You could think of the Beatles as a band who started off copying rockabilly and blues, badly, then tried to mix in some of the Motown sound, badly, for pop success until, when the Beach Boys made Pet Sounds, they jumped on the concept-album-as-a-work-of-art bandwagon, badly, played the sitar, badly, and ran their own record company, badly, until they split up. PaulMcCartney? later went on to make Frog Chorus, possibly the worst record of all time. Ignoring the gender difference, they were the Spice Girls of the '60s. -- DevilsAdvocate
You could think that, but only if you don't know much about music. The Beatles are often overemphasised, sure. But to pretend that they didn't do anything interesting, or that they were talentless hacks or opportunists is, well, inane. As is a comparison with the Spice Girls.
I can barely remember who the Spice Girls were just a couple of years after they split. But I remember TheBeatles just fine. Perhaps because you're not a 16-year old girl?
What's the difference between a Spice Girls video and a porno movie? The porno movie has better music. Not to mention prettier girls in more interesting costumes. Bow, chicka-bow, chicka-chicka-bow-bow-bow...
Un-popular opinion but always felt they were greatly over-rated. Me too!
In their early years, they were over-rated, to be sure. But are Sgt. Pepper or the "White Album" or Abbey Road over-rated? I'm not sure it's even possible. -- MikeSmith
Much better composers than musicians. True, but Mc'Cartney, at least, was also quite a competent musician. -- Musicianship, so what? The point is that they made songs that will last, that many people enjoy and will never forget. They influenced a generation of music to come. Jeff Beck was a great musician. His songs sucked, and so he's already been forgotten by the masses.'
The core members of TheBeatles were (they disbanded in the early 1970s) JohnLennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The other members that left the group before Beatlemania set in were Stu Stutcliffe and Pete Best. More specifically, Stuart Stutcliffe died from a brain hemorrage, possibly caused by a brawl outside of an early gig in Hamburg. He had never really been accepted in the group, being more of an art student that a musician - and not a very good bass player at that. He had a tendancy to get lost and make 'egregious' errors. However it was his German girlfriend, Astrid Kirchner, who invented the Beatle haircut. -- KachinaCrowe
Parodied by EricIdle et al. as The Rutles.
Essay question: defend the statement "The only difference between TheBeatles and SpinalTap was success."
No can do. The difference is night and day, black and white. SpinalTap released a black album, TheBeatles released a white album. Smell The Glove, man, Smell The Glove.
Smell The Glove was an album released by heavy metal band SpinalTap in the movie ThisIsSpinalTap. Fran Drescher's character objects to the proposed cover art, a leather-clad fist held to the face of a young woman wearing a dog collar and a leash. So the band releases the album with a plain black jacket, unofficially called "the black album." Fans getting their albums autographed at a shopping mall can't read the autographs on the black jackets.
Besides their music, the Beatles had a significant pop-culture impact. Long "hippy" hair; dreamy, "trippy" rock music; flower power; clothing with way too many colors and foo foo (Remember 3's Company's Mr. Ferly?); "Love is all you need"; the "Religious Rock" movement (Harrison); and the Eastern meditation movement in the Western world, along with East Indian influence in pop, can be directly traced to them, more or less. (Perhaps they did not originate each one from scratch, but they had the knack for knowing what to focus on.) They generally set the trends of the '60s and early '70s. Whatever they did would be in vogue about a year or two later (see It's Only a Northern Song by Harrison). Thus, it is not just their musical impact that was amazing, but their power to move the entire pop world. The '60s changed everything in the Western world, and the Beatles were a big part of that. I doubt the '60s decade would have been what it was without the Beatles.
There are probably two events that mark the start of the 1960s as we now remember/represent it: the beginnings of the anti-war protests, and the arrival of the Beatles in America. They gave the youth of the time a new medium, sound, and look with which to express themselves. They were rebels with guitars. Is there any other one music group that one can say changed the entire look and feel of a generation? The distant second is probably the BeeGees. (Perhaps Elvis's popularizing suggestive hip movements during songs is noteworthy, but his style otherwise mirrored the existing pop of the time.)
When the Beatles arrived in the US, the US was still recovering from the assassination of President Kennedy, so some good diversion was very welcome. Also welcoming was Brian Epstein's cleaning up of the Beatles (he dressed them in suits, had them bow at the end of the performance...) which made Mom and Pop welcome these fellows over the pelvis gyrating Elvis. Working in the strip clubs in Hamburg also helped the Beatles come into being, but their new image then needed to be toned down for pop.
I think their real music power was in the contrasting styles of John and Paul. A whole album of just John's music is too sarcastic and schizophrenic to tolerate for 45 minutes, and a whole album of Paul is too sappy. However, when you intertwine them, the balance is like nothing else. Throw in a little Harrison style to spice it up even more. They were greater than the sum of their parts. -- top, et.al. (mop top?)
From SexPistols:
Since the SexPistols were formed by the manager, Malcolm McLaren?, they were one of the first boybands as well.
Boy bands pre-date the Beatles.
Indeed, it's good to remember that the Beatles were generally regarded as a flash-in-the-pan, teenybopper act when they first got started. If their entire repertoire consisted of fluff like "I Saw Her Standing There," that's probably how history would remember them. But as their career progressed, the quality of their music and songwriting grew immensely. Soon, critics and other musicians began to take them more seriously, and now they are remembered as one of the greatest bands (and many say the greatest) ever. Not bad for a Boy Band.
I seriously doubt The Backstreet Boys and the rest of their ilk will ever achieve that level of prominence.
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