[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Severian

Um, I really don't want to sound like an asshole here, but what T&B said about brushing up on your rock history needs to be repeated. And underlined.

Maybe it is you and Toilets who need a refresher course? YOU HAVEN'T NAMED A SINGLE BAND FROM 1964-1968 that sounded like the Beatles, so I'm still not convinced as y'all side-step the issue at hand. I NEVER INTENDED TO DISS OR MINIMIZE THE BEATLES. my point was to talk about music and sound, and again, IT IS MY OPINION that the Beatles were less influential to the sound of bands in that time. This doesn't negate their explosive influence to motivate other musicians to start bands, and as Rob mentioned, to focus on original song writing, but I still dispute that these bands' sound was influenced by Beatles, and in all y'all's posts nobody has yet to demonstrate anything to the contrary. Not even one band!

Have you ever attempted to slog through the veritable OCEAN of posthumous Beatles reading material documenting how each songwriter grew into an extreme, of sorts, and how the "Lennon & McCartney" song credits were largely the result of an early desire to distribute credit equally between the two chief songwriters? Well, by the end of it, Lennon was so disgusted with McCartney's pop gloss that he dissed him publicly in his solo albums (which sold downright poorly compared to McCartney's, despite his number of singles that became notable hits.

In several interviews across the 1970s both John and Yoko babble on about their goals for commercial success. Did they cater to a corporate image of themselves? No. Did it stop them from going more experimental on some records? Hardly. However, John was ALWAYS very attentive to his album sales, his chart positions, and his critical acclaim. You can read all the books you want and it won't hardly change that reality. Yoko even mentioned about how pissed off John was that his last record wasn't that commercially successful initially, and she lamented that it was only his death that catapulted it to number one on the charts.

Lennon hated commercialism by the time the Beatles reached their commercial peak in the late '60s. By the 70's, he was releasing work that would have no place on any Beatles album (Imagine and Plastic Ono Band actually remind me a lot of Nirvana. Especially the vocals, and the grit and sincerity of the delivery.

He still cared about his sales and acclaim, even if he was sort of nonchalant about it. He often felt dissed and that Yoko especially was dissed when people in the mainstream didn't particularly dig their records.

Lennon wanted fame at first, but I honestly don't think he gave a dick whether his albums sold by the time he was solo. Some of his shit is just painful to listen to. But Plastic Ono Band is as gritty as a Stooges album.

I didn't say fame, I said commercial success. I wasn't trying accuse John Lennon of being a fashion whore, rather, just mentioning that he wasn't exactly aloof from record sales, chart positions, and what rock critics and writers had to say about his records. BY THE WAY IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT I AM QUITE FOND OF 1970S JOHN LENNON, so please don't naively misinterpret the situation so as to think that I don't dig it, or that I don't know what he was about in that time period, 1970s Lennon was the John I liked the most, the revealing, crass yet funny, intellectual, honest, creative, and especially fun but sometimes abrasive person that he was. John shove the fame up its own ass, but it doesn't mean he stopped caring again about his sales, chart position, and critical acclaim. I just never see Kurt focusing on ANY of that. Also, Kurt wasn't as serious an artist as John was, clearly Kurt was more having fun and John was focusing more on his passions as an artist. In this regard they have very little in common.

By the way, you know that we can have a decent conversation about music without all of y'all throwing out ad hominem insults about my intelligence about music, we can discuss the issues without it having to be personal. I know this comes as a shock to SYG, but its not always personal if we have a difference of opinion about things.