Influence of the Beatles..
 

Lets have an intelligent musical discussion. On the recent Nivana thread folks have been comparing Nirvana to Beatles, which might not be valid. Its led to heated side-bar discussion about the Beatles in general. I personally just don't see the Beatles as being influential to the 1960s so much as inspiring. So many bands were inspired to start up bands and get out there when they saw the Beatles doing it, but I just don't hear any influence on the music itself.

If y'all do, kindly document this progression please. Can y'all help inform me and list record releases in chronology to demonstrate how the Beatles directly influenced mainstream bands from 1964-1968? I don't dispute the influence of records like Abbey Road and Let It Be, but these records clearly had their impact more so in the 1970s as a plethora of Abbey Road/Let It Be records and bands came out. However before then? I just don't hear it. It was mentioned that Stones responded to Sgt Pepper, but to me I don't hear it, if anything it sounds like Sgt Pepper was a response to both the rising Stones and also the weird 1966/67 Blues revival explosion which replaced the folk era and spawned the success of bands like the Grateful Dead (who relied almost solely on kick ass Ottis Redding covers until 1968), Jimi Hendrix (who also relied on blues "standards" until Are You Experienced), Cream, Black Sabbath, and even James Brown.

So step up and help us out, with evidence demonstrate chronologically just how influential the Beatles were (as opposed to being inspiring)..

You mean bands that not only were influenced by them before they split but also included covers of their songs on their records at the time? Fuck, the list would take months and months to compile.

Just a note, I would never deny the impact and influence of the Beatles AFTER 1968 and for semantics clarification, I am talking about INSPIRATION vs INFLUENCE..

Mainstream bands and not simply covers, but original records that sounded like pre-1967 Beatles records. And if that list were as extensive as you claim, you could easily post five records RIGHT NOW off the top of your head.

Why? Do you feel like typing "No" or "Doesn't count" a bunch of times?

!@#$%! has that been you all along?

Find a bunch of 60s garage rock comps, copy and paste the track list there's your answer.

If it was really that fucking easy, why haven't you or Genteel Deat done it yet? Right, because apparently its just easier to troll and be a prick rather than have a substantive discussion :cool:

Nevermind* the trolling, I have to keep an eye on stuff I have on the cooker upstairs. Do you not have Google on your machine?
*see what i did there

Rofl, Nevermind.

LOL U GUYS!

Fuck it, this forum is dead and even I'm just a troll now, why would I ever try and have a serious discussion about music on a music forum that is no longer about music but simply how obnoxius the trolls (myself fully included) can be to each other? ;)

The influence of Nirvana is in "sound" and that is it. It was co-opted by the large music industry at large to sell records to people who thought "grunge" actually meant something.

The influence of The Beatles is in songwriting, songcraft, ideas, innovation, and plain old musical skill. When you have musicians, who are hugely influential in their own right, saying they only got into music because of seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or of hearing their early singles, it shows a depth of appeal that no other act since has come close to matching. Ozzy Osborne himself, whose music would not seem to be influenced by the Beatles states repeatedly that the Beatles were his one and only inspiration to be in a band, to rock. Thank Mario for that. Brian Wilson has stated many times that the Beach Boys (who were HUGE in the early 60's) looked to each new Beatles release to show them where the future lay.

Before The Beatles cemented the idea of a ROCK BAND in the minds of the world, rock musicians were mostly single headliners with a back up band. Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis, etc, were all sold on the singular performer (much like pop music today).
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The Beatles were also the first major act that up and quit performing live, tired of the inadequate technology to amplify their music to a stadium full of people. They focused on writing personal music, personal lyrics, and crafting entire albums of original material. I have already mentioned in another thread how this was HUGE, how most bands before the Beatles recorded mostly covers, or other people's songs, and sprinkled a few self-penned ditties on B-sides or at the tail end of albums.

The Beatles were all songwriters, even Ringo, and were all experimental in their instrument choice, with the help of Mr. Martin of course.

Who influenced more good bands? The Beatles or VU?

Some well known ones:

The Byrds
The Who
The Monkees
The Kinks

Some more obscure:

The Knickerbockers
The Liverpools
The Manchesters
B. Brock and the Sultans

There are really too many for this to be a serious "discussion". Do you need more?

"good" is a subjective thing.

VU definitely influenced more bands that I personally like than the Beatles I would say, but it is a close call.

VU and the Beatles also influenced a shit-ton of DOO-DOO bands.

Agreed, and a great example of how the Beatles were very inspiring to the 1960s, but not necessarily demonstrating any direct influences. I am not disputing this, I'm trying to talk about influence, but everybody is just talking a bunch of shit so fuck it... boring.

The Beatles are such a singular force that anyone who tries to just write good melodies and songs gets compared to them, whether intended or not.

The Who were definitely a sound of their own, the Monkees were a manufactured band so that doesn't exactly count, the Kinks indeed had a certain Beatles sound but also very clearly were influenced by what bands like The Who were doing, and the Byrds had a very original sound of their own, a great blend of both scenes of the time, the acoustic folk sound and the new British Invasion rock sound..


Obscure bands I can understand, but obscure bands hardly have major impact and influence now do they? There were a THOUSAND bands in Seattle in the late 1980s, only a relative handful became the Nirvanas..

Y'all keep saying that, and yet clearly its not that easy because nobody has posted anything but those same four bands you posted above, and we've already discussed them..

it's cuz we are all too young to remember all the bands that time forgets.

we should dig up GMKU's corpse and see what it thinks....

I was born in 1973, but I do not remember bands before 1980.

What about VU?:cool:

Yes but we can listen to their records and interpret the art on its own terms. IN FACT, often this is better, because many times folks are biased by their inclussion in the events themselves. Sometimes we remember things that weren't there. Black Sabbath is a great fucking example. Just about EVERY dumbass 50 something man tells me how "evil, dark, black, Satanic" Black Sabbath was in the early 1970s, and yet the records speak for themselves that the opposite was true.

Ozzy is Anglican/Episcopalian.

Dave Clark Five
Badfinger
The Merry-Go-Round
The Bee Gees
Nazz (Todd Rundgren's early band)
The Turtles
The Move
Harry Nilsson
The Hollies
The Swinging Blue Jeans

Zombies (It's just that I get a boner when you say "No." C'mon, you can do it for me one more time.)

Now we're getting somewhere. Can we take this a step further? How successful were these bands? Were they big enough in the "mainstream"? Did they have an impact of their own? Thank you for actually posting some substance by the way, I appreciate it (sincerely)

The Pretty Things
Herman's Hermits
Gerry & The Pacemakers
The Beach Boys
The Beau Brummels
The Searchers

Yes, these were all successful, in their own right or members went on to success.

For example the Hollies were very big and Graham Nash went on to even bigger things.

As for my first list, all are valid. Listen to the Who's first album for example. Obviously they clearly had other influences but there are a few VERY Beatlesque tracks.

Manfred Mann
Freddie and the Dreamers
The Troggs
Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders
The McCoys

well for one, the rolling stones were very influenced by the beatles. the beatles wrote one of their first hits "i wanna be your man" and although they were known for their harder r&b sound, the beatles mined that field in their hamburg days.

and most obviously; their satanic majestries request=sargent peppers

franz zappa was doing a parody of the beatles with we're only in it for the money but he obviously had great respect for them musically

it could be argued that bob dylan's switch to electric guitars was influenced by the beatles and byrds (just like you could argue that he influenced the beatles more sophisticated lyrics)

jimi hendrix was known to cover day tripper and sargent peppers live

like someone said the kinks (although suchfriends, you said the kinks took after the who when its the opposite way around, townsend admits as much)

the lovin' spoonful-although the beatles were influenced by them as well

donovan-again donovan also influenced them by teaching them a picking style in india that yielded many songs\

buffalo springfield

the list could go on. even bands that don't sound like the beatles were very much influenced by them. you can say the same thing about sonic youth.

Agreed, but I would say that these were more so inspired than influenced, in my opinion, musical influence means to directly impact the sound of band or artist.

By the way, I'm not trying to be the definitive voice on this issue, rather just chat and share opinions. If I disagree with some opinions here, I will say such, and folks are of course always free to disagree with my own.

Clearly the Beatles were very inspiring, that could never be denied, I just still don't hear the Beatles in a lot of the bands mentioned on this thread, possibly just me. I would also like to remind y'all I got no beef with the Beatles, this is not intended to diss them, rather just a clarification..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bea...opular_culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ed_the_Beatles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Invasion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatlemania

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XWQCLqab4o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFp1bqhW9Lk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-D9xcZgKX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXeRB-3nDR8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7wrwctQS3s

ad infinitum

You'd be hard pressed to find a more influential band that's for sure.

Here's a list of bands who've covered The Beatles. Says it all really...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ed_The_Beatles

I hear influences from the Beatles in almost every bands of sixties (even for example in Velvets & Pink Floyd, I don´t believe Hendrix would have come so great songwriter without Beatles). And I think many new bands would have sounded really different (much more bore) without Beatles (in my opinion Oasis is just a boring copy of Beatles). Nirvana has never been that important at all comparing to Beatles (it´s possible nobody remembers Nirvana after hundred years but I believe Beatles music is still alive).

Suchfriends, you don´t seem to understand nothing about the popular music. This is last time I am going to put anything into your threads.

There is a recording around of Lou Reed riffing to ''Paperback Writer' when he was in VU.

Yes, but you did realize this thread isn't about Nirvana yes?

That is great, how ever could I aspire to be as polite and genuinely nice as you, thank you for that.

I will reiterate ONE FINAL TIME. I DON'T DENY THE IMPACT OF THE BEATLES, NOR INTENDED TO SCOFF OR DISS THEM. RATHER TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE CONCEPT OF INSPIRATION AND INFLUENCE, BUT FUCK IT.

How do you distinguish inspiration and influence?

Influence is when bands have similarly distinctive sounds, inspiration is when bands were directly inspired but not necessarily have the same sound. Many bands were inspired by the Beatles to start bands, to play shows, and as Rob in particular mentioned, to focus on original song writing and crafting. However, in the 1960s so many bands had a unique sound of their own that its hard for me to hear a Beatles influence, while never denying the impact of Beatles on the scene and bands in general. Sure, Jimi Hendrix covered Beatles songs, but honestly, who really hears early Beatles in that raunchy, bluesy, psyched out Hendrix tunes? Shit, even when he covered Beatles songs they didn't sound like Beatles songs, they sounded like fucking Hendrix songs. The Grateful Dead quite literally covered two dozen Beatles songs, and yet dude, who the fuck honestly hears the Beatles in the Dead during 1968? Pigpen had them sounding like a damned Otis Redding cover band, not some "I wanna hold your hand" wanna-bes. Again, both Hendrix AND Jerry Garcia were very fond of the Beatles and spoke often of how much they were inspired by what the Beatles were doing which inspired them to go out and do their own thing. I know I sound like a broken record, and its not like I'm right and y'all are wrong, these are strictly matters of taste and opinion. Further, I'm used to have unpopular musical opinions so its all good..

That's all valid but according to your definition, which groups have been particularly influential?