop posting, lest you make a bigger fool of yourself than you have to date. Apparently continuing to do so doesn’t trouble you in the least.
As I said, nothing against the songs you cited – I think they showed great taste and talent. However, don’t sell the Beatles short in this area. During the several years prior to their recording contract, there was a sort of competition among Liverpool groups to find obscure songs (often B-sides of US singles) to include in their shows, and the Beatles were second to none at this. It’s true that they focused on contemporary releases, and their preferred genres included rock and roll, Tamla, R & B, and country rather than the blues, but I think it’s overly simplistic to basically take the position “blues = great, everything else = crap” as many people seem to. (Let’s not forget that the Who favored Tamla and R & B at first too.)
~round and round and round and round~
My parents were a little beyond college age by that point (my mother was 22, my father 30). But, they were both big music fans. They were primarily into folk music (particularly the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul & Mary).
I’ve talked to them about what they had thought of the Beatles, back in those days. They never got into the Beatles – initially, my parents thought of them as teenybopper music. By the point in time when the Beatles became more experimental, my folks were parents of young children, and just in a very different mental space from a band that was into Eastern philosophy and mind-expanding drugs.
I was born in the 70s but imma respond to this thread anyway. It was impossible to not hear a lot of early Beatles this weekend even though I have managed to keep away from it for more than two decades (although I like post-early Beatles.)
Those of their songs that managed to be innovative, even in this early period, do have a vibrancy to them that I did not catch when they were being broadcast several times a day on the oldies stations in the 80s (I didn’t pick the station on the radio.)
But I don’t so much like their covers, nor their straight up Merseybeat songs. Gerry and the Pacemakers and even Peter and Gordon sound better than the Beatles in that style.
I have no idea if I would have liked them in 1964. Their first album still doesn’t have anything on it that I really can get in to, and for better or worse, I rarely give bands a second chance. So if I had been around in 1964 I very well might not even like their mid and late stuff even now!
Wow, I guess you told me!
Surprised no-one’s picked up on this:
“Love Me Do” wasn’t a 1964 song, it was recorded right at the start in a relatively primitive way in 1962. To compare it with songs that were influenced by what the Beatles subsequently recorded is daft. I could have chosen any number of real 1964 Beatles songs, but I feel sorry for anyone who can’t feel what we feel when we hear “I Feel Fine” or “I Should Have Known Better”.
My sister was 12 at the time and she did not like the Beatles at all. She loved Herman’s Hermits, Dave Clark 5, Beach Boys, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy. She would complain bitterly about Ed Sullivan giving the Beatles more air time than anyone.
Then a year or so later she was suddenly a huge Beatles fan and didn’t want to be reminded of her year of disdain.
If we’re going to talk about the important rock and roll of the period from 1963 to 1968 that comes close to the level of the Beatles, it’s not the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Procol Harum, the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, or Jimi Hendrix. The Animals and the Kinks are interesting because they were also part of the British Invasion but aren’t on the level of the Beatles (and similarly for the Who, which you didn’t mention). The Rolling Stones maybe come close to the level of the Beatles. The only other really important rock and roll of that time is maybe the Beach Boys and definitely the Motown Sound.
about my list which i made a brief statement about in #41.
i went to a source of information created by others, it was a listing of popular music in each year. i did not use my memory to generate the list i posted. i did not add any entries. to my recollection (of culture of about half a century ago) the list seemed correct and i did not double check any facts. i did not use any record or radio industry data. i did the list in maybe 15 minutes about 2.5 years ago to make a point in another thread. i did not intend on writing a book or research paper; many of which have and could be written about each group, music of that era and so on.
i did not have a complete catalog of any of the groups. the meaning of cherry picking is that you have a full selection and pick select ones. i did not.
even if the list was a partial catalog of each band, i think it still makes a point. the Fab Four was a pop boy band, they continued with that for some time. other bands also made simple lyric, simple music, short songs that really rocked at the same time. some other bands had an early album of rock that wasn’t real good but in a year caught on fire with quality music that became their style. some other bands made albums that were played as whole sides on progressive rock stations on the FM band.
did the Fab Four change in their music? yes they did. even so they continued to make music marketable to the pop Top 40 market for a long time.
other bands developed into their quality music much quicker. other bands went deeper into the style of music they were known for.
is it OK for someone to like pop music? is it OK for someone like Top 40? sure is but it is not my taste.
the Fab Four went to a middle mass market crowd maybe for most or all of their history. IMHO there were far better rock bands. IMHO there were far better intricate music bands.
What amazes me, among the many things of the Beatles, is how they can make musical and rhythmic complexity sound so effortless and natural. Who else can pull off the crazy 11/8+4/4+7/8 “Sun Sun Sun Here It Comes” part in “Here Comes the Sun,” for example, without it sounded like prog rock masturbation? Or even the 7/4 (or alternating 4/4-3/4) of the aforementioned “All You Need is Love?” To me, it is music that gets richer and more rewarding the closer you listen to it. It all sounds pretty simple and Top 40 pop on the surface, but delving into the details, there is a lot of careful craftsmanship, experimentation, and subversion. If anybody wants to get into a musicologist’s take on it, Alan W. Pollack’s Notes on… series is fascinating, in which he deconstructs every single Beatles song. I don’t think there’s any need to intellectualize the Beatles–I think they’re clearly bloody brilliant–but for those who want the left side of their brain tickled a bit, it’s a good and informative read.
Indeed. I can pick up my guitar and play just about any early Jagger-Richards song because they rely on the standard 3 or 4 chords, but the same is not true of early Beatles songs… almost all of them have some weird chord or other. But until you try to play them, you don’t even notice that, because they fit in to the songs so naturally. And this was at a time when most other bands were either doing covers exclusively or were just beginning to write their own material. In terms of songwriting, Lennon and McCartney’s musical palette was miles ahead of just about any other bands at the time.
The history of the Beatles was unique. Bands played in tiny clubs until they picked up a following. Then they were put into packaged tours, with a half dozen groups or individuals playing their top hits for 10 or 20 minutes. Concerts as we know them today were restricted to mainstream music.
The Beatles did this at first, quickly working their way to the lead act by blowing everybody else off the stage. They played their latest hit and maybe a rave-up American cover. When they came to America they were stars and so played sets that were a huge 25 minutes long. Those consisted of a few more hits and a couple of American covers that they loved. They didn’t play album songs. Nobody cared about albums in those days. If Ludovic had been around in 1964 it wouldn’t have made any difference that he didn’t like their first album. We spent every lunch hour in school talking about the Beatles and none of us ever mentioned an album. Only singles counted. Besides, the American companies didn’t even release the same albums as the British ones. You got mishmoshes of various albums forced together. Sgt. Pepper’s was so important because it was the first Beatles album to be released in the same form in both countries.
Anyway, this pattern continued until the Beatles were forced off the road in 1966. The last concert included Rock And Roll Music, She’s A Woman, If I Needed Someone, Day Tripper, Baby’s In Black, I Feel Fine, Yesterday, I Wanna Be Your Man, Nowhere Man, Paperback Writer and Long Tall Sally and ran for just over 30 minutes.
Then they went into the studio and started making songs designed never to be played live. Songs that sounded that nothing else by anybody else. There was Beatles music and rock music. Trying to compare them leads you down the road to foolishness, as you’ve demonstrated.
Are there better rock bands? Yes, mostly because the Beatles opened the world to that music and allowed them a chance to progress that was denied to them. Are there more intricate bands? Yes, the deepening and widening of rock music in just a few years is the most amazing cultural leap I know of. And that was wholly because of the Beatles and Dylan.
Did the Beatles go to “a middle mass market crowd?” No. The Beatles grew the market as they say today. Their market was everybody. They were analyzed by the most sophisticated music critics, who were dazzled by them. They appealed to exactly the same crowd who were fans of all the other supposedly more sophisticated groups mentioned (all of whom aimed songs at the singles market, of course). The White Album was released my freshman year of college. A local station played it in its entirety. Our whole hall were crowded into a room (of a Vietnam vet who brought back the best stereo in the building) and listened to the whole thing, judging the songs one by one. Radio stations did that for nobody else. We wouldn’t have done that for anybody else. The Beatles mattered. You cannot get away with claiming that they were a boy band appealing to naive teens in 1968. It’s historic nonsense.
Same. We are apparently very close to the same age 
Again, the shift key is your friend.
OK, so you did not cherry pick. But whoever created the list did. That makes the list pretty useless to make your case. The fact that you yourself didn’t create the list doesn’t mean you get to hide behind some anonymous writer. The list is crap.
No, it doesn’t. While the Beatles were making pop music they were also making revolutionary changes to the Rock genre. The other bands you mention were reacting to the groundbreaking work of the Beatles (and others, the Beatles weren’t operating in a vacuum) and transforming Rock.
You haven’t demonstrated this in any way. You’re ignoring huge swathes of the Beatles catalog to make your point and holding some undefinable quality as goal.
Every post you make furthers the idea that you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t understand the history or influences of Rock.
The Beatles (and especially Lennon’s) songs also performed a seamless (and probably subconscious) synthesis of American rock and roll and British music.
The rhythm of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” has distinct traces of English marching music.
And “Hard Day’s Night” (and “Norwegian Wood” later) were pioneering in their use of the Mixolydian mode in rock music, which is prominent in Celtic music. Although the Beatles weren’t the first to make this blend, it was a *big *influence on countless rock musicians over many years. Ted Nugent might not be able to spell ‘Mixolydian’, but he probably wouldn’t have written “Hibernation” if he’d never heard the Beatles using it.
And they weren’t trying to impress anyone with their musical knowledge; they were just trying to write music they thought sounded good.
I’m also a little disappointed that **johnpost **apparently didn’t catch my allusion to a lightweight novelty song from two of the greatest of all American songwriters. Great music can indeed be appreciated by unsophisticated audiences.
Hell, Prokofiev wrote music for children. My daughter loves Mozart, who wrote some of the most irresistible and simplest melodies ever.
Therefore, since they appeal to (and even wrote for) children (who are the most musically unsophisticated of all audiences), obviously the above two composers are complete CRAP.
I feel so enlightened now…
The line is “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!”
I first heard the line in the late '90s, when the Bond franchise was spluttering and the Beatles place in the pop culture pantheon had long since been established. It was kind of hilarious.
Can’t find my copy of Albert Grossman’s biography of Lennon but he wrote most U.S. media critics were not impressed by the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, finding their musicianship subpar. Goldman doesn’t think much of any Beatles song until “A Hard Days Night”.
Excellent points all around. The Beatles were wildly experimental from nearly their earliest days when it came to melodies, harmonies, chord progressions and rhythms…not because they were consciously trying to be, but because they just did what sounded right to them and didn’t realize they were breaking any rules.
The fact that, as said, they made this sound so effortless and right despite it being so unconventional is more important that the rule-breaking itself…although it could be argued that the rule-breaking encouraged others to follow different paths too.
Another option would be Dominic Pedler’s “Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles,” which goes into rather exhaustive detail about their songs and what makes them “work” from a music theory standpoint. Though he takes things to a level that goes far beyond my middling comprehension of theory, the book is very enthusiastically and engagingly written and a real pleasure to delve into at random.
Pedler makes the interesting argument that, on the whole, The Beatles’ earlier works are actually more adventurous from the standpoint of their music structure than the later-period ones. As somewhat who has been playing and singing Beatles songs since I got my first guitar in 1965, I can attest to this.