Beatles: Classic or Dud?

Oh, and: classic. Obviously.

Actually, I'll have to disagree with you on this specific point. "It's My Life" has a crisp, clear sound to it that just seems to rise up and connect -- and feel more electronic and 'of the now' if you like -- while at the same time the weird whale-sound synth bits almost remind me of "Tomorrow Never Knows" for a future time! So there's a bit of inspiration if you like, but also a way in which the past can get drop- kicked forward by someone else. ;-)

A lot of the fans, when they are interviewd on TV, came across as ppl who would ONLY listen to the Beatles and nothing nothing else (there are similarities w/Smiths fans who are caricatured as the sort of ppl who would never touch black music and who have only listened to Morrissey solo albums after the smiths broke up, the sort of ppl who could not handle the concept of 'dance' music).

I avoided the beatles for a long time because I got this idea that I would stop to listen to music and only listen to beatles albums until my dying day (this is before the days when I even knew what free jazz/improv/other musics was BTW).

I finally got round to them when i realized there is just TOO MUCH out there and so i picked up a copy of the white album (borrowed it from the record library). It's a good record, the arrangements on tracks like 'Sexy Sadie' (my favourite on the whole rec) were really beautiful. On the other hand I thought revolution no9 was a dud (a break from the pop norm and something that could have put me off listening to any 'adventurous' music if i had listened to it two years earlier, say) and that 'helter Skelter' was alughable attempt at copying the velvets (did they hear them?) but a nice melody. So overall a mixture of the dud, the sublime and plenty in the middle as well. I taped what i liked (left out six tracks as I recall) before I gave it back. Haven't got around to anything else as this stuff just isn't very important to me (I could get all he beatles recs for free as they are all there in the record library but I really can't be bothered).

At the end of the day I want to be stunned and this is not enough and the cultural importance just isn't there to make it vital, either.

(VU *did* send demo tapes to Brian Epstein. but no one knows if he ever listened to them, let alone passed them on to any of the four)

Is timelessness necessarily a virtue, though? Or less a virtue than a perceived construction? "I hear lots of things that sound like this = it is timeless"...doesn't seem to work for me as well as it might.

Whenever the Beatles come up here, I am hesitant to say anything because part of me wants to make a case for the Beatles which will convince even the most hostile, and part of me sees the utter futility in such an effort. I don't want to deal with the pressure of getting it just right, or of saying something sufficiently novel. But also, my reponse to my favorite Beatles songs is so immediate that I don't feel like being bothered with attempting to point out what there is to enjoy in their music.

I feel that maybe I have been fortunate in that my exposure to their music has been gradual. I guess I would have heard their songs for the first time when I was five; but I didn't hear the "White Album" until my brother bough it when I was in 6th or 7th grade; didn't hear "Rubber Soul" until he bought that a couple years later; and didn't hear "Revolver" until I had graduated from college and was getting high on marijuana for the first time (which, in itself, gave me a fresh take on their music).

I don't listen to them as much as I used to, but I still have the desire to hear their songs from time to time. I think sometimes there is this assumption that very enthusiastic Beatles fans think that everything they did was great, which is certainly not the case for me. On balance though, they are still the stand-out band for me.

jerry garcia's and ghost and kate (i think) to thread!!!

''haha who else wants julio stunned?''

OK OK so i don't need to be 'stunned' but the build up to listening to them just told me that i would be at the time and i wasn't.

The one thing that could be considered massive dud, though, is that after the Beatles started writing all of their own material, it was pretty much expected that new artists would write their own material in order to be considered valid--interpreters need not apply! From that perspective, it's tainted a lot of musical appreciation--"Oh, they just do a bunch of covers = they are untalented!"

i think tom's "complete exaggeration" up-thread re critical language is pretty close to true (i mean, you can factor in the stones and dylan also, BUT beatle-success = condition of possibility for both... )

An old theory applicable to most Beatles fans I know: it isn't simply the exposure that inspires reverence, but how early the exposure takes place. Before becoming eclectic, sometimes before choosing the music they heard, they had committed half the band's discography to memory (Beatle songs double as lullabies for parents who grew up with them).

Ned, I am having this tattooed on my forehead, and if you're honest about your priorities you'll do the same post-haste. :-)

Personally I've always been more of a Stones fan but where would the Glimmer Twins be without Lennon & McCartney? I don't own any Beatles albums except for the red and blue doubles and (for professional reasons) "Live at the BBC", the "Anthology" series and "1", although I know most of the albums. I actually prefer the early, jingle-jangle merseybeat guitar stuff to the later psychedelia efforts. The first singles and albums - up until and including "Revolver" - have a freshness, a manic energy, a dazzlement, if you will, with the form of the pop song and the idea that yes, you could be different and be accepted that have transcended the time since past. If you look at "A Hard Day's Night", you'll find it's a film that very much puts into pictures the entire madness and the enormous realm of possibilities that the Beatles meant.

By the end of that era though I suppose it was becoming a very limited sound and I certainly understand their need to move forward. For me, though, nearly everything from then onwards is more intriguing than interesting and doesn't hold my attention; you can see them stretching but what they're getting out of that is very often meandering. And I still think the Red and Blue doubles are probably the greatest compilations ever done, simply by dint of the enormous amount of good and important music contained therein - they really are the best of the Beatles. Whether the band is still relevant today beyond its historical importance, though, is anybody's guess - and no, I don't think they've been underrated or underexposed (if anything, they have been overexposed thanks to their crafty zeal in milking the catalogue for all it's worth).

but why chris?

1)I didn't actually write the original post that started this discussion-- someone (knowing that a)I love the Beatles and b)I would find a[nother] discussion of whether or not they are "overrated" intensely boring) posted under my name as a "joke," I guess. You all seem to be having a fine time with it anyway-- I'd never even looked at this board until a rarely-used mailbox of mine started filling up with responses...

2)Hey there, Jack Cole-- you're wrong about the Beatles, mums & dads and probably any number of other things, but I love you anyway.

I like the Beatles a lot but I never have anything to say about them anymore. It's not that there's nothing new to say about them, I'm just looking for a new angle. I will say that the early stuff is actually quite underrated, and I always feel irritated when someone says that they didn't start being good until Rubber Soul. Then again, I think it's a bit silly to go the complete opposite and claim they never did anything good after Rubber Soul. Maybe the only interesting angle left is "Ringo was the true genius of the group. No, wait, it was Stu Sutcliffe."

A Hard Day's Night is probably the best pop movie I've ever seen.

if nothing else, they were exceptionally and uniquely innovative in SYNTHESIS from the very start, for example of what kind of songs one pop group was allowed to write: they covered a radically broad range, not just of styles in a shallow pick-and-mix sense, but of songs-as-ethos-as-style, and also quite soon began to crossbreed them... this wasn't a small thing, and it's a major reason why they weren't a small thing either

The Red album is a pretty good collection, but the Blue misses the boat in a number of ways. It is missing the following songs from the years it covers: Baby You’re a Rich Man; Lovely Rita; Rain; Paperback Writer [but was this originally released earlier?]; Dear Prudence; I’m So Tired; Julia; Yer Blues; Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey[!]; Sexy Sadie; Helter Skelter; Long, Long, Long; Two of Us; Dig a Pony; I Me Mine; I’ve Got a Feeling; One After 909.

I would be willing to exchange some of those for many of the ones included on that compilation.

And if you have the red and blue albums, you still don't have any of the songs from Revolver, which means you don't really have the best that the Beatles did.

man, it's my birthday today, please don't spoil it!

I think sexy sadie is a beautiful tune and the piano arrangement is too good (wish I had it now so I could go on about this). Karma police has imcromprehensible giberish masquerading as lyrics (this can be a good thing but Thom Yorke lacks imagination to make it good) and the piano in the whole thing is set up to make you feel depressed. Radiohead cry all the way tot he bank...

Yes, the blue album covers the hits, but in doing so it leaves off quite a few of my favorite songs, and includes some I would just as leave not hear again. (In general, I can do without the anthemic late songs like "All You Need Is Love" or "Let It Be," though they have their good points.)

The Beatles legacy was exposed to me during a "Beatles A to Z weekend!!" on a local classic rock station. I made tapes of most of what I heard, starting somewhere in the middle of the B's. With a few exceptions, the early straight-ahead songs have never grabbed me. At this point I have Sgt. Pepper (obviously upgraded to a reissued LP), White Album, Hey Jude, Magical Mystery Tour, Rubber Soul, and two Abbey Roads. I would like to get Revolver, but might be slightly embarrassed to buy a copy.

I find it unfortunate that it's probably the aftershock of all the DUD! screamers which gives rise to my hesitation. There shouldn't be anything wrong with enjoying this band. Good songwriting, interesting studio experimentation, blah blah etc. I am by no means and avid fan, and the records dont often find their way onto the turntable anymore, but still i come down on the side of Classic.

Morrissey too - bonus!

>>> inclusivity is too rarely celebrated in pop to kick Carter aside. And besides I love how folksy and rudimentary Carter were - nobody else has ever sounded quite like them.

Your last point is good. But the 'inclusivity' one I don't buy. I feel like there's been loads of it, rhetorically; and when that record came out the gesture already felt very tired *in specifically carter-USM terms*. Maybe I am misjudging here cos of B&S and Murdoch's worthy, dull rhetoric of inclusivity.

>>> THE BEATLES - "For No One"
So, I finally bought a Beatles album. "For No One" is the best track on the patchy Revolver, McCartney's singing on it a measured miracle (I could lose a day in those vowels). Why did everyone rip off Lennon's throaty yowlings and ignore McCartney's proud, stiff-backed regionalism?

'Patchy'? How? I mean, what's Bad on it?

Apart from that, you are on the money - and you are bringing out sth specific that seems almost never to have been raised. The precision, the well-spokenness of Macca (despite his love of Little Richard / sandpaper vox etc) - and the relation (whatever it is) between that and the 'regional' quality: this is a key overlooked issue. It almost deserves a thread in itself.

>>> even if it wasn't Vini Reilly's piano would net it a place on this list.

Yes - the piano is maybe the strongest musical touch of all. Of course, the piano on 'For No One' is crucial too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2vU8M6CYI

(I'm sure we're all a bit fed up with the Fabs at this point, but it's been quite interesting reading early-ilx having a chew over whether the Beatles are any good or not, whilst some dish out the challops as per)

Not much has changed, but they live under water.

we're at the very tail end of the period when they will be listened to alongside contemporary popular music on the same or at least similar terms. Soon their status will become increasingly like, say, Duke Ellington's: revered in theory but listened to only by oldsters and the minority of enthusiasts prepared to work at breaking down the barriers that makes their music sound dated to most ears.

i dunno about this...

especially with the remasters, i get the feeling that these fellows' records will be accessible for quite a while

Oh that Beatles 3000 thing is HILARIOUS!
"Sgt. Pet Sounds and the Spiders From Aja"

LOL at the joke about the Napster-era mislabeling.

Oxygen and vitamins: Classic or dud?

There's a really good video of "Don't Let Me Down" from the rooftop concert streaming on the iTunes store right now. I guess it's a promo for the Let It Be...Naked release.

lol at the random ilx guy in 2002 dismissing them as 'a very popular skiffle combo.'

lol

Surely that was dave q.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrAdX4O1m4M

"Rock out in comfort"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v--q95oeWU

George Martin's string arrangement on "Eleanor Rigby" is really good. I have loved since I was a little kid how rhythmic the violin section is done, it rocks up pretty good for a string section.

I think that's cos Martin used Bartok st qts as a template.

What would be a good example of a Bartok quartet piece with this feel?

You can hear just the strings here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZA6jtxtTfQ

As someone says in the comments it sounds (in places) quite like Bernard Herrmann's score of Psycho.

George Martin:

I was very much inspired by Bernard Herrmann, in particular a score he did for the Truffaut film Farenheit 451. That really impressed me, especially the strident string writing. When Paul told me he wanted the strings in Eleanor Rigby to be doing a rhythm it was Herrmann's score which was a particular influence.

Geoff Emerick:

On Eleanor Rigby we miked very, very close to the strings, almost touching them. No one had really done that before; the musicians were in horror.

If this is the closest we're ever going to get to a restoration of Let It Be, I guess I'll take it.

Just announced: Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back” documentary, featuring never-before-seen footage of the legendary band, comes to theaters September 4, 2020.
Photo Credit: ©1969 Paul McCartney / Photographer: Linda McCartney pic.twitter.com/8BM11NH3Iz

— Walt Disney Studios (@DisneyStudios) March 11, 2020

p excited for this tbh

and I haven't cared about anything Peter Jackson's done in ... 20 years?

Sounds about right!

the WWI restoration footage thing he did was incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcgceA64aAI

really looking forward to this

xxxp me too, except They Shall Not Grow Old was pretty good

ha, fuck, beaten to it