One major aspect of The Beatles that has been mentioned above is that they used their early success to capitalize a lot of composing and studio time. And they had the luxury to break from their successful early style, and experiment to their hearts' content. Few artists have that luxury, and when they do break from their successful rut, they can rarely pull their fans along for the innovative stuff. The Beatles used their musical capital well, and brought the fans along for the ride. I was just reading that they have the record with 20 number one hits. Elvis is 2nd with 18, and Mariah Cary just pulled into 3rd with 17.

Y'all go on with your Beatle love fest. Don't let my personal tastes sidetrack or hijack the thread. I guess I hit a raw nerve.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 28 December 2005 at 05:17 PM.]

That plus six bits will buy you a cup of coffee.

Anyone over about 35 that considers themself at least a relatively serious fan of popular music is well aware of how the British rockers that were part of the "invasion" listened to the original American rockers along with the black bluesmen and regurgitated it back to us fickle Americans, and saved us from Pat Boone and Frankie Avalon in the process. I think most of here are intelligent enough and have enough music knowledge that it's not necessary to recall the whole syllabus on such matters.

You can analyze them into the ground, but think of how they affected just a few areas of popular music that had a domino effect on seemingly endless scenarios: McGuinn, Hillman, Clark, and Crosby were inspired to form the Byrds and become a largely electric band, they even went for versions of mop top hair. Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions became the Warlocks morphing into the Grateful Dead, and helped to spawn "The San Francisco Sound" and the whole pychedelic music era. Bob Dylan found himself one of the finest ensembles in the land, the Hawks, that later became The Band-and decided to go electric and lose the folky image. He put up with boos, taunts, and tomatoes thrown at him and the players on stage-and those tomato throwers who are still alive have to admit that they were complete idiots back in '65 if they are being honest with themselves.

The Beatles were the catalyst for all of this.

Of course over 40 years later it's easy to analyze "She Loves You" as a simplistic pop/rock tune-but give these guys some credit-only a few years later they gave us "Norwegian Wood" for gosh sake!

I can remember sitting there in my bedroom with my older brother just in shock over listening to "Rubber Soul" after he brought it home from the record store. Maybe it's because I'm middle-aged and the same thrill is not possible to get anymore-but you don't bring home new albums by anyone these days and get so blown away.

You have valid, intelligent points to make about some of the shortcomings of The Beatles, but it sort of reminds me of the baseball fan that likes to point out though he hit 714 homeruns, and in years when he hit 50 plus homers the guy who was second in the league usually had about 12; and had a lifetime batting average of three forty something-Babe Ruth was also one of the all-time leaders in strikeouts. Hey-this doesn't diminish his greatness.

I’d have to say that the Beatles were the reason I started playing guitar. When I saw them and heard them in 1964... BANG… that was it. I was a young teenager and I Had to get a guitar and learn to play!

George Martin.

I think that's a very common dynamic. When 10 people tell me to go see a particular movie, typically, it doesn't seem all that impressive.

But then, I can easily imagine that if I had discovered this unknown, undiscovered film on my own, I would be telling people how great it was.

That's what happens when expectations are raised through the roof... it interferes with a more impartial hearing. It's almost impossible for any of us to judge anything outside of the expectations we had going into the deal.

I vaguely remember pre-Beatles pop, early 60’s…and like David said, it was some Bland stuff! Bobby Darin, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee, Andy Williams… man, the world was Ready for a change.

As far as the Stones… sorry , but I can’t stand em! Never could, right from 1964 when I heard their first songs on the radio. Oh well… think of how boring the world would be if we all agreed on everything. Somehow we were all drawn to the Steel Guitar… so go figure.

[This message was edited by Doug Beaumier on 29 December 2005 at 05:06 PM.]

But that's OK....it forced me to become a better bass player and musician.....and when the popularity began to fade, I returned and was a better steel guitar player.

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www.genejones.com

I did, in 1965. Full-frontal Beatlemania, like in the film "A Hard Days Night." Girls passing out, the whole thing.

I recall that they sounded a lot like their records.

The front row center seats were a lucky accident. I ordered the most expensive tickets (I wanted to impress my date) but never expected to get the best seats in the stadium.

Interestingly, they sounded better as a band than the Stones, yet not as good as either the Searchers or the Hollies.

In those days I was playing guitar with a singer named Eden Kane (who had a string of top 5 hits from '61 - '64), so our paths crossed that of the Beatles quite a lot.

I still think that the Everly Brothers were better than the lot of them, but that's just me....

RR

PS: ..and there was a BBC Radio show called 'Saturday Club' that was prerecorded on Wednesday evenings at the Charing Cross Theatre in London; we did that one week with the Beatles, but, being a child of 1950's r'n'r, the excitement for me was the fact that Jerry Lee Lewis was there, too!

[This message was edited by Roger Rettig on 31 December 2005 at 07:16 AM.]

As for the Stones, I guess I just prefer their raw garage-band style of rock more than the Beatles' sweet, artsy style. The Beatles were certainly good musicians. Maybe the Stones didn't use as many chords. Neither did Muddy Waters, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Little Richard, or Early Elvis. I just always heard a gutsy soulfulness and deep energy in the Stones that I never got from The Beatles.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 31 December 2005 at 08:34 AM.]

DD you might quit while you are not ahead. That is a mighty deep hole you are digging for yourself! Give me a Chuck Berry or a Stones record that has 1% of the innovation that is on that record. That record stunned the entire music world when it was released.

Also, what b0b said.

Forever and ever, Amen.

I will agree that the early Beatles stuff was cutesy and somewhat trite. However, there is a HUGE difference, artistically, in "Love Me Do" and the "long medley" from Side B of Abbey Road... in just a few short years. I think that some people wrote them off in the early years as "simply" a teenybopper act and never gave them a serious listen after that... when they probably should've.

Since Roger is an Englishman, a contemporary, and played on actual shows with them, I'm sure he wouldn't be quite as obsessed as we American kids who were 9 and 10 years old when the '64 Ed Sullivan appearance was broadcast. As a 9-year-old kid, I was QUITE impressed.

Roger, I read an early 60's interview where Lennon listed The Searchers as his favorite band!

All of those guys were influenced by Jerry Lee, Chuck Berry, Elvis, Carl Perkins and the whole rockabilly scene. The Everlys too. I've heard several outtakes where John and Paul were calling each other "Don" and "Phil". They were in awe of those guys, just as I'm in awe of the Beatles.

I read recently where, when Ringo first visited the Capitol Records office in LA, he wanted to know if Buck Owens was in town so that he could meet him.

Sorry for the ramble.

[This message was edited by Rick McDuffie on 31 December 2005 at 11:50 AM.]

I believe that it was their early commercial success and hero worship that gave them the freedom to really pursue their muse. It wasn't until "Rubber Soul" and "Yesterday and Today" that I thought they really started to come into their own. Musically, what they did was to incorporate more complex chord progressions from more mainstream pop music. There is some very nice stuff, but I don't see this as revolutionary in the same sense as early jazz, bebop, the great early tunesmiths from tin pan alley, Stravinsky, Webern, and so on. Lyrically, they got much more interesting also, but again, DD is right on the money about influences from Dylan back through the beat poets. And all these people are part of older threads of musical and writing influences.

I think their timing was a big part of their early success. After JFK was shot in Nov 63, we in the US needed something, and the Beatles were there, at the right time and the right place. Part of this was the meteoric rise of mass media right around then. I think the Beatles changed the business model for popular music more than anything.

Roger Rettig posts:

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I believe that the rock'n'roll genesis of the mid-fifties was the catalyst for social change; the Beatles picked up the ball and ran further with it, that's all.

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I agree, and I'd go further than that. Yes, for me, Elvis was the real revolutionary, but that's just because I noticed it at the time. I'd go further and say that jump blues (like Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner) was the main catalyst for Elvis and 50s rock'n'roll, which was catalyzed by swing and bebop, which was catalyzed by early jazz and blues, which was catalyzed by .... And country music weaves its way through through this thread also. I also agree with Roger, those Everly Brothers harmonies just blow them all away. These observations are what caused me to move somewhat away from rock music, and more into blues, jazz, country, bluegrass, rockabilly, and so on.

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All good music is derivative, David. The fact that you prefer the Stones shows that you prefer music that imitates original sources to music that is an original synthesis from a variety of influences.

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DD also clearly argued that it is all derivative, and I agree. But I disagree that the Stones "imitate" original sources any more than anybody else, including the Beatles. They are each the branch points of different styles of popular/rock music, and each forged a highly original sound. The Stones are not just rehashed Chuck Berry, and Chuck Berry is not just rehashed T-Bone. The Stones mix early R&R, raw blues, country, and funk. Chuck has tons of country influence in his tune. Practically anybody of influence mixed styles in an interesting and unique way.

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... unlike the Beatles, whose palette was extremely broad and far more sophisticated.

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Yes, musically the later Beatles are more harmonically sophisticated than the typical rock band, but not near as sophisticated as many other styles of music. Further, I like sophistication, but not for its own sake. I'd infinitely rather hear a real good rock band pump out some 3-chord tune than any of the current "Beatle-esque" pop-grunge bands that litter the landscape these days. For sophisticated, I still prefer jazz or classical. Not all good music is harmonically sophisticated.