Posted on 12/22/2004 11:56:06 AM PST by qam1
Greg Hassall and Charles Purcell do battle over the fab four.
FOR
OK, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da is the most annoying song ever written. And you won't find Revolution No 9 on too many iPods. But how many bands' dud tracks can you count on one hand? The Beatles deserve their place in the pop pantheon. They revolutionised the way pop music was written, recorded and talked about. They were funny, charismatic, hungry to learn and unafraid of controversy. They matured spectacularly over seven tumultuous years, then quit on a high note with the peerless Abbey Road.
They were a genuine band, in that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. The three writers spurred each other on and checked each other's excesses (McCartney's sentimentality, Lennon's bile and Harrison's cod mysticism). In one throwaway B-side, Rain, they created the template for psychedelic Britpop, a genre lesser bands spend an entire career mining. Their refusal to write the same song twice resulted in a catalogue of breathtaking diversity, while producer George Martin gave the recordings a unique, uncluttered sound that refuses to date. And, as the age of the drum solo dawned, Ringo kept it real, underpinning the Beatles' sound with undemonstrative precision.
Greg Hassall
AGAINST
Pretty much everyone in the '60s must have been on drugs - that's the only reason I can imagine why the Beatles were so popular. They had about three decent songs: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Eleanor Rigby - and that other one, the one that doesn't suck. It's a riddle greater than the pyramids as to why a group of English fops with ridiculous hairstyles could make entire crowds of grown adults faint in awe. John Lennon? A prancing popinjay. Paul McCartney? A ponce. George Harrison? Vanity in the shape of a man. Ringo Starr?
A cool dude - the only one.
OK, so the Beatles recorded on top of a building. Big deal. OK, so they hung out with the Maharishi. Is that supposed to give their dire tunes spiritual worth?
"But they were a major influence in the history of rock'n'roll," some might bleat. Sure they were - but does that mean the baby boomers have to force their boring Beatlemania down our craws year after year, decade after decade?
I'm glad Yoko Ono helped split them up. She's the true heroine of this story. Too bad she's also a lousy artist.
And Wings. Don't get me started on McCartney's sad side project. That's another story.
- Charles Purcell
You and me both- The Beatles were the greatest ever.
Good find, Doc.
Of course: nothing is more subjective than taste, and nothing is more engaging than a good ol' fashioned donnybrook over what sucks and what doesn't. But the anti-Beatle subject of this thread seems to be less the music critic than the over-striving contrarian.
They might have refused to do the same song twice late in their career. But they built their empire on cranked out clone love songs:
Love Me Do
Please Please Me
I Want to Hold Your Hand
Can't Buy Me Love
Eight Days a Week
...
Heck Paul just about admitted it in "Silly Love Songs" when he had Wings. And that's the part of the Beatles catalog that keeps me from every being able to rate them higher than a C-. These are the guys that INVENTED formula pop, just because they eventually moved on doesn't forgive them their sins. You want to know why all Nickelback songs sound the same? Because the Beatles proved that making the same song over and over was a license to print money.
Greater than the sum of their parts. George Martin deserves credit for reigning them in.
The band disentigrated before their pet projects overtook the legacy of the band. Nothing that they have done in the decades since has matched the merit of the "group's" works.
That legacy is what kept them from mucking about with ANY thought to reunions (with or without John). I can accept that they reunited for Linda's funeral and I am glad that was not filmed and released to the networks for round the clock coverage.
If the Beatles had remained a band, we could have expected more 2 record sets like The White Album with essentially a side of cuts from each member (they all wanted to have "their" songs represented on the albums).
The 70s sucked anyway. Better for them to snuff out as a band on the eve of that decade than to go disco, country, singer/songwriter, party band, or prog.
There will never be another "Beatles" for better or for worse. There may be the same amount of hype for a performer for 2 years but the music won't have the same worth and few artists release that many original songs in a year (there are some but they don't get radio/tv exposure). Any more, it seems to be 2-5 years between albums. The Beatles would never have lasted long enough to put out all their albums at that rate; imagine only hearing every 3rd Beatles album and trying to figure out how they got from A Hard Day's Night to Sgt. Pepper's? This is the way it is today with some bands (local and national) who find album after album shelved (because of delays at the label or changes in band lineup) meaning that much of the evolution of the band's sound is not "documented" leaving the casual listener unable to accept the change in a performer's sound.
True, Little Drummer Boy would be a great song for someone learning English as a second language. Not awhole lotta challenge there. But, The Night Before Christmas sung is fabulous--a story plus musical twists and turns make it operatic. Un Flambeau Jeanette Isabella (ok, it's French....but, after all, it's Christmas) is also an interesting story. Grandma Got Runover has a plotline, as does I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.
I don't know how old you are but virtually everyone who could read the Rock rags then knew this in 1968 or certainly by 1969. It's a point about the musicianship perhaps but not about Harrison's beautiful song.
The last paragraph sums it up quite well, weegee. While I do think they're far overrated I have to agree with your assessment. There will never be "another" Beatles for many reasons. The "system" just won't allow it for all the reasons you mentioned.
Ping
Huh?
Sitting here listening to the Brecker Brothers and wearing most amused expression at the flames; I might've liked the Beatles if one of them sang like David Ruffin or Otis Redding or Dennis Edwards or.....
I was also born in 1968. My parents preceded the whole Baby Boom (they were born in the 1930s and lived through WWII).
I was exposed to Yellow Submarine as a kid but essentially "discovered" the Beatles on my own in 1975 when I caught a daytime tv broadcast of Help! Musically I liked the band (much better than the crap on the radio in Lafeyette Louisiana, except maybe Brownsville Station; decades later I would learn that Cub Koda and I shared appreciation of Andre Williams, Link Wray, and Chuck Berry songs but as a small child I knew NOTHING of these artists).
I slowly collected up Beatles albums (1976-1981) from garage sales and birthday gifts. I STILL don't have Let It Be or Abbey Road.
I'm listening to the Beatles' Christmas recordings right now.
They helped revitalize rock and roll (and spawn countless cool garage bands in the 1960s when high school kids picked up guitars to get chicks) while at the same time making it entirely too serious and bloated with the concept of concept albums.
I loved U2---the first band I was ever in was more or less a U2 rip-off band---but they lost me after Joshua Tree. Their latest effort has won me back somewhat.
Spector destroyed Let it Be. It's too bad, because there are some solid tunes on that album: I Dig a Pony, I've Got a Feeling . . .
Ray Davies may be the most underrated songwriter in rock. What a catalog of great tunes he's composed! I love hearing "Picture Book" in that HP commercial - hope Ray's getting some coins from it.
I was being funny. Dylan did 4th time Around to mock the Beatles.
...and neither is a classic, by any stretch.
Beatles=Poo.
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