The Beatles

[Si Hunt]

I'm not suggesting he was the best, but he was up there. He was in The Beatles for crying out loud.

IMO there's nothing in my opinion that marks Ringo's drumming as being any better than Zac Hansons. But there you go - I expect there'll be outrage at that - how can Hanson be compared to the Beatles? But the Beatles seem to attract some form of... I don't know if snobbery is the right word, but perhaps INDIGNATION when you dare compare anyone else to them. When it comes down to it, they are just a band that ran for ten years and wrote a lot of incredibly successful songs. Why shouldn't one prefer a modern day band? And why should Ringo's drumming be elevated to god-like status just because he was in the hallowed Beatles?

That got me thinking this morning that the Beatles were, in a sense, very lucky. The music industry today is a very different beast, and I don't think any group today could physically get to the same position of opportunity, even if they were as good as the Beatles. Back in the day you could record three albums a year, as well as being inclined to self-moderate your excesses due to the running length of vinyl, and so the Beatles amassed a lot of radio-friendly tunes in a short space of time. By contrast, todays bands are forced to tour the same 14 songs for two years before starting work on something new. It's hard to see how a modern day band with the songwriting talent of the Beatles could ever have the time and space to rival their back catalogue.

I was inspired by this thread to whack on "Rubber Soul" this morning but I'm afraid I got cross with it - I don't know if I wasn't in the mood, but the music just wasn't in tune with the music I've grown to love. It's like if someone sang a jolly little tune to you with a fantastic central hook. You like it. They then do it again twelve times and it just becomes tiresome. There's no disputing the songwriting craft at work, but that to me isn't enough. Perhaps our appeciation of music today is a more in-depth pursuit, or maybe we've just been conditioned to listen to it in a different way. But I look for something a bit different, rather than twelve jangly singalong tunes which is what you seem to get on most Beatles albums. Things like beautiful sections of instrumentation, a harmonica or strings gently ebbing away in the background, a deep lyrical subject matter, some very contrasting song styles or tones accross an album... no doubt I'll get presented with examples of all of those things in "Beatles" songs now, but I didn't find them on "Rubber Soul" I'm afraid, or even on "Revolver" which I tried afterwards and which I thought I liked.

To be honest, and I hope no amount of musical one-up-manship can prevent my opinion from being ridiculed, I listened to Hanson's "This Time Around" album through twice yesterday, and enjoyed it ten times as much!

Si.

[Wayne]

IMO there's nothing in my opinion that marks Ringo's drumming as being any better than Zac Hansons. But there you go - I expect there'll be outrage at that - how can Hanson be compared to the Beatles? But the Beatles seem to attract some form of... I don't know if snobbery is the right word, but perhaps INDIGNATION when you dare compare anyone else to them. When it comes down to it, they are just a band that ran for ten years and wrote a lot of incredibly successful songs. Why shouldn't one prefer a modern day band? And why should Ringo's drumming be elevated to god-like status just because he was in the hallowed Beatles?

To be honest, and I hope no amount of musical one-up-manship can prevent my opinion from being ridiculed, I listened to Hanson's "This Time Around" album through twice yesterday, and enjoyed it ten times as much!

Si.

FWIW Si, I've not really heard a deal of Hanson beyond a few snippets, but i think you're more than likely right. As a drummer, Ringo was adequate at best. IMO, it could've been anyone who was the drummer in the Beatles, but it just happened to be Ringo. Just because he was the drummer in The Beatles doesn't mean he was anything special. In fact as individual intrumentalists, none of them were anything special. Lennon was a strummer who had a pretty good voice, Harrison (by his own admission, humble man that he was) was nothing special at all on lead guitar, he simply copied Rockabilly guitarists Carl Perkins & Scotty Moore. McCartney was a good bass player though. He moves around a fair bit. The Beatles forte was really songwriting though, rather than being amazing on their instruments.
No musical one upmanship or snobbery. I think you're right. Ringo was no god of drumming!

[Si Hunt]

I think Hanson are a good example, because they're a group most people will scoff at through ignorance of anything else they've written in the last nine years (hey, almost the same career span as the Beatles!) apart from one song they wrote when teenagers. But when it comes down to it, they are a band, they write everything, they play umpteen instruments each, where's the difference?

I think your point about the songwriting is a good one, as the Beatles were a songwriting 'super group' and score here - like Queen, they could eventually turn in four (well, three in the Beatles case) directions for songs, and thus had a very strong songwriting arsenal. Like Hanson too, who all write (music AND lyrics).

Si.

[Dave Lewis]

By contrast, todays bands are forced to tour the same 14 songs for two years before starting work on something new.

I don't think today's bands are necessarily forced to tour the same album for as long as they do by anything other than the need to get some cash in the register. If they're an upcoming band on their first album, they need to do it to actually earn some money, and if they're an established band, they want to do it to earn some more money. Plus, it's all about keeping your profile up - if you're sat at home writing the next Eleanor Rigby, Hey Jude, or Where's The Love, you're not in the NME or performing on Gonzo or whatever.

It's hard to see how a modern day band with the songwriting talent of the Beatles could ever have the time and space to rival their back catalogue.

The latter day Beatles stuff, certainly. When you've got unlimited time and rehearsal space in a recording studio, you can mess around with songs forever. Lennon couldn't have come up with the finished version of Strawberry Fields Forever when the Beatles were playing in Hamburg in 1960.

Still, it's all subjective, innit? My version of the Beatles "1" album on the first page of this thread is THE BEST BEATLES ALBUM IN THE WORLD EVER. It is.

[Si Hunt]

I don't think today's bands are necessarily forced to tour the same album for as long as they do by anything other than the need to get some cash in the register.

It's difficult. I remember when The Darkness' were clamouring to make their 2nd album while watching their moment come, pass by and vanish up the shitter. But they were stuck with tour commitments and promotion and just didn't make it in time.

I suppose when a band is wealthy enough to afford not to tour all the time, they don't WANT to be spending every month in the studio anyway. It's a Catch 22 - when you can afford not to, you won't want to anyway.

Mind you, back then an album was 30 minutes of music. Much more is expected these days for a punter to spend 12. The best you can hope is a Madonna style of workload, i.e an album every other year.

Si.

[Milky Tears]

Si Hunt's love of Hanson has destroyed this thread for me.

[Si Hunt]

Quiet you.

Si.

[Carol Baynes]

You see Ringo never seemed to just count the bars and do the necessary. He's very much a part of those songs and it never sounds like 'drumming by numbers'. I'm just very concious that people seem quite keen to praise the other three (rightly so) and then add the sniggering addition that the drummer was somehow crap. Which he wasn't. I know neither Si or Wayne are saying that, but I'd personally like his role in The Beatles to be the first thing we consider commenting on; not 'Thomas the tank engine' or whatever (which was great by the way )
My point about him "being in the Beatles for crying out loud", is that a band that good couldn't really do it all with a crap drummer, or at least one not in tune with the other three musicians. That's why Pete Best had to go.

It's pretty pointless comparing The Beatles to modern bands I think. They happened at a certain time when things were in place to go a bit crazy....which they did. It was a time of seismic shifts in culture, wasn't it? George Harrison once commented that the band were an excuse for people to go crazy, because that's what those times were asking for- an excuse for it. In the process The Beatles actually surpassed their original 'teenybopper' stage and pushed a few musical boundaries, helped by the fact that they existed in a time that was the first to allow it to happen. Through all that they became national institutions of a kind, and still are. It's just a bloody shame that two of them left us so relatively young, although at least George had a good 30 years after the madness.

For the likes of Hanson (Si's choice of example) to exist The Beatles and their contemporaries had to exist and do what they did way back when. Yes, it does mean they're going to get revered a little too much, but they did soundtrack people's lives in a way modern bands possibly do not. Shit, they probably changed a few lives too. They were (and are) a global phenomenon that reached people in a way new bands probably will never be able to because it's all been done before. So yes, they were incredibly lucky- in the right time and the right place. But thank our lucky stars they were, because they were better than just being a '60s 'phenomenon'. In some ways they've transcended their decade in a way many were unable to.

[Captain Tancredi]

Is part of the thing with Ringo that his style then became a standard for others- in much the same way as every League One forward tries to pull off a Cruyff turn several times a game? I'd imagine that drumming is one of the least creative areas of performance in that it's mainly concerned with rhythm and volume and in the course of 30-40 years the skill level of the average drummer would catch up.

One of the things I've been trying to do in the way I look at albums is delibarately to look at them in isolation rather than in context- in part because I'm usually too far the other way towards context, but also because the music that survives will be the stuff that works outside its original era and setting- that somebody on the other side of the world can listen to on their MP3 player, experience in a setting that its creators couldn't imagine and still get something out of it.

[Milky Tears]

Harry Judd from McFly p*sses all over Ringo Starr. He's the king of basic drumming... well buffer and more gorg as well.

[Carol Baynes]

I was inspired by this thread to whack on "Rubber Soul" this morning but I'm afraid I got cross with it - I don't know if I wasn't in the mood, but the music just wasn't in tune with the music I've grown to love. It's like if someone sang a jolly little tune to you with a fantastic central hook. You like it. They then do it again twelve times and it just becomes tiresome. There's no disputing the songwriting craft at work, but that to me isn't enough. Perhaps our appeciation of music today is a more in-depth pursuit, or maybe we've just been conditioned to listen to it in a different way. But I look for something a bit different, rather than twelve jangly singalong tunes which is what you seem to get on most Beatles albums. Things like beautiful sections of instrumentation, a harmonica or strings gently ebbing away in the background, a deep lyrical subject matter, some very contrasting song styles or tones accross an album... no doubt I'll get presented with examples of all of those things in "Beatles" songs now, but I didn't find them on "Rubber Soul" I'm afraid, or even on "Revolver" which I tried afterwards and which I thought I liked.

I'm not insulting Si here but I do think that's rubbish. Suggesting there's nothing more to The Beatles than jingly jangly singalong tunes is like saying there's nothing more to Dr. Who than Daleks, long corridors and screaming girls. There's more deep lyrical subject matter with The Beatles than a lot of modern bands, just as there are modern bands who go even...er...deeper. I'm sure you mustn't own "The Beatles" (white album) which is as far from "Please, please me" as you can get without being a different band....and I really don't think our appeciation of music today is a more "in-depth pursuit" at all; no more than it ever was. Technology has changed, that's all.

I don't know; it's like we're hearing different bands (or more to the point, hearing them in different ways).

[Dave Lewis]

Suggesting there's nothing more to The Beatles than jingly jangly singalong tunes is like saying there's nothing more to Dr. Who than Daleks, long corridors and screaming girls.

I've just watched every single episode back to back and have failed to find anything other than Daleks, long corridors, and screaming girls. Apart from some subtexts about bottoms, front bottoms, and Frank Sidebottom. Carol has destroyed the magic of Doctor Who for me forever.

Plus, if you play Revolution 9 backwards, you clearly hear John Lennon say: "F***ing hell, it's a load of f***ing dick, that Blake's Seven. Terry Nation is a f***ing Walrus", to which a clearly distressed George Martin replies, "A noxious brew. Personally I rather like it, you smacked up old fanny."

If you play it forwards, it's a load of old rubbish.

[Carol Baynes]

Not as good as Black Dalek singing in the dead of night!

[Captain Tancredi]

I have a horrible feeling that Carol may have started something here...

...Fixing a Hole (Where The Cybermen Get In And Take Over The Moonbase)
Script Doctor Robert (mid-1970s cover, obviously)
and of course Sergeant Benton's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

[Carol Baynes]

No more. Please (please me).

Just watched the lasttwo episodes of "The '60s- the Beatles decade" on whatever history cabel channel it was on. Bernard Hill narrated it.

Very good stuff about the social and cultural changes of the time, which The Beatles personified to some extent. There was some very perceptive comment from those in the know. I particularly agree with the idea that the Beatles created a style blueprint (which is visual as well as aural).
Someone mentioned (forgotten which luminary said it) tha tthe ultimate legacy of the sixties might be a totaltarian society. The thinking being that the more freedom you give people, the more you'll leventually have to tell people hwta to do...something like that anyway,

Taking the discussion down another avenue though, why has the Beatles catalogue not been reissued and digitally remastered since 1987?! These albums deserve better sleevenotes and packaging surely, especially considering that the bog standard versions we have now cost around 15 each (until recently).
And! When is "Help!" going to get an outing on DVD in this country? ANy chances?

Biggest band in the world and it gets the shoddiest treatment in many ways. Don't understand it.

[Dave Tudor]

Going back to the Ringo thing, speaking as a drummer myself, I have to say that he was excellent, perfect, even. I pretty much learned how to play the drums by listening to the drum parts on The Beatles' records. He may not have been too flashy, but he was so precise, there is barely a misplaced beat on any of their singles or albums. And, having said that, some of the apparently 'simple' fills, even on early-to-mid recordings, are anything but: listen to the rolls on 'Ticket To Ride', for example.

I remember a documentary about 'Sgt. Pepper' from about ten years ago or so, which featured Phil Collins talking about Ringo's drumming on the album, in particular, on 'A Day In The Life'. He was saying how the little bursts of drums in the verses are just timed so right, not too little and not too much, and how it marked out a really good drummer. He's dead right, too: Ringo might not have been the most spectacular of drummers compared to the John Bonhams and Keith Moons and Neil Pearts of this world (and, it has to be said, the drum solo on The End' is possibly the least adventurous in all of rock and pop), but his timing was precision perfect. It's a cliche, but he, lik emany other drummers, was the glue which held together this tightest, most cohesive of musical units together. Any one looking to take up the instrument today could do no better than follow his example.

I will post further thoughts on this thread over the next few days.

[Carol Baynes]

Dave, as a drummer you put it far better than I could. Thank you!

[Wayne]

there is barely a misplaced beat on any of their singles or albums.

What you expect me to be impressed by that? It's like me praising Lennon for not getting the chords wrong. Band's generally don't have drummers that can't do this most basic things that are expected of a drummer.
Sorry mate, i'm not convinced. Ringo was adequate, but Phil Collins was bum licking!

[Carol Baynes]

Who was it who said that most drummers would have trouble replecating what Ringo did on "Sgt. Pepper"??

Saying that, Lennon did say that Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles!

[Dave Tudor]

What you expect me to be impressed by that? It's like me praising Lennon for not getting the chords wrong. Band's generally don't have drummers that can't do the most basic things that are expected of a drummer.

Whereas guitarists can get away with anything.

[Wayne]

Who was it who said that most drummers would have trouble replecating what Ringo did on "Sgt. Pepper"??

Was it Phil Collins? If so, see my edit.

[Dave Tudor]

I don't think that I quoted Phil Collins as saying that Ringo's drumming could not be replicated, just that what he did was really good. OK, so the 'barely a misplaced beat' line might sound a bit dumb, but you know what I mean!

I think it's because we've been spoiled by the more flashy drummers since the days of The Beatles, that Ringo is underrated. As I said, he was never really spectacular, but he did what was expected of him, whether basic or more complex, and he did it perfectly. I reiterate what I said earlier, that Ringo's drumming is the best starting point for any new percussionist.

[Wayne]

I don't think that I quoted Phil Collins as saying that Ringo's drumming could not be replicated, just that what he did was really good. OK, so the 'barely a misplaced beat' line might sound a bit dumb, but you know what I mean!

I think it's because we've been spoiled by the more flashy drummers since the days of The Beatles, that Ringo is underrated. As I said, he was never really spectacular, but he did what was expected of him, whether basic or more complex, and he did it perfectly. I reiterate what I said earlier, that Ringo's drumming is the best starting point for any new percussionist.

Fair do's.

Whereas guitarists can get away with anything.

Depends if they're good enough to pull it off.

[Captain Tancredi]

Taking the discussion down another avenue though, why has the Beatles catalogue not been reissued and digitally remastered since 1987?! These albums deserve better sleevenotes and packaging surely, especially considering that the bog standard versions we have now cost around 15 each (until recently).

Because people (myself not included, I hasten to add) are still prepared to pay the 15?

[Carol Baynes]

Still doesn't tell me why they've not been re-issued, regardless of the price. That was actually my question- the fact they've generally been quite expensive is to be expected as EMI know we'll pay.