The Beatles in Context

[_Jersey Girl]

Articulate and passionate about the music. It’s a joy to read.

Well that is very kind of you. I love the stories of people and when their stories happen to intersect my own, those connections provide an inspiring event for me. They spark something and I have to write about it. That happens with MeDot all the time--he's amazing!

Back to the film for a moment. If you pay attention to the story that Ron Howard is telling regarding their career, how the machine behind it developed and eventually ate them alive, you can see that they were unhappy for a great many years, long before I would have ever imagined. Paul McCartney, when he talks about the movie Help! admits that they were basically stoned during most of the filming of it. That tells you something right there. They were already starting to check out.

But what is even more telling, is that if you watch the rooftop concert (their last one) you can see how happy they were. I think they were happy because they knew they were finally cut loose from the obligation and demands, but not only that, they were playing while no one was watching them. Only a few folks in adjacent buildings and the film crew could actually see them. The crowd that gathered on the street could not.

They must have felt like they did back in the old days. Playing their music and simply loving it.

Okay I'm gone.

[_Markk]

I remember Beatles Mania hitting our neighborhood...they had such a influence to our world, literally. Every time hear this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S302kF8MJ-I it brings back a feeling I can't explain. My older sister and her friend let sing the ooow part, I was around 8 year old.

The two songs that for me that are simply the greatest songs on earth, based on how they were perceived in my youth, are Hey Jude, and Let It Be.

I watched How The Beatles Changed the World a while ago, free on Amazon Prime, and it is amazing how they influenced our world.

[_MeDotOrg]

MeDot did you see the Ron Howard film?

Yeah, I have it on Blu Ray. Like a lot of people, I was sad when they broke up. But if you saw the movie Let It Be you could see a lot of the tension. But I never felt like they owed it to the world to remain together. They really were living in a gilded cage, victims of their own success. I always secretly hoped they would have a reunion tour, but Mark David Chapman killed that idea.

by the way Jersey Girl, I'm very happy that you wanted my response, but know I usually have a browser tab open or Mormon Discussions, so just because it show me online doesn't necessarily mean that I am actively reading or writing. So please don't wait up!

[_Quasimodo]

I remember when they first became popular and the young girls in my neighborhood would argue about which Beatle was the cutest. Paul seemed to lead the voting (something about "bedroom eyes"). John was second and George was third.

Sadly, no one ever argued for Ringo.

[_honorentheos]

I don't know if this is a derail, but since it seems like this is an opportunity to get insight from people who would know, I thought I'd take advantage and ask a Beatles-related question.

I once worked with a lady who was a huge Beatles fan going back to her childhood which seems to be chronologically aligned with MeDotOrg. She's retired now. When we worked together, we both would often come into the office on Saturdays to work and she would have the radio playing the golden oldies station which would often lead us to talk about music from her youth. To me, the music was all of an era that I would group together. So it was interesting to get her take on different bands, which ones were ok to be fans of if you were a fan of a different band and which were not.

The one that surprised me, and I've wondered if this was local to her peer group or universal, was the claim that a person couldn't openly be a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was one or the other.

Anyone recollect if this was the case where you were?

I should comment that I come from an era where there was supposedly a similar conflict that went completely over my head - and I'm glad it did. I didn't realize that in the days of early grunge being a fan of Nirvana apparently meant a person ought to dislike Pearl Jam and vice versa. I was apparently naïve to this and liked both though I recall Nirvana being around a while before I heard PJ for the first time.

[_huckelberry]

So it was interesting to get her take on different bands, which ones were ok to be fans of if you were a fan of a different band and which were not.

The one that surprised me, and I've wondered if this was local to her peer group or universal, was the claim that a person couldn't openly be a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was one or the other.

Anyone recollect if this was the case where you were?

Honorentheos,
I think the Beatles and Stones are enough different that people are inclined to clearly prefer one or the other. Perhaps that difference sounded larger when they both sounded so new. I do not remember any social pressure to be exclusive in enjoyment however. I preferred Beatles at first, Stones mid decade and Beatles again starting with Revolver or perhaps Rubber Soul. A good friend was Stones only in taste but I thought that was a bit of unusual narrowness.

Social groups I knew distinguished between real rock and bubble gum music. Bubble gum would refer to processed music with more cute and polite restraint.

[_Jersey Girl]

by the way Jersey Girl, I'm very happy that you wanted my response, but know I usually have a browser tab open or Mormon Discussions, so just because it show me online doesn't necessarily mean that I am actively reading or writing. So please don't wait up!

No problem! I popped in and out of here while I was working online--and later shopping. I saw you and later your post just after I ordered an olive wreath!

So I jumped back on here.

[_honorentheos]

So it was interesting to get her take on different bands, which ones were ok to be fans of if you were a fan of a different band and which were not.

The one that surprised me, and I've wondered if this was local to her peer group or universal, was the claim that a person couldn't openly be a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was one or the other.

Anyone recollect if this was the case where you were?

Honorentheos,
I think the Beatles and Stones are enough different that people are inclined to clearly prefer one or the other. Perhaps that difference sounded larger when they both sounded so new. I do not remember any social pressure to be exclusive in enjoyment however. I preferred Beatles at first, Stones mid decade and Beatles again starting with Revolver or perhaps Rubber Soul. A good friend was Stones only in taste but I thought that was a bit of unusual narrowness.

Social groups I knew distinguished between real rock and bubble gum music. Bubble gum would refer to processed music with more cute and polite restraint.

Thanks, huckleberry. I guess for me they have different sounds but their song-writing and musicianship wouldn't exclude either from being bands I would listen.

That said, I've heard someone say that we as humans tend to compress periods of time into caricatures of what they really were, such that we combine bits and pieces of an era into a few symbols that people from the time would find confusing. The person who was commenting on this was talking about the way entire centuries of music have become largely symbolized by a handful of what we think of as classical pieces. And decades from the Twentieth Century are compressed into a few songs and a dance or two. They suggested that at some point in the not-too-distant future, people might reduce the entire Twentieth Century catalog of music to Johnny B. Goode.

I think my view of the Beatles and the Stones is an early stage of this where, minus the context of the period and focused on the music-only, I pick out what I like with my non-contemporary tastes and think of it as all coming from the 60's and early 70's. And that's one thing not two separate decades.

[Guest]

I think the argument, or settled argument, is that the Beatles by and far are the "greatest band" ever, while the Stones are the "greatest rock and roll band" ever." Mick made it a show beyond the Music.

The Beatles actually were not very good in concert...if you listen to the Japan tour they sound horrible. I think Paul made up for this with Wings, a awesome show, with awesome Music, and in my opinion one of the most under recognized bands ever.

Bands like the Stones, The Who, The Kinks...brought it up a notch as far as entertainment and a "show."

Pete Townsend may be the one that really brought it to another level in regards to "the show" with raw emotion... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AduIrDqBtGA

The Beatles 1st, and the Beach Boys 2nd, in my opinion, are the greatest studio bands without peer. George Martin, and Brian Wilson are maybe the greatest producers ever. Here is a cool video of them together...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8iNuxRpi8I

[_Jersey Girl]

The one that surprised me, and I've wondered if this was local to her peer group or universal, was the claim that a person couldn't openly be a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It was one or the other.

Anyone recollect if this was the case where you were?

I want to mention that I'm a bit younger than MeDot, but I have a memory that people would kill to have. I learned how to dance watching American Bandstand with my then teen age aunt. Everyone in my family danced. I learned to jitterbug, cha cha, etc. at a fairly young age. Grew up listening to big band era music, country and rock n' roll. I'll never forgive my MIL for throwing out my collection of old 45's while I was overseas because I had there Little Richard, Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and the like that I absconded with when I got married.

In any case, don't worry about a derail. You injected the Stones, I'm all over it.

On to your question and you can compare whatever I have to say to what MeDot says. I haven't read all of the new replies here yet, he may have well answered already.

Yes, there was a rivalry between the Beatles and the Stones. If I recall correctly the Beatles actually gifted one of their songs to the Stones at the beginning of their career. I'm going out on a limb here from memory, when I say that it was "I wanna be your man".

I tend to think that that rivalry was foisted upon us by publicists. And not only that, you had the clean and neat Beatles juxtaposed with the rougher looking Stones. Their images were so different and so was their music. The Beatles played rock n' roll. The Stones played largely R&B. That doesn't mean that they both didn't cross over one to the other, but primarily that definition was obvious from the beginning.

I loved both bands but I preferred the Stones because back in the day, they were the bad boys of rock music. I can write more about that later if it matters. I just don't have the time right now.

When people think about the Stones, I think they think about Jumpin' Jack Flash, Paint it Black and onward. The Stones produced a huge catalog of music. The Stones that I personally fell for were the Stones on the 12X5 album. When Brian Jones was still alive.

Here's an example if you're interested:

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

Here's another one with a bit of an interview. Please do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing as you have time. Notice how polite they are during interview. Then watch how they change once they start playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6RWnGQ3XqQ

Compare those to any early Beatles performance. The Beatles were clean. The Stones were dirty. The Beatles sent messages of romance. Jagger dripped with sexuality. The Beatles stood and played their instruments. The Stones MOVED.

So, yes there was a rivalry between groups and their fans. As for me, I liked both. I wasn't even a teenager yet when those above linked songs came out but even so, the Stones appealed to me in ways that I cannot describe mostly having to do with an emerging sense of sexuality.

There. I put it right out there!


I think it's important to know, too, that one thing that was so appealing to fans was that both the Beatles and Stones, took their American musical influences, wove them into their own music and brought them back to America in new form.

Here's another Stones video, far more recent. This is them playing with one of their early influences, Muddy Waters. Notice how they blend together. His music ran through their teenage veins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbao_laqF8E

I think that's why they blended into us.

You can see videos on youtube mainly of Keith Richards playing with his idols--Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis.

Notice that those performers were some of my own influences. It is no coincidence that the Beatles and Stones appealed to us as a generation. We listened and danced to the same things that they did. And they made something new out of it.