The Curse of The Beatles

[gordonfmoore]

Their most recent record is 37 years old

37 years, flippin' eck what happened to my life, oh, deja vu perhaps. (tehe)

[Dayna]

37 Years old is the latest Beatles song? I'm a Beatles baby, I think.
If I was born in 1965, I think that was when They first came to America. I was just talking to my Uncle & he has always been into Rock music. He's always liked groups like Journey, The Cars, Ted Nugent( I kind of picked The Cars out of that), ect. He looks a little like Ted Nugent. He doesn't think The Beatles ruined American music at all. What they started was great.
He told me about how that night they were going to be on Ed Sullivan, he & my Mom argued about what to watch on TV. She wanted to see The Beatles & he wanted to see something else. I forget what he said he wanted to see.
The reason I grew up hearing all this 60s music myself, was because my Mom was a teenager herself. It makes it really interesting to me anyway. I'm not a baby boomer, yet I feel like I am.

[Dominic]

I'm a Beatles baby, I think.

I remember kids in the playground singing Yellow Submarine & Ob-la-di Ob-la-da (words changed, shockingly, to O Bloody O Bloodah), but I just thought they were childrens' songs. It wasn't until I was 9 or 10 that I first watched Top of the Pops & discovered Pop Music. The Beatles had split by then and glam has just hitting its stride, so give me T-Rex or Sparks anyday.

And talking of The New Beatles, how about The Move/ELO or ABBA?

[Dayna]

ELO ? I wrote somethings about ELO somewhere. They've been one of my favorite groups since the 70s. Some others here don't agree that they were great, but to me they had a mixture of music that is great. I heard someone say once they think the Beatles might have evolved into something like ELO if they would have stayed together. Do you think so? I guess if you don't like ELO, you'd probably disagree.

[gordonfmoore]

I'm a Beatles baby, I think.

I remember kids in the playground singing Yellow Submarine & Ob-la-di Ob-la-da (words changed, shockingly, to O Bloody O Bloodah),

We must all be the same age on this forum...

[gordonfmoore]

I heard someone say once they think the Beatles might have evolved into something like ELO if they would have stayed together. Do you think so?

Now that is a very good question, noooo not the ELO bit, they were way beyond what ELO could do, but what would they have done?

I bet they would have gone retrograde, back to their roots and made some bloomin good rockin songs, get us all dancing again...

[Adam Blake]

I bet they would have gone retrograde, back to their roots and made some bloomin good rockin songs, get us all dancing again...

Mate... There's a question! A bit like what would Jimi Hendrix have done if he hadn'ta woke up one mornin' 'n' found himself dead...

OK. Suspending all disbelief and ignoring all the overly well documented facts about the disintegrating personal friendships that caused the Beatles to split - I'd say you're right on the money. Taking their cue from The Band, The Fabs had already called a halt to all psychedelic excesses and taken to reviving stuff they wrote in 1957 (!!) like "The One After 909" - a great little rock'n'roll song sung with a wonderful snarl from Lennon and perfect barrelhouse harmonizing from Macca, plus a pearl of a guitar solo from George - equal parts Clapton and Carl Perkins. Ringo's country-rock-with-balls shuffle is a perfect example of why he was far and away the best rock'n'roll drummer around. OK, maybe Carlo Little could have bettered it in his day - but I doubt it. Charlie Watts? Ferget it. Charlie could SWING like a bastard, but Ringo had all these arcane Northern dance hall tricks up his sleeve which, when allied with the pure rock'n'roll drumming he had learned from listening to D J Fontana with Elvis and any number of vintage New Orleans R'n'B records, gave him a feel and a signature that was quite uniquely compelling. Likewise, the rolling train of "Get Back", or the foursquare funk of "Come Together".

Yeah Gordon, The Fabs woulda rocked us all over again if Lennon had cared enough to tell Macca to get off the "Long And Winding Road" and abort "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". The evidence is there: "Oh Darling" being another cool 50s pastiche. A little over-produced but what a great song, and what a superb vocal.

Anyway. I must go away and listen to Miles Davis or something to calm me down...

[Adam Blake]

Oh, and a Special Service Announcement to Beatle People:

If you haven't bought it already, don't bother with the "Let It Be...Naked" album. It sounds horrible. You're much better off with the original version and any halfway decent bootleg of the same stuff.

[Martin_Edney]

Yeah Gordon, The Fabs woulda rocked us all over again if Lennon had cared enough to tell Macca to get off the "Long And Winding Road" and abort "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

Did anyone catch any of Paul McCartney's recent "back to rock'n'roll" album? (I've forgotten the title, but I do remember the song "Run Devil Run" from it. A bit middle-aged, but definitely better to hear him rocking than making music to knit cardigans by ("Mull of Kintyre", "Frog Chorus", "Ebony and Ivory", the list is endless).

So I agree with Adam, on the evidence of "Run Devil Run" that eventually we might have seen a return to The Beatles as a hard-rocking garage band.

[Adam Blake]

People think the great Beatle tragedy is John Lennon getting murdered - which of course it was - or George Harrison dying of cancer after having re-introduced the West to the East (and inventing "World Music" in the process) - which of course he did; but another great tragedy is that one of the greatest rock'n'roll singers we ever produced got his head stuck so far up his own arse that he thinks creating ersatz "classical" crap and writing songs to accompany knitting circles is more important than strapping on his Hofner and tearing hell out of the microphone on a regular basis.

[ritchie]

ok, I'll try and write this and hope it makes some sense. Can you imagine being eleven years old, as I was and hearing the Beatles for the first time and then growing up in your 'formative years' eagerly waiting for the 'next record' always something different, always something 'better'.

Here we had four members of the band also 'growing up' their lives were changing in all sorts of directions both musically and also because of their individual personal circumstances.

On reflection, they recorded as many lovely 'soppy' ballads as they did good 'rockers' so where would they have gone as a group? who knows? Who would have been the 'one' making the decisions as to what direction to take?

and my point is?

well to be honest I have nt got one, other than that I loved 'growing up' with the Beatles and even now I like listening to their legacy ... oh yes and.... I also recently enjoyed watching the Paul McCartney concert in Moscow (on the tele I must add).

I wonder though, if they still were around now whether many 11 year olds would be listening to them with the same excitement as I did? .... I think not and more to the point ...would I?

[Adam Blake]

Bless you Ritchie! (you did sneeze?) I got taken to see "A Hard Day's Night" when I was five and THAT was IT. First love at first sight, forever.
41 years later, and God knows how much music since, it doesn't take much to set me off. This recent debate has got me listening to the later (post-psychedelic) stuff again for the first time in ages and, guess what?, most of it sounds great.

[ritchie]

Adam, it was more like a hiccup.

It's a fightening thought, one that I've had for donkeys years, but everytime a 'new' band comes along I think "are they giving their fans the same excitement as the Beatles gave me?" and I hate to say it but the fans of McFly probably think they are, I certainly know that Oasis lovers definitely thought so at the time.

Good luck to them ...the King is dead...long live the king.

you know what gets me though, is when I see the old fogeys coming out and bashing out all their old hits that actually meant or stood for something at the time .... I'm sure 'My Generation' would sound better if it was performed by a young band or Townsend changed the lyrics to something like "hope I don't die before I'm really old"...mind you I cringe when I watch them and what's with the 'lookie likey' drummer all about?

For some reason it doesnt work for me, all these old 'white groups' perhaps that it was because all my blues 'heroes' seemed old it's ok watching them, mind you I was a bit dissapointed to see what was supposed to be the 'Temptations' and what amounted to be a 'one Top instead of 4' a few years ago.

My Mum was just telling me she was born in 1928 and yet I still think she is about 35 years old (yup I'm her favourite).

I can remember the outrage in our household when Lennon said something along the lines that 'the Beatles were bigger than Jesus' and then after the drugs thing he said 'that one day, everybody would be taking pills of one sort or another'. Dad went loopy and gave me quite a lecture as I recall ... (at the moment I take two pills a day for my blood pressure, I don't know how many he takes)

[Adam Blake]

.you know what gets me though, is when I see the old fogeys coming out and bashing out all their old hits that actually meant or stood for something at the time .... I'm sure 'My Generation' would sound better if it was performed by a young band or Townsend changed the lyrics to something like "hope I don't die before I'm really old"...mind you I cringe when I watch them and what's with the 'lookie likey' drummer all about?

It doesn't work for me either. For years I resented it deeply: all these old heroes of mine who refused to let it go when the moment had passed. But I suppose I've come round to the idea that THEY REALLY LIKE DOING IT and they get paid very well so, why not? I don't have to go to the gigs and, at least, the coolest band of them all (The Beatles) had the good taste to quit while they were ahead. But then they had to go and blot their copybook with those ghastly "Anthology" tracks. Like the Velvet Underground, who I also love (but not as much, of course). I remember seeing them at Wembley and, although it was a surreal experience, it just seemed plain wrong. Mind you, it explained immediately why all those bands who tried to sound like the Velvets didn't make it: they didn't have Mo Tucker on drums.

But as for The Who. Oh dear... It upsets me almost daily. Why Townshend and Daltrey can't have the good taste to bill themselves as Townshend and Daltrey - like Jimmy Page and Robert Plant did - defeats me. But I still wouldn't go to the gig, either way! It's a problem. A good friend of mine from way back keeps sending me these DVD's of things like "The Quadrophenia Show". It's terrible! I feel I have to watch this shit out of politeness and it's just pure pain. But it periodically sends me scurrying back to the bits that DID matter once upon a time and it always amazes me how powerful the real stuff still sounds. Like I got sent a bootleg of a Canadian radio broadcast from 1973 when The Who were still the best live rock band in the world and, my God, they really knew how to do the thing. But it's MOON that does it. Mad Keith bloody Moon. He was a genuine nutcase and the manic intensity of his playing is the source of the power and what makes the other musicians play so tough and truthful, what makes the vocals so real. Without that genuine edge, it's all empty bombast and nauseoustalgia.

[Adam Blake]

That pesky album of re-mixes has come out - just in time for Christmas.
It makes it very hard for us Beatle people to hold our heads up, as opposed to hanging them in shame. How much more money do these people NEED?

I haven't heard it. I don't want to hear it. I know I'm bound to hear it sooner or later. My mate Hami made me laugh by asking, in all innocence, if I'd heard the new album of Beatles songs re-mixed by George Michael and his son... Now THERE'S a thought.