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: