Rubber Soul was really the first album in which the Beatles started stretching their musical imaginations and marked their breakthrough into a new musical format. But ALL the other albums were fun and listenable very much so.
Their “painfully repetitive” long songs they initially sang were their training like the early blues of the Stones were their training and their first albums reflect that and are limited to that. And to a great extent is has remained the starting point for the Stones songs. I don’t condemn them for that at all. But where the Stones were taking from Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley the Beatles were taking from Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Elvis, and Little Richard. Why would anyone find that worthy of condemnation?
Sounds like you are complaining that rock and roll groups start out playing rock and roll.
Teen Angel is NOT I want to hold your hand. They are completely different in intent and sound. There is a place for both of them in my musical universe.
The Beatles reignited the Rock and Roll world which had fallen back somewhat since Elvis skyrocketing to the top. I guess you won’t have much good to say for Elvis either, though. He was so repetitive.
The Beatles never played rock and roll. They were a pop band. The idea of them being a rock band is the great lie Wenner ever proffered upon the world.
I’m complaining, as I’ve said repeatedly, because they spawned the prefab pop that the record companies have been trying to recreate ever since. While pop will almost never be really good music (almost, there’s the Marc Bolan and Tony Carey exceptions of course but outside of them), it’s never been allowed to progress past the Beatles. Once they made all that money the record companies keep wanting it to happen again.
Teen Angel IS I want to Hold Your Hand. They are exactly the same prefab mimeographed pop song and anybody that can’t see that is deliberately looking away from the truth.
The Beatles never made rock, so it’s not possible for them to have reignited it. The great lie of the British invasion is that rock was dieing. It was only dieing in the New York radio stations, out on the street rock was fine.
When Elvis wasn’t being forced to “Pat Boone” (make sanitized uncredited covers of kick songs by black artists) he was great. All the way up until he went all sequins, then he became a sad mockery of himself. But he knocked out some kick ass rockabilly in his day. Never really sure he earned that whole “king of rock and roll” thing, but he could pound out the rockabilly with the best of them.