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My dad doesn't like Paul McCartney :(

#22
I'm always surprised to hear that anyone could not like The Beatles cos to me, they had it all, but to each their own.

I got sucked into jazz and fusion-y stuff as a young upstart drummer and went thru a long phase where I didn't see anything special about them either, despite a childhood filled with all things Beatles and had full-blown Beatle-mania by 4th grade.

But honestly, I got turned off of jazz pretty bad in high school and even moreso in college by the intolerant purists who sorta ruined it for me with their uber-acedemic high-brow dogma, so it doesn't surprise me that the jazz cats are so dismissive of them. But what *does* surprise me is them thinking they can do the Beatles better than the Beatles simply by taking their compositions and jazzing them up.

I mean, if you guys are such badass players, why are you doing covers and standards? Why not write your own material?

Like this cat:


C'mon dude, you're the greatest jazz drummer the planet will ever know with the tightest band money could buy and you couldn't be bothered to write your own hits? You're just gonna cover the hits of a band you find so contemptuous?

Man, I just don't get that.

The Beatles may not have been virtuoso players, but recognize musical talent (and genius) where it exists, even if it ain't yer cuppa tea.

I'm not hating on jazz despite my negative experiences with some of its adherents, and Jaco still rules my little corner of the bass world.

Metal is another genre in a bubble where too much inbreeding clouds the lenses thru which it sees the rest of the world, tho even there, I can't seem to get enough Meshuggah or Melvins ...

But what do I know - I've never liked Zeppelin. lol
 
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#24
Sixgunn said:
Oh please!! Sure they might have stole stuff but who hasn't really? They also went on to produce some of the most innovative and unique music the rock world has ever heard.
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It is one thing to cover someones song and give them credit for it.
It is another to rip off old Bluesman and make them sue them to get what was rightfully theirs.
Howlin' Wolf,Jake Holmes and Robert Johnson were all ripped off by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

The Stones covered a lot of American blues and always gave credit to the people that wrote and performed them.
 
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#27
29A said:
I'm always surprised to hear that anyone could not like The Beatles cos to me, they had it all, but to each their own.

I got sucked into jazz and fusion-y stuff as a young upstart drummer and went thru a long phase where I didn't see anything special about them either, despite a childhood filled with all things Beatles and had full-blown Beatle-mania by 4th grade.

But honestly, I got turned off of jazz pretty bad in high school and even moreso in college by the intolerant purists who sorta ruined it for me with their uber-acedemic high-brow dogma, so it doesn't surprise me that the jazz cats are so dismissive of them. But what *does* surprise me is them thinking they can do the Beatles better than the Beatles simply by taking their compositions and jazzing them up.

I mean, if you guys are such badass players, why are you doing covers and standards? Why not write your own material?

Like this cat:


C'mon dude, you're the greatest jazz drummer the planet will ever know with the tightest band money could buy and you can't be bothered to write your own hits? You're just gonna cover the hits of a band you find so contemptuous?

Man, I just don't get that.

The Beatles may not have been virtuoso players, but recognize musical talent (and genius) where it exists, even if it ain't yer cuppa tea.
Click to expand...
Yeah, ol' Buddy had a more epic guitar face than most guitarists!!
 
#28
By the way, the Beatles certainly did not need back room writers. You can tell the WHY of why their songs had all that sophistication. It was all accidental. They were idiot savants; people who just had a ton of natural talent, and no training. Did they sometimes come up against a problem, and ask Mr. Music, George Martin how to resolve something? MAYBE. PROBABLY.

I've never known of a songwriter like John Lennon, who switches time signature constantly, because he simply pays no attention whatsoever to structure of rhythm. He just writes what he feels, and it results in amazing stuff.

If you go to sites where proper music people analyze Beatles songs, it's beyond fascinating. The scholars can't figure them out, but every stoned kid for sixty years did so easily. The Beatles all had a natural ability to groove, and that's why they're so popular, and that's why they were attracted to each other, musically speaking.

They really were an amazing phenomenon, whether you like them or not.

Personally, I always DID, but I like the Stones, Zeppelin, the Who, Pink Floyd, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and a lot of other bands of their era/genre/ilk just as much. These are all very accessible bands, who tried to do more than just a 4/4 time 3 minute pop song, and yet wrote a very good 4/4 time 3 minute pop song.
 
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#31
hdracer said:
It is one thing to cover someones song and give them credit for it.
It is another to rip off old Bluesman and make them sue them to get what was rightfully theirs.
Howlin' Wolf,Jake Holmes and Robert Johnson were all ripped off by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

The Stones covered a lot of American blues and always gave credit to the people that wrote and performed them.
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I definitely won't make excuses for them. The music industry has always been rife with scumbags.
 
#33
hdracer said:
It is one thing to cover someones song and give them credit for it.
It is another to rip off old Bluesman and make them sue them to get what was rightfully theirs.
Howlin' Wolf,Jake Holmes and Robert Johnson were all ripped off by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

The Stones covered a lot of American blues and always gave credit to the people that wrote and performed them.
Click to expand...

I've amended my thoughts on this to say they were mostly ripped off by Robert Plant.

Jimmy Page listened to classic blues songs; liked melodies and ideas he heard, and he completely changed it all around, and wrote original riffs and grooves based on those songs. Had Robert Plant changed the lyrics, no one could have sued them for any of it.

Go back and listen to the worst offenders, and you'll soon see what I mean.

Food for thought.
 
#34
I like both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but I've never liked Zepplin, personally, which is sort of a surprise considering I'm a big classic rock and metal fan. I can acknowledge they've made many contributions to music, but if one of their songs comes on the radio, I'm changing stations. I think it's mostly because I don't like Robert Plant's vocal style (and I've heard Stairway to Heaven waaaaaay too many times... but then again, who hasn't?)
 
#35
Geekydad said:
I like both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but I've never liked Zepplin, personally, which is sort of a surprise considering I'm a big classic rock and metal fan. I can acknowledge they've made many contributions to music, but if one of their songs comes on the radio, I'm changing stations. I think it's mostly because I don't like Robert Plant's vocal style (and I've heard Stairway to Heaven waaaaaay too many times... but then again, who hasn't?)
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I'm going to have to check out this "Stairway to Heaven." Sounds promising. Religious song?
 
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#36
A Mirror Somewhere said:
He's a jazz guy (pro dummer) and he doesn't like him or the Beatles at all. Always discredits their efforts as derivative of Motown, says they had ghost writers, and session guys playing their parts, and so on.
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He is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts and these 'facts' are incorrect, although I believe that there were occasions that sessions guys played parts. If he knew any actual facts about the Beatles, instead of making up his own, he would know that early Beatles owed much more to Rockabilly that to Motown.
 
#37
mellowinman said:
I've amended my thoughts on this to say they were mostly ripped off by Robert Plant.

Jimmy Page listened to classic blues songs; liked melodies and ideas he heard, and he completely changed it all around, and wrote original riffs and grooves based on those songs. Had Robert Plant changed the lyrics, no one could have sued them for any of it.

Go back and listen to the worst offenders, and you'll soon see what I mean.

Food for thought.
Click to expand...
Their song “Dazed and Confused” was lifted from a 1967 song of the same name by a little known artist called Jake Holmes. Holmes opened for the Yardbirds — Page’s group before Zepp- in 1967 in Greenwich Village. Two years later, the new Zeppelin released their “Dazed and Confused.” Holmes had to sue them.
 
#39
I never cared for the Beatles contemporaneously. I was into Zep, Deep Purple, Sabbath, Floyd. I'm mid fifties, and only learned to play the bass, my first instrument, four years ago. My instructor was a high school kid in my neighborhood. He taught me to play using Beatles. It was then that I gave then a serious look, and now I do recognize and respect their work. I now have about fourty Beatles songs in my music collection, many are not their big pop hits.
 

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