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

[I am not Spock]

^ The psych era is my favourite of the Beatles. The White Album is by far my favourite album by them. I didn't even like the Beatles until I heard that album. It covers so many genres, and probably invented a few more (Helter Skelter points the way to heavy metal, and several others are the forerunner to prog rock).

Of the big four Sixties bands (The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and the Kinks), my faves are the Kinks and the Who. But the Beatles are good, just a little overhyped.

 

[Nowhere Man]

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.

Ok, I'll explain, Mcartney said specificaly with the White Album and Abby Road which is the "left overs" of the White Album they Wanted to write a song for each genre of music what I Mean:For Regae you have Obla-De-Obla-Da and Octopuss' Garden,For Country you have Rocky Rocky Racoon, in keeping the Phycodelic theme you have Glass Onion and Come Together,For a tribute to the Beach Boy's you have Beack in the USSR. also they were not alowed in Russia, so they made a song about it. For Folk music you have Honey Pie and the Contuing Story of Bungallo Bill, which is aperently a true story. For Old school Blues/Rock you have Oh Darling, For his Mom Lennon wrote Julia and for Clasic Love songs Lennon wrote dear prudence and sexy Saide, which was about the Maharishi. For the emerging Hard Rock, they Had Helter Skelter and Revolution. For the rest they just had half written songs and just made Medley's. In recapping, up until Rubber Soul you had the Pop/Yeah Yeah phase then From Rubber Soul-Revolver they started to change or adapt. Rubber Soul and Revolver were also meant to be a double, but were released as 2 seperate albums. Sgt.Peppers was intended to be a seperate persona(The Beatles in disquise) and was of course the Physicodelic era and continued into Magical Mystery tour. The White Album-Abby Road was a little bit of everything and Let it Be was a return to basic rock without all the overdubbing and added effects. All the Beatle bashing seems misplaced since they were able to constantly adapt to how music was rapidly changing. The problem other bands Like Elvis or Pop icons didn't survive past 2 or 3 years is because they couldn't adapt. I'm not saying they would have gone into heavy metal, but they definately could have kept up with modern music. The music we see today is pretty much the music they were doing. Look at bands like Jack Johnson, Dave mathews, Kings of Leon ,OAR. The trend seems to be that the Harder stuff is sort of fuseing with the acoustic rock. It looks like Rock 'n' Roll is returning to it's roots in many way's. I think it's fair to say that the Solo careers kept up with the times and thier music is still on par with the ideas of today. The music is timeless. It's been almost 50 years since they began, do you think we will be talking about Britany Spears in 50 years or will she have any new fans? I doubt it. The Beatles gain new fans all the time.

 

[USS KG5]

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

He became something of a standard bearer in the USA especially for the emergence of the teenager. I agree his influence was in no way as pronounced as that of the Beatles socially, though in many ways it was musically.

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"

Hence A jumping point, rather than THE jumping point. Dylan was of course a one-off in his own right as well.

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.
Heartily agree.

Cool.

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.

Well yes but you will also get different answers from different people. In this case your daughter obviously considers the dividing line to be credibility. Like you say, the line often moves.

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!!!

Thankyou for such a charming reply!

 

[Davros]

Even if you don't like their music, their inovations in multitrack recording are worthy of note.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^ The psych era is my favourite of the Beatles. The White Album is by far my favourite album by them. I didn't even like the Beatles until I heard that album. It covers so many genres, and probably invented a few more (Helter Skelter points the way to heavy metal, and several others are the forerunner to prog rock).

Of the big four Sixties bands (The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and the Kinks), my faves are the Kinks and the Who. But the Beatles are good, just a little overhyped.

I think Help, Rubber Soul and Revolver are the pinnacles of their career. Not the the post Revolver is bad, though.