One of their best and still relevant today...
The Beatles - Revolution
- Thread starter The Oracle
- Start date
One of their best and still relevant today...
i never liked the Beatles..............................Ogibowt ducks for cover
I love this song, and the beginning is one of the best openings in rock. I think it is the "heaviest" of all Beatle songs, borderline heavy metal.
Back in the day I liked the Beatles, but I loved the Stones, cuz they were more raw and "bluesy".
Paul McCartney dissed them recently, calling them a "blues cover band". To me the Beatles were part pop, a bit rock, and a lot "English Music Hall".
It's a HUGE mindfuck to think that only four years earlier they were in suits and ties and singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on black-and-white film.
The 1960s moved at breakneck speed: the music, the clothing, the hairstyles -- it all noticeably changed from one year to the next.
Give me any photo of the Beatles and I can tell you what year it was just by looking at their hair and clothing.
The 1960s moved at breakneck speed: the music, the clothing, the hairstyles -- it all noticeably changed from one year to the next.
Give me any photo of the Beatles and I can tell you what year it was just by looking at their hair and clothing.
I liked them. Well I was 14 and living in the UK when Beatlemania hit. So I was a fan. Now I like a lot of their stuff and dislike a lot of their stuff on about a 50/50 basis. Some of their stuff stands up today. A Day In The Life is classic English dreamscape. Oddlly enough John Lennon's stuff outshines Mcartney's after the fact. Although Mcartney must have made a deal with the devil to come up with some of his songs. Hey Jude. Fool on the hill for instance. John Lennon seemed to be early in his resentment of being a performer. Made a lot of references to feeling like a performing seal, or monkey or whatever.
Hated the Stones. Posers. "bad boys" . Rode the gravy train on the Beatles coat tails. Their first hit was given to them by the Beatles. I think it was Levon Helm who said of them "seeing the Stones makes me appreciate Elvis all the more" The Stones sounded like a bunch of English Hillbillies.
That being said. 19th nervous breakdown, Jumpin Jack Flash and that one song they did about riding in long black limousines are good.
Anyway, here I am ranting about it all 50 years later. Old man problem.
Great post. I've always wondered, did the Beatles create the change in the 60's or did they just reflect it.
The Beatles were innovators and they never got pigeon-holed into one style. Very versatile and ever-evolving.
They proved the theory of Gestalt. They were much more than the sum of their parts which we discovered when they split. Max Wertheimer posthumously owes them a debt of gratitude.
I've also wondered this. I think it was a bit of both. For instance, in 1963 when they ditched their leather jackets, put on suits and took on the "mop-top" look, they actually (or rather manager Brian Epstein did) had caught on to a look that was fashionable for men in France but had not yet spread to the UK. Suddenly, with the rise of the band's popularity, males started getting that haircut and wearing "Beatle boots". They weren't the inventors of that look, it was foreign to England at the time, but they adopted it and made it their own.
They were also pretty early into the psychedelic drug scene in England. Acid had caught on fairly earlier in the US -- probably around 1964 in some more hip circles on the West Coast --- but its fad hadn't spread to the UK yet. They first did acid as a band in 1966 and I firmly believe that Revolver, which came out in '66, was a far more trippy album than Sgt Pepper, which came out in '67, the year most "psychedelic" music started coming out. So I think they were ahead of the curve there.
In 1968, they sort of adopted a more grubby look (see the above video) that really wouldn't take off until the '70s -- longer greasy hair, no longer wearing collared shirts, etc. Most bands in '68 were still more polished looking than they were, so I think they started that look.
1966 was a pivotal year in music. Neil Diamond started writing songs for The Monkeys and members of The Academy of St Martin's in the Fields recorded with The Beatles.
Correct me if I'm wrong, it may have been George Martin who suggested that Eleanor Rigby wouldn't work as a conventional band song. The Academy Octet was part of the Fields founded in 1959, they remained obscure until hey were invited to accompany McCartney on the song. I was surprised to learn that McCartney also wrote the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby, they sounded so John Lennon. Further proof that Paul regressed after he separated from John Lennon.
Correct me if I'm wrong, it may have been George Martin who suggested that Eleanor Rigby wouldn't work as a conventional band song. The Academy Octet was part of the Fields founded in 1959, they remained obscure until hey were invited to accompany McCartney on the song. I was surprised to learn that McCartney also wrote the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby, they sounded so John Lennon. Further proof that Paul regressed after he separated from John Lennon.
Accurate, Led Zeppelin made more money than The Beatles did touring. However their lyrics were too juvenile to challenge Lennon...no one could.
It's funny when some people dismiss them as a pop band. They were very diverse in their musical tastes which was reflected in their songs. They were always trying to come up with something new and to not repeat themselves. (As opposed to today's music which seems to depend on algorithms that guarantee repeating yourself.) Not only were their hairstyles changing year to year, but also the music.
The Beatles had plenty of rockers and heavy sounding songs - like Helter Skelter and Tomorrow Never Knows. But i think their first heavy sounding song was Ticket to Ride. Listen to Ringo on the drums and Paul and George dueling lead guitars.
