THE BEATLES!

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Hi!! ! is anyone else a Beatles fan??? I JUST LOVE THEM

Hi Pinkaspie5 and welcome to WrongPlanet!
My three older sisters were all huge fans of the Beatles, so I was exposed to their music from an early age. As a teenager, I bought several of their albums and tripped on the lyrics, pretty harmonies and cool sounds. The lads from Liverpool were charming and witty characters. As musicians they weren't among the world's best. Even so, they didn't stay stuck in one style but experimented and evolved over time.

As I understand it, the Beatles helped break ground for long hair on males, for musical groups to perform their own songs instead of mainly playing songs written by other people, and for innovative techniques in the recording studio. They also helped popularize eastern philosophies, even though they ended up disappointed in their guru being only human after all.

All in all, I think as musicians they are tremendously overrated by many people, but as a pop phenomenon they are unequaled to this day. Their first visit to America was soon after the Kennedy assassination, so Americans were looking for some distraction. That may have something to do with how wildly popular they became in this country, but there seems to have been some magic going on somehow for them to be as insanely popular as they became worldwide.

I particularly like their 1965 song Help! John Lennon said it was one of his two favorite songs he wrote while with the Beatles (the other was Strawberry Fields). The other Beatles liked this song too and were at the top of their game when they recorded it nearly 46 years ago this month. Help! fascinates me for some reason, and it is one of the few songs written by others that I play on my guitar. I have played along to it many thousands of times the past five or six years (not exaggerating either). There is a YouTube video from December 2009 showing how I played it then. I play and especially sing it much better now and need to re-record and post a newer cover version.

I have yo disagree with you on the fact that they are highly overrated.. They are/were SO TALENTED.. I cant think of a single person who has never heard of them.. Many of their songs were on billboard charts for weeks. In fact they are SO great, that young people today still listen to them.. I can surely say that they will be heard by many generations to come. Im going to see Paul McCartney on May 9! Im so excited! My favorite song is tomorrow never knows.. or maybe happiness is a warm gun!! I know every single song.. I just love them

sorry about the typos.. I'm using my ipad..

You know, today in 1969 John Lennon recorded Give Peace a chance, it was his first single and I would love to see a video of you playing a Beatles record!! I play the piano, maybe we could play Beatles songs together.. jk!

As the French say, à chacun son goût (each to their own taste), or the Latin De gustibus non est disputandum (there's no arguing about tastes).

I'm not saying The Beatles aren't talented. Obviously they have something going on, some combination of their looks, personality, musical ability and songwriting skills. However, as musicians they really aren't that great. What I mean is that in terms of being virtuosos on their respective instruments, there are dozens or hundreds of lesser-known people who are or were better at playing their respective instruments than the Beatles were. Ringo isn't that great a drummer. George had a great style but wasn't a spectacular lead guitarist. John had good chops but wasn't the best rhythm guitarist, and Paul isn't the world's greatest bass player although he is better at his instrument than most of the other Beatles were at theirs. That said, they played well together, better than most musical groups ever had.

John and Paul are one of history's greatest songwriting teams, and George may have had more input into the finished form of many Beatles songs (even those by Lennon and McCartney) than he is generally given credit for. Ringo could lay down a solid beat which is why they asked him to join. I'm not putting the Beatles down by saying that as musicians there were and are many more people who can play their instruments better than any of the Beatles could. Like I said, there is something magical about the whole Beatles story, but they are far from being the world's best musicians in terms of how well they could play their instruments. They may be the world's best ever musicians in terms of how popular they were, but that is something different than musical ability.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 08 Apr 2011, 1:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Oh I see what you mean.. I tend to take things literally... and I have to agree with you on that! haha.. and you have to give a little credit to drugs too.. They get by with a little help from their friends! Have you ever seen one of their movies?

Amazingly enough, I have not yet seen Let it Be. It showed the Beatles in the process of breaking up though, and would be depressing for that reason. A couple years ago a "naked" version of Let it Be album was released that doesn't have all the strings and such added by the producer Phil Spector. I haven't heard that yet either, but would like to someday as that would be closer to the sound that the Beatles intended for those songs.

I enjoyed A Hard Day's Night. It captures the craziness of Beatlemania quite well. But I enjoy their second movie Help! much more. There are so many sight gags and jokes in this movie, even though the Beatles were all stoned out of their minds on pot when they were filming it. That movie inspired the Americans to come up with the Monkees TV show that resembled the silliness of that movie in many ways.

Magical Mystery Tour was weird. I didn't really like it that much, even though I love the songs.

I enjoy Yellow Submarine too. Did you know that none of the speaking parts were done by actual Beatles, except for that little live segment at the end of the movie where Ringo has an "ole in his pocket? They hired actors to do the voices of the Beatles cartoon characters. The songs of course have the real Beatles singing, but the spoken parts were not done by the Beatles. That shocked me when I heard it. It's still a great movie.

You are so lucky to get to see Macca play. I have never seen him or any other Beatles in person yet.

I'd love to jam with you. I live in Oregon, west coast USA.

Here is the YouTube video I mentioned. Like I said, I play and sing it MUCH better now than when this was recorded in December 2009. Just this past week I found that by using alternate picking I could play George's spiraling arpeggio much more consistently spaced than with all downstrokes which is the way I'd played it thousands of times the past few years. Nowadays I also play the verses more like the way John played it, especially the third verse, than what you will hear in the following video. I play both George's lead parts and John's rhythm parts.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x31RbJ4pr3E[/youtube]

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 08 Apr 2011, 2:33 am, edited 2 times in total.

Omg you have to listen to the naked álbum!! ! Its a must! How about acroos the universe? I didnt know they didnt do the voices in Yellow submarine! I'll have to read abour that!! And Yes.. I believe its a once in a lifetime opportunity... Im very lucky to get to see him live.. WOW I still cant believe it.

Try and guess where I live.. Just for fun, can you play happiness is a warm gun? If you havent.. Can you try?

I like them to tho I gone off Ringo after he slagged off Liverpool back in 2008.

Yes I love The Beatles!! It makes me cry that I wasn't alive for their music heyday. Still, I listen to their music every single day.

the real powers behind the beatles, were 1] george martin and 2]brian epstein, without which they would not have been as successful as they were. george martin deserves special praise here because his classical music grounding informed and enriched many of the beatles' recordings, and he even played keyboards on some of them.
this said, all of the beatles, while not truly excellent at their respective instruments, they all were very good, and in addition to their instruments, john, paul and george could also play drums and keyboards and several other instruments with fair facility. they were all multi-instrumentalists, including ringo who also played keyboards. if you listen to the background of "i wanna hold your hand" you can hear john lennon on the organ behind george on guitar. you can also hear paul mccartney on drums in "the ballad of john and yoko." and what really holds a special place in my heart, is the fact that they all had superb senses of humor and indulged periodically in wonderful novelty ditties, such as "you know my name [look up the number]" and "maxwell's silver hammer" and even the occasional country-western tune [buck owen's "act naturally"]. they had such a wide musical range, far in excess of the bulk of competing groups, they were in a category all their own. no other mainstream group would have dreamt of including something like "revolution#9" on a record.
though i have to also say, that if buddy holly hadn't have taken that airplane flight [DAMN IT!] he was well on his way to doing equally great things.

I like the music that they recorded between 1963 and 1965, during Beatlemania.

I'm not a big fan of The Beatles but I'm a huge one of The Boobles. Their a group doing parodies of Beatles songs & all the money is going towards breast cancer research/awareness~ http://www.theboobles.org/