The Beatles

Nothing nasty there Kenny. Really.

I don't know. That's the second time you've called me mental. lol

In my mind it had Ricky Gervais voice from some routine he did. I think it was when the Captain sent all the Kings Horses and all the Kings Men to repair Humpty Dunpty and he says "are you  mental"



you had to be there.

Dylan did believe that Smokey Robinson was Americas greatest living poet,
It is an interesting and shrewd observation.

Dobbo - I defo went to the Island but not I think to Goldhawk Road. I saw the Velvets twice, one was the Marquee (or poss the UFO or even the Lyceum).  but cannot be sure. Between 67 and 70 I went to gigs 2/3 times a week in town and they merge a bit

Dylan always secretly envied songwriters like the Beatles and Smokey
Robinson and their ability to write deceptively simple lyrics and music.

I dont  know anyone now who went to The Island or UFO. Wonderful days. Floyd used to play the graveyard shift at UFO . The Island was something else entirely.I saw all sorts of Blues people there, Jesse Fuller, Sonny Terry & Brownie, Geno washington weirdly. I remember the night they closed it and the little old lady on the bridge was breaking the bad news to everyone. "Sorry dear"

You know him do you 1971?

I know how difficult it is to write a pure pop song, and so did Dylan.

Dobbo - I went to UFO a lot, AND saw Pink Floyd a lot, but not I think at UFO. They had moved on by the time I went there. Bands I defo saw at UFO were Soft Machine, Family, Incredible String Band (Whoooo!!), Jeff Beck (Whooooooooooo!, and Ten Years After (loud, fast and cra p).

I saw Family at Bradford Odeon, circa '71. Great gig.

kenny..... "weaver of life, let me look at you"   Only kidding!!

Vaguely Tiny Time falsetto voice, and used to raise one arm in the air. Roger who managed to be balding and have long hair simultaneously.

ha ha They were good. I spent a fortune on In Your Own Time and Burlesque on the juke box.

incredible String band. I had forgotten about them When I was a young man back in the 1960's"And Soft machine I saw them at UFO also.Floyd first played at The Crypt in All Saints Square  with the light show being a sort of lampshade on a record player turntable with dyes and glycerine creating that LSD effect. There must have been all of 20 of us there.

Bloody hell, they reformed last year after 40 years!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wdlZtev

Dobbo - contrary to popular myth, the Incredible String Band were excellent on record and live too when they were not "otherwise engaged". They were a disaster of course at Woodstock having refused to play in the rain. I wasn't there, but they followed Santana and the Keef Hartley Band, so they probably wouldn't have gone down too well.

I loved the Incredible String band but had more or less forgotten about them. Did you know the Ealing Club and Blue Triangle, Craw Daddy? Ricky Tick? I think we nurtured more rock bands in West London than anywhere else could claim.

Not read the replies because Mc Moonbeam is surely one of the biggest trolls on here from past stuff that I've seen of his and from the thread title. Sad.

*thread title should read his opening post.

The Beatles were the first group. Before there were solo artists like
Presley or groups with a lead singer and backing band, the first to share
vocals and have more than one songwriter. Everything was self-contained
within the group, this had never really been done before and became the
expected blueprint for future American and English groups.

STUDYFORM 05 May 14 21:48 
Many many bands since have modelled themselves on the Beatles (ELO, Oasis and nearly every other band whilst learning/practising) and you won't often hear any musician say a bad word about their music.

About as savage an indictment of the Beatles as I've ever read.

Dobbo 05 May 14 23:26 
I didn't much care for the Beatles and still dont.I accept they were talented but I cant see them as the greatest band of all time.Cant say I bother much either  about intricate chord patterns and original intros. I want to hear some rock and roll not call in at the local music academy.
I was born in 1950 but the Beatles were just wallpaper in my life. I knew of them of course and even owned a copy of MMT which was given to me as a present. But like lots of my contemparies I was listening to Chuck Berry, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, and of course the Rolling Stones - if the Beatles wrote a better song than Paint it Black that so summed up the moment I missed it.I saw Dylan early in the sixties and concluded he was so far ahead of anyone else he would do for me. Can the Beatles match Like a Rolling Stone? Of course not.
Later came Led Zep, Van Morrison, Velvet Underground and many many more that in my view made the Beatles look even more like the popsters that they really were.It seems to me they sit more easily besides  Abba than they do jimi Hendrix.

Great post.

It seems to me the whole ‘Beatles were a pop band, not very good, unlike [insert band of choice], who were great’, would make more sense if the bands in question weren’t often so obviously influenced by (or even happy to copy or cover) them.

Would a cool psychedelic guitar pioneer like the mentioned Jimi Hendrix have gone to the trouble of learning Sgt Pepper’s so he could perform it live the day it came out if they were the equivalent of The Monkees in terms of credibility? He performed other Beatles’ songs too.

And while on the Monkees, there is really very little difference between a song like I Wanna Be Free, sung by cute Davy Jones and The Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning, sung by Lou Reid, or Femme Fetale, sung by Nico. The VU were a pop band, with verses and choruses (“It’s all versus and choruses, innit”, as Jimmy Page once said) like any other pop band.

One of the interesting things about The Doors and The Velvet Underground is that while they have gained a mystical cool status over the years, their early demos show that the former were influenced by straight lounge jazz and the other by straight country blues.

The lyrics of course set the Velvets apart and yes the Beatles at times look very poor in comparison, but so does Led Zeppelin’s backwards-looking and faintly ridiculous writing and posturing and the whole prog/heavy rock lyric writing that followed.

Paint it Black is terrific – would this be the one with sitar, like The Beatles’ Norwegian Wood a year before? The Beatles had started writing comedy songs, they said, and this was one. What did Keith Richards say about Paint it Black next year? Ah, it was a comedy song (also with a sitar). So whatever moment-defining importance you think it has, it was just a joke song to them. Norwegian Wood, part 2 interms of ideas and instrumentation. Listen to the Rolling Stones’ Child of the Moon. Not only does its melody derive from the Beatles’ Rain (a year before), it even contrasts ‘rain’ and ‘sun’ in the lyrics. It’s basically a stylistic copy. You see this in hundreds of songs, album covers, lyrics, engineering techniques and so on. You can say today the Beatles were only a pop band but there's very little evidence that many of their contemporaries really thought that way.

Watching the tribute now, hard going in places to be honest, just reached Yellow Submarine with the crowd lapping it up

You have of course picked the silliest song in the whole of their repertoire, pumpy.

1 billion record sales. That's billion with a B, and rising all the time.

There must be an awful lot of gullible people about if they weren't that good.

Good post FlowerMyth, the single most important thing in popular music,
and the most difficult is can you write a song. The Beatles were pioneers
in this and made it the expected norm, not an unusual thing, and this lead
to all groups in the 60s and 70s having to be able to this.

It meant that suddenly anyone, with little or no musical training, could
form a band and all of these bands would produce new music. This lead to
an incredibly productive time for music. It was a golden era.

From their first hit (Love Me Do) late 1962 - they were only making records for just over 7 years - thus began the greatest 7 year run in music history.

"There must be an awful lot of gullible people about if they weren't that good".Hit the nail on the head there Kenny.The pop music "industry" relies on this gullibility.

"and the most difficult is can you write a song." Most of their songs were on the same level as nursery rhymes.

So to sum up.The Beatles.Poor singers,poor musicians,poor songwriters - but,in the right place at the right time,with the right image , good management and a gullible general public = ££££££££££££££.

The difference is artie that The Beatles have been selling records for over 50 years. Gullibility has a shelf life whereby artists are imposed on us with all the hype but they rarely last more than a year or two.
Most people in the music business quote The Beatles as a great influence, surely they can't all be wrong.

artie is Derek Thompson. Talks out of his asre.

I spent quite a few days in Derek Thomson's company Kenny. My company used him for shop openings and I would be charged with collecting him at the airport and taking him to various units. Was normally a 9 to 5 thing and involved a fair bit of travel so he was in my car for anything from 2 to 4 hours. He was okay to be honest, really friendly unlike McCririck who I also ran about.

Maybe so akabula, but he's robbed a lot of people over the years with his dreadful tipping service.

I paid for his service and posted his bets on General Betting several years ago. Gerry did all the spouting (he was very good at that) We had a lot of fun.

What's gullible about buying records that you like to listen to.
A lot of pretentious claptrap written here.

McRirick asked Thomson once on The Morning Line:

'What is your maximum stake for yourself when you advise a 'maximum bet' on your phone tipping service?'

Thommo said 'I'm a family man, I don't go mad.' 

McRirick asked him again 'Don't beat about the bush, what is your maximum stake?' 

The answer was 'Ten quid. I've got children.'

Its amazing how a thread can divert from its original topic, were be talking about Panyan pickle next !!!

Branston's for me.

lol class Taxi.

Looks like taxi has posted on the wrong thread. Silly old fool

There is only one person on the wrong thread here

read higher up crags.

"Most people in the music business quote The Beatles as a great influence, surely they can't all be wrong." Most people in the music business know the correct thing to say to keep the general public on their side.What they really think is another matter.

I first heard the Beatles when I was 11/12 and at school.
When I was 18 I got my first guitar.
As they disbanded I spent the next two years learning a lot of their songs.   
My daughters were born in 1982 and 1984, and The Beatles were still played a lot in our house, and they knew a lot of songs off by heart by time they were 10.
When the internet appeared, I showed them the Beatles on youtube.
They both agreed that George was 'cute'.
They also agreed that Yoko Ono was ugly.

tut tut tut...

You only had to watch the Beatle's Tribute that was on the other night to notice that their music STILL appeals to ALL generations.

and what do they think then artie o f ucking wise one?

"their music STILL appeals to ALL generations." That doesn't mean it's any good.

so they've been peddling carp for 50 years! clever lads.

" clever lads. " Undoubtedly clever - skilled entrepreneurs.Just useless musically.

Artie's on a fishing trip as usual.
The more you bite.....

"You only had to watch the Beatle's Tribute that was on the other night to notice that their music STILL appeals to ALL generations."

There's one tribute band The Bootleg Beatles and they've been going for 30 years, that is 3 times longer than the 'real'  Beatles were together.

artie is seething that The Beatles put an end to the Skiffle groups
He's probably got a Lonnie Donigan poster on his bedroom wall.

The usual crew broadcasting the mop tops exam results as the best, most original, iconic, influential, blah bloody blah.
Bottom line I cant stand their music I prefer my rock and roll to have some balls. Its all a matter of opinion.

I curse all the stupid gets on this thread

Abbey Road Crossing webcam

http://www.abbeyroad.com/crossing

Beatletastic

Agreed. Anyone who doesn't like The Beatles hasn't listened to ALL their records at least 3 times. Simples.

"Simples". Don't you mean simpletons ?

I'll treat that with the contempt it deserves.

best band ever ask noel Gallagher who says white album is the bible for music.

This is incredible really. Kenny Mann patronisingly claiming that if you dont like the Beatles you have never really listened and every tom dick and noel being brought into the discussion to verify their unique and amazing talent as if having some herbert saying they were good would change anyones mind.

I dont like them. Didn't like what I saw of them as people, didn't like their music and still dont. Its an opinion. I thought everyone was entitled to one but get the impression that here on Betfair chit-chat we risk the Liverpool Gulag for not following the party line.

@Dobbo
What did you see in Ringo and George that made you not like them as people?

i think people who dont get the beatles have missed something wonderful,just an opinion.

I agree with Terry. They`ll be saying Minder was a crap tv show next.

I agree with Terry and tmm.

O.P. At the time - NO...MOST DEFINATELY NOT!!!!!

.

As for songwriters - listen,  I mean 'LISTEN' to this.  Not Dizzy Rascal admittedly but........................I can live with that!

Sorry - This:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVg2EJvvlF8

That would make an interesting poll:

People who dont get .........have missed something wonderful.

Music:  Bob Dylan
Book    Catch 22
Film   A Man for all Seasons
Country  Belgium
City    New York
Sport    Cheltenham
Pastime   Macrame
bonus     Cats

Kenny the cat in that picture looks exactly like a cat we homed from cat rescue in 1980. He was the most fantastic character.He died in 2000 a good age but we were gutted, absolutely gutted

Agree -  Music: Bob Dylan (Amongst others)
  "   -  Film: A Man for all Seasons (Paul Scofield - Awesome).
  "   -  Sport: Cheltenham (I take it you mean The Festival

3/8 then - I hate cats though.

Ah, you never get over losing them Dobbo, never. I can't believe it's 5 years since I lost mine, Cleo. Never known grief like it. I'm weird I know. lol

How  on Earth can you hate cats?

kenny mann: 'Cleo. Never known grief like it. I'm weird I know' - and  so do know too!

Dobbo - because they $h1t in my garden and they kill birds.....o.k.?

Of course,John Lennon adored our furry friends.

Cats are very discreet ****s as for killing birds birds kill birds too.

dewey, don't blame the cats, partly blame the owners and  blame Mother Nature.

Birds kill lovely snails.

.......... and harmless worms

andt' worms come and eat thee up!

nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I think I'll go and eat worms

So the owners lock them in the house all day? or take them out on a lead? (don't get me on to the poop-a-scoop thing)!.  Why on earth do people even want cat hairs everywhere anyway?  Beyond me.

If cat hairs is all a person has to worry about they're very lucky.

My cats don't poo in anyone's garden. I spend £20 a month on litter and they only go out on a lead due to fairly heavy traffic nearby.

Whatever floats your boat - you definately don't live next door to me though.

I wish I did, I'd let them off the lead and dispense with the cat litter.

Yuk!

Lets get back to the music - eh?

I agree with dave

the rest of the band must have been pretty pissed off that john lennon had one song on his own that was 50 times better than all the beatles entire output put together. thats gotta hurt.

Lennon would never have been a musician if he had
never met McCartney. He was not really musically talented

Who is Dave'? ...or does that mean that you 'THINK' that you extremely clever?...... (Dunno why I even asked that question)......pretty obvios rfeally.

Goodnight dave, sleep well and try to lay off the booze a little.

Who's Dave?

Charlie