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keith a 9573 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 10:37
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I think my age bracket - those of us who were very, very young when the Beatles started having hits - was possibly the last to like The Beatles unconditionally. I remember learning that people a few years younger than me didn't like them. Until then it seemed that everyone did! My theory is that they weren't "theirs" (they weren't really my generation's either but we grew up watching it happen) and they had grown up with the Beatles shoved down their thoats. It was an unwitting rebellion! But critically I'm not sure they ever went away. Sure What's Going On replaced Sgt Pepper as the best ever LP in a lot of critics polls, but the likes of Pepper and Revolver were always up there somewhere. Although I bought the re-mastered Abbey Road recently, and enjoyed it hugely, as a rule I don't really feel the need to play The Beatles that often, probably because you an get exposed to them in other ways. But I rememember when George died. The sense of loss took me by surprise and made me realise just how important the Beatles were to me, regardless of how often I play them. A trip to the Beatles Museum with Mr Tones a few years back inspired a similar reaction. The sacking of Matlock because he liked The Beatles was surely just a piece of publicity though. I thought it was funny. Elsewhere, punk/new wave artists weren't shy of covering them, were they? The Damned, Siouxsie, Radio Stars straight off the top of my head. They may have decimated the likes of Help and Helter Skelter in some folks eyes, but these were all people who would have grown up listening to The Beatles - even the rather older Radio Stars! |
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 10:59
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keith a wrote: I think my age bracket - those of us who were very, very young when the Beatles started having hits - was possibly the last to like The Beatles unconditionally. I remember learning that people a few years younger than me didn't like them. Until then it seemed that everyone did! My theory is that they weren't "theirs" (they weren't really my generation's either but we grew up watching it happen) and they had grown up with the Beatles shoved down their thoats. It was an unwitting rebellion! But critically I'm not sure they ever went away. Sure What's Going On replaced Sgt Pepper as the best ever LP in a lot of critics polls, but the likes of Pepper and Revolver were always up there somewhere. Although I bought the re-mastered Abbey Road recently, and enjoyed it hugely, as a rule I don't really feel the need to play The Beatles that often, probably because you an get exposed to them in other ways. But I rememember when George died. The sense of loss took me by surprise and made me realise just how important the Beatles were to me, regardless of how often I play them. A trip to the Beatles Museum with Mr Tones a few years back inspired a similar reaction. The sacking of Matlock because he liked The Beatles was surely just a piece of publicity though. I thought it was funny. Elsewhere, punk/new wave artists weren't shy of covering them, were they? The Damned, Siouxsie, Radio Stars straight off the top of my head. They may have decimated the likes of Help and Helter Skelter in some folks eyes, but these were all people who would have grown up listening to The Beatles - even the rather older Radio Stars! Hit the nail on the head Mr A, couldn't agree more, I was surprised when I saw McCartney with Neil Young what a rush it was to hear a Beatle live. The Beatles are part of my DNA, i dont feel a need to listen to them often, but I never turn it off when do |
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 11:16
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I was born in '68 and so the Beatles were never far away during my childhood. I was talking with a friend the other day and we were both amazed to find just how close classic albums were once e.g. when I first head 'The Doors,' Piper At the Gates Of Dawn and Sgt Pepper the albums were only 13 years old. They were as close as the Brit-Pop period is now. I remember how upset the 12 year old me was when John Lennon passed, and how very sad I was when George went. The Beatles are in my genes, and were the bedrock of everything that was to come. I don't play them that often either, but when I do, nothing's changed. The Beatles were simply stunning songwriters and groundbreakers. Three years from She Loves You to Tomorrow Never Knows speaks for itself. Even for those who don't like the music, no one could deny their incomparable seismic influence that will always be there, like background radiation. |
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Nov 07, 2009, 11:39
Nov 07, 2009, 11:23
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Well yes. My older brother and sister were part of that Beatles/Stones thing but by the time I was buying records The Beatles were done and the red/blue doubles were out. I hated the Please Please Me, Love Me Do sound and and I only got into them via the psych rock records in maybe 78 or 79 (alongside the Nuggets revival, Pebbles and the Radar reissues of Red Crayola and the Elevators) but no, they never felt like they were anything to do with me. First Bowie, Alice, Sparks, Roxy & Lou and a little later LZ, Yes, Genesis and Purple felt like they belonged to me in some way and even the Stones were still fairly believable until after Tattoo You. All a delusion of course. None of these people were interested in their audiences except as a money machine. Beatles and Jimi already felt like ancient rock history in 1973. And I hated it when Capital Radio used to blitz on the Beach Boys which just sounded like ball-less sacharine shit to my 12/13/14 year old self. But I loved Motown cos my brother's wife worked for them so we got loads of free Temptations, Originals,Rare Earth and Stevie records. Free records seemed like the best thing in the world when it took weeks to save up for an album or else you gave up going to football for a month or two. Access inevitably freames your taste. Like inheriting a load of 50s and early 60s jazz records in 1975. A total accident can change everything. Anyway at 15/16 I took the punk rock covers of Beatles tunes as an ironic joke rather than an homage but then at 15/16 you tend to believe the nonsense that is printed in the music press. The first rock deaths that genuinely made me sad were Lowell George, Gary Thain and Koss. And later on Malcolm Owen. I felt nothing much of anything on a deep level when Lennon or Bolan or Bonham died. Too big. Too distant. Too iconic. I felt bad for George Harrison but then death is much more real in your 40s and chances are you have buried a few people by then. Which, to cut a long story short, is why saying "I hate" anything is closing a door you may want to open later. And to use that kind of dogma as a critic is encouraging others to do the same. There are better ways of cutting a cultural opponent down to size than hate. Like pity ....
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 11:48
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I first got into music about 75, so it even closer.I got the Beatles Red & Blue albums and I loved every song. Still have them somewhere very old & battered, I'm assuming it was the summer of 75 when talking to my older brother and he said you like the early stuff try Dr Feelgood, you like the trippy shit try Pink Floyd etc. Those red & blue albums were an education in themselves. Of course a year later punk had been decreed as year zero and all old music was bad, and you learnt to play the guitar by playing along to Ramones records rather than Love Me Do or Chuck Berry, shame really, but for any one who could get beyond that you could pick old records up dirt cheap. Just wish my brother had been more into Krautrock and less into Deep Purple, might not have taken me 30 years to discover Neu. |
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Edited Nov 07, 2009, 12:05
Nov 07, 2009, 12:04
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| Summer 75, I was 7 years old and I was watching tv on my own one Saturday afternoon. I saw this group , B & W footage, and I was absolutely mesmerised and was in a daze all weekend. An art teacher at school the following Monday informed me that is was a group called The Beatles singing Twist and Shout. Corny, maybe, but i'll never forget the impact of that moment in front of the tv. | |
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 12:21
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The Sea Cat wrote: Summer 75, I was 7 years old and I was watching tv on my own one Saturday afternoon. I saw this group , B & W footage, and I was absolutely mesmerised and was in a daze all weekend. An art teacher at school the following Monday informed me that is was a group called The Beatles singing Twist and Shout. Corny, maybe, but i'll never forget the impact of that moment in front of the tv. people tend to forget that back then it was easy to get hit out of the blue, I remember seeing Hawkwind on TOTP and beinf totally mesmerised. And I dont know about your parents, by 68 you probably had parents who didn't listen to the light programme or what ever it was but apart from the occassional bit on the telly I heard absolutely no rock/pop at all until i started buying records. I went from a couple of Disney soundtracks and a thunderbirds TV21 record to the Beatles & Black Sabbath in about a fortnight, blew my mind completely, never really got back to reality since. |
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Edited Nov 07, 2009, 12:45
Nov 07, 2009, 12:37
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I had to do it all myself really. My Mum was into Buddy Holly/Elvis Scott Walker. She had the taste. She was of the Rock n Roll generation and the music of the sixties more or less passed her by as she was too busy trying to raise a familly in a bad marriage. My Dad was strictly Jim Reeves, Engelbert etc and corny Irish C & W maudlin shite. To be fair, he was 30 in 67 and came from an impoverished Irish rural background where radiograms and 'musical taste' did not exist. He just soaked up all the Kilburn pub weepies really. Punk completely passed me by, and because I went to a private school in Surrey, Prog was the order of the day in the late 70's/early 80's. it was all Genesis, Rush, ELP etc. I was a deliberate snob by being into Yes and thinking I was far deeper (!kin'ell!). I still think that punk, although necessary in a lot of ways, unfortunately produced a long lasting blinkered inverted snobbery that lasted for many years. At last, you can have an intelligent conversation about Caravan, Van der Graaf, Gentle Giant etc. without some sneering faux private hedged urban warrior deriding anything approaching visionary musicianship. Now, all of a sudden, everyone loved Led Zep all along, and never said the the Beatles early output was utter shite ! Interesting how this attitude of fanatical prog hatred was never adopted in Europe for example, purely an Anglo thing. Maybe it's got something to do with our innate inability to appreciate our own ethnic musical roots, as a suprised Joe Boyd pointed out in White Bicycles. I'v only recently statrted my deep Krautrock love, but am I right in thinking that this was spared Pol Punk Pot scourge ? |
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machineryelf 3681 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 12:59
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The Sea Cat wrote: I'v only recently statrted my deep Krautrock love, but am I right in thinking that this was spared Pol Punk Pot scourge ? Nobody liked it before so it wasn't worth hating IIRC Lydon liked Can so that made it allright You really had to be there ton appreciate the stupidity of the whole thing, punks told me the Stooges & MC5 were hippy music, and the hippies hated them because they started all that punk shite. I was at Knebworth and someone had a prototype beatbox, wev annoyed the hippies all afternoon with a selection of Judas Priest,Motorhead et al which they moaned about constantly but put up with, I put on a tape with the MC5 & the Pistols on & I thought they were going to lynch me, the final straw was Sly & The family Stone at Woodstock when some dick demanded we switch it off and put Suppers Bloody Ready on, never really had much time for the average Zep fan since Hawkwind were the best example, before punk they only had 3 chords & couldn't play and were shit, same people three months later any more than 3 chords & any ability was to be frowned on, Hawkwind were still shite however due to whatever reason they could find that week The whole punk attitude put me off going to see some great bands like Joy Division & Magazine which was a pity, but they missed the Tygers of Pan Tang & Angelwitch, that'll learn 'em
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Jim Tones 5142 posts |
Nov 07, 2009, 14:57
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The Sea Cat wrote: I'v only recently statrted my deep Krautrock love, but am I right in thinking that this was spared Pol Punk Pot scourge ? Most people who were into 'progressive/underground' music were usually into 'krautrock', eventhough more or less any music that was made by people with long hair, was always lumped together before 1976, especially as there were only three main music papers catering to such interests, although it was mainly blurting on about Led Zep, Dylan and anything that could be described as 'denim rock'. A lot of debates and things at the time of 'uk punk', were also engineered by the muso journalists, although this came into being during the latter half of 1977/first half of 1978. Mclaren, Rhodes etc. did their sufficient 'media engineering' a whole year before of course, which took no prisoners at all. The actual hype of 'uk punk' at the time, especially within the music weeklies, would put all this X Factor hype to shame and to be fair, the best music paper was Sounds, as regards really jumping ship early on. Their whole layout and typeface changed for the better and left the NME and MM looking ridiculous by late '77. As m.elf stated- Lydon did mention his love for Can and later Pete Shelley also voiced his his love for them via some sleeves notes for the german innovators (not forgetting it was also a ruse by the United Artists label, to which both 'acts' were contracted to!). Plus, a lot of the 'garage electronic bands' (as they were initially called) like Cabaret Voltaire, TG, Residents and Devo etc. were voicing influences from the german outfits. This influenced the rest of the mindset, as everyone (bands and fans alike), seemed to be cacking themselves as being viewed as stale or unhip (which exists to this day in a smaller form), whilst everyone was waiting for the 'next new thing', so as to not get caught out again and made to look stupid. Everything was word of mouth of course and not laid out in front of you like the internet, adding to that the notion of 'chinese whispers' and things got very distorted, in most cases for the better, especially as younger people were taking up the baton and experimenting. |
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