Are The Beatles important anymore?

An interesting question this. Yes, the Beatles have massively influenced pop/rock music in their time and ever since then. Oasis anyone?But are they important anymore? I would say yes in the same manner as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven remain important.

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Originally posted by Big Brother:

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Originally posted by Paul Gravett:
To return to Rasher's initial question: the influence of the Beatles on modern music. The single most persuasive case for this is the song Tomorrow Never Knows, the final track on Revolver.

It is unarguably the first first example of electronic music in pop/rock. That is a song based on electronic sound affects instead of real instruments.

In so doing it is the ancestor of all modern electronic music - ambient, techno, electronica, house, bands like Kraftwerk, etc. I


Paul

I'm sorry to barge in here, but the Beatles got their ideas for electronic sound from the german avant guard composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

In fact John and Yoko's Revoulution #9 from the White album was inspired by Stockhausen's Hymmen (1967).

Stockhausen can be seen as one of the famous "celebrities" on the jacket cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He is the one between Groucho, and Mae West !


Regards

BB

I didn't say they were the first to use electronic sound affects per se, I said they were the first to use them in a rock/pop context.

As for Telstar by the Tornadoes, it was an interesting oddity, a one-off, containing some strange sound affects yes, but its influence is not comparable to that of Tomorrow Never Knows.

Paul

quote:

Originally posted by Camlan:
OK

IMHO, the 4 great outstanding influences/impact on 'popular' music in the last 500 years:

Bach
Mozart
Beethoven
Lennon & McCartney

Agreed. This is a simple but overwhelming truth. Debating otherwise is silly to the point of being futile IMO.

ps - George Harrison wrote some jolly good songs too don't forget, so I would say The Beatles rather than just L&M.

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Originally posted by Tarquin Maynard-Portly:

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Originally posted by Diccus62:
"Free Nelson Mandela".

Diccus

I went to the Free Nelson Mandela gig at Wembley.

A real let down, I didn't get one.

I once went to a 'Free' gig and it wasn't. I also went to see the Fabulous Thunderbirds and they weren't.

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George Harrison wrote some jolly good songs too don't forget, so I would say The Beatles rather than just L&M.

Agreed. He may not have written as many - but he wrote two or three of their best.

Steve.

FWIW I just listened to 'Love' through on the Naim system. Twas like seeing my whole life in front of my eyes in 78 minutes. You may quibble with some of the mixes but as a whole it sounds astonishing. And they've had the sense to leave 'Day In the Life' and a few others more or less untouched. Put on 'I Am The Walrus' and it's like the first time you've ever heard it.

Okay, I admit to posing the original question tongue-in-cheek, but there is a valid question there, and I can certainly see Nigel's point even if I don't entirely agree with it. The Tomorrow Never Knows track is a good example; just because it might have been the first electronic track, it does not necessarily follow that it influenced anything after it. Evolution and influence are not the same thing, and that probably is the essence of my opening post.

So far there have been 37 reponses to your question, rasher. I think that answers the question...

JohanR

quote:

Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:
I can't think of a single piece of music that changed anything

I can.
Thinking about it, I can't think of a general argument to challenge that, so conclude that probably in most cases you are right, but not in the case of Jazz.
Jazz isn't about the entertainment industry like other forms of music, it's way deeper than that. To the John Coltrane's of this world it is the essence of who they are and their main form of expression and there will be an album by someone that will turn their world upside down. That to them is cultural change. Okay, it isn't for the guy in the chippie down the road, but it is for some people, and the war in Iraq isn't cultural change for the guy in the chippie down the road either, because his newspapers front page is only concerned with David Beckhams new handbag. I think we have to define what we mean by cultural change and who it applies to in each instance.
So I've now come full circle and believe that music does change things.

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You're right, it was Declan's dad (Ross McManus), though Declan wrote the tune.

However, I still think the Beatles were more influential.

Didn't sell as much lemonade though!

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Originally posted by Rasher:

quote:

Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:
I can't think of a single piece of music that changed anything

but not in the case of Jazz.

Music changing music? well OK but not to my mind significant in the grand scheme of things.

Music is important to me but I do not see it as significant beyond that. As I said before, music, and other "art" is a reflection of the times not a change agent.

Nigel,
Loads of specific examples have been given, and in some detail, of how music has been an agent of change, and all you can do is repeat the mantra that music is not an egent of change.

Perhaps you could show how the examples given (let alone any other instances) of music as agent of change have not actually been?

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Music is important to me but I do not see it as significant beyond that. As I said before, music, and other "art" is a reflection of the times not a change agent.

Music changes (influences) people.

And people change things.

You can't, of course, "prove" this. Nor point to specifics, but anything that is out there has the power to influence people.


Q: Is music dangerous ?

A: I think, yes !

(Polish Composer Krystov Penderecki, interviewed 1983)



Regards

BB

quote:

Originally posted by JWM:
Nigel,
Loads of specific examples have been given, and in some detail, of how music has been an agent of change, and all you can do is repeat the mantra that music is not an egent of change.

Forgive me, but I don't think I have seen "loads of examples". The success of Band Aid was about Saint Bob's drive and charisma and nothing to do with music imho.

Hi all


Music like any other Art form when its is executed with passion and intelligence it will reflect the artists intentions, and when those intentions are a different way of looking at the world they eventually have a cutural impact. Think of Art forms and Artists whose art was origianlly derided like Mozart, Picasso, Stockhausen and the Mordernists, Shakespear, The Original House Music pioneers, Hip Hop, Rock 'N' Roll, The Beatles and many other sixties artists plus many more I could mention (I include scientific pioneers as well). All these are things that have become mainstream and are examples of changing the way we as a culture think about the world we live in from highlighting social problems to freeing up all pretensions of oneself and are therefore culturally significant.

And in answer to the original question YES.


Dean

quote:

Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:

quote:

Originally posted by Nigel Cavendish:
I can't think of a single piece of music that changed anything

but not in the case of Jazz.

Music changing music? well OK but not to my mind significant in the grand scheme of things.

Music is important to me but I do not see it as significant beyond that. As I said before, music, and other "art" is a reflection of the times not a change agent.

Aha! So to be culturally significant something has to be a 'change agent'?

I agree with Big Brother about music profoundly influencing people. What music does is stimulate the emotions, and this has been enormously influential throughout history. Think wars and religion for two. And music has pervaded cultural life throughout recorded history (recorded in the sense of known...). Take it away and you lose one of the pillars of personal and social life worldwide. And you still think it's kind of a 'nice-to-have'? No wonder this country's education system is running its music departments into the ground. Still, never mind, there'll still be plenty of IT management training courses...

quote:

Originally posted by Whizzkid:
Hi all


Music like any other Art form when its is executed with passion and intelligence it will reflect the artists intentions, and when those intentions are a different way of looking at the world they eventually have a cutural impact. Think of Art forms and Artists whose art was origianlly derided like Mozart, Picasso, Stockhausen and the Mordernists, Shakespear, The Original House Music pioneers, Hip Hop, Rock 'N' Roll, The Beatles and many other sixties artists plus many more I could mention (I include scientific pioneers as well). All these are things that have become mainstream and are examples of changing the way we as a culture think about the world we live in from highlighting social problems to freeing up all pretensions of oneself and are therefore culturally significant.

And in answer to the original question YES.


Dean

Good post - but I do find Bill Shakespeare overrated, as to me all he did was string together a load of well known phrases and sayings and stick them in his plays.

As Nigel Blackwell once said:

if music be the food of love, are we the indigestion?

Well said Rupert

Over the ages Music and Song have been one of the most effective ways of passing on knowledge to the next generation and thus making us (now I say this with trepidation) wiser people. If this is not influential i don't know what is.

Be suspicious of any groups or individuals that feel that Music is bad and should be censored.

Dean

I don't really have an answer to the original question, but I love the Beatles' music to death; in fact I have this fear that when the Boomers and Gen X die off, the Beatles will slip out of society's consciousness. A shame, really, as their music is magical. But I do imagine some person in 2095 or whenever picking up a Beatles CD or LP in some thrift shop or rubbish tip, taking it home and putting it on their antique player (maybe they're a collector) and discovering the joy that is within the Beatles' music.

And yes, I bought Love yesterday!

Are they important?

Yes

Are they relevant?

No, not really.

This is all down to this rehash.....



If I put a load of Shakespeare's sentences in an order of my choosing then would that be a new play by the Bard...?
Of course not.

A ham and cheese omelette is the work of the person who cooked it. It still needs the input of a pig, a chicken and a cow, but it doesn't make it "their" creation.

The fab four did their bit, but that's in the history books now.

quote:

Are The Beatles important anymore?

I can only speak for myself and the answer is unreservedly yes.

In my opinion, the answer to the wider question is that in musical history, they will always vie for the top slot of artists from a list of 10 or 15 others.

Peter

I agre with you Mike, that the Beatle Were important, but are no longer relevant. Their influence, and yes there was influence (change under a different name Nigel)but that was then. There music is now no longer relevant as far as cultural influences go. Butr this does not mean that it is no longer entertaining!! For some it will still be the pinnacle of thier entertainment and should be left so.

As for Nigels opinion that art/music has no cultural influence with regards to change....thats like saying i'm don't get influenced by advertising. its completely preposterous....you are living in a vacuum then!

Ryan

For some technical musical reasons why the Beatles are still relevant and influential today, and especially to music, we would have done well to watch 20th Century Greats presented by the composer Howard Goodall.

QUOTE FROM THE SYNOPSIS :

"How the Fab Four rescued music

"When people look back in 200 years' time at Western culture, whose music will have survived from the 20th century? Who will be our equivalent of Bach and Beethoven, Verdi and Wagner? There are big classical names from the last 100 years, including Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Stockhausen, but, believes composer Howard Goodall, in dismantling the traditional keys and harmony, the building blocks of Western music, classical music lost touch with its audiences. 'The big story of 20th century music,' he says, 'is the way that classical and popular music collided with each other to create a new musical mainstream … In the 1960s, with classical music at its lowest ebb, the most important composers in the world were without doubt The Beatles.'"

Sadly, I didn't catch all of the programme, which was first shown in 2004.

James

quote:

Originally posted by ryan_d:

As for Nigels opinion that art/music has no cultural influence with regards to change....thats like saying i'm don't get influenced by advertising. its completely preposterous....you are living in a vacuum then!

Ryan

Vacuum? Nah, he's just plain thick.

i was trying to be diplomatic (for a change) Acad.

Ryan