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Ive been pondering this a bit. Is it that culturally the beatles really were a huge revolutionary influence but musically less so? Ie folk who played or who were music nerds knew where all the influences came from but the general public didn’t?
there is no doubt that culturally they were hugely influential.
Nail on the head for me TJ
I think musically they were innovative... I'm not a big fan of the early stuff, when they were touring, but when they went studio only and had the clout to stay in and make exactly what they want, well there's some very good music in there. I don't like it all, that's what happens when you can experiment, but there's enough to make it worth listening to, and for me a lot still sounds different to most other things.
Oasis were not innovative, full stop, and that's why they have zero impact now.
Jonny B Goode sounds like something from a long time ago now
How in the name of god can anyone claim that Zappa and Beefheart were innovative, or groundbreaking? They've disappeared into the mists of time as well. If I try to listen to them I make a couple of minutes, and then, well, what's the point....
When my friend came over from Australia we took a trip down to Brighton.
He freaked out to see an amusement on the pier with Helterskelter written on the side of it. Obviously ,he knew the song but he also knew the horrific story and shared Charles Manson's ignorance of what it actually meant.
I think we can call that a significant cultural impact.
Anyway , Ringo's new song has a nice riff.
Oasis were not innovative, full stop, and that’s why they have zero impact now.
I would agree on your first point but not the second. My 15 yo daughter and her best friend love Oasis and Liams new tour sold out really quickly.
WBO - Zappa was certainly - loads of bands disappear into the mists of time and sound dated now but the first time I heard Joes Garage it blew me away. Like nothing I had heard before.
But then folk like Bon Jovi and AC DC so there is no accounting for taste ( I was a big metalhead back inthe day but they didn't do anything for me)
How in the name of god can anyone claim that Zappa and Beefheart were innovative
Quite easily.
TJ - for me all of Zappa just sounds a mess - lots of talent, but didn't know what to do with it, ultimately limiting cultural impact. But that's just an opinion (what else is anything on music)
I'm genuinely surprised anyone listens to Oasis outside of 'Who loves' the 90's tours'.
The song is... alright? But the first time I heard it was watching the video, and I don't know what they were thinking with that. Just seemed cynical and a bit exploitative, and it made me wonder what the point of the whole thing was. Especially as apparently Harrison really didn't rate the song first time round.
Try Joes Garage again. I am listening to it now. title song is great. I only recently discovered he never took drugs. Must have been one weird dude
Beefheart weirdly I only discovered recently. Heard a song and went "WTF was that - its amazing" and its rare anything does that to me.
a lot of the rock of that era has not aged well for sure. somewhat self indulgent
Please don't put Bon Jovi and AC/DC in the same bracket.
But I'm not surprised you didn't like AC/DC if you were into metal - they were a 12 bar blues band, just superfast and cranked up to 11. They also had one of the best rhythm guitarists who ever lived - as Angus Young once said when asked what it was like being one of the best guitarists in the world "I'm not even the best guitarist in my family!"
Bon Jovi on the other hand.....were not very good.
Why not? Both are pish. 😉
<br />*thread descends into bickering on a huge scale*
Nope. Wholly right. Here’s an example, there are more:
And you think that because *some* of their songs sound like *some* other songs, that makes them derivative? Suit yourself. You could not be more wrong though. You could try to be more wrong, but you would not succeed.
Frank Zappa was a huge AC/DC fan, funnily enough.
Very very meh - I’m sure if it had come out in their heyday it would be thought of as no more than an average b side. However I’m sure Beatles fans will love it.
Is it that culturally the beatles really were a huge revolutionary influence but musically less so?
I think both. In the 5 years from Aug '65 to September(ish) '69 the Beatles record: Help, Rubber Soul, Revolution, Yellow Submarine, St Peppers Abbey Rd/Let It Be. Musically those albums have probably influenced more pop/rock/whatever musicians/bands than pretty much any other group before or since, and you'd be hard pushed to name another band with that sort of output with that much influence. and I reckon you could pretty easily play a version of "6 degrees of the Beatles" with too many bands to list.
I get that it must be pretty annoying if you don't like their music though.
Call me a cynic but it's quite convenient that a "new" track featuring all five Beatles is released just before the band's 70 year copyright on their earliest stuff expires. I thought the new track was alright but not particularly memorable.
I found some of the raw studio mixes that were released a few years ago really interesting, though.
...and I forgot the White Album in that list...
Their influence on pretty much everyone musically is just ridiculous.
point well made NickC - also Zappa is influential, just because he isn't played on the radio a lot doesn't mean that it's not important, very few people have Picasso repo prints hanging up in their houses but you can't deny that he's not a great artist.
I like Now and Then, (I think it's better than real love and probably better than free as a bird) although there is some slightly incongruous guitar on the second verse that I think is George taken from the 90s sessions that they've kept in for completeness that if he was here to re-track would have been discarded
I like the fact that it isn't yet another 4chord trick that is so prevalent on the radio at the moment
Finally got round to listening to it last night. Thought it was ok, pretty good actually - especially in Hi res lossless. Deffo grows on you.
Not the best song they ever did but listenable in a playlist. Video was very good as you'd expect from Peter Jackson.
Good interview here with Giles Martin
https://www.grammy.com/news/the-beatles-last-song-now-and-then-giles-martin-interview
although there is some slightly incongruous guitar on the second verse that I think is George taken from the 90s sessions that they’ve kept in for completeness that if he was here to re-track would have been discarded
The short documentary on this on iPlayer makes it look like that guitar part is by Paul aping George's style.
Video was very good as you’d expect from Peter Jackson.
Ignoring the song for a second, the video is horrendously cheap looking. It's like one of those videos that would appear on karaoke screens back in the 90s. It's disjointed, low budget and looks like it was made by a school drama department
I didn't think there'd be anything I'd want to listen to less but then someone said this:
Not a patch on the new Stones single with Lady Gaga.
Heavens...
I've heard it a couple of times on the radio, and can't remember a single musical phrase from it.
If it was some undiscovered masterpiece of Lennon and McCartney, release it, but why put out something so ordinary?
Erm….because as even as this small thread based straw poll suggests, whilst there are some who think it’s meh others quite like it?
Music is pretty subjective after all! <br /><br />Except Bon Jovi obviously - I think we can all agree on that.
It's meh bordering on cringe, with Paul's fingerprints (
all over it, and i'm a Beatle (post Rubber Soul) fan.
In previous music discussions on here I have been told Bon Jovi is a great innovate influential band 🙂
I didn’t think there’d be anything I’d want to listen to less but then someone said this:
Not a patch on the new Stones single with Lady Gaga.
-) 🙂 to my amazement I've heard now then now then when it came on R6 in the car, and actually seen the gaga stones bit on yourtube. I could do the short review (shite), longer version (risible shite), or long as I can manage version (now then now then - not ELO's best work; stones etc video's worth a watch - sound down, obv - just to see Ronnie and Keith. I'm not saying they're actually dead, they may be, but either way they do look distinctly reanimated. You'd not want to run into them in a light alleyway, let alone a dark one. The singers? Mick hamming it up, obv, and his carer hamming it so far over the top I'd call it admirable. Sound up and it's apparent a bit of work has been done to get things in tune, as in it's been processed, so make that spam versus spam. The end.)
Also, Afrobeat? I mean I really like the last J Hus's Common Sense as much the next middleaged white guy, but I'm surprised Burna Boy etc are so big on here.
From Wiki<br /><br />
Distinct from Afrobeat is Afrobeats, a combination of sounds originating in West Africa in the 21st century, one that takes in diverse influences and is an eclectic combination of genres such as hip hop, house, jùjú, ndombolo, R&B and soca.[3][4][5][6][7][8] The two genres, though often conflated, are not the same.[4][5]
<br /><br />Afrobeat was developed in Nigeria in the late 1960s by Fela Anikulapo Kuti who, with drummer Tony Allen, experimented with different contemporary music of that time. Afrobeat was influenced by a variety of genres, such as highlife, fuji, and jùjú,[9] as well as Yoruba vocal traditions, rhythm, and instruments
Yeah heard it yesterday, fan of the Beatles generally, but if a song didn’t make its way onto an album, there’s prob.s a reason for that*.
Seemingly unaware, then, that many of The Beatles best known songs never appeared on the album that was released at the same time. This is also true of many other artists through the 60-70’s. That’s why the Blue and Red albums exist.
There were 32 songs released as singles in England that were not originally released on albums, and that includes 11 number 1’s; the argument being that fans buying the singles shouldn’t pay for them again when they bought the album. A philosophy sadly ignored by the likes of Michael Jackson, for example.
Jacko also ended up taking Maccas advice to him that 'publishing is the best way to make serious money in this business' a bit to literally, by buying the rights to the Beatles songs.
And you think that because *some* of their songs sound like *some* other songs, that makes them derivative? Suit yourself. You could not be more wrong though. You could try to be more wrong, but you would not succeed.
Yep. Influenced by and derivative as I first said. And I do understand the difference.
I was initially pointing out that they hadn't just appeared out of nowhere. This is not necessarily a bad thing and was in my opinion, wrt The Beatles, a good thing.
I'll leave you to have the last word if you wish, you seemed to have appointed yourself as the arbiter of the accuracy of my posts here.
What the beatles did was a great synthesis. They didn't create much in the way of new sounds but they took a load of stuff that was not well known and melded it together to create something that had not been heard in the UK before.
Great marketing as well, nice clean cut lads In image anyway) and also right place right time. Epstein was a huge part of it all. It all came together really nicely for them
They didn’t create much in the way of new sounds
They actually did. Some of the sounds and techniques they created in the studio once they got past the jangly pop song phase were absolute firsts and completely revolutionary in terms of songwriting and recording. Tape delay, reversing, sampling, using instruments like sitars and Moog synths etc
Sitars - taken from ravi shankar as they themselves acknowledge iirc
Shankar befriended Richard Bock, founder of World Pacific Records, on his first American tour and recorded most of his albums in the 1950s and 1960s for Bock's label.[28] The Byrds recorded at the same studio and heard Shankar's music, which led them to incorporate some of its elements in theirs, introducing the genre to their friend George Harrison of the Beatles.
from Wiki
Delay and reversing - again others did it first. Lee "scratch" Perry was a real pioneer of this although I doubt the Beatles knew of him but others were experimenting before as well. Lee Perry is the real pioneer of overdubs, reversing and using 4 tracks to their best doing it in parallel rather than copying tho I think. Very experimental time in music as the first 4 track recorders came out. Lots of folk were playing with this stuff. Lee Perry was far more innovative
Moogs - same. Lots of folk experimenting with early moogs First came to popularity in Jazz in america in 1967ish
What they did was pull it all together and introduce this stuff to the UK pop music. They did not create it. They created a synthesis that created a sound and movement. Great work to create that synthesis but thats what it was. A synthesis. listening to what others had done and pulling it all together into one song
How in the name of god can anyone claim that Zappa and Beefheart were innovative, or groundbreaking?
quite easily. Because they both were. Not popular or commercial but most definitely ahead of their time. Doesn’t matter that they weren’t commercially successful. That doesn’t alter the fact.
If you want innovative the Lee "scratch" Perry and Dr John the night tripper were way ahead of their times. Gris Gris was recorded in 1968.
Lee perry was using samples in 1968. Often credited as the first hit with sampling but I don't know enough to be sure
Gris Gris is phenomenal and Dr Lee PhD was way ahead of his time. The Beatles, whilst having some great tunes, appear to get all the credit for an entire generation of music. Always seemed very odd to me.
Right Place, Wrong Time is also one of the best funk albums ever recorded. Dr John and The Meters, what a combo. Sorry, getting way off topic.
Its because they melded all these influences into a great pop sound and were already popular from their early pop work so got the audience. Anglocentric again as well
fabulous synthesis of a load of influences from the pre and post war bluesmen to the sitar melodies of Shankar and taking full advantage of the rapidly evolving technology of the day
Epsteins contribution is often underrated as well
Yep. Influenced by and derivative as I first said.
And you're still half right.