by James Coarse
Sorry Hannah. The first person I ever heard say that they didn’t like The Beatles was also the person who encouraged me to start drinking miller high life when I started drinking for the first time during the summer before my 18th. A time when some of the people I see the most are more aptly described as drinking buddies or gang members or fellows and the people I say I love you most to are almost inexplicably out of physical reach for months and months at a time. Had a girlfriend (a term which seems dated at this point – a time when lovers are most aptly described in that vague way so as to convey the vague lines within which we love each other).
Had an older sister who took our cash in exchange for an 18 pack of miller high life bottles & two forty ounce bottles of miller high life with which we played kings in my bedroom at my mom’s house. This stuck with me most because even as a green drinker with no useful conception of a liquor store layout I couldn’t & can’t answer the question proposed by the forty ounce bottles. Was 18 so clearly not enough? 30 far too many? An odd credit minimum or the desire to use exact change paired with a refusal to pocket our extra dough? When he would say “ahh they suck” with a smile and a pull on whichever freshly opened can of miller high life he was directing over the years before a brush with forces beyond our immediate control led to him switching to PBR, my reacting progressed from one of surprise and indignation at the idea that anyone could be so blasphemous. Never conventionally religious & always argumentative I would attempt to defend the kingdom of rock & roll as my rigor would allow even though he was already bent over our particle board based pool table explaining that if the rack was good it was tight and a decent break would leave the 8 ball stationary. My uncle in later years would impress with mostly failed attempts to crack & send the 8 ball into a pocket
ending the game & either way it just meant one of us would have to rerack because when you try
to shoot so that the 8 ball goes in on the break you have to shoot at an odd angle and with what
turns out more often than not to be too much authority giving flight to objects that really shouldn’t
have the ability of anything like a bird or a human or certain fish & squirrels & bats.
Sometime later I started trying on his hat, just like I adopted his choice of beer – of course in situations absent from him and his superior drinking, poolplaying, joketelling self – once most
recently when I found myself almost kicked out of a bed I really wanted to be in by the person I
wanted to be in it with because I tried to fork over some half assed shit with a comparable grin that
probably came across as comparable attempt at ftw hepness which it probably was at the time & was quickly admonished with ice and fire. The nit & grit of it I have come to realize has nothing to
do with John’s abusive tendencies or Ringo being “not even the best drummer in the Beatles” or their (personally) irrelevant boymeetsgirlsboywantstofuckgirlditcheshimhethreatenstoputherintheground songs or their songs about drugs or really any of their songs or really anything at all that the Beatles did or didn’t do. It’s not about them anymore.
My father was the president of the motorcycle club at Amherst College & said there was a day when you had to choose between the Beatles and the Stones and that the good kids chose the Beatles (which right now is striking me as odd if only because in 1965 they looked almost the same, but maybe people in those days chose their favorite bands for different reasons) but that these days it doesn’t seem like such an important choice – not like sox v yanks (my words not his) – & so we can like both. The problem is that I don’t like the Beatles, or, to be more specific I don’t want to listen to them pretty much ever and usually will change the radio station when their music comes on. Here’s the crux
(ready? or are you already so engrossed that “ready” doesn’t apply?):
The Beatles were way too influential for any of our personal or collective goods.
So many songs and artists since them have been so influenced by them I could practically say that I’ve heard every Beatles song more often than the song has literally ever been played. And I mean literally in the old sense not the sense that is literally the opposite of the old sense which is so much more common these days I literally will kill myself in the new sense.
The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as “the greatest or most significant or most influential” rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worthy of being saved.
In a sense, the Beatles are emblematic of the status of rock criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena (be it grunge or U2) and too little to the merits of real musicians. If somebody composes the most divine music but no major label picks him up and sells him around the world, a lot of rock critics will ignore him. If a major label picks up a musician who is as stereotyped as can be but launches her or him worldwide, your average critic will waste rivers of ink on her or him. This is the sad status of rock criticism: rock critics are basically publicists working for major labels, distributors and record stores. They simply highlight what product the music business wants to make money from.
Hopefully, one not-too-distant day, there will be a clear demarcation between a great musician like Tim Buckley, who never sold much, and commercial products like the Beatles. At such a time, rock critics will study their rock history and understand which artists accomplished which musical feat, and which simply exploited it commercially.
Beatles’ “Aryan” music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll. It replaced syncopated African rhythm with linear Western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.
Contemporary musicians never spoke highly of the Beatles, and for good reason. They could never figure out why the Beatles’ songs should be regarded more highly than their own. They knew that the Beatles were simply lucky to become a folk phenomenon (thanks to “Beatlemania”, which had nothing to do with their musical merits). That phenomenon kept alive interest in their (mediocre) musical endeavours to this day. Nothing else grants the Beatles more attention than, say, the Kinks or the Rolling Stones. There was nothing intrinsically better in the Beatles’ music. Ray Davies of the Kinks was certainly a far better songwriter than Lennon & McCartney. The Stones were certainly much more skilled musicians than the ‘Fab Four’. And Pete Townshend was a far more accomplished composer, capable of entire operas such as “Tommy” and “Quadrophenia”; not to mention the far greater British musicians who followed them in subsequent decades or the US musicians themselves who initially spearheaded what the Beatles merely later repackaged to the masses.
The Beatles sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented “Beatlemania” in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time reading these pages about such a trivial band.
While I appreciate an aberrant opinion, one that goes against the grain, as in most articulated rants (in both the original article and its the lengthy response) the critique occasionally goes “a bit too far”. But far be it from me to be required to jump to the defense of The Beatles when their mass appeal, as indicated, already tips the balance and the vehemence of both opinions about the boys’ suckiness should leave me to leave well enough alone.
But the thesis, particularly in the comment, that selling a large quantity of product is all the fab four really accomplished and their talent was far surpassed by other musicians of that time seems myopic. It was The Beatles’ shift from teen idol to adult freaks that had others of their ilk reading between the lines and being encouraged to further their own freaky pursuits. Clearly Jimi Hendrix was paying attention and many of the folkies of the 1960s (people like Bob Dylan) came back into the Rock n Roll fold after hearing ditties like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”. Can you believe that?
But . . . OK, OK, I get it. You don’t like The Beatles, that’s a matter of “taste”, but it’s probably advisable to not to throw low blows in the pursuit of your opinion such as “The Beatles’ ‘Aryan’ music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll. It replaced syncopated African rhythm with linear Western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.” Wow, “lusty negro attitudes” in itself sounds slighty suspect. Putting aside the comment’s nod to stereotype, let’s ask why Wilson Pickett covered “Hey Jude” or how lusty a title like “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” really is?
Let me conclude by saying that I am not the type who only pays attention to the surfaces of pop music. I can’t stand U2 but I am also not a big admirer of The Who, I dig The Beatles but most especially Miles Davis and more recently I came under the spell of Madlib. I believe the best musicians, regardless of their technical skills, keep their ears and their hearts open to the multiple possibilities and arrangements of sound, but if you can’t stand what I adore (or vis versa) so be it, but maybe one day, under the right circumstances one of the other of us, after the needle has been dropped on the record, will declare, “Oh! Now I get it!”
Mister Coarse, a very interesting perspective. I love your writing style, guy.