Beatles

[bloke57]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

Their Engaging Public Personalities,They very wisely concealed just how unpleasant John Lennon actually was..

Heh! Heh! Yes.

Funny how the Stones were portrayed as the antisocial hard men - when, like the Who, they were art school boys from my neck-of-the-woods in leafy Middlesex (Who started in local pub here - the Railway).

The Beatles cut their teeth in a tough northern port and played countless gigs in Hamburg - many fights and scrapes in their lives.

Yet they always appeared to be the urbane sophisticates. Great marketing and they had the nous to carry it off.

[Quackerson]

Originally Posted by otokonomidori

I've always thought that if you weren't a young teenager during the period when the Beatles first rose to fame then you will never be able to completely understand just how important they were and are - musically and culturally.

I think that may well be the case.

Like, silly as this may sound, when I was a child growing up in the 1970s, honestly I didn't consider The Beatles to be any more important than KISS, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, The Bee Gees or even The Monkees which I enjoyed watching in syndicated reruns back then. Probably because I was too young in the 1970s to really hold The Beatles in any type of reverence...because I was too young to - according to rock media - know that I supposedly SHOULD. I simply listened to The Beatles because I liked them, just like all the other bands I mentioned.

I didn't have any real understanding of how big The Beatles were in the 1970s, because they had already broken up. I didn't really get it in terms of what The Beatles meant until the day John Lennon was killed, and my 5th grade teacher had to leave our classroom in tears because of it.

Even after that, though, as I got older and would read all the various Rolling Stone magazine accounts about how The Beatles were "the greatest rock band ever" and all that stuff, I was still content to make my own determinations about which bands/acts/artists meant the most to me.

I mean, honestly, the classic/original Van Halen meant (and continues to mean) more to me than The Beatles ever did. While I understand the importance of The Beatles in terms of 20th century popular music, for me music is a visceral thing: it either moves me or it doesn't. For some, every single thing The Beatles ever did was some sacred golden musical nugget to cherish above everything anyone else ever did. I'm certainly not one of those people. Yet even having said all of that, I'd still probably put the Sgt. Pepper's album in the top 10 of all-time great pop music albums...and as a rule I don't usually care for the 'Top 10 list of all time' mentality as it applies to anything.

But I've always thought Sgt. Pepper's WAS that good. And tunes on that album like She's Leaving Home or other Beatles tracks of that period like Penny Lane have nothing to do with rock and roll to me at all. I suppose that IS a part of the greatness of The Beatles in that they were in some ways BIGGER than rock and roll. Something like Yesterday or Eleanor Rigby...they're more like timeless classical music pieces with lyrics than anything I'd call rock music...or even pop music.

But as a rock act, nah. The Beatles weren't the greatest rock act. For THAT to be true, live performance has to come into the equation. And the truth of the matter is that The Beatles weren't a great live act. In part because they stopped performing halfway through their recording career.

[Quackerson]

Originally Posted by Mal Hombre

Their Engaging Public Personalities,They very wisely concealed just how unpleasant John Lennon actually was..

To be sure.

Even taking into account the over-the-top nature of the tone of Albert Goldman's book in terms of some of the stories in it (and, frankly, I at least find Goldman's book far more interesting to read than one of the many Yoko-sanctioned Rolling Stone magazine puff pieces that portray John Lennon to be a saint), the bare-bones facts of Lennon's life don't paint a particularly appealing portrait of the guy in terms of personal character.

By many corroborated accounts from people who knew Lennon, on numerous occasions he would turn physically abusive when intoxicated on liquor. He left his first wife for Yoko and afterward had only a sporadic interest in establishing a relationship with his first child. He approached politics like one would expect a moneyed dilettante would: at first loudly and proudly for "the cause" then backing away when said public support threatened to put his immigration status to the US in legal jeopardy: the latter half of the 1970s one didn't hear anything from Lennon by way of "power to the people" or "give peace a chance" once he got his green card. He left his second wife for a year and took up a very public romance with a younger woman, whom he then discarded when he went back to his second wife. Not to mention his abuse of heroin, cocaine and the eating disorder that encompassed his last 5 years. Does that sound like someone you'd want to spend much time with were they not famous?

People think they 'knew' Lennon from all those years of giving those witty interviews with all those tart quips. Doubtless that was part of his public persona. Lennon in the end, like everyone else, was only human. He was just a man, and had plenty of unsavory aspects to his character. Somehow, after he was shot in the back by a deranged looney, Lennon became mythologized far beyond what he was. Perhaps because people believed had it not been for Lennon's assassination we would have had that wonderful Beatles reunion everyone had been clamoring for since the day they split up. Some actually believe had it not been for Lennon's death, [Lennon] was on the cusp of organizing a concert tour to coincide with the No Nukes movement of the early 1980s, and Lennon would have went on to spearhead a nuclear disarmament movement with that tour. The whole "John Lennon was Jesus" idolatry nature of his enduring myth to some.

Personally, I find the truth of the man far more interesting, but I suppose people need their various fairy tales to believe in.

[bloke57]

Originally Posted by Quackerson

But as a rock act, nah. The Beatles weren't the greatest rock act. For THAT to be true, live performance has to come into the equation. And the truth of the matter is that The Beatles weren't a great live act. In part because they stopped performing halfway through their recording career.

I'd just slightly dispute that. There is plenty of footage about to show they were great live in the early days - and contemporary reports have them as being one heck of a powerhouse on their night.

But it is true that they lost interest in live performance - and equipment limitations (such as no fold-back speakers) made it almost impossible for them to hear what they were doing. Remember also, if you read the Lewisohn diaries, they hardly ever had a day off.

So you are right, performance did suffer as they got bored and tired with it - but one-take wonders such as "Twist and Shout" and "Rock & Roll Music" show that they could rip it up with the best.

[howerd]

Originally Posted by Brecht

Sorry if I offend any hardcore Beatles fans but they were not really talented.

I'm not offended but I disagree, they were super talented in pretty much every dimension imaginable: Melodies, lyrics, concepts, humor, social awareness, etc...

Originally Posted by Brecht

I think what made them so popular worldwide was the role they were playing in many aspects for young people.

Young people who recognized their talent - but it wasn't just the young people was it? Even Frank Sinatra covered Beatles songs too & he was the 'establishment'.

Originally Posted by Brecht

They were the voice of a generation.

Of many generations actually. Even the young ones now coming to know them >

Originally Posted by Brecht

But besides that, they were just an average heart-breaking group.

Errr... no. Wrong. Very very wrong!

Originally Posted by Brecht

The band members made better music after the split-up.

Lennon made music as good, but by & large the others rarely matched their hey day with one or two exceptions. Name a few songs which are clearly better than Beatles classics. Can you?

[Quackerson]

Originally Posted by bloke57

I'd just slightly dispute that. There is plenty of footage about to show they were great live in the early days - and contemporary reports have them as being one heck of a powerhouse on their night.

But it is true that they lost interest in live performance - and equipment limitations (such as no fold-back speakers) made it almost impossible for them to hear what they were doing. Remember also, if you read the Lewisohn diaries, they hardly ever had a day off.

So you are right, performance did suffer as they got bored and tired with it - but one-take wonders such as "Twist and Shout" and "Rock & Roll Music" show that they could rip it up with the best.

I'd say, even taking into account the Cavern Club days, that in general terms I'd tend to doubt most people even think of The Beatles as a great live act outside of the phenomenon of early Beatlemania hysteria.

[cginok]

Originally Posted by Quackerson

I'd say, even taking into account the Cavern Club days, that in general terms I'd tend to doubt most people even think of The Beatles as a great live act outside of the phenomenon of early Beatlemania hysteria.

People who saw them in Liverpool and Hamburg would dispute that.

The Beatles that we the wider world came to know were the product of Brian Epsteins taming. He's the one that got them out of their leather/rocker gear and into the uniform suits we all know them for. He's the one that got them to stop jumping around and acting up on stage. He's the one that made them into the sedate stage shows everyone saw. You can still see flashes of the old Kaiser Keller Beatles in a few shows where John starts to act goofy on stage, or bang on the keyboards with his elbows, things like that. Lennon said as much himself when he said if you never saw them live before they became THE BEATLES you missed it.

As others have mentioned, and it's 100% true, the Beatles were the bad boys in reality, but not in image. Once again it was Brian who got them to put forward that non-bad boy image. If they hadn't agreed to go along with it, they probably never would've gotten anywhere.

[maildude]

I am a big fan of the Beatles...together and apart.
But, what they were, simply, was a rock 'n roll band. That's it. Nothing more. Except to add that they were human.
We hold celebrities of all kinds in a certain reverence...where we are free to secretly envy them and publicly abhor them. The Beatles' place in all of this was simply to make music. What they were in addition, was an example of what to be and not to be. As I say about actors, athletes, and writers: I like their works...but I've never met them.

[howerd]

Originally Posted by maildude

I am a big fan of the Beatles...together and apart.
But, what they were, simply, was a rock 'n roll band. That's it. Nothing more.

You have criticized my religion by claiming the Fab Four were mere humans! That's blasphemy!

[Marcsimus]

I personally couldn't stand them, I hated their music! The Who, The Rolling Stones produced vastly superior music!