It was 50 years ago today....

"It’s complicated". They were such a cultural phenomenon that it’s hard to judge their music objectively. Everyone likes one period or album(s) more than another, and they progressed through a lot of them. Think how much different they sounded in ’66 compared with ’64! No group put out so much material in such a short period of time as did they, though Prince and Ryan Adams tried.

I love Rubber Soul and Revolver, but not Sgt. Pepper---too many filler songs imo. Magical Mystery Tour is just awful (it wasn’t even an album in England, just an EP), but the s/t white album is pretty amazing, though I agree with George Martin---it would have made a much better single album (Revolution 9? Wild Honey Pie? Lennon and McCartney were better together than alone imo). Get Back/Let It Be is really sad; they were obviously overdue for a divorce. Lots of people like Abbey Road, but I had already moved on by the time of it’s release (and the rooftop set). The Band had moved the bar far higher than even The Beatles could reach ;-) . The end of one era, the beginning of another, as much so as when they had appeared in 1963.

I had mixed feelings about them from the moment I saw and heard them live in the summer of ’65; they weren’t that good, I was disappointed. I had already started going out and seeing local San Jose groups (as we called bands at the time), and wasn’t very impressed by The Beatles AS A LIVE BAND. San Jose was the undisputed garage band capitol of The United States, and I saw them all: People, The Chocolate Watchband, The Trolls/Stained Glass, The Otherside, The Syndicate of Sound, The Count V, many others only locals knew about. None of them had the songwriting of John, Paul, and George, but they were better live bands. Honest! It is my view that they were a fair Rock ’n’ Roll band that evolved into a great Pop group.

@gpgr4blu, believe me, I completely understand why you feel the way you do, and wouldn't dream of challenging your opinion. The Beatles made some great Pop music, a fair amount of which I would not want to be without. And they are unquestionably amongst the three most important and influential artists in Rock 'n' Roll history (along with Elvis and Dylan). And yes, their cultural influence cannot be overstated, for better or worse. 

However ;-), in regard to songwriting, do know Paul McCartney considers Brian Wilson his favorite songwriter? I can't name a Beatles song on the level of Brian's "God Only Knows". That Lennon considered Chuck Berry his hero? That Lennon & McCartney modeled themselves on The Everly Brothers, who had the best songwriting, singing, and musicians of them all? All the above music may be from before your time, but it's what The Beatles music is based on, and is still considered superior by older guys like Dylan (who is not in awe of the 1960's).

As to singing, taste is just that. Paul was and is a pretty good singer, but great? Give a listen to Richard Manuel of The Band. John? Okay, I guess (pre-Yoko, that is). George? Pretty bad. Ringo, terrible.

Arranging? Sorry, no. That was George Martin.

The thing about The Beatles is that they were greater than the sum of their parts, at least to me. Each to his or her own! Just an alternate point of view.

Discussions about The Beatles never fail to get everybody goin'! We who bought their albums at the time of their original release have unfortunately heard them far too many times, and it's easy to take them for granted. Rubber Soul is a really, really good album, and they had become a great recording group by the time they did it. John had discovered Dylan, and it shows. If you watch the tapes of the two of them traveling in a taxi together when Dylan was touring England with The Hawks (who became The Band in '68. George and Ringo became instant fans while seeing them on that tour), you can see John trying to be as cool as he obviously thinks Bob is. Speaking of Bob, he introduced the Jazz cigarette to The Beatles, and it too shows!

Paul had greatly improved as a bass player (thanks to discovering James Jamerson of The Funk Brothers, the Motown house band), and George's guitar playing, though it was starting to sound somewhat old-fashioned in the wake of Jeff Beck's playing in The Yardbirds, along with the emerging white Blues bands like Paul.Butterfield (with Mike Bloomfield, whom Dylan had starting using on his recordings in '65, on guitar), was peaking (his little solo in "Nowhere Man" is one of my faves. To hear where it came from, listen to the guitar playing by James Burton in Ricky Nelson's "Young World" ;-). It shortly thereafter went way south, as he became infatuated with the Sitar, with which I can not at all relate. But George better than Hank Garland, the guitarist on a lot of the Everly Brothers recordings? In his dreams! Get yourself a Garland collection and be amazed. Don Everly was a fantastic rhythm guitarist, much better than John Lennon. He played a lot of their songs' chords as inversions, which was way over Lennon's head. Their drummer, Buddy Harman, is on of my Top 5 drummers of all time list. He was Nashville's Hal Blaine, if you know what I mean.

Ringo's best drumming imo is that on Rubber Soul. He was now getting a great sound, learning how to damp the heads to get the dead, thumpy sound he was after (for whatever reason, they don't sound nearly as good imo on Revolver). He later became a huge fan of Levon Helm, who also mastered the art of drum tone. When I went to Levon's book release and signing, Ringo showed up to get his copy. To hear why I consider The Band a great Rock 'n' Roll one, but The Beatles not, listen to Ringo try to play along with them at the end of The Last Waltz. They leave him in the dust, he plodding along behind them.

Brian Wilson of course heard Rubber Soul, and it's excellence inspired his next album, Pet Sounds. He then started work on what could have been the album of all time, Smile. But that's a subject for another time, except to say that Lennon & McCartney had heard about it from Derek Taylor, who had been The Beatles press agent but was now working for The Beach Boys. The Smile tapes were kept under lock & key (Brian thought Phil Spector might try to steal his ideas!), but John and Paul came to America to try to hear them. They were working on Sgt. Pepper, and the rivalry between Paul and Brian, especially, was intense. Taylor snuck John and Paul into the studio and played them the tapes. If and when you hear the Smile album, you can guess how they reacted;-) .

I liked the white album when it came out, but also Procol Harum's debut, The Nice ( Emerson's pre-ELP group, whom I saw live at The Fillmore), Moby Grape's debut, and the rest of the emerging new groups and bands. The one I didn't "get" was Music From Big Pink. I could not understand what all the fuss was about, and gave up trying. But in the summer of '69, as I have recounted here before, all that changed when I saw and heard Dewey Martin (of Buffalo Springfield) and his band play live.  

Harold, I very much enjoy your post directly above. Nice to hear someone else give ABBA their due!

I imagine you know John Lennon loved "A Whiter Shade Of Pale", playing it incessantly they say. But I really must dispute you assertion that Gary Brooker and Hendrix "created the very first attempts to (write? create?) serious and important rock music". What do you consider "Like A Rolling Stone"? "God Only Knows"?

Leonard Berstein wrote, produced, and narrated a TV Special that aired on CBS in the spring of ’67, entitled Inside Pop---The Rock Revolution. One of the main segments is about Brian Wilson and his upcoming Smile album. Brian is shown playing "Surf’s Up" (lyrics by Van Dyke Parks, a much better lyricist that Brooker’s songwriting partner and Hendrix, imo) on the piano (yes, the one in the sandbox ;-) in his Bel Air mansion, and Berstein explains why he is so impressed. The show is viewable on You Tube.

To see and hear the genius of Brian Wilson explained and demonstrated, watch the You Tube video wherein a music teacher breaks down "God Only Knows", it's whole structure and construction. Chord by chord, the melody, harmonies, and counterpoint. It is mind blowingly great!

George suggested The Beatles stop touring as the 3rd USA tour grinded on, as he (and Ringo) didn’t think they were playing as well as they once had. They didn’t even have stage monitors, to be able hear their vocals! I therefore don’t fault them for the often out-of-tune harmonies of their live shows.

They never again performed together live on stage until on the rooftop in Get Back (with Billy Preston on electric piano). In that performance, they sound pretty rusty imo. Having not played night after night on stage for many years, they were not exactly firing on all 8 cylinders! But that’s immaterial; it was their songs that made them what they were, and their personalities, humour, style, and cultural influence.

When I said arrangements, I was talking about the charts George Martin wrote for the strings, horns, and other instruments The Beatles themselves didn’t play. The "arrangements" of the songs themselves, the song construction---verse/chorus/refrain or middle 8 (no offense, but that’s not what "arrangement" means), THAT John, George, and Paul did, with some suggestions from Martin. In contrast, Brian Wilson DID write all the parts for the strings, horns, percussion, tuned percussion (tympani), keyboards (piano and organ), celeste and harp, bass harmonica, basses (up to three on any given song: upright acoustic, 4-string electric played by Carol Kaye, and Fender or Danelectro 6-string), and complex harmonies and counterpoint he started using long before did The Beatles. I can’t overstate in what high esteem Paul McCartney holds Brian Wilson.

During the recording of Smile (an album scheduled to be released before Sgt. Pepper. It ended up not being released at all---at least not fully finished, but is truly and astonishingly musically revolutionary. Sgt. Pepper---a vastly over-rated album imo, pales in comparison), Brian and his brother Carl were floating in Brian's pool, a Beethoven symphony playing on the outdoor speakers. As the symphony ended, Brian turned to Carl and said: "It's nice to know you're a musical midget" ;-) . I love humility.