OK, so my last post was a simple ode to the Beatles. For reference sake, here it is
http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2013/03/if-only-beatles-had-been-canadian.html
Pretty harmless, right?
You'd think so, yes?
Nothing there to get bothered by, right?
Apparently not.
I'm attaching a response from a reader. As you'll see, this rather verbose reply is way off the mark. As you read through it, please look past his expansive vocabulary and often humorous comparisons and focus on the facts.
Don't let his intellectualism fool you...
He's bad mouthing the Beatles.
He particularly comes hard after this one
So my question to you dear friends...
How do I reply?
I need some ammo.
Something good.
As he said to me, this might end up as fisticuffs in Willard Square
Without further ado....here it is.
Better go get yourself a drink and have a seat...it's gonna take awhile
Oh, and I'll say this now before you get the highly expected bad taste in your mouth after you're done with this.
...love is all you need.
_________________________________________________
I like a good debate now and then, a verbal donnybrook, and when my pal Pete started talking up the Beatles in his excellent and bodacious blog, Pompatus of Pete (don’t change the name Pete – we all love it) I challenged him to this throw down. “I’ll write the first volley,” I said – premise: the Beatles stink – and you can shoot afterwards, with heavy artillery, knocking me down if you can. Within 24 hours Pete had posted a complete and thoughtful defense of the Fab 4, awarding them best album of all time, best band, best songwriters, best, best, best.
I should have known what was coming. I should have known Pete would have to go first. Try this experiment at your next dinner party. First, over soup, challenge your host’s politics; a friendly debate may follow. Next, main course, go after their religious beliefs; there will be an uncomfortable silence as everybody looks down into their food. When dessert is served, call their babies ugly. You’ll most likely get a stern lecture about how little so and so looks like Aunt Susie, who was “really quite a beauty in her day” and “she’ll most likely grow out of that nose and third eye at any rate.” At this point, you haven’t been asked to leave and you’re still eating.
But then attack John, Paul, George and Ringo. Call them mediocre. Call them hacks. What you’re going to find is that them is real fighting words. The room will go nuts. People will put down their forks. “You don’t know what you’re talking about” is the immediate response. “Get to the barricades fast and throw all the stones we have” is the immediate reaction. Defend the Beatles. Defend received wisdom.
In other words, Pete couldn’t help himself. So thoroughly has Western society of a certain age been brainwashed to think that the Beatles carry the banner of being the greatest and most influential rock and roll band ever to walk the planet, that they are not merely that, but also the most Pavlovian band ever. Let me be clear, I’m not here to call the Beatles down. I come not to bury them. I’m just asking for a little clarity of thought regarding the state of their rock and roll legacy.
In fact, I heartily concede to Pete the fact that the Beatles were very prolific. They wrote a lot of catchy, ear wormy songs, way more than any other band of their generation. In pop history the Beatles catalog is unrivaled for the sheer volume of middling to fairly pleasant pop songs. But (and forgive the sports metaphor here, but Pete will get this), nobody considers Rod Carew to be the best baseball player of all time. If you care about rock and roll, if you think it has meaning and relevance to our lives, if you think it is an agent of cultural evolution (and Pete and I are in this group or we wouldn’t bother with this debate), then the Beatles are a piffle, kind of like Phil Collins with more hits.
And, to be clear, it’s fine if you like the Beatles, or Phil Collins (although if Pete defends Phil, we may have to do this all over again), but it puts me out a little when otherwise thoughtful and intelligent people pretend that the Beatles (or Phil) ever contributed much to our lives that was culturally significant. Paul McCartney recently said in an interview that he’s very proud of the fact that the Beatles’ ultimate message was “all you need is love.” Well yeah, that is nice Paul, but, really, did we not know that before the Beatles came along? I mean, is that it? Instead of buying your albums I could have just saved my money, got stoned, and danced naked at a Grateful Dead concert.
But again, give them their due. Let there be absolutely no doubt at all that those who frequently ride elevators and take long walks at the mall are deeply indebted to the Beatles. Eleanor Rigby keeps her heart in a bottle on a shelf on the wall….at the Gap.
That’s really the point where this all goes awry. The Beatles were never really all that good or influential, but there is no denying they were the most successfully marketed rock and roll band ever. Everybody confuses the two things. Look, I’m happy for Paul McCartney. I’d like to own half of Scotland too. There is no doubt that they all made a lot of money. But then, so does Donald Trump.
Advertising does come into rock and roll. Rod Stewart owns an island. Sting lives in a castle. U-2 owns half of Dublin, and I’d bet that even guys like Michael Bolton live in very big houses. Who among us would turn down your money for nothing or your chicks for free? God bless them all. I’m not bothered by it because rock and roll, at its best, transcends selling out. It’s bigger than any amount of rock star glitter. Music is a form of human conversation that takes place in the mass media beyond the influence of the artist who created it. I doubt Elvis ever thought about integration or civil rights when he started singing so called “race music,” yet it was he who effectively put that issue into the average American’s home for the first time. Rock and roll, for all its silliness, has always had deep roots in all things fashion, politics, and culture. It has influenced attitudes to orthodoxy, sexuality, and even language in ways that few other social developments have ever equaled. The 15th century may have the Guttenberg Bible but we had Bill Haley and the Comets, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Marvin Gaye, Buffalo Springfield, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan.
Consider for moment how loaded up with songs all those PBS documentaries about the 50’s and 60’s are. In today’s age, it’s almost impossible to imagine your youth without a soundtrack. Songs are buoys that mark our way out into our lives, and back if you choose (which a lot of us do judging by the rise of classic rock) and, let me be clear, the Beatles can be your soundtrack. That’s cool. You’re a fan. I’m perfectly okay with that. Anybody who knows me knows I have more than my fair share of my own guilty pleasures in terms of musical tastes. The point I’m trying to make here is that the fact of the Beatles success doesn’t objectively mark them as great artists, or a great and important band.
True, they had a lot of hits, but did the Beatles ever write a song that points the way forward? How many great Beatle songs are there that tell us something new about ourselves, that truly define a moment in time? For just a moment come down off the cultural landscape (and careful, careful, the Beatles are tottering high up there) and forget about the marketing, the longevity, the myth making, the general brainwashing, and just look at the catalogue. How many great Beatle songs are there? Not songs that you love, but songs that have real cultural relevance. Two or three? I might stand up for Hey Jude, The Long and Winding Road, maybe even Get Back, and you might have Yesterday on your list, or Norwegian Wood (Pete has A Day in the Life – fair enough. Strawberry fields – ehhh.), but mostly, with the Beatles, what you’ve got is a lot of derivative English music hall influenced dreck clothed in technical virtuosity and faux intellectualism. Imagine Muddy Waters singing Octopus’s Garden. Imagine anybody other than the Wiggles covering Yellow Submarine. It’s not rock and roll, and I don’t like it.
Look, I am amused at Napoleon in rags and the language that he used. I know that guy. When I was fifteen I wanted my parent’s generation to f- f- f- fade away. I have heard the sound of marching charging feet now (everywhere), and when I was young, and really really stupid (even more stupid than I am now), I was pretentious enough to have imagined myself living these badlands, being born to run. Heck, I have even seen myself and others in various hints and clues contained in blood on the tracks and I think, in college, I lived up the street from where the streets had no name. But – and this is my point – I have never once had my photograph taken by a barber in a shop on Penny Lane. I have no idea who that guy is.
And therein is the problem with assigning the Beatles greatness. Penny Lane is a pretty tune (actually in my personal top ten of favorite Beatle songs) but in what way, shape or form is it an important song, a song that defines a generation or propels the art form forward? In the words of Michael Stipe, “What’s the frequency Kenneth?” Who is Rocky Raccoon, Prudence, Mr. Kite, or Maxwell (and why does he have a silver hammer?). What is the relevance of anything the Beatles wrote to stuff that happened in the real world? They’re a cultural phenomenon. They were prolific. They were (and still are) incredible at marketing their work. But in the end, the Bee Gees are really just as good, maybe even better.
Right or wrong, I can assign meaning and interpretation to almost every character in the Bob Dylan catalogue. I’m pretty sure that every character in the Paul McCartney’s catalogue is just there because there was a nifty rhyme that came to him in his sleep. Just go back and listen to Band on the Run if you don’t believe me. The Jailor Man and Sailor Sam will search forevermore. That line is just embarrassing. Mmmbop is a better lyric.
Face it, there’s are lot of fairly well crafted and catchy ditties (silly love songs?) that belong to the Beatles but in the end they really are nothing more than bunch of dopey hippies who, because they made so much money, had access to the next level above tie dye which were those nifty Sargent Pepper costumes. The Lonely Hearts Club band album is full of astonishing technical tricks but thematically and lyrically, it’s dead empty. From a content perspective, it’s vacant. Pet Sounds is the greater album because it’s at least about something, the experience, the isolation and/or joy, of being an American teenager. Lonely Hearts is about being Mr. Kite, or Billy, or… , well take your pick. Throughout the latter part of their career John, Paul, George, and Ringo just didn’t have much to say so they dealt in obtuse British silliness and cheap sentiment. All you need is love. Thanks boys; that and four bucks will get me a mocha latte at Starbucks. They’re tunesmiths, not artists. They’re panderers in cheap sentiment, not intellectuals or activists. They got rich and did drugs and hung out with that guy with the long stringy hair from India and that was about it really.
And you know what? - maybe that’s enough for you. Fine. Again, I’m not arguing that everybody should scrap their Beatle records and never listen to them again. I’m only suggesting that people should stop taking them so seriously. Turns out, in hindsight, that they are not bigger than Jesus and John Lennon is not an intellectual because he said number nine, number nine, number nine over and over again on a record. Props to him for being a peace activist but his single biggest idea was that we all stay in bed until world peace is achieved. Really? Imagine if that was Noam Chomsky’s central thesis.
Rock and roll has always been about rebellion. Each successive generation pounds and shapes the music it is given until they can use it to attack and obliterate what came before them, to make their own mark. The genius of rock is that it is the most democratic mode of mass media that we have, a mode that is perfect for co-option again and again by the margins of society. At its essence, rock music speaks to power. At its best, that’s all music really. Beethoven wasn’t just looking to write pretty tunes that we could hum. Stravinsky knew what he was getting into with Rites of Spring. Sinatra certainly made his father’s generation squirm. And Elvis…. well enough said. You get the point. Great rock music is revolution. Free Pussy Riot.
And while John Lennon may have written a pretty good song called Revolution (also in my top ten), he never meant it above the level of mawkish sentiment or nonsense masked in high school debate politics. The Beatles never went to the well for longing of the blues, the majesty of classical, or the intricacy of jazz. Outside of fiddling with knobs in a recording studio they were never innovators in any emotional sense of the word (and the guts matter in rock and roll). Instead of going forward, they went backwards and wrote a lot of Tin Pan Alley songs, signifying nothing, perfect for playing in doctors’ offices. When was the last time you heard “Won’t Get Fooled Again” at your kid’s orthodontist?
After the British invasion came and went, the Beatles dealt in retread ideas from the popular culture that, in the end, produced them, and not the other way around. Pete, I agree with you that in the pantheon of rock and roll greats they’re certainly guys who deserve to be at the party, but let’s all stop pretending that they’re the guys who brought the beer. Little Richard propelled us forward with “a whop bop a loo bop, a bop bam boom.” I don’t know what that means but I want to get up and dance when I hear those words. Turn it up. From the Beatles we get “ob la dee, ob la da, life goes on….bra.” Bra? Maybe it’s just me, but I feel bad for Paul, John, George, and Ringo when that comes over the radio. Have another pina colada boys. Try again.
But then you don’t have to. You’re the Beatles and you can just slap anything on a record and people will buy it.
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