The Beatles. What's the story there?

Badly Drunk Boy · 27-09-2015 06:01AM

Mother Brain wrote: »

Oh nothing at all! I like to listen to classical music sometimes while im sculpting or just relaxing.

My brother maintains that the beatles are objectively good because of the complex musicality, harmonies etc. and I just feel that if your only criteria for deciding whether you like a piece of music is whether it's sort of 'critically considered' to be good then you should be listening to classical music all the time as it doesn't get much more musically accomplished than that!

Yeah, like there's no such thing as bad classical music...

27-09-2015 07:23AM

The Dogs Bollix wrote: »

Lucy off in the sky with diamonds
Hey jude
Let it be
Yellow submarine
Strawberry field forever
Penny lane

Are just a few of their songs?

Are you okay in the head OP? The beatles were great. What a decade to live in.

Was going through the list and thinking dirge, dirge, dirge, dirge...oh yeah. Because Lucy in the sky with diamonds, Hey jude, Let it be and Yellow submarine will just make me turn a radio off...but Strawberry fields forever is just amazing. Great cover by the Candy Flips too.

Menas · 27-09-2015 07:26AM

The early stuff is chewing gum pop crap. But their later stuff is fcking great. Get a copy of the White Album and give it a whirl. If that does not change your mind then nothing will!

Mantis Toboggan · 27-09-2015 07:35AM

Sucks that their stuff isn't on Spotify. Who holds the music rights? I thought it was wackojacko!

Mena · 27-09-2015 08:05AM

libelula wrote: »

They were fairly brutal like. What's the appeal?

This seems timely and apt. Apt!

Ignatius in bloom · 27-09-2015 08:26AM

The smiths were far better.

FrKurtFahrt · 27-09-2015 09:06AM

It's all to do with taste. I'm a Beatles man, and I'd insist that - behind all the hype/looks/wives/scandals/drugs - the bulk of the music created was utterly brilliant.

Whitewinged · 27-09-2015 09:06AM

Its funny when your listening to a beatles song and without knowing you can correctly guess which one of them wrote it.

id prefer the rolling stones music myself but i like the beatles too. I like "the white album".

i remember watching a doc about the stones though that kind of turned me off. It basically painted the picture of mick jagger as a very shrewd business man and that while the beatles were marketed as good boy band type, the stones dark bad boy image was also very deliberate.

Insect Overlord · 27-09-2015 09:31AM

Billy86 wrote: »

You seem to be under the impression they broke up around 1965.

I never said that was what *kept* them popular. :P

Sir Osis of Liver. · 27-09-2015 10:09AM

Love the Beatles,but given a choice would rather listen to the uglier,slightly less talented Stones.

One eyed Jack · 27-09-2015 10:14AM

libelula wrote: »

They were fairly brutal like. What's the appeal?

I'm with you OP, the Beatles themselves were brutal, but they were a product of their time, the same way as One Direction themselves are brutal, the head on Harry Styles in all fairness, similar to the effect that walnut-head McCartney, I simply don't get the appeal... but, there's no denying their musical accomplishments, and while the Beatles catalogue is infinitely more diverse than One Direction, they still manage the odd tune that catches my attention, like this one -

I'm not a fan of them, or their music, generally speaking, but I wouldn't outright dismiss it on the basis that the vast majority of their output is utter shìte IMO, same as I feel about the Beatles and their output.

DavidLyons_ · 27-09-2015 10:25AM

From that era, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks were all much more deserving of the sort of adulation heaped upon The Beatles.
The one whose popularity always baffled me was Sinatra. Absolute crap.

Dirty Dingus McGee · 27-09-2015 10:30AM

Suas11 wrote: »

But a lot of the Beatles' music is simple, especially the early stuff.

What's wrong with it being simple.

Surely that's the genius part of it that it was simple but yet brilliant.

Jaws is an extremely simple film yet at the same time it is brilliant.

Sir Osis of Liver. · 27-09-2015 10:40AM

Yoko was the real talent.

Arthur Daley · 27-09-2015 10:50AM

I always thought they were a bit over rated. Like untouchable rock and roll royalty.

But getting into their 65/66onwards stuff I can see (or hear) what the fuss was about. A day in the life is just so powerful when you listen to it loud and concentrate on all those sounds. On the white album and abbey road the layers of sound were innovative and on a different planet from the sort of music people listened to in the rest of the 60s. They innovated with things like the moog synth. I like to think if the beatles ever reformed or displaced into the late 70s or 80s they would have been called new romanticsor dance/rave acts. Only they would have been the damned finest that all the others peered up to.

The beatles rattled out an album a year of masterpieces every single year. Shows up all the artists in their wake who have to explain away at interviews that they have spent 8 years contemplating for the latest album they are pushing. But to be fair who could match that period of creativity (especially 66-70) ever again?

GuessWhoEh · 27-09-2015 10:55AM

RWCNT wrote: »

Properly weirded out by people who think the Beatles got by on their looks. Not my cuppa tea I suppose.

Id love a cup of tea now actually

Whitewinged · 27-09-2015 10:55AM

One eyed Jack wrote: »

I'm with you OP, the Beatles themselves were brutal, but they were a product of their time, the same way as One Direction themselves are brutal, the head on Harry Styles in all fairness, similar to the effect that walnut-head McCartney, I simply don't get the appeal... but, there's no denying their musical accomplishments, and while the Beatles catalogue is infinitely more diverse than One Direction, they still manage the odd tune that catches my attention, like this one -

I'm not a fan of them, or their music, generally speaking, but I wouldn't outright dismiss it on the basis that the vast majority of their output is utter shìte IMO, same as I feel about the Beatles and their output.

The reason i dont like the comparison to 1d is because they probably dont write their own songs and even if they do, they have a large input from people behind the scenes. They also dont play any instruments.

The rolling stones were from upper middle class and were trained musicians that went to music college (someone correct me if im wrong)

But the beatles were just a couple of lads in a working class area who got together and learned as they went on.

not saying there is anything right or wrong about class but just that is the reason why the beatles earlier stuff sounds simple but in fact was not that simple because they did it on their own.

GerB40 · 27-09-2015 11:31AM

DavidLyons_ wrote: »

From that era, The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks were all much more deserving of the sort of adulation heaped upon The Beatles.
The one whose popularity always baffled me was Sinatra. Absolute crap.

I agree with absolutely everything you said. Especially about Sinatra. Deano was a better singer, Sammy was a better entertainer. Plus there were people like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin doing the rounds at that time.

The Beatles were outstanding but their PR people deserve a Nobel prize of some sort...

Nodin · 27-09-2015 11:35AM

libelula wrote: »

They were fairly brutal like. What's the appeal?

Beyond me, tbh. You probably had to be around at the time.

eviltwin · 27-09-2015 11:38AM

Not a fan of any of their stuff, don't really get what all the hype is tbh. I'm more of a Stones fan myself.

e_e · 27-09-2015 11:40AM

I'm not one of these "The Beatles invented music!" people but the comparisons to the likes of 1D are utterly ludicrous. It's a bit like saying "James Joyce, meh. He was just the Dan Brown of his time!"

How many boy bands sound like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiPqeeMfmfA

or this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av4x6nZlefc

or this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bl-pLG7_5E

yabadabado · 27-09-2015 11:50AM

Duggy747 wrote: »

Pfffft, The Beatles couldn't even dream of making something as majestic and powerful as this

you watched the new episode of South Park:D

nullzero · 27-09-2015 12:16PM

The Beatles were masters of the pop tune and then became inventive and creative pioneers of a more avant garde sound that became the new direction of popular music for much of the late sixties.

To say the stones or the who were better more inventive bands is quite hilarious really as neither of those bands approached the type of stuff the Beatles created even though they are bands I love on their own merit.

I think there are people who like to say the Beatles weren't all they were cracked up to be and that they were a glorified boy band and a pr miracle etc as that muck will stick to them but the fact is they were also the most productive, inventive and inspired band in the history of popular music. They deserve to be thought of as the best band of all time because they got to that level on merit of the music they created, which holds up today and will still hold up for generations.

Some people won't like their music, that's fine too, but they remain one of the few bands worthy of the hype they have generated over the last five decades, so yeah OP they're not great, they're much more than that.

27-09-2015 12:25PM

JupiterKid wrote: »

The Beatles were groundbreaking. You may not like their music but they were a force to be reckoned with in the 60s. You have to remember that the 1960s was a really important decade for pop music. It started out with crooners and Cliff Richards and in just 9 short years you had heavy rock like Led Zeppelin.

There's little doubt that the Beatles played a major role in the evolution of music in that decade and the huge influence they had.

Agree. But what was acceptable in 1960s is not these days. It is the old hat! It may have inspired bands that followed, but the beatles was inspired by other bands also.

starling · 27-09-2015 12:26PM

Don't read Shakespeare OP, it's just full of clichés

Wibbs · 27-09-2015 12:28PM

GerB40 wrote: »

The Beatles were outstanding but their PR people deserve a Nobel prize of some sort...

That's seeing things through the prism of today. The PR we have these days is a world away from what it was then. It was of a much more primitive sort. In many cases more about damage limitation than anything. The Stones as the bad boys was a very clumsy example of early PR. They were anything but. Nice grammar school boys they were. The Beatles were actually more dodgy under all the clean cut hype that their manager pushed. They had been the leather clad ones honing their craft as a backing band for strippers in Hamburg dive bars, partaking of pills and whores and getting into trouble. Lennon may have even beaten a guy to death. On another occasion he painted swastikas on a pig(christ knows where he got it from) and goose stepped down the street of the red light district shouting sieg heil. As you do. Though again "working class hero" Lennon was anything but. Very middle class suburban. Even McCartney who pushes the working class spiel was after all an art student who took a holiday with Lennon in France. Broke they weren't.

Music wise again we looking back through the prism of familiarity and today. We're so used to many types of music coming at us from everywhere. It was a very different world back then. Far fewer conduits for music for a start. 90% of people only heard mainstream stuff. One reason so many came out of a place like Liverpool was because it was a port and records were coming in from the US and Europe. the Beatles had access and were listening to quite obscure stuff.

This is reflected in their music. As is strangely enough church music and some medieval phrasing and this is in their early "simple" poppy stuff too. Even stuff like "she loves you" was playing around with music in ways rarely heard outside classical works. When they got the Indian music buzz they fiddled with it too. Lennon's Jealous Guy, written when he was a Beatle is written in the pentatonic scale like eastern music, but he made it sound like a "normal western" pop song. That's genus level shít right there. Bands like the Stones were playing around with the 12 bar blues and doing so well, but their range was very limited by comparison. The Beachboys of all people were the closest in range and who the mop tops saw as their rivals, not the Stones. Oddly enough given their influences and fashion the Beatles only ever wrote one traditionally structured 12 bar blues song.

Basically if you were around back then you quite simply had heard nothing like it before. By the time they got to stuff like nowhere man, Eleanor Rigby, Norwegian wood and something really out there like Tomorrow never knows(which could nearly be the Chemical brothers) all bets were off. Turning on your transistor radio in 1967 to hear "Strawberry Fields forever" coming through the speaker for the first time would have been well weird(never mind the music, the lyrics are as far from boy loves girl as you can get).

That they did all this year after year always pushing forward through Beatlemania and all that madness is nothing short of unbelievable. Consider the time gap between a song like Help and a song like Tomorrow Never Knows is just eight months. :eek: When they first laid down a track guitar bands were "going out of fashion", when they ended only seven years later music had changed forever and they were right at the pointy end of that change.

biko · 27-09-2015 12:32PM

libelula wrote: »

They were fairly brutal like. What's the appeal?

It's fine, you'll get them when you're older. Enjoy One Direction for now.

Wibbs · 27-09-2015 12:34PM

Deleted User wrote: »

the beatles was inspired by other bands also.

Yes and no. The "band" as we think of it today wasn't really around when they were forming. It was much more a case of a frontman/lead singer and a backing band. Solo artists were the thing really. one of their big influences was Buddy Holly and his band the Crickets. Hence they liverpool lads went for another type on insect, adding the "A" to reflect the music side. A band like the Shadows were popular, but were Cliff Richards backing band and otherwise were a novelty act. The band were in the background in the public eye. Few fans could name a bass player or drummer back then. To be able to name John, Paul, George and Ringo was very new. That three of them wrote songs was extremely novel. The Beatles influences were as much about show tunes, film scores, hymns(and later classical, eastern and avant garde) as they were blues and rock and roll.

garrixfan · 27-09-2015 12:42PM

There is a reason they kicked out the drummer, he was too good looking compared to the rest of them and he was hogging all the limelight. I maintain in 2010 those guys would have never been famous for their looks.

garrixfan · 27-09-2015 12:44PM

They just looked like every British young person ever, nothing great. I was never a fan of them tbh

The Beatles. What's the story there?

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