John Lennon

The Golden Miller

Surprised there's no thread on him, this being the anniversary of his shooting. Weirdly, it's the day the Christmas run in starts for me, do alot of driving and radio on, discussions about Lennon and then his Christmas song being played. That song for me is THE Christmas song... Happy Xmas (War is Over).

There's not much point going into his legacy and influence as its well known. Contemporary music, songwriting, how albums were recorded, pretty much everything we associate with modern music, starts with the Beatles, they changed the game. And they were led and driven, particularly in the early days, predominantly by Lennon. And I'm not a huge Beatles fan, but whether you like them or not, you can't question their influence.

Music was pushed and experimented beyond this point. So when we listen to our favourite contemporary songs, we owe their existence to Lennon. Without his insistence of writing and pushing his own material, that change between the 50s/60s may never have happened, and music would of went down a very different path.

Music relates to people in many different ways, can effect and help people, make them happy, intertwined with popular culture and our day to day lives. And in many ways, our modern outlook through music is thanks to John Lennon. We owe him a debt for that. His legacy or influence will never be matched!

AbusesToilets

Bit of a **** dad by all accounts. Can't look past this either

Strumms

There is a real gulf in quality, class and consistency between his Beatles and solo work.

a lot of his solo stuff is absolute tripe. He could never be motivated to actually tour as a solo artist. Ok he didn’t need the cash but, he could have had his pick of musicians to play with, any venue…. Any city… any country… That Live In New York album was a charity thing done over two concerts on the same day…

Trigger Happy

John Lennon is nothing but a poor man's Big Tom.

buried

Can't stand any of their stuff. The whole vibe about them is one of utter depression for me. Yeah they were highly influential within the realm of commercial pop music, but how has that turned out? Commercial Pop music is now the most odious form of trash that has ever been associated with the term 'art'. The internet saved and highlighted real new groundbreaking music, and highlighted real groundbreakers of the past, and the Beatles had zero to do with internet communications.

War is over is an absolute depression session, especially this time of year. "so this is christmas...and what have you done?" Ahh....... turned your noise off John, that's what I done.

trashcan

The whole Beatles vibe is one of “utter depression” ? Okaaaaaayyyy.

buried

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119972814#Comment_119972814

For me. You and anybody else can get whatever you like out of it, and fair play to ye.

The Golden Miller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119972721#Comment_119972721

I'm the first to accept what's happening now is a result of us downloading music for free, new creative bands can't make a living to push boundaries.

But for several decades after Lennon this wasn't the case. Accept it or not, without him, we'd still be listening to Elvis and Bill Haley and the Comments, musicians covering other musician's. Lennon changed that.

Lennon was the first man in contemporary music to play and persist with original music whether people like it or not. Without him, music as we know it today wouldnt exist. That simple.

Lennon was the first in westernised contemporary music to compose original music, play it and succeed. It changed history. Everything we know today followed from that

Aurelian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058275100/john-lennon

That's such a gross exaggeration of the Beatles it's absurd. Sure they were enormously influential but to suggest everything we associate with modern music starts with the Beatles is nonsense.

Strumms

whats happening now is record companies wanting instant $$$$$$$$ for the least investment, both time and money.

They want it back off the first album and singles from the album.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973380#Comment_119973380

I concur. People were slating the feck out of "manufactured pop" before Napster came on the scene

trashcan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973365#Comment_119973365

Don’t think it’s that much of an exaggeration tbh. The Beatles led the way in bands as we understand them today, especially in writing their own songs. The only thing I’d say is that it was as much McCartney, if not even more so, than Lennon. Anyway you look at it I think it’s very hard to argue that both of them weren’t massive pioneers.

The Golden Miller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973365#Comment_119973365

Is it? What came before? Even the Stones were doing blues cover album's at that point. The concept of original full studio albums didn't even enter the sphere of commercial music at the time. Lennon changed that. After, every band was trying to create original music. That's when contemporary music as we know it began. Lennon paved the way. Everything that came after is thanks to him, and as I said, I'm not a huge Beatles fan. Like them or not, their influence will never be matched!

The Golden Miller

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119972721#Comment_119972721

And they weren't commercial pop! They were original songwriters. The first in history as we know music today. Westlife is commercial pop. Manufactured rubbish. Comprehend the difference ye?

The Golden Miller

Well said

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119972721#Comment_119972721

War Is Over (Give Peace A Chance) isn't a Beatles song.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973458#Comment_119973458

Is it? What came before?

Buddy Holly & the Crickets. He was really the first of the rock singer/songwriters to make it a thing and that was very unusual at the time(though Chuck Berry wrote much of his own stuff). He also wrote both ballads and rock and was a huge influence on young Lennon and McCartney. Their band's name was a big nod to him. McCartney even bought the publishing rights to his music(while losing his to Michael Jackson).

What the Beatles did was take that seed and really run with it and made composing your own stuff a near given. Indeed pretty quickly made covers old hat for upcoming bands and singers if they wanted to be authentic(the Monkees got serious static for being a fake band, though funny enough the Beatles themselves were very supportive of them). Then after the Beatlemania madness got too much and they retreated into the studio they took it to a completely different level of invention.

They also did so in a staggeringly quick time, going from lovable moptops to serious innovation in not much more than a year. Put it this way their entire output that changed the maps was over just seven years, releasing twelve albums, one a double, thirteen EPs and twenty two singles. With pretty much each year moving forward. Never mind near constant worldwide touring in the early days, four films, a load of what came to be seen as music videos and helped changed how studio recording was done. And then we have solo projects. Albums, acting, soundtracks, "happenings", writing for and playing with other people. Lennon even wrote two best selling books and they got into the whole drugs debate and other political movements of the time. And they started their own record company, opened a fashion shop and changed album art, packaging and marketing.

No wonder they were burnt out by 1969. Their workload was positively insane. Curent artistes would be screaming for their therapists after a year of that. No wonder too that they couldn't capture tha lightning in a bottle as solo artists, or did so very rarely. Though McCartney was the stand out here. Lennon was the driver early on, but by the end of their time McCartney had taken over, with even Harrison coming out with beauties.

To put all this in context; if they were around these days and you heard they broke up today, you would have heard their first blink and you'll miss it single in 2015 and by 2019 they'd be releasing music and sounds that you simply wouldn't have heard before. Like, loath or indifferent to them, their place in musical history is assured*.

*I'm not so sure about their direct influence. Other than sorta copyists like ELO and Oasis, you don't really hear them in the majority of music since. IMHO their biggest influence was much more along the lines of you can have a band, write your own songs and are free to innovate, not copy and we've ploughed that field for you. I seem to recall Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd saying that was what they did fo him and when recording their first album down the hall from the Beatles recording their latest it gave him and his band confidence.

Aurelian

The Beatles named themselves in tribute to the Crickets a self contained 4 piece band who together with their leader Buddy Holly produced tons of memorable songs which would be influential for decades and be covered by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. A cover of Holly's Not Fade Away was the Stones first Top Ten hit.

The Stones didn't just have old blues songs to cover. Just like the Beatles they covered recent songs by rock songwriters like Holly, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and the hugely influential Chuck Berry, someone who was also a big influence on the Beatles. As John Lennon said if you want to give rock and roll another name, call it Chuck Berry. Similarly they covered recent songs by Carl Perkins, a major influence on George Harrison.

They were far from being the first self contained rock band. There was already a new young group in the USA called the Beach Boys who the Beatles would spend years trying to compete with. In the UK their was the 4-piece Shadows, who the Beatles tried and failed to emulate in their early song Cry For A Shadow. Listen to that and see which was the better group in 1961.

England was full of similarly influenced groups who were about to breakthrough. That's the reason why Decca famously turned down the Beatles after their audition and gave a contract to the Tremeloes instead.

And later there would be plenty of other groups who would push the Beatles in new directions like the Byrds.

The Beatles were hugely popular and influential but they were also a continuation of all the other things that were happening around them.

Rothko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973480#Comment_119973480

Musicians can be both original songwriters and commercial pop.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119975323#Comment_119975323

The Stones didn't just have old blues songs to cover. Just like the Beatles they covered recent songs by rock songwriters like Holly, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and the hugely influential Chuck Berry, someone who was also a big influence on the Beatles. As John Lennon said if you want to give rock and roll another name, call it Chuck Berry. Similarly they covered recent songs by Carl Perkins, a major influence on George Harrison.

Certainly, but the Beatles were also quite different to the Stones and the other influences in that they were far more diverse in musical output than their peers and got ever moreso as they progressed beyond their early "pop" songs(that could be complex, surprising even odd too). TBH I found their covers with the exception of Twist and Shout a bit lacklustre. They were far better being them.

No other group around them could have songs as wildly different as Tomorrow never knows, Yellow Submarine, Love you too, Eleanor Rigby, Got to get you into my life and Taxman. On the same album(while knocking out a contractual single Paperback Writer/Rain((much of Oasis' DNA) and a couple of promo films for it) . The Stones had cracking songs, even the occasional out there song, but settled down into a groove and stayed there. The Beachboys had some incredible songs and a couple of incredible albums, but again tended not to stray too far from their "sound" and then tapped out pretty quickly. The competition between them and the Beatles(mostly McCartney) was fruitful for both, but was over within two years and the Beatles kept going.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119974552#Comment_119974552

And all before they were 30!

EmmetSpiceland

Must be incredibly annoying for McCartney to see Lennon get all the credit for the “out there” creativity when Lennon did barely anything after 1967.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119976687#Comment_119976687

I'd personally say 1968 EmmetS, but yeah spot on. Of course Lennon dying so tragically amped that "dead genius" thing way up. His solo career stuff was pretty much dead after about a year of the band going their separate ways. His final album before he was murdered barely registered and critics were very meh about the whole thing, then...

Harrison got a great double album out of the stuff he'd been saving up/rejected by the others and then flatlined. That was pretty much all he had in the tank, with a brief sparkle in the 80's(where oddly his once thin voice got better with age, unlike Macca's).

McCartney kept cranking out the hits for over a decade more including one of the biggest selling singles of all time. Sadly too often let down by his weakness of going twee, which Lennon had been a brake on. He had the widest talent and most longevity of the two of them and was the best musician, though Lennon was a helluva rhythm guitarist and could come up with incredibly interesting melodies and lyrics at his peak.

Harrison had come up from skiffle and early rock/country, but ended up in the middle of the guitar hero era, but was pretty OK and got Indian music on the map(good slide guitarist too). Oh and he made a good few cool films with the company he set up. Even mortgaged his gaff to help produce Life of Brian and help out his friend Eric Idle. Others included The Long Good Friday and Withnail & I.

Ringo for all the static he sometimes gets was twice the drummer someone like Charlie Watts ever was. Made the matched grip pretty much the standard in rock and was very inventive in his playing and rarely repeated himself to the point where a fan could tell the Beatles track from just his isolated drums. Ringo kept being Ringo, did a bit of acting, actually had a couple of hits, went full nuts on the drink and drugs to the point that Keith Richards would have been dead after a month of Ringo's intake, married a Bond girl, got sober, became Thomas the Tank Engine, went vegan, still tours like a mad thing and looks incredible for an 80 year old. He also got the most fan mail out of the four of them.

So they kinda did OK all in.

DublinWriter

Can't believe no one has brought up "Luck of the Irish" or "Sunday Bloody Sunday" yet.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119978833#Comment_119978833

I love the lyrics of Luck Of The Irish

Its parent album Some Time In New York City is fascinatingly awful in parts.

Macca was much more consistent IMHO - Ram, Red Rose Speedway & McCartney II are classics

Imagine is the worst song ever written.

cj maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119980445#Comment_119980445

No it’s not

MOR316

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119974552#Comment_119974552

McCartney didn't lose it. He had the opportunity to buy it first and he declined. Jackson told him he was going to buy it and others and McCartney was OK with that.

Jackson then gave Chuck Berry, Sammy Davis, Little Richard and various other black artists their music rights back for free. McCartney expected to get his back, for nothing or at a cut price and Jackson said no. Hence McCartney becoming bitter about it down the years. Which is laughable considering the other music rights he owned that belonged to other artists.

Anyways, he has them now so all's well that ends well...Or whatever the phrase is. I'm not big into phrases

Big fan of The Beatles and their innovation and songwriting btw. One of my all time favourite artists and along with Chuck Berry, Michael Jackson, Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix, in my opinion, the most important of the 20th century, if not of all time. But, there is no question that at times, they put out some incredibly bad stuff. Revolution 9 being a big example.

The same for most artists I guess

McCartney is a phenomenal bass player, which is sometimes sadly overlooked due to his songwriting

buried

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973842#Comment_119973842

Never said it was. I said I can't stand ANY of their stuff.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119973480#Comment_119973480

"The first in history as we know music today" What absolute nonsense.

Westlife is commercial pop, hundreds of thousands of girls screaming like lunatics at 4 haircuts on a stage singing songs. And who started that craic? Woody Guthrie?

Gregor Samsa

Surprised there's no thread on him, this being the anniversary of his shooting.

Imagine!

walshb

John, the engine of the Beatles!