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're not a guitar player, are you?
I don't think anyone with a brain between his ears considers that noise MUSIC.
"Thanks to the Beatles, music in America became all about how to market sugar-coated garbage to teeny-boppers"
Ah, but they were doing that in the 50's/early 60's BEFORE the Beatles with Pat Boone, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Darin, Gene Pitney, Paul Anka, Dion, etc, etc
I'm partial to the "love" songs of Lightnin' Hopkins, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Skip James, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, Albert King, and Howlin Wolf. ....among others.
Too bad they're all gone now. .....although Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and James Cotton are still with us.
Some of my favorite Stones albums are from the 1970s. Exile on Mainstreet (72), Sticky Fingers (71), Black & Blue (76) and Some Girls (78). After Tatoo You, they had a creative dry spell, were each album had 2 or 3 gems, but the rest was unlistenable. My faith in the Glimmer Twins was restored with Voodoo Lounge in the mid 1990s.
Agreed. However, with the success of the Beatles, it seems to me that it became a lot more commonplace and a lot more blatant...
1. Mack The Knife, Bobby Darin
2. The Battle Of New Orleans, Johnny Horton
3. Personality, Lloyd Price
4. Venus, Frankie Avalon
5. Lonely Boy, Paul Anka
6. Mr. Blue, Fleetwoods
7. The Three Bells, Browns
8. Come Softly To Me, Fleetwoods
9. Kansas City, Wilbert Harrison
10. Dream Lover, Bobby Darin
11. Sleep Walk, Santo & Johnny
12. Put Your Head On My Shoulder, Paul Anka
13. Stagger Lee, Lloyd Price
14. Donna, Ritchie Valens
15. ('Til) I Kissed You, Everly Brothers
16. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Platters
17. Charuk Brown, Coasters
18. Quiet Village, Martin Denny
19. My Heart Is An Open Book, Carl Dobkins Jr.
20. Pink Shoelaces, Dodie Stevens
"I'm partial to the "love" songs of Lightnin' Hopkins, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Skip James, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, Albert King, and Howlin Wolf.."
You left out one of my favorite guitar players of all time, Elmore James.
You raise a good point. It's my personal opinion, however, that with the coming of the Beatles, it pretty much told the record companies that if they want to make millions, then follow the formula... The Beatle's arrival, to me, was just the "writing on the wall", so to speak.
Selling records is their job, it's how they earn a living. And it can be pretty hard to keep your artistic soul intact when that A&R guy is waving a million dollar advance under your nose. Most of the folks who get to keep their creativity are the ones that developed a following on the bar circuit before getting a major label contract, people eeking out a subsistence living in music are the only ones who still have any power over their album, them and really well established "dinosaurs" like Alice Cooper or Jethro Tull. The day David Geffen sued Neil Young for making "unmarketable" albums (Neil eventually won, but artisticly he's never recovered from the Geffen years) the accounting department took over the major labels, make an album your company doesn't think will make money album doesn't get published and it doesn't count to your deal either. And the companies all want their artists to make their highest selling album over and over.
"Good" is a relative term. Certainly they are better than Marilyn Manson, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Blink 182, Sum 41, 311, crap crap crap.
Note how Jim Thirwell (aka Foetus) gets completely overlooked by the young kids. There would be no industrial rock if not for "Clint Ruin" (another of his aliases). And for rap/metal hybrid, why don't they just pull out Suicidal Tendencies' second album?
So bored with kids trying to impress me with how tough they are. They're like the Baby Boomers who honestly believed that they "invented" Sex.
Well, it DID pave the way for real British PAP such as Herman's Hermits and Dave Clark Five et al
Yep, I forgot Elmore. .....and a whole bunch of others.
We all accept Bobby Darin for what he was, not so with the Beatles.
I don't believe there is an A&R guy out there who could get a record label to fork out that much in advances.
Wilco.
You made my point much more succinctly than I.
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