Am I The Only Person That Just Isn't Into The Beatles?

[23skidoo]

When the box sets came out the other week, I used that as the gauge. I've been an admirer of their work for years and I certainly recognize their influence. And a number of their recordings rank among my favorites. But I came to the conclusion that, taking their entire "canon" into account, there wasn't enough interest to justify buying their whole repertoire.

So I guess that makes me a casual fan, at best, who likes particular songs but has little interest in the whole enchilada. I ended up buying the Past Masters reissue because it had about 75% of the songs I cared about and for now that's good enough.

I do not consider them overrated in the slightest (except for arguments made by some of the real die-hards that they were the true creators of rock and roll). Taken as a whole, they just aren't my cup of tea.

Alex

 

[Trubinator]

Nope. The Beatles suck ... not just you.

 

[Smiley]

I've never been a big fan, but I don't dislike them, either. Since I've only heard the #1s CD and not any of the original albums, I decided to try one out. I found Let It Be for a reasonable price, so I will give it a listen.

 

[ITL]

I've never been a big fan, but I don't dislike them, either. Since I've only heard the #1s CD and not any of the original albums, I decided to try one out. I found Let It Be for a reasonable price, so I will give it a listen.

IMO There's some good music on Let It Be despite the messed-up way it came to be - A fractious, abandoned project in early '69 that wasn't released (and with a Phil Spector mix that wasn't too popular) until '70.

Interesting, but definitely messed up!

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I've never been a big fan, but I don't dislike them, either. Since I've only heard the #1s CD and not any of the original albums, I decided to try one out. I found Let It Be for a reasonable price, so I will give it a listen.

I'd suggest Revolver, Rubber Soul, or, if you want to pay a little more, the White album. Let It Be was made when the Beatles were disintegrating, so I wouldn't judge the band from the album.

 

[I am not Spock]

Overhyped, yes. Overrated, no.

The Beatles were and are a fine band. Are they gods? No. Were they incapable of producing a bad song, or are they completely above reproach? No and no.

I used to dislike them for being too cutesy, until I heard some of their darker stuff. I'm a moderate fan now. But's lets be reasonable. No filler tracks, as someone said before? Dig It? Why Don't We Do It In The Road? The Beatles had as many filler songs as anyone else.

I'm not a hater. I bought Let It Be (the 2009 remastered edition). I may well buy some of the others. Let It Be is considered one of their weaker albums, despite 'Across The Universe' , 'Get Back', and the title track. But I picked that one up because it was the album of theirs I was least familiar with.

Pros and Cons

Pros: -The Beatles were good songwriters, in fact some of the best of their generation.
-The Beatles helped the notion in popular music that one could write one's own material, not have some record company schmuck write it for you.
-The Beatles pioneered a lot of studio recording technologies.
-They influenced so many musicians, from hip-hop to pop, from prog rock to heavy metal.
- John and George looked cool

Cons: -Too many bubblegum songs, at least in their earlier phase.
-The idea that its blasphemous to say anything against them, yet its OK with just about any other artist.
-They were not the best players, technically speaking. Could anyone seriously tell me Ringo was a better drummer than Keith Moon or John Bonham?
-The insane overhype. The fact that they are now so establishment, that their works are taught to school children.
-They just never were mean enough. The Who, The Kinks, Zep, and the Stones all looked and sounded nastier than them.

But overall, I do quite enjoy most of their music now.

 

[I am not Spock]

I've never been a big fan, but I don't dislike them, either. Since I've only heard the #1s CD and not any of the original albums, I decided to try one out. I found Let It Be for a reasonable price, so I will give it a listen.

I'd suggest Revolver, Rubber Soul, or, if you want to pay a little more, the White album. Let It Be was made when the Beatles were disintegrating, so I wouldn't judge the band from the album.

Actually, I think I might get the remastered White Album. Let It Be probably wasn't the best first choice for me.

 

[Smiley]

Hearing Let It Be remastered was kind of like being inside the recording studio with the band. I liked the majority of the songs on it, and I was indifferent to the rest. I plan to try Revolver this weekend and The White Album when my gift card arrives in the mail.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

I am a fan of The Beatles. When I was a teenager, I knew who they were, but was just a casual fan. There was other music I enjoyed more. But in my family, I had relatives who were fans of the band. One of my uncles gave me a vinyl copy of I want to Hold your hand. Not sure where it went.

But over the last 10 years, I've been looked to what the artists liked, and I've been listening to a lot of older music also. A few years, I brought a copy of 1, and have got other Beatles CDs.

 

[Hofner]

And a one night stand that leads to arson, at that.

Also one of the first rock tunes to use alternate tunings.

I did not know that! Any idea which one?

ITL, currently DADGAD with capo at the 3rd fret

Sorry to dig up this old fossil of a thread but wanted to address something.

I'm pretty sure in "Norwegian Wood" Lennon used his acoustic guitar at standard tuning with a capo on the 2nd fret. The song is in the key of E meaning he used the open D chord fretting pattern on the guitar with a capo on the 2nd fret. You can pick out the signature melody of the song in this chord pattern.

For the rhythm acoustic guitar in the song "Nowhere Man" Lennon did the same thing; he put a capo on the second fret.

Robert

 

[USS KG5]

No self-respecting rock band I can think of would put out stuff like "Octopus' Garden", "Honey Pie", "Bungalow Bill", "Yellow Submarine", "Penny Lane", etc. And there's not one single actual rock song on Sgt. Peppers.

That is the main problem with modern music, there are no real, genuine genre-hoppers in the way the Beatles were in the 60s. It really is impossible to over-emphasise their influence, not just on the development of popular music but also they share with Elvis the distinction of genuinely changing the world around them too, or at least being a key part of that change.

The other important point to make is that Elvis did all his key music making in a year or so, or arguably one single session at sun studios, whereas the Beatles had a five year run of astonishing productivity and music around them developed as well. They became the jumping off point for other great acts like Dylan, The Stones and The Beach Boys, and that then floweed back into what the Beatles did. It was a genuinely fantastic time to love popular music.

It is also worth remembering genres as we know them now did not really exist back in the 60s. "Rock" on its own was largely invented to seperate "serious" album based music from "rock and roll" as "pop" in the late 60s. There were a lot of genres that were invented in the 60s like "folk rock" (Dylan, The Byrds) but even then you had a lot more flexibility than you do now.

R&B amusingly has the same meaning now as in the 60s, a polite way of saying "music made by black people" always a tremendous load of fluff as of course all of what we know now as popular music comes from the melting pot of the 60s, which was a distillation of folk, country but above all "black" music. Of course real rap music and hip-hop now is one of the few genuinely new things to emerge in forty years.

The 60s had it all where music is concerned. What came after while often brilliant never covered so much ground so fast. The "genre fascism" that is found these days particularly among younger rock fans helps encourage a rock music scene that is as stale and uniniteresting as anything on X-Factor, for the most part.

There is always great music out there, and to summarise the amazing theing about the Beatles is that they were the centre and had the biggest achievements of any artists working in a period where anything went, because it was MUSIC, not "rock" or "pop".

 

[ToddPence]

I'm a Rolling Stones kind of guy...

Me too, Mutenroshi. I can remember in high school getting into arguments with people who liked the Beatles and I would argue for the Stones. Later, I came to appreciate the Beatles' music more. Today a lot of the stuff before Rubber Soul sounds sometimes dated and formulaic. But everything after that is pretty brilliant.
Of course, I'm not typical of Beatles likers - I think their most brilliant and accomplished record is "Let It Be", which most fans consider a mistake.
And I guess I still prefer the Stones - because, as you said, I'm a Rolling Stones kind of guy.

 

[TrekNut87]

I like a few of their songs, but I can't say I'm a huge fan.

 

[gblews]

That is the main problem with modern music, there are no real, genuine genre-hoppers in the way the Beatles were in the 60s. It really is impossible to over-emphasise their influence, not just on the development of popular music but also they share with Elvis the distinction of genuinely changing the world around them too, or at least being a key part of that change.

I know how the Beatles "influenced" the world around them, but in what way did Elvis do this?

They became the jumping off point for other great acts like Dylan,

I would not call the Beatles a "jumping off point for Dylan". They probably had an impact on his music, just as he had on theirs, but there were many other artists who could be considered "jumping off points for Dylan", before the Beatles. But I'll agree that the Beatles pretty much led Bryan Wilson around by the nose (when Chuck Berry or Phil Spector wasn't). And, no Beatles, no Stones.

It was a genuinely fantastic time to love popular music.

Heartily agree.

It is also worth remembering genres as we know them now did not really exist back in the 60s. "Rock" on its own was largely invented to seperate "serious" album based music from "rock and roll" as "pop" in the late 60s.

Agree. This is a point I was trying to make in a recent thread concerning the Rock Hall of Fame. It is something that young rock fans seem to be unaware of.

R&B amusingly has the same meaning now as in the 60s, a polite way of saying "music made by black people"

This is what I thought too, but some years ago I asked my daughter what music her and her friends considered to be R&B. To my utter shock she said, N'Synch, 98 Degrees, etc. I said wll what about Mary J. Blige, and (I mentioned some other young black music acts which I can't recall now), she said they are considered Hip Hop, not R&B. The landscape is ever shifting.

The 60s had it all where music is concerned. What came after while often brilliant never covered so much ground so fast. The "genre fascism" that is found these days particularly among younger rock fans helps encourage a rock music scene that is as stale and uniniteresting as anything on X-Factor, for the most part.

AMEN!!!

 

[Jax]

I like a few of their songs, but I can't say I'm a huge fan.

Same...I don't get the hype really for any of the so called legendary bands.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The Beatles were influenced by Dylan and the Beach Boys (and visa versa) Brian Wilson claims that Pet Sounds was made because of Rubber Soul. Paul McCartney and George Martin cite Pet Sounds as an influence on Sgt Pepper.

 

[Nowhere Man]

I am a huge fan of The Beatles, they are the best band to ever exist point blank. There will never be another band better than them and I wanted to pretend that I didn't see this thread, but I did. I understand how someone could not like many bands, but I cannot see how someone could not like the Beatles. I understand the younger people who may not be into them as much, but everyone can find atleast one song they like. I am 30 years old and work with college age kids and 90% of them Love the Beatles. I don't want to be mean, so I will stop there. Normaly I defend the Beatles with much anger, but since this is suposed to be a friendly forum I will leave it alone. You are intiteled to your opinion.

 

[The Beer Slayer]

For me, part of the problem is that there seem to be three different versions of the Beatles. There's the pop-Beatles, and then there's the Rubber Soul onward Beatles when the Beatles were moving towards psychadelic rock, and then there's the post-India Beatles that couldn't seem to decide if they were going to be experimental or move back to mainstream music (e.g. the White Album).

Towards the end of the Beatles, there's an awful lot of what I consider noise on the Beatles albums, Revolution 9 being the most obvious example of that kind of music. I don't know it it was just the 1960s, if the members of the band wanted to try something new, Yoko Ono, the drugs, sheer exhaustion, or what it was, but the albums are very uneven by the end of the decade. McCartney writes Blackbird and follows it up with Ob-La-Di, Ob-la-Da for example. It's almost like the Beatles couldn't find their sound, or maybe more accuratly wanted to change their sound and didn't know which way to go.

I won't deny that the Beatles were huge in the music scene in the 1960s, but compared to other period groups, I don't think the Beatles albums, especially the later albums, have aged well. Overall, I think the Beatles were an important band, but I don't think they were the greatest band musically (although I do think individually McCartney and Harrison rank right up there) and I do not think they are as great as many people think they are.

 

[gblews]

For me, part of the problem is that there seem to be three different versions of the Beatles. There's the pop-Beatles, and then there's the Rubber Soul onward Beatles when the Beatles were moving towards psychadelic rock, and then there's the post-India Beatles that couldn't seem to decide if they were going to be experimental or move back to mainstream music (e.g. the White Album).

How is this a problem? The band evolved and grew, something that many many bands never do.

Towards the end of the Beatles, there's an awful lot of what I consider noise on the Beatles albums, Revolution 9 being the most obvious example of that kind of music. I don't know it it was just the 1960s, if the members of the band wanted to try something new, Yoko Ono, the drugs, sheer exhaustion, or what it was, but the albums are very uneven by the end of the decade. McCartney writes Blackbird and follows it up with Ob-La-Di, Ob-la-Da for example. It's almost like the Beatles couldn't find their sound, or maybe more accuratly wanted to change their sound and didn't know which way to go.

The band had "found their sound" when they appeared on Ed Sullivan, at least that version of the band. They continued to explore and experiment and find new sounds as the band grew older, more experienced, and confident. Not every song on every album was a masterpiece, there's never been an artist even close to the Beatles in terms of output who could make that claim. But the fact is, their highs were higher than nearly everyone else.

Whether or not you like the band is subjective and to each his own, but the Beatles music certainly continues to withstand the test of time.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I think the Beatles are okay. They're not my favorite group by any means (my favorite band that was around in the 60's is probably the Hollies), but I still enjoy their music.

I definitely prefer the Beatles when they were just normal happy-go-lucky suit-wearing dudes, not this psychedelic crap they turned into.