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“Uncool” is just another type of cool, Lester.
Oliver Hall over at the amazing website Dangerous Minds surfaced this contentious clip by ur-rock nerd Lester Bangs dismissing Beatles nostalgia as “sick” and “a rip-off,” a mind-killing corporate shill whose ultimate victims were “the consumer” and (gulp) “John Lennon.”
This explosion of insight comes from a TV series called “FM-TV,” which did a segment on Beatles nostalgia. The entire annoying segment is below. Right up front I’m going to cop to taking this personally, being one of those second-generation fans that, in Lester’s eyes, should’ve lined up to see — I don’t know, Lydia Lunch? The Voidoids? Apparently there was only one right way to be a teenager in 1982, according to this guy born in 1948, and everybody else was falling for a rip-off.
Lester Bangs was desperately trying to influence the zeitgeist — and in the days before the internet, that term really meant something. It’s both comfortably cynical and very convenient for him to dismiss Beatles nostalgia as an artificial phenomenon — all those sheeple lapping up whatever their corporate overlords fed them. When of course the truth is much, much simpler: in the end, Lester Bangs didn’t have very good taste. And when you’re a critic, taste is… kinda important?
Bangs is emblematic of the type of critic we gripe about all the time over here, a real-life Comic Book Guy who fastened onto rock and roll because he was looking for a rough, tough substitute self. Then used his furiously strong opinions on its minutiae to shame, scold, and cajole people — to project all his own self-loathing outwards. “X is shit. Y is God. Z fans are morons who should be shot.” Uncool as cool, a gutter pontiff, endlessly speaking ex cathedra, endlessly angry and ungenerous, conferring “authenticity” like grace, who thinks his nonsense gains traction because it’s right — when it’s merely jagged enough to slice through pop culture’s overstimulated, decadent buzz.
Come on, Lester, be honest: you’re just mad that, even by 1982, it’s obvious that your counter-religion is never going to inherit the earth, so now you’re going to convince everyone you didn’t want the earth anyway. You’re just mad that, even by 1982, punk had been exposed as just the latest version of what it was trying to destroy, and whole generations of kids were utterly rejecting all that shit, for a bunch of music made before they were even born. How dare they? Don’t they understand rock? How could “Love Me Do” be as reeeeaalll as Lydia Lunch? You’re worried Lester, that even with all your carefully cultivated cynicism, what you think rock is and what it’s for, turns out to have been bullshit. You’re worried that you’re just another fan.
I was 13 in 1982, and Lester Bangs’ worst nightmare; because I’d heard a lot of the bands Lester loved… and liked the Beatles more. All throughout my teen years I tried to like The New York Dolls, The Ramones, the Pistols — the whole “tintinitus-IS-music” crowd. And then I’d take Bollocks off my turntable, and put on some horrible scratchy bootleg, where if you listened very closely, you could just make out John, Paul, George and Pete playing “Wonderful Picture of You” under twenty fathoms of tape hiss and time. That whole CBGB scene, London in ’76 — I guess you had to be there. But you didn’t have to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, and that’s the difference between authentically great art and merely the soundtrack to your first blowjob.
I didn’t like their reification of ugliness, and thought their sexuality was retarded and reactionary. I thought their vision of what rock was and what it could be was a dumb person’s idea of insight, pure marketing, that old Sixties canard dressed up in ripped jeans and leather. I thought it was all inutterably stupid. And just as John Lennon often cloaked his lies in a pose of utter honesty, people like Lester Bangs took this infantile and wholly artificial marketing concept and held it up as some kind of cosmic truth.
To people like Lester Bangs, loving the Beatles is a threat — not just because it shows that they are suckers, but also how it puts their insights in competition with all the other critics that came before. When Lester Bangs writes about The Shaggs or Richard Hell, he can say whatever he likes. But reading Lester Bangs on the Beatles, we can see just how original and smart he really is… or isn’t. “Beatles nostalgia” sends a chill up his spine. It threatens to unmask him as a fraud, a little man behind the curtain of Punk, of uncool-as-cool, a creation of Big Rock just as fraudulent as Led Zep, only less well-paid.
In his Village Voice obituary for Elvis Presley, Bangs wrote, “The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience. Those who indulge in it will ultimate reap the scorn of those who they’ve dumped on…”
You’re right, Lester. Have some.
Related posts:
Did The Beatles Help Kill Rock and Roll?
Do female Beatles fans understand John and Paul better?
Anybody else share your love?
A Dylan Beatles Stones Album In A Parallel Universe
John or Paul
"Ultimate Beatles Record Collection"
Benjamin Levi Marks’ “The Ultimate Beatles Anthology”
Kids React to the Beatles
The Beatles Forever?
"How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll"…
Mike’s Dream Bootleg: Beatles Complete Anthology Recording Sessions Box Set
The Beatles on Stella Street
“Mark David Chapman is the ultimate Beatlemaniac.”
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wow.
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Bang disparages the Beatles’ enduring legacy because, in his mind, it is indistinguishable from Beatlemania. To him, anyone who has a keen interest in the band are no different from those adolescent girls tearing there clothes off in Beatle concerts. To, on any level, equate Chapman’s delusional psychosis with normal adolescent behaviour boggles the mind.
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If Bang is disparaging of Beatle fans, he must really have an issue with aficionados of classical music. Poor Beethoven. Little did he know that a few hundred years after his death he would still have a huge following. I guess we should have let it all die, just like our interest in the Beatles. 🙂
There’s a gargantuan difference between Beethoven and the Beatles. The latter was a mediocre poppy boy band, and they’re worshipped not for their (nonexistent) artistic merit, but for the sensation that surrounds them, as eternal celebrity “icons”. Beethoven is revered in a totally different sense, as people experience a devastating maelstrom of emotions and psychic patterns and mindblowing cognitive architectures, and wonder what genius was behind the impossible sound they just heard. Lester Bangs gets this, and this is implicitly the distinction he’s making. The great hardcore punk and no wave bands of the era were creating deep, bold, original outpourings of visceral dark authentic emotions, not quite on the level of Beethoven, but approaching far closer than the Beatles ever did. But some people lack artistic taste and like empty-headed bubblegum pop and a weird fixation with artificial “idols” and commercialism-as-reality delusions.
Kirk, I edited your comment before posting it. You can make your argument as forcefully as you like, but please no unkind remarks directed at individuals.
I was being sarcastic to make a point about longevity and popularity, Kirk. Feel free to disagree of course, but as Nancy said, leave the personal commentary at the door.
That you describe The Beatles as a “mediocre poppy boy band” is rather astounding. Rolling Stone, among many others, describe their impact thusly:
One doesn’t have to like The Beatles of course; music is personal, and so is one’s musical tastes. But to say that someone “lacks artistic taste and likes empty-headed bubblegum pop” because they like music you may not is sanctimonious in tone, and does not really lend itself to productive discourse.
I hate this guy for his t-shirt alone.
I am shocked to find myself thinking that Bangs has a point here.
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I don’t much like what I’ve read of Bangs’ writing, and think his music criticism usually comes off just as Michael puts it in this post–pretentious and preachy. Bangs (with Christgau, also from the Village Voice of the same period) I find helpful only when they’re writing about music they love. When they write about what they dislike, I find their tone harsh and many of their pronouncements baffling.
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However, in this clip I hear Bangs talking from the standpoint of 1981 about a very 1981 phenomenon. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit, but I think this historical moment is why, as Karen put it, Bangs treats the Beatles’ enduring legacy as “indistinguishable from Beatlemania.”
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It’s a year after Lennon’s murder, and the Lennon-as-saint machine is in high gear. Look through “Beatlefan” magazines of the time, and they’re full of ads for Lennon busts, Lennon posters, etc. etc. The “Beatlemania” musical had premiered four years earlier, in 1977. Reagan and Thatcher were in power, and it was clear they were going to be rolling back whatever they could of the 1960’s legacy. All of that makes it understandable, to me, that Bangs would look at the renewed enthusiasm for the Beatles and think “This is just wistful looking backwards — we need to focus on today.” I bet, at the time, it was hard to distinguish the musical legacy from manufactured nostalgia.
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Now, I say all this from the standpoint of a Beatles fan who wasn’t around for Beatlemania, and who wasn’t paying much attention to the Beatles in 1981. My Beatles backstory is rather like the one Chantal shared in the Allen Klein thread — I came to the Beatles late, in my 30s, and owe a lot to McCartney’s solo music. (Chantal, if you’re ever in Chicago, I would love to meet up.) For me listening to the Beatles’ music isn’t about nostalgia. It’s music that speaks to me today, the same way that great literature of the past speaks to me today. But the experience of listening to / loving the Beatles is probably different for different people, and for some it may be only or mainly about nostalgia.
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That line about Chapman is deliberately provocative, and I find it distasteful. But again, I think Bangs has a point. Chapman was reported as saying he murdered Lennon for being a hypocrite, and in that sense he does represent the dark, obverse side of idolatry. If you look to Lennon to be a perfect savior, of course he can’t live up to that, and it’s not fair or reasonable to expect anyone to meet that standard. Lennon ran hot and cold on whether he wanted to be seen as a savior, but at his best — at what I at least see as his best — he urged people to think for themselves, not look to someone to solve things for them.
And yet, there’s a T-shirt: “Lester Bangs Died for Our Sins.”
The thing about people like Lester Bangs — or Lenny Bruce — or even our dear ol’ John Lennon — is you can’t be an idol who says “smash all idols.” It doesn’t work. Personae are not authentic, and if you’re going to create and inhabit the one, you’re necessarily giving up any chance of the other.
You are not wrong. In Lennon’s remarks over the years I, at least, hear ambivalence about taking on the hero/savior role. That Bangs shirt is just sad.
A fan ov Beethoven’s music is quite different than being a fan of Beethoven. The art or the artist. If someone cannot distinguish the artist from his or her art, and the other way around, which is equally challenging when a timeline is involved, I would suggest Bangs has a point.
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At the time, early 80’s there was a lot of silly Lennon-mania going on, among the audiences, in the media, and among those already fan of The Beatles. ‘I know’, boy did I play along. I even went on the street in Amsterdam with about a thousand people for a silent-walk with candles in our hands, in memory of John’s peace efforts, in the days after his killing.
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Even today I sometimes fall of my chair wondering what the %^@$# is going on…all our speculation about non-facts, with too little use or reference to known-sources is fan-behavior pur sang. I have yet to see or understand the relation to the music we might adore.
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Knowing whether John and Paul had joint erotic experiences or sexual relations, is to me so beyond humanistic thinking that I have yet to learn how that might change our perspective of their music, as The Beatles as well as solo-artists.
Empathy and real-close friendships can cause exchanges of looks and touches between people that are common among lovers and people in fifty year marriages and still in awe and deep appreciation of each other.
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We got to learn to accept that sexual relations as such are not to be considered as personality traits, it is the culture, in which they exist or cannot freely exist and how the partner perceive this culture in terms of freedom, cautions and strangeness of themselves and they sexual desires or relationship, that influence their behavior, they interactions and emotions, feelings and thinking.
. what that has to do with the music of The Beatles is still beyond me… anyone out there to fill me in?
“You can’t be an idol who says “smash all idols”. And that’s the ultimate irony, isn’t it. Once you become an iconoclast, you’re a member of the club, whether you want to be or not.
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It seems to me that many who disparage ‘fandom’ are simultaneously participating in it. If MG did a data analysis of all the posts on HD, for example, how many of those posts would be only about the Beatles’ music? That’s because it’s not only about the art; it’s also about what creates the artist.
@Karen your line: “That’s because it’s not only about the art; it’s also about what creates the artist” proves Lester’s argument, it is about the artist and not the art. Change it into: …; it’s also about what creates the art” (the creative processes) and we go beyond fandom. Beatlemania was about the associations with the artist’s existence and art. In fandom is the artist primary object of adulation, in western music it is possible in disco and dance venues to go nuts without the associations, but it is rare. Fandom is artist related and hardly ever art related… I know nothing of Rembrandt-groupies in the 21st century.
“@Karen your line: “That’s because it’s not only about the art; it’s also about what creates the artist” proves Lester’s argument. Fandom is artist related and hardly ever art related”.
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No, and no. 🙂
Said another way: you get to like the music AND be interested in the lives of the artists who created it, because the former is inextricably bound to the latter. Being interested in the artist as a person is not synonymous with mindless adolation. That seemed to be Bang’s view, a view which I disputed.
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To say that fandom is artist-related and hardly ever art-related is kind of an overgeneralization. (There’s a local fandom in my area for Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, for instance, and I’m pretty sure the participants are equally interested in the art as well as the artist.)
Having lived in Oak Park, IL, I can attest that there is a strong fandom of Frank Lloyd Wright there (and an appreciation of his buildings). In the very same town, Hemingway is both idolized and taught in the high school.
The work kindles the interest in the person; the biography deepens the appreciation of the work.
There’s a persistent whiff of sexism in how Bangs dismisses the Beatles. I think to him they are too soft, gender-traitors.
Because the thing about John and Yoko? They both embody masculine virtues. Yoko gets a pass from people like Bangs because “she’s like a bloke.” She doesn’t swoon and scream.
I think that’s Bangs’ big beef with the Beatles– he has a straight man’s fear of surrender, of being out-of-control.
@Michael and @Karen Ahhh I like the notion of fandom for Frank Lloyd Wright, didn’t know that, his work is phenomenal – but gimme a link or two to get a view on FLW fandom, would love to experience that. Is it really about the person?
With Hemingway I am cautious, I know his person often comes first and only then people get to his work. His book on Paris is for me the first time his work is the trigger for interest, that happened after the criminal violence and killings in Paris. His book ‘A Moveable Feast’ is a memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling, young, expatriate journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. After the killing it became a symbol of going on enjoying life and not let the bastards get to us and make us change our daily life. Of course it did, because partying in response to such an event is let the creeps get into your brain. It wasn’t about Hemingway but about Paris and mood of ‘c’est un fête’ – http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/ernest-hemingway-paris-attacks-a-moveable-feast/417294/
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Interestingly Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ became an equal depersonalized big symbol when a German street-musician played on the streets of Paris, near Le Bataclan. In Holland the song Imagine surged to #1 position in the yearly Christmas-New Years Eve Radio2 event: Top2000. It was solely based on the peace message and the song, not about the bespectacled Lennon nor his widow.
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@Michael come on your running away from the Bangs’ statement when you give a semi-psychological attack. Don’t you think you prove his point? At least it does to me. You revel in the sexual Paul&John notion, and now your point out Bangs’ characterization of Yoko… what is it really about?
Rob, I live near Oak Park now, and I would say there’s a spectrum of Frank Lloyd Wright aficionados — just as there as is for other artists and performers, the Beatles included. At one end there are people only interested in the work, and at the other there are people heavily interested in the biography/persona. But even the people heavily interested in the life and times got there because they were drawn to the work. I don’t believe that “fandoms” last for decades, let alone centuries, if the work itself doesn’t exert a strong pull, independent of the artist’s biography and image. Here’s a link to the FLW Trust, and here’s one to Wright Chat, an outgrowth of the FLW building conservancy. I can attest that the historical novel Loving Frank, released in 2007, renewed or ignited many readers’ interest in FLW’s life.
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I also encounter a fair number of people who are avid readers of Victorian fiction, and they fall on the same kind of spectrum. There are people whose interest in Dickens pretty much stops with the work itself, and people who go to The Dickens Universe every year and join the Dickens Fellowship. But again, the latter people certainly love the work and know it well — they aren’t only, or even mainly, interested in the biography.
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I think it’s human nature for many of us, when an artist’s work speaks to us, to become interested in the circumstances of that artist’s life and what made the creation of that work possible for him, her, or them. I don’t believe it’s possible to draw a bright line between the work and the artist/the artist’s circumstances.
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For that reason I don’t believe that “Imagine” was as fully “depersonalized” by that 2015 Paris performance as you suggest. I can well believe that “Imagine’s” renewed popularity in France was based importantly “on the peace message and the song,” but in 2015 “Imagine” is so well known, and so strongly identified with Lennon’s peace work, that I can’t believe that popularity was wholly separable from “the bespectacled Lennon and his widow.” In my experience “Imagine” is the one song people know is by Lennon, even if people know nothing else about his work.
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Finally, why do people talking about the possibility that Lennon and McCartney might have had sexual feelings for each other, acted on or not, seem to bother you? I’m in the “maybe feelings; action on them unlikely” camp, but I see nothing wrong with discussing the possibility. The Beatles’ artistry was driven in part by powerful emotions, and interest in the artistry can dovetail with interest in the emotions and life.
What statement of Bangs am I running away from, @Rob? Gimme a quote and I’ll tell you what I think.
You write in a reply: “I think that’s Bangs’ big beef with the Beatles– he has a straight man’s fear of surrender, of being out-of-control.” With a generalized psychological label you give out a judgement to Bangs personality and thus control/dismiss his arguments… here… I know you gave a nice comment on his clip in the original posting. Why the sexual connotation time and again… it’s funny, but how does it get us further?
It gets us “further” — whatever that might mean, @Rob — by underscoring the male-hard-angry-GOOD/female-soft-not-angry-BAD idiot dichotomy that plagued rock culture and criticism from the 60s onward, and to a certain degree remains in place today. Bangs is firmly patriarchal and gets off on punishing, albeit in a groovy downtown kind of way, and that’s what bugs me about him.
How you dress and talk, what you say and what you show others you like, all these are social cues. Not only is it appropriate to make judgments using them, that’s why they exist; Bangs wants us to see his t-shirt, his moustache (or not), his big hair, his shitty messy apartment filled with records, and come to conclusions about who he is as a person. And to a certain degree these are sexual cues as well.
You can see this idiot dichotomy in critics’ treatment of Yoko and Linda — and by extension John and Paul. We’ve talked about this many many times on the site; Nancy in particular has written some posts about it. Bangs thinks the Beatles are all right, what he doesn’t like is BEATLEMANIA, and as we’ve said before (Nancy and Karen and Chelsea and others) the mania was female in its affect, and that drives a certain type of man crazy. Bangs is clearly that man, and the roots of his discomfort with such an overtly gendered and sexual phenomenon are likely gendered and sexual.
I get that, and I like that way of exploring and explaining. That female kind of thing is what George Melly wrote about in the sixties and early seventies (my second book about the Beatles).
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Still by making that observation you don’t need to listen to the arguments, cause you frame it in advance, that is what bothered me. Even a crook and a psycho might have something of truthful or new perspective to show off with.
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anyway thx for this response.
While I concede that Bangs has a point about the intensity of Beatlemania after Lennon’s murder, HERE is an example of why I tend not to have much use for him as a critic. His sweeping, unearned pronouncements irritate the crap out of me. I recalled reading a piece where he said “The Beatles were nothing,” and here’s the quote:
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“The Beatles were four yobs, or rather three yobs and a librarian named Paul. Watch A Hard Day’s Night on TV now and it’s obvious how worthless that whole business was when removed from its immediate context of hysteria. Fuck the Beatles, fuck the songs, fuck the cute direction and Marx Brothers comparisons: it’s BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that the most rock ‘n roll human being in the whole movie is the fucking grandfather! That wily old slime of Paul’s! He had more energy than the four moptops put together! Plus the spirit! He was a true anarchist. The Beatles were nothing. The Stones were something, still are I think, Dylan, well, but rock in the sixties was just plain overrated. In fact, the Sixties were overrated. The Sex Pistols were a hundred times more of a kick in the ass of a sagging culture than the Beatles.”
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My question, rereading this, is: does he actually believe this, or does he just want to believe this so badly that he’s attempting to convince himself as much as his readers? Why does he make the Beatles emblematic of everything he hates?
If you use “rock ‘n’ roll” as an adjective, critical judgment is perhaps the least of your problems. 🙂
Thx Nancy… I have read the novel…
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You write: “I think it’s human nature for many of us, when an artist’s work speaks to us, to become interested in the circumstances of that artist’s life and what made the creation of that work possible for him, her, or them. I don’t believe it’s possible to draw a bright line between the work and the artist/the artist’s circumstances.”
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I tend to agree with you that it appears to be human, well, we’ll see let’s be modest and accept that in our culture this is the case, that’s what we know. We can speculate much and hypothesize that as we are social entities the social component in appreciation of things, food and art plays a role…
There is no doubt that drawing a clear firm line between art and the creator/artists is possible. If you only listen to the music and don’t dig deeper for social information or give in to the need to gossip, we can just stuck with the music. I don’t know nothing about T.S. Elliott and still love and appreciate the poetry. Right know the problem is that Christopher Ricks is always looking over my shoulder, but so he does when I listen or focus on the lyrics of Bob Dylan. Those who teach you how to listen have an influence.
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Really for young people ‘Imagine’ is not related to the personality of John Lennon as it probably is for you and me. I was watching with my girl-from-next-door 14 years old and her little brother kid, and they didn’t get the melody, but sort of felt the emotion. There was no singing, it was a melody. Than when I played the song, they really liked it, and she said, (paraphrased) ‘gosh, that’s naive, when there’s no state nor country it will big corporations or king-assholes who run us down. Empathy, Rob, empathy helps, not the organization of the world.’
A few days later the guy with the piano came back and played some more songs, went on television, etc. Like I said the song was not just popular in France but in most of Europe, i countries where we hate the french, as some hat Allen Klein. In Holland the song became a symbol of hope, for melodrama, compassion and wanting peace. John Lennon was smaller than the song – and I liked that.
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Commercially I would have jumped on the train and campaigned for peace and Christmas with ‘Give Peace A Chance’, ‘Imagine’ and ‘Happy Christmas, War is Over’. Don’t know whether Yoko considered anything like that. The marketing risk would have been that John Lennon (rightfully) or his songs (undeservedly) runs the risk to be ridiculed by the younger generation, who know that you CANNOT become whatever it is that you want, nor that you can change the world, if you want it badly enough (all that ideological baby boomer dream stuff that generation imposed on their kids).
Rob, in my experience we can’t avoid having some contact with the biographical data about artists ~ that’s what I mean about no bright line. With T.S. Eliot, for example, you can’t help knowing that he’s male, English, and writing in the 20th century. That “bright line” is always already smudged ~ it’s just a question of how smudged, and whether it’s being smudgy is a bad thing.
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I think that interest in and exploration of an artist’s biography isn’t necessarily “gossip.” To go back to Dickens, information about his long-term affair with Ellen Ternan has not only reshaped his biography, but led to new thoughts about some of his works.
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Speaking for myself, my understanding of the Beatles breakup~ to take one example~ has changed a great deal as a result of the information shared, and the opinions expressed, on this blog. And I value that opportunity to think about what I know, what I don’t, and to what extent biography matters to my understanding of the music.
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Are you saying it would be better if people focused only on the artwork and didn’t seek to know anything about the artist’s life? I am asking that genuinely.
Of definitely yes, the art is much more interesting than the personal life of any artist.
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Next comes the creative process, and yes there the personal life gains relevancy. I got a nice quote somewhere about that. Not even paraphrased a biography should only provide details about the making of the art, the rest is BS.
Most fans are unable to discuss the art, the creative process and what that art does to them…
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and yes we can discuss for hours and hours about non-facts related to our stars, I call that gossip.
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Do I care about why and how the band cracked up? Of course, it was part of my life and professionally I like to be able to see what we, the audience get to know, feel and understand, and what the real story is. That difference is about personal safety and power.
Thanks, Rob, I appreciate your clarifying that. Figuring out where the creative process ends and the personal life begins ~ there’s the rub. Who decides which details are and aren’t relevant, and on what basis? Who decides where “gossip” begins?
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I think I’m not understanding what you mean at the end (the part about personal safety and power).
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I’m not convinced that talking about what you call “non facts” is always gossip, always unilluminating, or always the refuge of people unable to talk about the art itself or its effects. The revelations about Dickens and Ellen Ternan began as hypotheses by people familiar with the work and biography, because the hypotheses helped explain things about Dickens’ life at that period~ including decisions he made about his works ~ that were hard to explain otherwise. Now the evidence has made his relationship with Ternan a fact accepted by biographers and critics of Dickens. Curiosity came first, proof later.
“And then I’d take Bollocks off my turntable, and put on some horrible scratchy bootleg…”
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Are we the same person? This was me in 1982, the only difference being I was 17. Actually, I wish I’d held onto my import copy of “Bollocks”, as it might be worth something now.
HA! God, the money I spent, trying to like various hot bands. Not just all the punk people, but Bauhaus, RevCo, Front 242, The Smithereens…and none of it I listen to, today. I’ll listen to a little XTC, ELO, Squeeze once in a blue moon… Now it’s mostly jazz and classical and opera — and the Beatles.
“Bauhaus, RevCo, Front 242, The Smithereens…”
HA! This is totally my high school clique, right there. I occasionally listen to that stuff on the “1st Wave” SiriusXM channel, but otherwise nah. I haven’t thought of RevCo in years! 😉
Skinny Puppy?
I spent many a teenaged Saturday night at Chicago’s legendary Medusa’s. All the while wishing it were London in 1966.
“All the while wishing it were London in 1966”
HA!! I have ZERO doubt we would’ve been best friends in high school. 😉
“I remember having a moment of bonding with the guy behind the counter at Collector’s Records in Dallas”
@Nancy, I had years-long relationships with the two guys who ran the two cool indie record shops in my home town! They were both a big part of my teenage life. 🙂 Sometimes no one else understands…
This would be a fascinating topic to explore in depth — why some of us tried so hard, as teenagers / young adults, to like certain bands. I devoted so much effort to trying to enjoy the Dead Kennedys and Siouxie and the Banshees! I kept backsliding to Cheap Trick and the Psychedelic Furs. And the Who — I spent way more time listening to “Quadrophenia” and “Tommy” than I did “Plastic Surgery Disasters” or “Join Hands.” Nobody else I knew at that point who was my age cared about the Who. I remember having a moment of bonding with the guy behind the counter at Collector’s Records in Dallas, but that was it. And years later, when I started listening to the Beatles, I realized just how deeply influenced by them Cheap Trick were.
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Interesting that this sort of identity-through-music is often framed not only by what you like (or claim to like) but also by what you despise (or affect to despise). I recall The Rock Snob’s Dictionary listing Paul McCartney as one of the people a bona fide Rock Snob was required to hate. I also recall one of my high school friends declaring she would NEVER kiss a guy who listened to Journey!
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Lester Bangs was addicted to barbiturates and alcohol,
so a lot of the time, he wasn’t all there..
OK, I have never heard of Lester Bangs before, but judging from this thread, he sounds like a total douche.
I have very little tolerance for “rock snobbery” – that’s the dumbest shit EVER. Like, it’s ROCK N ROLL, people, calm the fuck down. And I say this as someone who spent my entire youth (and young adulthood) voluntarily surrounded by hipsters and snobs.
“I also recall one of my high school friends declaring she would NEVER kiss a guy who listened to Journey!”
I might be revealing a bit much about my personality, but this is the exact opposite of me! I LOVE nonconformity so anyone who has the courage to stand up and express affection for something outside the hipster norm… that’s a huge turn on for me! (For example, I liked the drummer in one of our high school bands a LOT more when my friend told me he secretly loved Phil Collins)
I actually think it’s vulgar to judge music in terms of trendiness. And I’ve always felt this way. (It made me a very odd teenager, believe me) But you can understand how teenagers get sucked into that sort of thing. People over, say 21 who still engage in it? UGH. Just like what you fucking like!
I luv you Chelsea!
Chelsea, I can’t agree strenuously enough. That any of us ever thought vowing never to kiss a guy who liked Journey was a signifier of “cool” — that’s the tragedy.
.
Also, Paul as “librarian” — against Bangs’ wishes, it makes me love McCartney all the more.
Paul is the hot librarian of the Beatles! ;p
And yes, Paul’s “don’t give a fuck” is yet another thing that makes him so sexy and awesome.
(Also, I LOVE Journey)
I’m THAT close to starting a “Paul as hot librarian” Tumblr . . .
Do it! There are enough pictures to support that meme. 😀
Long time/first time — tangentially, there are some neat bits of Beatles flavoured trivia to London’s pub rock/proto-punk scene. Joe Strummer christened John Tiberi (pre-Clash manager of The 101’ers, later associated with the Pistols) “Boogie” because he’d smoke Winston cigarettes; before “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones” in 1977, Strummer was speeding through material like I’m Down and I Saw Her Standing There (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37x2vALzmDQ).
To debunk the totally inaccurate,ignorant,ludicrous things Kirk said about The Beatles,
Here is a very good educational you tube video by Mean Mr Mayo who is a member of The Beatles fan site,Abbryd debunking this stupid,ridiculous,ludicrous myth that The Beatles were ever a boy band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmVlDCm5NOU
And,
Here is a 2011 amazon.com customer discussion where quite a few posters especially DK Pete do a very good job debunking this totally ignorant nonsense calling The Beatles a boy band,after a moron started this (unfortunately common) discussion,The Beatles Were The First Boy Band!
https://www.amazon.com/forum/music/ref=cm_cd_pg_pg2?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1YA4ZE83NG9MC&cdMessage=Mx2NYHBEJWD1BW6&cdPage=2&cdThread=TxHMCJDLBBOKZR
Even in this 2011 discussion asking this totally stupid,ignorant,ludicrous question if The Beatles were a boy band,people who said they aren’t even Beatles fans know it’s absolute nonsense to call them a boy band,and as one of the fans said,The Beatles are the most talented,forward thinking bands and to call them a boy band is a complete insult to The Beatles.Another said they do have a problem with them being called this,because they are nothing like boy bands musically and it’s derogatory.
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1480330&page=3
The Beatles were *NEVER* a ”boy band”! As a poster Reverend Rock,who is a rock musician,reverend and a big Beatles fan said on a classic rock site years ago,that anyone who knows The Beatles history knows it’s ludicrous to even *suggest* such a thing! And what a huge insult to their enormous talent as true singers,song writers and musicians! The Beatles were a *zillion* times more talented and cool than any stupid,uncool,untalented real boy band!
The Monkees are the first true boy band because they didn’t even start off as a genuine band, they were all musical but they were originally hired as actors to play members of a TV pop rock band for their TV show, they didn’t start off playing together like Paul at age 15,George age 14 and John age 16 playing guitars and singing,then playing a few years later for 8 hours a night in sleazy strip clubs( and The Beatles had sex with many young women groupies,many who were teen girls and strippers) like The Beatles did in Hamburg Germany(or anywhere) for 2 years in a row,taking speed pills to stay awake to do it,and working their a*ses off playing as a real rock n roll band,and then playing successfully in the Cavern club as a real rock n roll band for years by the time they made it big.
And The Beatles wrote and played a lot of great rock n roll and pop rock songs in their early days. John and Paul wrote the rock n roll song I Wanna Be Your Man write in front of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger in 1963 and they were both really impressed that they could just write a song just like that,and it inspired them to start writing their own songs and both bands became good friends from then on. And this song was one of The Rolling Stones first hits.
There is just no comparison to The Monkees etc. A guy so accurately said on a message board many years ago when some idiots called them a ”boy band” that The Beatles were *never* a boy band,not even during their 1963-1965 period. And another guy said a few years after this on another forum,when some idiot said this,that he too once thought the early Beatles were a boy band like NYSNC,or The Back Street Boys,until he got out of 7th grade.
Every time some ignorant person unjustly calls them a boy band,I’m sure John Lennon’s ashes must be turning with outrage.I’m sure he would go on to these sites and say I was *not* the founder and the leader of some f*king,stupid,uncool,untalented, boy band get that through your stupid f*cking heads!
And younger people don’t know what type of music was out in 1963,even though I wasn’t born yet,I know that The Beatles early songs like She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand were hard rock compared to the music out then.There was just Bobby Darin,The Four Seasons,Bobby Vinton and The Beach Boys surfing hits.
Not only is this so ignorant,ridiculous,and false on a creative and musical level,but on their personal level too. I guarantee true genuine boy bands don’t have groupies.
The Beatles had sex with *tons* of young women groupies,many who were just teen girls especially during their touring years of 1963-1966 ironically they did this the most during the joke fake cleaned up image Brian Epstein created for them in their early days.In reality they were like pimps playing the part of priests! It’s no coincidence that in The Beatles Anthology video series that Paul,George and Ringo made,the story that is reported of The Beatles being thrown out of a US hotel in August 1965 because Paul was found in his hotel bedroom with an underage girl, that is included in the first great Beatles documentary from 1982 The Complete Beatles which none of them had any involvement making,is completely left out of The Beatles Anthology.
Paul McCartney also said in Hunter Davies 1968 first edition of the only authorized Beatles biography called,The Beatles, that he had sex at age 15 with a girl who was older and bigger than him,and most 15 year old boys weren’t having sex in 1957,and he said he bragged about it to his classmates the next day and that he was the first one in his class to have sex.Paul also said in this book,that he would go into strip clubs at only 13 and he was the lad in his class that drew nude women.He also got another girl who was his girl friend,pregnant when he was 17 and she was 16,and Paul’s father and her parents wanted them to get married but she had a miscarriage.
Hunter Davies says in his 1985 update of his Beatles biography, that The Beatles were no different from any other rock band when it came to groupies and he said they just had more to chose from. He said it was up to the road manager to say to these young women,you,you and you 5 minutes later which is really sexist and disgusting but it’s totally typical for every rock band which is what they always were.
From Me To You,and especially She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand were praised by some music critics even from the beginning,like William Mann of The London Times in December 1963 pointed out their interesting unusual chords and arrangements and London Times music critic Richard Buckle also in late 1963 called John and Paul the greatest composers since Beethoven after they wrote the music for a play Mods and Rockers.
Bob Dylan ,Roger McGuinn of The Byrds as early as 1963 and 1964 pointed out that even in early Beatles songs like She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand had unusual and interesting chords and they arranged them.
Here in this article about The Beatles chords,Bob Dylan is quoted saying what he thought in 1964 about The early Beatles music,he said that they were doing things nobody was doing and that their chords were outrageous,just outrageous and their harmonies made it all valid.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME03/Words_and_chords.shtml
Here in Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Song Writers Bob Dylan is number 1,Paul McCartney is number 2, and John Lennon is number 3, Bob Dylan is quoted about a car trip when he heard a lot of Beatles songs on the radio, he said they were doing things and that he knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-songwriters#john-lennon
Roger McGuinn has said that he started to play a 12 string guitar after he saw and heard George Harrison playing in in the A Hard Day’s Night movie.
And John and Paul wrote one of The Rolling Stones first hits the rock n roll song, I Wanna Be Your Man in late 1963 right in front of them. And Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were impressed and said wow,how can you write a song just like that and it inspired them to start writing their own songs and both bands became good friends from then on.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were such amazingly talented singer song writers that they were already writing hit songs for other artists as early as 1963 when their own song writing success was getting off the ground,besides The Rolling Stones,they also wrote hit songs in 1963 for Billy J.Krammer and The Dakatos,Celia Black,and Peter and Gordon etc.
Paul wrote his first song at age 14 and was playing guitar,John wrote heavy deep poetry but didn’t start writing songs until he met Paul and was impressed that he wrote his own songs,and he too started to write his own songs at age 16,and they wrote together and never stopped from then on. Paul wrote the very pretty song I’ll Follow The Sun at only 16.Even when The Beatles first came to America in February 1964 many people said how rare it was for *adult* rock n roll bands and solo artists to write their own songs,and Paul and John were already doing this as teenagers in the mid 1950’s.
And even though I wasn’t born yet in 1963 I know what type of music was popular on the radio,non rock n roll songs like Bobby Vinton,The Four Seasons,Bobby Darin and The Beach Boys surfing hits,The early Beatles songs like She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing there etc were hard rock for 1963 and ahead of their time.
The Beatles even in their early days were writing and playing on records as well in concerts,both love ballads,and great rocking rock n roll and pop rock songs that they both wrote and cover songs including their great rocking performances in Sweden where the audience was quiet during their performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDAJczmuZ-OeU&v=EWFOO9CWfUQ
As The All Music Guide says in their excellent Beatles biography “That it’s difficult to summarize their career without restating cliches that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans, to start with the obvious,they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century.”
“Moreover they were among the few artists of *any* discipline that were simultaneously the best at what they did *and* the most popular at what they did.” They also say as singers John Lennon and Paul McCartney were among the best and most expressive in rock.
Also on an excellent site,The Evolution of Rock Bass Playing McCartney Style by Dennnis Alstrand,Stanley Clarke,Sting,Will Lee,Billy Sheehan,George Martin and John Lennon are quoted saying what a great,melodic and influential bass player Paul has always been.
http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/paulbass.htm
And Wilco’s John Stirratt was asked in Bass Player which bass players have had the most impact on his playing and the first thing he said was, Paul McCartney is one of the greatest bass players of all time,if you listen to what he was tracking live in the studio it’s unbelievable.” “With his tone and musicality he was a huge influence,he covered all of his harmonic responsibilities really well but his baselines were absolutely melodic and inventive.”
http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/15716769/windy-city-wingman-john-stirratt-lays-roots-wilco
In this 2010 interview the blogger says that John Stirratt has an affinity for good melodies so it’s not surprising that Paul McCartney is one of his musical icons and then he quotes him saying that he’s always absolutely in awe of his playing,including Paul’s Beatles years.
http://audreeanne.blogspot.com/2010/02/interview-wilcos-john-stirratt-talk.html
And in an online 1977 Eric Clapton interview,Eric Clapton In His Own Words he says that there was always this game between John and George,and he said partly because John was a pretty good guitar player himself
http://www.superseventies.com/ssericclapton.html . He played live with John as a member of John’s 1969 Plastic Ono Band.
And there is a great online article by musician and song writer Peter Cross,The Beatles Are The Most Creative Band Of All Time and he says that many musicians besides him recognize Paul as one of the best bass guitar players ever.He too says that John and Paul are the greatest song composers and that to say that John and Paul are among 2 of the greatest singers in rock and roll is to state the obvious,and that John,Paul and George were all excellent guitarists and that George is underrated by people not educated about music but that Eric Clapton knew better,he also says that both John and Paul played great leads as well as innovative rhythm tracks.
John Lennon co-wrote,sang and played guitar on one of David Bowie’s first hits Fame in 1975 and David invited John to play guitar on his version of John’s beautiful Beatles song Across The Universe.Brain May,Ozzy Osbourne,and Liam Gallagher and many more call The Beatles The Greatest Band Ever.’
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Beatles-are-the-Most-Creative-Band-of-All-Time&id=222245
Also on MusicRadar Tom Petty,Joe Perry and Richie Sambora in What The Beatles Mean To Me all say how cool and great they thought The Beatles were when they first saw them on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 when they were just teen boys,Richie was only 5.Tom Petty said he thought they were really really great.
Robin Zander of Cheap Trick said he’s probably one of the biggest Beatles fans on the planet.Brad Whitford of Aerosmith said that a lot of that Beatles influence comes from Steven Tyler’s collaboration with Mark Hudson both whom are absolute Beatles freaks and he said I guess the goal is to try and emulate probably some of the best music of the last 50 years which has to be The Beatles.
They were the greatest *rock* band ever! (NEVER A G*d dam*ed stupid,uncool,untalented boy band as so many ignorant morons misperceive them as!) And I have always loved this great blues rocker by Paul,She’s A Woman.
Except live there isn’t the piano,blending with the great rocking guitars,Paul’s great prominent booming bass,and his great rock vocal! And once again it’s amazing how good they sound on such limited,primitive sound systems of the time and with no feedback monitors so they couldn’t even hear themselves singing and playing,yet they still played and sang great and in sync with each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsNgLiPyuCY
Here is their great April 1965 New Music Express Winner’s Poll concert from April 11,1965.They won three years in a row.And notice that there are men and women of ages in the audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COSSsu1GSCk
Here they performed Paul’s great rocking I Saw Her Standing There in Sweden in October 1963 which The Beatles recorded in February 1963 on their first album Please Please Me which was recorded in just one day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkySom9bTfM
The Beatles performing their rocking cover of Long Tall Sally with Paul’s great rocking vocal June 1964.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiXtk296YmE
Here in 1964 June in Melbourne Australia they are playing John’s great rock song that they had recorded in February 1964 on their first great early album A Hard Day’s Night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Dpt7TI9q0
And here they performed Paul’s very good hard rocking,especially for early 1965,I’m Down at The Ed Sulivian Theater August 14,1965 one night before their live Shea Stadium performance.
https://vimeo.com/133531241
Here is their even harder rocking performance at Shea Stadium on August 15,1965 than they did on their record version of Paul’s I’m Down. And they did what a great rock n roll band would do,they ended this rock n roll concert with this rocking song.
https://vimeo.com/146526352
Here they performed a rocking cover of Dizzy Miss Lizzy with John’s great rock vocal,at the same She Stadium concert.
https://vimeo.com/14652584
Here is another great rocking Beatles performance of the cover Twist and Shout in June 1964 in Melbourne Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdIzcm95NCM
And what a huge disgusting insult to all of them as very talented musicians,and to John and Paul as extremely talented song composers and great singers,and to John Lennon’s memory and was never the founder and leader of some stupid,uncool,untalented boy band! And I’m certain that if John were still living he would come on youtube and other message boards and say I was *never* the founder and leader of any f**king stupid,uncool,untalented boy band get that through your stupid f**king heads!
If Beethoven,Mozart and Bach had screaming teenage girls in their audiences and they formed a band together they would have been a boy band too right?
Award winning classical composer and music professor Dr.Glen Gass’s Beatles course he’s been teaching since 1982 and he’s been teaching a course in rock music in general since then.
http://courses.music.indiana.edu/rock/beatles.html
31 Year old Beatles and music scholar Arron Krerowicz plays many instruments & writes his own music too
http://www.aaronkrerowicz.com/faq.html
The early Beatles lyrics were more simple but a lot of their early music was actually much more complex. Just one of many examples I always loved this very early John song written and recorded in 1962 Ask Me Why.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ex-epsPWoc
I have always loved this great beautiful song written by John,with such typical beautiful melodies and harmonies John and Paul usually wrote,and John’s usual beautiful singing voice.And this was amazingly recorded in 1962 on only two track tape! with such limited,primitive recording technology but it of course still sounds great.Except I hate mono it’s limited sounding and only makes their already limited recording technology sound even more limited.I tried to find the stereo version of this song on youtube but I couldn’t find it.
Here university of Pennsylvania musicologist Alan W.Pollack who did an 11 year extensive analysis of every one of the 200 Beatles songs,analyzes Ask Me Why and explains that it’s structurally complex.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/amw.shtml
Here is Alan’s whole Beatles song analysis series
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-notes_on.shtml
Both VH1 and MTV have been using Richie Unterberger’s excellent All Music Guide’s long Beatles biography as their Beatles biography they both used to not have a very good biography of The Beatles.Here are great Beatles biographies that totally debunk this totally stupid,inaccurate,ludicrous,ridiculous myth that they were ever a ‘’boy band’’.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-beatles-mn0000754032/biography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles
The Beatles own documentary The Beatles Anthology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJczmuZ-OeU&list=RDAJczmuZ-OeU#t=13
The great 1982 Beatles documentary,The Complete Beatles narrated by award winning British actor Malcolm McDowell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG8GbhSZq-o&list=PL2BCD47B5F0BDD651&index=2
And any great reputable accurate Beatles biography would debunk this ludicrous,stupid myth.And I have *never* read or heard *any* legitimate serious rock critics or rock music journalists describe them this way and for extremely great reasons.
Also in an excellent Beatles book Ticket To Ride by Denny Somach where so many other well known popular respected rock musicians and artists are interviewed about The Beatles praising them including Jimmy Page,Brian Wilson who says he’s always loved The Beatles. And Brian Wilson called John & Paul the greatest song writers of the 20th century on a 1995 Nightline Beatles tribute show,(which had on music artists from every type of music,a young black jazz musician,a middle aged black opera singer,Steve Winwood,Meatloaf,and classical violinist Isak Perleman,who said he plays his children Bach,Beethoven Mozart and The Beatles)and he played With A Little Help From My Friends on the piano and he said he just loves this song. He also said that Sgt.Pepper is the greatest album he ever heard and The All Music Guide says in their Beach Boys biography,that Brian had a nervous breakdown after he heard it. Brian also said that when he first heard The Beatles brilliant 1965 folk rock album Rubber Soul he was blown away by it.He said all of the songs flowed together and it was pop music but folk rock at the same time and he couldn’t believe they did this so great,this inspired him to make Pet Sounds.
John Lodge and Justin of The Moody Blues are interviewed in this book and Bill Wyman and Ron Wood says how The Rolling Stones became good friends with The Beatles in 1963 after John and Paul wrote 1 of their first hits,the Rock n Roll song,I Wanna Be You’re Man.
Ron Wood was asked what his favorite Beatles songs and he said there are so many apart from the obvious like Strawberry Fields I Want To Hold Your Hand is one he said he used to like a lot ,and he said he really loved We Can Work It Out.He also says that The Beatles used to have a radio show every Friday where they played live and spoke and he would never miss an episode. He said in fact whoever has the rights to those shows should dig them up,because they are incredible.
Justin Hayward says that the album he always really loved ,and he said it was when they started experimenting with chord structures ,was A Hard Day’s Night.He says they began to move away from the standard 3 chord thing and just went into more interesting structures .He said A Hard Day’s Night was the album for him and their song If I Fell was the song.He said it started in a different key to how it ended up,and it’s a beautifully worked out song and that there are some songs on that album that were very emotional and evocative. He said that for everybody just starting to write songs as he was,it was a real turn on and eye opener.
This 1999 review of Mark Lewisohn’s excellent Beatles studio diary book where many of The Beatles recording engineers and tape operators and their producer George Martin are interviewed (and it shows how truly innovative,brilliant and creative especially John and Paul were in the recording studio),The Beatles Recording Sessions titled, Behind The Creative Genius Of A Groundbreaking Band by a musician himself says it all, he says that as a musician he found Mark Lewisohn’s portrayal of The Beatles genius and in parenthesis he says, especially that of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, to be completely thorough and accurate, as well as insightful. He then says if you are to buy any one Beatles book,buy this one.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3EHW182TIHFQ2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1454910054
And this reviewer RAS who became a big Beatles fan after he read The Beatles Recording Sessions book,said,I think The Beatles ARE BRILLIANT and he said he despairs what his life would be like without The Beatles!! He said that when he first saw this book,he said Oh another garbage Beatles book.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Beatles-Recording-Sessions/product-reviews/1454910054/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_paging_btm_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=helpful&pageNumber=2
From Me To You,and especially She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand were praised by some music critics even from the beginning,like William Mann of The London Times in December 1963 pointed out their interesting unusual chords and arrangements and London Times music critic Richard Buckle also in late 1963 called John and Paul the greatest composers since Beethoven after they wrote the music for a play Mods and Rockers.
Bob Dylan ,Roger McGuinn of The Byrds as early as 1963 and 1964 pointed out that even in early Beatles songs like She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand had unusual and interesting chords and they arranged them.
Here in this article about The Beatles chords,Bob Dylan is quoted saying what he thought in 1964 about The early Beatles music,he said that they were doing things nobody was doing and that their chords were outrageous,just outrageous and their harmonies made it all valid.
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME03/Words_and_chords.shtml
Here in Rolling Stone Magazine’s 100 Greatest Song Writers Bob Dylan is number 1,Paul McCartney is number 2, and John Lennon is number 3, Bob Dylan is quoted about a car trip when he heard a lot of Beatles songs on the radio, he said they were doing things and that he knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-songwriters#john-lennon
Roger McGuinn has said that he started to play a 12 string guitar after he saw and heard George Harrison playing in in the A Hard Day’s Night movie.
And John and Paul wrote one of The Rolling Stones first hits the rock n roll song, I Wanna Be Your Man in late 1963 right in front of them. And Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were impressed and said wow,how can you write a song just like that and it inspired them to start writing their own songs.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were such amazingly talented singer song writers that they were already writing hit songs for other artists as early as 1963 when their own song writing success was getting off the ground,besides The Rolling Stones,they also wrote hit songs in 1963 for Billy J.Krammer and The Dakatos,Celia Black,and Peter and Gordon etc.
Paul wrote his first song at age 14 and was playing guitar,John wrote heavy deep poetry but didn’t start writing songs until he met Paul and was impressed that he wrote his own songs,and he too started to write his own songs at age 16,and they wrote together and never stopped from then on. Paul wrote the very pretty song I’ll Follow The Sun at only 16.Even when The Beatles first came to America in February 1964 many people said how rare it was for *adult* rock n roll bands and solo artists to write their own songs,and Paul and John were already doing this as teenagers in the mid 1950’s.
And even though I wasn’t born yet in 1963 I know what type of music was popular on the radio,non rock n roll songs like Bobby Vinton,The Four Seasons,Bobby Darin and The Beach Boys surfing hits,The early Beatles songs like She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand and I Saw Her Standing there etc were hard rock for 1963 and ahead of their time.
NME News
Bob Dylan talks of Beatles friendship
Legend admits: ‘I’m in awe of McCartney’
May 16, 2007
Bob Dylan has spoken in depth about his longstanding friendship with The Beatles and his particular bond with George Harrison.
Talking to Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan talked freely about Harrison’s struggle to find his voice within the songwriting collective of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
“George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney. Well, who wouldn’t get stuck?” he asked.
Dylan highlighted the writing talents of Harrison, saying: “If George had had his own group and was writing his own songs back then, he’d have been probably just as big as anybody.”
Speaking against popular belief, the singer also denounced any rumors of competitiveness towards Lennon and McCartney, asserting, “They were fantastic singers. Lennon, to this day, it’s hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is.”
Nodding his cap to McCartney in particular, Dylan concluded: “I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he’s never let up… He’s just so damn effortless.”
http://www.nme.com/news/bob-dylan/28350
Here is a really good July 1976 Rolling Stone Magazine interview with George Martin in which he’s asked about George Harrison who he says is talented but John and Paul are so enormously talented that it was silly to look elsewhere.But it’s obvious George Harrison was even more talented as a song writer and guitarist than most people realize because in this same interview George Martin says that he didn’t give George much encouragement he just tolerated him. And of course John and Paul didn’t give him much encouragement,so he did mostly everything on his own.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/george-martin-recalls-the-boys-in-the-band-19760715?page=2#comments
Around 2003 I found an online interview with George Martin and he said that even though he has produced many other music artists and he has never had the same success before or after producing The Beatles,he has never known or worked with anyone as brilliant as The Beatles. He was also interviews in the 1990’s on a Breakfast With The Beatles show on a local rock station,and he said that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were incredibly talented people and he said it like he still couldn’t believe it. And he also said they both were extraordinarily talented song writers and great singers.
And in the excellent thorough book by Mark Lewisohn,The Beatles Recording Sessions,George Martin,and so many of The Beatles tape operators and recording engineers are interviewed,(and in the beginning there is a great 1987 interview with Paul McCartney) and they describe in detail how truly innovative, brilliant and creative especially John and Paul were in their amazing 8 year recording career. And there is a big black and white picture of Mick Jagger sitting in between John and Paul in the recording console room listening to the playback of the songs from The Beatles Revolver album.
And my cousin who was born in 1968 who used to be a lawyer,and his brother born in 62 who is still a lawyer,and their sister born in 64,their oldest brother born in 60,and their parents have always been Beatles fans. My cousin born in 68,went to England around 1991 and he told me that he was at a British Museum where the works of Shakespere,Dickens,Wodsworth and Keats,Lennon and McCartney’s lyrics are right in the same case. And he said the majority of visitors always said,forget the Shakespeare etc,lets go over to the Lennon and McCartney lyrics.
When I once asked him,if he still liked The Beatles he said,best band there ever was.My step cousin born in 1958,said they probably were the greatest band ever.He saw Paul McCartney and Wings in May 1976 in concert when he was 18 and he said it was a great show.
Giles Martin,George Martin’s son who recently remastered The Beatles 1964 and 1965 Live At The Hollywood Bowl concerts rightfully says on All Songs Considered when people ask him if The Beatles were a good live band,he says they were a great live band and he mentions the very limited,primitive sound systems they had back then,and says how great The Beatles played live in the studio on their first 3 or 4 albums,and that they all played their instruments very good.
He obviously means they played these first several albums live because they didn’t even have any overdubbing until 1965 so they had to play and record those albums live.And their first albums before the great A Hard Day’s Night album were recorded on only 2 track tape,they had 4 track by A Hard Day’s Night and only 8 track for The White album,Let It Be and Abbey Road.
http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2016/08/25/491201322/all-songs-1-the-beatles-are-live-and-sounding-better-than-ever
As The Rolling Stone Album Guide said, not liking The Beatles is as perverse as not liking the sun. And Ozzy Osbourne( he’s been a huge Beatles fan he was a young teen from The Beatles early days,and he picked She Loves You as one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s greatest songs of all time,and Sgt.Pepper is one of hi favorite albums) said not loving The Beatles is like not loving oxygen. And a guy who runs Keno’s Classic Rock n Roll Site and who runs a Rolling Stones and John Lennon fan site says in his review of The Beatles 1967-1970 Blue Album damn The Beatles were one great group and he said in his great review of The Beatles 1962-1966 Red album, that if you don’t love or at least like The Beatles and their music then you are not a true rock fan and more than likely will never ever get it.
He also says that John Lennon showed on Paul’s rocker Get Back why he should have played lead guitar more often because he did such a good job of it. He also said he played a pretty good slide guitar on George’s For Your Blue and he said John also played one of the first and best acid guitar parts on his great rocker Revolution.
http://www.keno.org/classic_rock/rock_albums_reviews.html
And I have been a huge Beatles fan, especially a big highly impressed John and Paul fan since I was 11 and I got my first Beatles book for my 11th birthday,I started collecting their albums at age 9, and I had every album by age 13. I was born after 1964 too. when I was 13 a guy at school who was 2 years older than me,gave me Hunter Davies authorized biography,he was a fan and his older brother was an even bigger fan.I would read that book for hours till 5 in the morning.
My father was a big Bob Dylan fan and he had a lot of his albums,and he also had many Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass albums,and albums by Leonard Cohen and Peter Paul and Mary when I was growing up. And my sister who is 4 years older had a big music collection of all different types of music artists.
Most people I have known all of my life,including my female and male cousins, friends and neighbors know they were brilliant.When I was 11 I had a music teacher who asked us to guess who he was talking about when he said they were geniuses and that they wrote 200 songs,and that most of their songs and albums are great and critically acclaimed in just an 8 year recording career,and I said,The Beatles and he said yes that’s right!
In 2010 I read an online article that had an interview with Ernie Isley of The Isley Brothers about a recent tribute to Jimi Hendrix, in which he says that Jimi played for The Isley Brothers & lived with them & that they & he were fans of The Fab Four from the moment they all watched them on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. I always thought that Jimi was only a later period Beatles fan,I knew he played Sgt.Pepper live the weekend it came out,& he played Day Tripper live also,& several people on different message boards said that when he was asked where the direction of music was going,he said ask The Beatles.
In the 2012 Newsweek Beatles special celebrating 50 years since their music came out,Steve Jobs was quoted from Walter Isaacson’s biography as talking about how the band’s approach to recording “refining and refining” influenced his own creative process. He said they were such perfectionists they kept it going and going he said. Steve Jobs said that this made a big impression on him when he was in his thirties.Newsweek rightfully says,that it’s hard to imagine another rock band that influenced the way computers are made just as it is to think of one whose name became an adjective. And Newsweek said and that’s why The Beatles still stand apart.
They quote Steve Jobs saying,”Somebody else could have replicated the Stones,(Newsweek then says,nailing the difference between artists shaped by their times and those who shape them),no one could have been Dylan or The Beatles.”
Not only did The Beatles give The Rolling Stones one of their first hits with their rock n roll song I Wanna Be Your Man as you know,and they wrote it right in front of them and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were impressed and like wow how can you write a song just like that and it motivated them to start writing their own songs and The Rolling Stones were good friends with and fans of The Beatles.
Mick Jagger was at 4 Beatles recording sessions and Keith Richards was at 2 of them with him.Also Mick Jagger was such a big Beatles fan that in May 1967 when The Beatles were recording their song Baby You’re A Rich Man he came there and stood on the sidelines to watch and listen to them recording it. His name is also on the tape box and he likely sang at the end verses.In Mark Lewishon’s great detailed music diary book, The Beatles Recording Sessions there is a big black and white picture of Mick Jagger sitting in between John and Paul in the recording console room during The Beatles Revolver recording sessions too.
The Beatles remastered albums sold much more 40 years after their break up than The Rolling Stones remastered albums and they are still together! The Beatles have the best selling album of the last decade with their CD 1.And soon after their music went on iTunes,it went to the top.
And Brian Jones played the saxophone at the time Marianne Faithful contributed sound effects on the song Yellow Submarine.
As this guy Sal66 who is also a musician and has also posted on sites debunking ignorant cr*p about The Beatles has rightfully pointed out, The Beatles wrote,played and recorded I Feel Fine (which The All Music Guide says has brilliant,active ,difficult guitar leads and riffs) in the Fall of 1964 which was the first use of feedback guitar on a pop rock record and it also had a prominent guitar riff throughout this very good song almost a year *before* The Rolling Stones’s Satisfaction came out.
And on John’s great Norwegian Wood recorded in the Fall of 1965,George Harrison was the first to play a sitar on a pop rock song and it was released on their great album Rubber Soul in December and then in May 1966 The Rolling Stones song Paint It Black came out with Brian Jones playing a sitar.
And in Paul McCartney’s authorized biography Many Years From Now, Mick Jagger’s former girlfriend singer Marianne Faithful says that she and Mick used to go over to Paul’s house a lot and hang out in his music room. She said he never went to see them at their house they always went to visit him because he was Paul McCartney.She also said that Mick was intimidated by Paul but that Paul was totally oblivious to this.
Paul also says in this book that he turned Mick on to pot in his music room and he said which is funny because a lot of people would assume it was the other way around. Mick Jagger was also with The Beatles in Bangor when they got the call that Brian Epstein was found dead because he went on the train with them with his then girl friend singer Marianne Faithful to see the Maharishi to study meditation that weekend.
Also Mick Jagger is quoted on a Rolling Stones fan site,timeisonourside.com saying that Keith Richards liked The Beatles because he was quite interested in their chord sequences and he says he also liked their harmonies which he said were always a slight problem for The Rolling Stones.He said Keith always tried to get the harmonies off the ground but they always seemed messy.Mick then says,that what they never really got together were Keith and Brian singing backup vocals and he said it didn’t work because Keith was a better singer and to keep going,oooh,ooh,ooh(he laughs) and he said Brian liked all of those oohs which Keith had to put up with.He also said Keith was capable of much stronger vocals than ooh,ooh,ooh.
On this same fan site Keith Richards is quoted from 1971 saying that The Beatles were perfect for opening doors,when they went to America they left it wide open for them and he said that The Rolling Stones could never have gone to America without them.He also said that The Beatles are so f**king good at what they did.
A radio host who was a former DJ once said that The Beatles are one of the only if not only bands that almost all of their songs were great including the album tracks that weren’t released as singles.
On a message board discussion some years ago about what bands and artists people consider overrated,quite a few said The Rolling Stones and some said The Beatles or both,and a guy said if you ask almost anybody in the music business they will tell you that The Beatles were the Greatest Band Ever!
I once spoke to a rock DJ about The Beatles and even though he said they aren’t his favorite,he said nobody can say that The Beatles weren’t great,he said especially John Lennon and Paul McCartney as song writers.
And I once spoke to another rock DJ who is a huge Beatles fan & who has hosted a 2 hour Breakfast With The Beatles radio show for over 20 years & I said that The Beatles work in the recording studio described in details in The Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn,is so impressive & brilliant & he said oh it’s the work of geniuses. I said how can anyone not recognize what extraordinary singer song composers John Lennon & Paul McCartney were? And he said oh you can ask anyone in the music business & they will tell you that.
I have read all of the recent almost all 5 star amazon.com reviews of the new remastered amazon.com best seller,The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl and many people are saying what I and other fans have said elsewhere,that given how limited and primitive sound systems of the time were,and they had no feedback monitors so they couldn’t even hear themselves singing and playing,they played and sounded amazingly good! I heard the small samples on amazon.com,and what struck me is how typically great and prominent Paul’s bass playing is,someone said he’s playing it like a lead instrument.Also an amazon.com reviewer said how underrated John’s rhythm guitar playing is and how George Harrison’s guitar playing is very good and how great Ringo’s drumming is.
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Here on Paul McCartney.com quite a few members are saying that it’s amazing and incredible that The Beatles played so great and sang so great with such primitive sound systems at the time and no feedback monitors so they couldn’t even hear themselves singing and playing.One member said they were without a doubt the greatest live rock band ever!
http://maccaboard.paulmccartney.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=91901&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=45
Many are saying the same things on this music forum including how great and hard rocking of a live band The Beatles really were.
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/beatles-live-at-the-hollywood-bowl-out-on-cd-9-9-16-vinyl-on-11-18-16.567252/page-141
I just found only part of this review from The London Times,you have to have a subscription to read the whole article though,and it says in the first part of it,that it’s remarkable they played as well as they did given that they couldn’t hear a thing.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pop-the-beatles-live-at-the-hollywood-bowl-f9pxrkmzg
It’s really amazing how good The Beatles sounded live with such limited primitive crappy sound systems of the time,but they were so great that they would have even sounded good playing out of of cave.
There is an online interview with Roger Daltry,Roger’s Journey With The Who in The Sun http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/sftw/607170/Rogers-journey-with-The-Who.html and he was asked if The Who had screaming girls at a certain point,and he said after Can’t Explain they did. He said it was the screaming teenage era and every band had them on their way up. He said it was fun at first but the trouble for a performer when you are that young and inexperienced is that you start to judge your performances on the amount they scream,he said it’s nonsense which is why Lennon gave up. He also said that The Who’s manager turned their image overnight from scruffy rockers to Mods.
When The Beatles played live in 1963,64,65 & 66 they only had 100 watt amplifiers,no feedback monitors so they couldn’t hear themselves sing and play,plus the screaming crowds and that’s why they gave up touring.
George Harrison says in The Beatles Anthology video series,that for their August 1965 Shea Stadium concerts, special 100 watt amplifiers were made and that they went up from only 30 watts before. Given how limited and primitive the sound systems were then,it’s amazing they sounded as good as they did live.But it was impossible for *anyone* to sound great on those kind of limited,primitive sound systems of the time.
Former Kiss guitarist Bob Kulick who produced the heavy metal Beatles tribute album, Butchering The Beatles, said he saw The Beatles in concert in 1966 and he said he could hear parts of Baby’s In Black & Paperback Writer and they sounded amazing.
A guy Steve from Canada said on Artist Facts,that he saw The Beatles live in 1966 and The Stones in 1996(and the sound systems by then were a zillion times better!) and he said don’t get me wrong,The Stones were great but they were no match for The Beatles and he called The Beatles The Greatest Band Of All Time.
The Beatles started out playing 8 hours a night in the sleazy strip clubs of Hamburg Germany,taking speed pills to stay awake,wearing tight black leather jackets and pants,smoking and cursing on stage,and had sex with so many young women groupies including the strippers in those clubs,they were successful there. They also played successfully live in The Cavern Club for several years in the early 1960’s.
John and George especially hated Beatle Mania,and George says in The Anthology series, that it took a toll on their nervous systems, they had no life either trapped in hotel rooms most of the time. They wanted to be popular & successful as every band does, but they didn’t want or ask for the hysteria. John says in his 1975 Tomorrow Show interview that the screaming wasn’t doing the music any good,and that things would break down and nobody would know.
The Beatles sound great on their live roof top January 1969 concert in The Let It Be Film, and the sound systems had improved by then,(although still very limited compared to today’s) and there were no more screaming crowds.
Paul was playing guitar and writing songs at 14 and he started soon after his beloved nurse and midwife mother Mary died of breast cancer, and he wrote the beautiful song Let It Be after he had a real seeming dream where he saw her alive again and she told him to just accept things as they are. He says in his authorized biography, that when he woke up he thought how great it was to see her alive again.
And there is this very good article by Collin Fleming from The Atlantic, 50 Years Later: The Greatest Beatles Performance Of All Time
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/50-years-later-the-greatest-beatles-performance-of-all-time/280801/
And there used to be the full video of The Beatles February 1964 Washington Colosseum and there were over 1,000 likes and many people were saying what Frank and Jack say to this now only audio version of this concert,( many people on youtube are saying why are many of The Beatles videos gone off of youtube now and some are saying it’s because of UMG_MK and I don’t know what this is.) that it’s amazing that with such crappy sound systems of those days and no feedback monitors so they couldn’t even hear themselves singing and playing and many said they still sound so good and great and some say this Washington concert proves what a great live band they were and before they got so tired of all of the Beatlemania garbage they had to put up with all of the screaming drowning out their great music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge66-bK0E70
In this 2008 interview asking Keith Richards who the five greatest bands ever are besides The Rolling Stones,he said obviously he put The Beatles in there. This was 6 years of course before he ridiculously criticized The Beatles brilliant Sgt.Pepper album that The Rolling Stones tried but failed to copy and equal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNKckhYqNBk
Ozzy Osbourne has been a big Beatles fan since he was an early teenager,and he picked She Loves You as one of his favorite songs for Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest songs and Sgt.Pepper is one o his favorite albums.
Ozzy Osbourne has been a big Beatles fan since he was an early teenager,and he picked She Loves You as one of his favorite songs for Rolling Stone Magazine’s 500 Greatest songs and Sgt.Pepper is one o his favorite albums. He says that not loving The Beatles is like not loving oxygen and he called The Beatles the greatest band to ever walk the earth.
Here Ozzy Osbourne says that he doesn’t anyone will ever be as great as The Beatles and he said they were all great,even George Harrison and Ringo Starr were great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD0_MtCDcQQ
Here is a video of Ozzy Osbourne meets Paul McCartney for the first time and they hug each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkudA0P27Q0
Here Ozzy Osbourne says how hearing She Loves You at age 15 inspired him to go into music.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/ozzy-osbourne-beatles-moved-me-30320049.html
British classical composer Howard Goodall’s TV special 20th Century Greats features The Beatles,specifically Lennon and McCartney as one of the brilliant music artists featured.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FolZRFAWWog
Here is another even better part of this series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQS91wVdvYc
This is a great August 1986 hour long Paul McCartney interview by Barbara Hower from Entertainment This Week. She asked him a lot of great intelligent questions including how he felt about John Lennon’s horrible,tragic murder and she got a rare great interview out of him and he comes across as very likeable intelligent,funny,serious and charming.
This is really the best interview with Paul that I have ever seen or heard.She also talked to him about his drug arrests and all of drug related songs of The Beatles and his time in jail in Japan because of having tons of pot with him and she asked him after having so many groupies how has he managed to stat faithful to one woman,and he only half jokingly says it hasn’t been easy.And in between commercials Lionel Richie and David lee Roth talk about how great The Beatles,especially John and Paul were as song writers.
I still have this interview on an old VHS tape from the time. It’s not on youtube though for some reason. Unfortunately it gets interrupted by advertisements but then the interview resumes.But I just watched it again and there were no commercials now, I hope they don’t include them again.
Paul also says in this interview that soon after John died Yoko called him up and told Paul that John really loved him.
Notice how uncomfortable Paul’s face expression is for about a minute in this great August 1986 hour long Paul McCartney interview by Barbara Hower from Entertainment This Week when she says to him,probably your first great love before you married Linda was Jane Asher, it struck a chord.I’m sure that Paul was really in love with intelligent beautiful British actress Jane too,you don’t write the beautiful love songs such as And I Love Her,Things We Said Today, and Here There Everywhere,(plus the great songs he wrote about his arguments with her,which was his own fault because of his sexism constantly trying to get Jane to give up her acting career she loved so much and that she had been doing since she was 5 years old.She left him for good when in early 1968 after they had been lovers for 5 years and engaged to be married for 7 months,she found him in their bed in their house with another woman.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qtunj
This is a description of the 2009 Beatles 3 part radio special of how brilliant and influential The Beatles were from the beginning and it has interviews with Brian Wilson,Tom Petty,Dave Grohl,Slash,Jeff Lynne,Ann Wilson,Nancy Wilson,Peter Asher,Jackson Browne,Bob Seger,T-Bone Burnett,Cameron Crowe,Mika,Mark Ronson,Susan Werner,Rick Rubin,and Joe Boyd.
http://beatlesblogger.com/2009/12/04/new-three-part-beatles-radio-series-here-there-everywhere/
Utterly amazing, wonderful, fascinating mind-boggling and a schedule sweeper this lot of responses by Topazthecat. Today and tomorrow there will only be time for training, sleeping, drinking water and reading and exploring, all those sources we are familiar with and will now return to again.
Humbling, really humbling dear missus or mister Topazthecat.