40 Years Ago....

[MAXIMUS]

40 years ago magic happened that in my opinion hasn't happened since. 4 boys from Liverpool took America by storm . Their music was the voice of generations and of peace. Now I'm only 18, but even I know the significant impact the Beatles had on the world. What are your thoughts on this event and on the music of the Beatles in general?

http://www.rollingstone.com/features...n.asp?pid=2767

[Chad Bonin]

To be honest, I despise The Beatles.

I despise few things in life. Pepsi, Saturday Video Entertainment System, and The Beatles.

[MAXIMUS]

..and you don't even give a reason...tsk, tsk.

[Chad Bonin]

Oh, I could go on a whole diatribe (Major egos, the whole "peace" thing, being the Boy Band precursor, a British band dethroning the American King...)

But hey, it's your thread.

[SSJPabs]

Oh, I could go on a whole diatribe (Major egos, the whole "peace" thing, being the Boy Band precursor, a British band dethroning the American King...)

But hey, it's your thread.

I agree with Knux.... dammit.

[MAXIMUS]

It's funny because I dont like Elvis much...a little overtaed but now we are getting of topic.

[Lord Dalek]

Well, unlike today's Boy "Bands" (they don't play instruments therefore they aren't bands), the Beatles were actually good.

[Chad Bonin]

That's all up to opinion. Of course, I won't give The Beatles' music a listen due to the actual band members. Might be the best damn music in the world, but I'm changing the station as soon as I recognize it.

[Tienshin]

40 years ago Big robots ruined the Earth.

Oh wai...

Yeah, that's what happened. Big Robots and earth ruining.

[Chad Bonin]

Yeah, I clicked this thread in the first place due to the "Forty years ago, all of our memories were lost..." vibe.

[Tienshin]

...

Agreed.

This thread does not deliver.

[Mackenzie Rainelle]

Egos, pfft. Everything else is sidebar to the music. The music's what's lasted this long and the music's what's most important. And they made some damn fine music. I listen to at least one of my Beatles CDs a day, if not more.

[Neo-Era]

Giving props to the Beatles, a band that innovated or helped push many aspects of popular music (songwriting, promotion, recording techniques & technology) by light-years without falling into ruts and doing the same thing over and over, unlike most in rock & pop. They assimilated influences as diverse as Chuck Berry, avant-garde composers like Stockhausen, and even Indian music while still making their music accessible to the masses. The songs on the charts these days aren't anywhere near as ambitious.

For that alone, as a musician, I have to give credit to them. They could've just had a few hits, taken the money and chicks, and sat on their bums recycling things. But they kept reaching further and further. Some musical artists have overwhelming popularity and some can write a few memorable tunes and others can cross boundaries to create something new but no one else in popular music had the strong combination of the three that the Beatles did.

[Chad Bonin]

-Big Egos.
1. Believing that their opinions were worth anything.
2. Coming to another country and suggesting how to run it. (I'm not gonna go to Japan and try to change whatever political trip it's going on at the time)
3. "Bigger Than Jesus". Sure, they later retracted it, but they still said it.

-The "Peace" Thing
1. They were all about peace, right? Yeah, America's gonna survive if we're all friendly with every damn country...

-Boy Band
1. Four/five clean cut (or stereotypically gruff) guys, adored by society? Huh, N*Synch falls into that category. So does Menudo. Maybe not back in the day, but definitely now.

-The King
1. Elvis was still a legend. He hadn't self-destructed in the eye of the public like Michael Jackson or turned against his past like Rob "Vanilla Ice" Van Winkle. He just put on a few pounds, did the standard drug addiction, and died on the Throne.

[MCSarah]

To me the Beatles are only a boy band in the fact that the members are boys. They wrote their own songs, actually played the instruments (which hardly ever happens these days, granted it happened a lot more back then), and not only that, they re-invented their music with every album they released. Without the Beatles we wouldn't have the album Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, arguably the greatest album EVER. The Beach Boys were so in awe of an album by the Beatles (I think it was Revolver...can't remember exactly) so they went out to try and match how new and revolutionary it was. The result was Pet Sounds, which in turn made the Beatles want to match it, thus creating Sgt. Pepper (again, I could be wrong on the sequence of albums here).

Anyway, I love the Beatles. One of my favourite songs is Blackbird. My favourite album is the White Album.

[Obi]

Best. Band. Ever.


"I am the Walrus" is still one of my favorite songs of all time.

[David Lucas]

I'm by no means a huge Beatles fan, but I do like a lot of their music, just not enough where I'll seek it out to listen to it. If I hear it, I listen to it.

As for the whole dethroning Elvis, Elvis was nothing more than a guy who took black music and made it more accessible to the masses. (white folk) I like one of Elvis's songs and it's only cause Travolta sang it in "Look Who's Talking Too" with Gilbert Godfried, one of my favorite movies as a child.

As for the "Bigger than Jesus" thing, that was a lil retarded. If anyone out today came out and said that..........man, if 50 Cent said that.........who knows what this country would do.

Beatles are great, ya oughta give at least "I am the walrus, goo goo gachoo." a shot, Knux.

[Magwheel]

Wow. 40 years. Makes me feel old, despite the fact that it was 19 years before I was born.

As far as the "bigger than Jesus" quote is concerned, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to say, but I really believe they didn't mean better, nor did they mean they SHOULD be bigger; I saw an old documentary on them, and I really believe they were expressing some susrprise/disappointment that people were more interested in them than in Jesus. As in, "what's with this planet? we're more popular than Jesus!" That really seems like what they were saying. John (I think it was John) seemed really shaken up at how people interpreted it But, again, an unfortunate/unwise thing to say when you're in the public eye.

As far as their music is concerned, they've been one of my favorite bands for about 5 years, since I started listening to them. I like how they experimented with melodies and rhythms and so on. Some of their music feels a litte off, somehow, but they wrote some great songs. And I really like the fact that I've been a listener for 5 years, but I'm still discovering stuff by them I hadn't heard before. Especially their later stuff, which I wasn't really into until another friend introduced me to it.

A few of my favorites, with notes on the lines I like, and so on:
- For No One
- Eleanor Rigbey
- Something
- A Day in the Life
- Hey Bulldog
- Michelle ('Michelle, ma belle' sont les mots vont très bien ensemble!)
- Your Mother Should Know ("...before your mother was born, though she was born a long long time ago" haha)
- In My Life
- Drive my Car
- Strawberry Fields Forever
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps (I liked Harrison's stuff)
- Old Brown Shoe ("if I grow up I'll be a singer..." )
- Get Back (for the music, more than the words)
- St. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band
- Magical Mystery Tour
- Helter Skelter (though I must say it was easier to like U2's version)
- If I Need Someone
- You Won't See Me
- If I Fell
- Fool on the Hill
- Across the Univers ("thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox")
- Here Comes the Sun
- When I'm 64 ()
-EDIT: Adding: I'm So Tired ("I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain!")

Ok, that's more than a few, and I could go on and on. Can't say I have a favorite album, but I can say I didn't like "Beatles 1" very much.

Here's a supposedly complete list of their songs: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip...518/main01.htm Caution: MIDIs play on the songs' pages.

Oh, and I'm from Canada, so it means nothing to me if someone dethroned The King of the US... just as long as no one dethrones our boys, The Tragically Hip!! (I'm completely kidding, AND I'm not really a Hip fan... but I just had so say that )

[DarkAngel]

3. "Bigger Than Jesus". Sure, they later retracted it, but they still said it.

Don't be ridiculous. John said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ". He never said the Beatles were better or that Christianity is bad. It just seemed to him that people were more interested in the Beatles than in Christ.

I don't see much from your other comments really showing the Beatles have massive egos or to justify despising them. I think you're going overboard. No one says you have to like the Beatles or their music. But to despise them? I'm not sure what your issue is with the group.

[Stewie]

The Beatles > all other bands.

As far as taste and personal preference are concerned, I can see disagreeing with that. But when you talk about their impact on society, music (especially rock and roll), and the music industry in general, the Beatles are tops.

I think one of their greatest qualities was the ability to change. If you listen to their music chronologically you can hear a huge transformation in the style. 1964 sounds different from 1965 which is drasctically different from 1966 which sounds nothing like stuff they did in '69 and '70. Most bands sound fairly similar from their first to last recording. The Beatles were practically a different group,yet they still made great music.

About the boy band thing: yes they were a boy band. They were a group of boys in a band.
What made them similar to N'SYNC is that they were marketed to young girls.
But that's a marketing thing, and that's all they have in common with N'SYNC. As already mentioned, the Beatles actually played instruments (and they wrote their own songs. Not always true with boy bands). And The Beatles music stands the test of time. It's an incontrovertible truth of the universe that N'Sync and Backstreet Boys will someday be as popular as "New Kids On the Block" are now. If you want to blame someone for the recent wave of boy bands, blame NKoTB.