Hi, name's Ric - New Members - Forums : Best Ever Albums

sp4cetiger

meccalecca wrote:

play rock music, I guess. It's not that The Beatles weren't influential. I just think if John and Paul never met, there would have been another. It would have been different for sure, but the main role may have been filled.

The role filled by the Beatles was multi-faceted and extremely complex. To say that another artist would simply step in and do all the same things seems kinda silly to me. What I was getting at in my response to the OP is that even though the evolution of rock music in the '60s was a complex interplay between the British and American music cultures (primarily), it was initiated by the Beatles. After they hit the American shores like a tidal wave, all of the subsequent British acts were welcomed with open arms. If the Beatles had never existed, would this interaction have even occurred? Would some other music fad have taken over? Perhaps the British Invasion would have happened more gradually or later, but how do we know that what comes out on the other end is the same? And that's just the British Invasion. Many of the Beatles' individual songs and albums influenced the direction of popular music in the '60s.

I just think it's difficult to speculate about how music is going to change without a key player in the timeline. The same applies to Elvis. But we shouldn't confuse historical importance with "greatness." Just because Elvis was pivotal in the evolution of popular music doesn't make him an all-time great musician. The same can be said of the Beatles (though I do view them as all-time greats nonetheless). In short, "music wouldn't be the same without them," doesn't by itself justify critical acclaim and I think ricox would be better off making that point than trying to rewrite history.

Cymro2011

The Beatles were objectively average

Gender: Male

Age: 30

Location: In a deep, dark bubblegum graveyard

ricrox wrote:

Just so you know, my favorite band is Polvo.

Today's Active Lifestyle is dope. Welcome.

meccalecca

Voice of Reason

Gender: Male

Location: The Land of Enchantment

sp4cetiger wrote:

The role filled by the Beatles was multi-faceted and extremely complex.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to belittle the role the Beatles have played in popular culture. History would undoubtedly change, but that's the way it is with everything. the whole butterfly effect. I just meant that the masses would have found another band to idolize. Maybe the Stones or Kinks, maybe the Zombies would have raised to that level. Who knows? but when society needs something like this, they seem to find it.

Personally, there's no way I'd care about music like I do, if my family hadn't been playing Beatles albums non stop when I was a baby

sp4cetiger

meccalecca wrote:

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to belittle the role the Beatles have played in popular culture. History would undoubtedly change, but that's the way it is with everything. the whole butterfly effect. I just meant that the masses would have found another band to idolize. Maybe the Stones or Kinks, maybe the Zombies would have raised to that level. Who knows? but when society needs something like this, they seem to find it.

I don't want to give the impression that this is some sort of band worship kick, because I really do agree that the Beatles are given too much credit for a lot of things by casual music fans. However, I'm not at all convinced that the Beatlemania phenomenon would have occurred with just any band. It didn't need to happen that way for rock music to develop, I don't think, but its impact was so tremendous, I just wouldn't know where to start trying to rethink subsequent events. I'm also not saying that the world of music would be much worse off without them, because that also is too difficult to judge. I think the Beatles should be judged primarily on what they produced, so we can leave history to the professors and forum-going geeks (*cough*).

benpaco

Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 28

Location: Missouri

Honestly I think it's just hard to judge cuz who knows what a world without Beatles would look like. You can guess, I can guess, we're equally right, we just can't know. That's the hard bit.
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ricrox

sp4cetiger wrote:

Hmm, that seems like it would be a tough claim to support, especially since we don't know how the British Invasion would have played out without them... or whether it would have happened at all. I would approach that argument from the other direction and show that there are many great artists without whom the modern music world could be very different. Some that come to mind, in addition to those you mentioned: Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, The Yardbirds, and Bob Dylan.

It's tough to go back and try to rewrite history, though.

Very good point. I have no intention of even trying to rewrite history. It is true that the Beatles paved the way for the British Invasion, and that is a significant moment in history. What is interesting to me is how the Beatles made it safe for American kids to like rock n roll again, albeit a more cleaned up version rhythmically and lyrically (when compared to Chuck Berry and Little Richard, or even Elvis.) I'm talking pre-Rubber Soul Beatles, of course. Between 1959 (the year "the music died") and 1964 (when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show) is one of the most fascinating eras in music. People think it was a stagnant time, but dig a little deeper, and you'll uncover many lost gems. Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers are two of the most well known from this time, but there are some others, many one-hit-wonders, who are really good.

ricrox

Cymro2011 wrote:

Today's Active Lifestyle is dope. Welcome.

Thanks! That's my favorite album of all time!

sp4cetiger

ricrox wrote:

Very good point. I have no intention of even trying to rewrite history. It is true that the Beatles paved the way for the British Invasion, and that is a significant moment in history. What is interesting to me is how the Beatles made it safe for American kids to like rock n roll again, albeit a more cleaned up version rhythmically and lyrically (when compared to Chuck Berry and Little Richard, or even Elvis.) I'm talking pre-Rubber Soul Beatles, of course. Between 1959 (the year "the music died") and 1964 (when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show) is one of the most fascinating eras in music. People think it was a stagnant time, but dig a little deeper, and you'll uncover many lost gems. Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers are two of the most well known from this time, but there are some others, many one-hit-wonders, who are really good.

Yeah, I recently did a listening survey of that period. I'll admit that it was a little short on landmark albums (even jazz seemed to decline a bit after Kind of Blue), but "stagnant" would certainly be an exaggeration. In addition to what you mentioned, that era was a particularly active one for American folk music and soul.