Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Today's Noise is Tomorrow's Hootenanny!

One of the sharpest rock critics currently working has come up against an interesting pop cultural phenomenon: a lot of apparently reasonable people are saying the Beatles weren't really very good.

From TNR Online this week:

I Have to Hide My Love Away? Help!
by David Browne


In case you hadn't heard, the Beatles blow. They're overrated lightweights who aren't as influential as certain pivotal punk bands, and they're to blame for all that soft rock commemorated in the latest Time Life Music infomercial. And those Sgt. Pepper costumes are, let's face it, cornier than any boy-band outfit of the '90s.

Of course, what you have heard and already know is that Beatle-bashing is as old as the Beatles' music itself: They've been derided by everyone from Lou Reed to incensed Christians. Lately, though, rampant Beatle-dissing has taken on an intensity and force it never had before. The impetus for much of it has been the fortieth anniversary of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," which produced not only the expected media nostalgia wave but a storm of revisionist thinking. And the backlash will only grow louder when Julie Taymor's eye roll-inducing movie musical "Across the Universe" arrives on September 14.

In a New York Times op-ed, no less a pop classicist than Aimee Mann admitted she loved the album as a child but now feels it's missing "emotional depth," that "John Lennon's melodies feel a bit underwritten while Paul McCartney's relentless cheerfulness is depressing." On Salon, rock writer Gina Arnold weighed in, "There's a number of current bands that you can say, 'These guys like Sgt. Pepper,' but they're oddballs, like the Polyphonic Spree." So the album's legacy amounts to a bunch of toga-clad, faux-cheery ironists: Ouch.

Simultaneously, the Internet burst with "Beatles are overrated" threads that went to the heart of the band itself. "When you really think about it, they were a good but not great pop band," wrote a Slate letter writer: "A little lite [sic] and fluffy, a bit quirky, but not much else," and certainly, the writer added, not nearly as good as the Stones, the Clash, Jeff Buckley, or Radiohead. On the same page, another reader argued that Beatle music "has not aged well" and that their influence "has been limited to soft pop acts and perhaps Oasis." Others called their music irritating--or, in the words of a 27-year-old writing to Salon, "a bore, a relic, and decidedly tame."


Wow. Holy Revisionism, Batman.

Actually, I've been aware of the tendency Browne's describing at least since the mid-90s and the release of the "Anthology" sets, but my feeling has always been that anybody who says they don't like the Beatles is just being difficult. On the other hand, from what I've seen of the Taymor movie, I can also understand somebody not wanting to hear a Beatles song again for as long as they live.

In any case, you can read the rest of Browne's interesting take here.

Postscript: Sir Paul played disc jockey on the BBC yesterday. You can hear the show here. Turns out he likes Radiohead and the Killers.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Naturally your teaser over at Atrios made me stay up and come over here ... I'm sleepy so I'm sure I won't be particularly coherent. But here goes ...

So to some people the Beatles sound tired, trite, simplistic, blah blah blah, almost 44 years after their first album was released in the States.

Give me a fucking break.

I'll never forget the first time I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on the radio, during the days when AM and the two-and-a-half minute song format still ruled the airwaves. It sounded completely fresh and new. Which is sort of the point.

I defy anyone to find any band that produced 17 albums in eight years (I'm going back to when they first stepped into the studio in 1962), that made as much musical progress in as short a period of time, and had as much influence as the Beatles did.

They were the first rock act to play Carnegie Hall. They were also the first rock act to play a stadium. I don't think their critics realize how much they changed our culture. Measuring them by today's standards is stupid.

Having said that, I hated Sgt. Pepper when it first came out. It struck me as pretentious, self-indulgent, and condescending (that's why I remember Richard Goldstein's review ... I agreed with it). Not to mention that it signified the end of the Beatles as a live performing band, which on some level I took personally.

As far as the Taymor film is concerned, I suggest to anyone who is tempted to see it, watch "A Hard Day's Night" instead. And now you won't even have to deal with all the girls screaming ...

Anonymous said...

I'll grant that Sgt. Pepper is the Beatles least worthy album. It's trite, campy, and shallow. It may be the most daring experiment in rock, with the possible exception of Dylan's gospel recordings. But 40 years on it's reasonable to want to give it a rest, especially when pretty much every other record the Beatles made still sounds fresh and compelling.

But this jazz about punk bands being "more influential," well, you have to ask, "influential in what?" The Beatles influenced musicians in all genres to re-examine the history of music and stretch themselves in unexpected ways, to aspire to greatness. Punk, for all its usefulness in the late '70s, gave us the Cult of Inspired Incompetence, the idea that there was something wrong with an artist who could actually play an instrument or write a song. This glamorized stupidity, for all the left-wing rhetoric of the Clash et. al., provided the opening to the corporations that rule our culture today. Get that mess out of here. I don't want no woman with no skinny legs.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Kid Charlemagne said...

Well, in all fairness, to me, punk destroyed that idea in the 70s that you had to be a virtuoso musician to make great rock music, and that was a very, very good thing. Just think of all of the great bands who were inspired by the Ramones (like the Pistols and the Clash) to pick up guitars and make their own music. Plus, there were plenty of accomplished musicians like Television thrown in the mix to make it interesting.

I think the trashing of Boomer musical icons comes from the realization of Gen X'ers that most of their music is a vapid pastiche of 70s and 80s musical fads which exhibits no real personality in and of itself. Grunge? If I ever have to hear the soft-loud-soft verse-chorus-verse thing again, I'm gonna take a hostage.


Of course, my parents were always telling me what a genius Duke Ellington was, but it was not until I started listening to jazz seriously did I understand what they were talking about.

PhilDutra said...

When it comes down to it, who gives a crap what some guy at TNR thinks. The only person who decides if a band or CD is good or bad is YOU!

Anonymous said...

When it comes down to it, who gives a crap what some guy at TNR thinks. The only person who decides if a band or CD is good or bad is YOU!

True. Look forward to my 2000 word essay on why the 1910 Fruitgum Company was the greatest band evah!!

TMink said...

Peter wrote: "It's trite, campy, and shallow."

I would like to respectfully disagree with you Peter. THe only reason SPLHCB sounds trite and campy is because it has so thoroughly influenced modern popular music. The stuff from Pepper has permeated our musical soundscape. It can be a bit tired because it is everywhere and has influenced so much.

I think it would be similar to say that George Washington is overrated as a president. He was foundational in the establishment and early growth of our country, I think it is difficult to overstate his importance. So it is with the Beatles.

Well, that is my take.

Trey

Anonymous said...

Hell, there are people who trash Mozart too, I'm sure.

And their opinions will last about as long as the Beatles-bashers'.

I don't think it's pretentious or overblown to say that the Beatles influenced every aspect of Western culture in their time.

No other pop band has ever done that, or ever will.

And you know what? Fuck all that shit. Listen to the music. It still kicks all kinds of ass. You want straightahead rock-n-roll? Check. Your preferences run to pop music? Got it. Enjoy a syrupy sweet ballad every now & then? Some of the best ever. Cutting edge experimentation? Wadaya know, got that too.

Trashing the previous generation's culture is old hat. We did as kids; now the kids are doing it to us. Their kids will do it to them.

In the final analysis, who cares, really?

Anonymous said...

True. Look forward to my 2000 word essay on why the 1910 Fruitgum Company was the greatest band evah!!

Yummy yummy yummy
I got love in my tummy

Hmm, I wonder what Britney could do with that one....

steve simels said...

Amen to pretty much all of the above, although I'm reminded of something Kurt Vonnegut said.

In some essay somewhere he made the point that one of the fundamental purposes of art was to make you feel good about being alive.

Asked to name an artist or artists that actually did that he replied, "Well, the Beatles, of course."

Anonymous said...

BTW, Help! comes out on DVD (for the first time ever!) next month!

I was 9 when Help! came out and I went to see it in the movies (I hadn't seen Hard Day's Night in the theater). It was an afternoon show and the girls were screaming so loud, I missed most of the film.

That's right, they were screaming hysterically AT A MOVIE SCREEN.

I stayed to see it again, and got in big trouble because I didn't call my mom to tell her I was staying for another showing!

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting for the Gen X's and Y's to step up to the plate and bring us a new Beatles and a decade as creative as the 60s.

I really wish they would!! I'd love to see it!

Anonymous said...

Kid --

We really thought it was going to happen in the mid-70s with punk & new wave.

With Patti Smith, the Ramones, Television, T. Heads, Pere Ubu, we had music that really sounded NEW, for the first time in almost a decade; it was fun, it was fresh, it was strange.

But radio refused to play it, clinging to old artists or new artists who sounded like old artists (this was my beef with Springsteen for many years -- his sound was nice & safe, and enabled radio programmers to ignore the really great stuff happening right under their noses).

steve simels said...

Cameron Crowe on the Beatles white album:

"You still can't buy a better record."

Anonymous said...

That's right, they were screaming hysterically AT A MOVIE SCREEN.

That sums it up. When I saw "Hard Day's Night" they started screaming when the United Artists logo came up and didn't stop until the movie was over.

The Beatles weren't just about their music, right from the get-go. They tapped into something much deeper ...

Anonymous said...

Oh yes, I'm sure in 40 years someone will make a movie of all Radiohead songs, and they will rule the charts...

Slig said...

I was born in 1967 so all my formative encounters with the Beatles were through the filters of other people (and to some extent radio, which even in the 70s provided a pretty narrow selection). And it's hard to take seriously the musical recommendation of a 60 year old 8th grade music teacher playing Beatles 45s in her class and talking about how "catchy" and "clever" they were. It's probably for this reason I never thoroughly studied the Beatles' music. Nevertheless, as stated upthread, virually all musicians in my generation recognize that they did a lot of things first and essentially invented (or-coinvented) a fundamental genre of pop music. So in the long view they are victims of their own success and accessibility, but this has nothing to do with their actual music.

It's simply undeniable that the Beatles directly or indirectly inspired every late 70s and 80s band that I count as a major influence. Even though I don't listen to them a lot, I see them as a sine qua non of the modern rock/punk/etc. band as we know it.

Anonymous said...

But radio refused to play it, clinging to old artists or new artists who sounded like old artists (this was my beef with Springsteen for many years -- his sound was nice & safe, and enabled radio programmers to ignore the really great stuff happening right under their noses).

Well, you can't blame Springsteen for making the music he wanted and also having commercial success with it. And radio is just that ... commercial. Always has been. The Fugs and Mothers of Invention didn't get played on the radio, either. That was actually part of their appeal. It was fun to listen to something subversive.

And, IIRC, Blondie and the Talking Heads were very successful.

Cleveland Bob said...

Steve,

Nice recall of that Vonnegut quote.

The first record I bought was Let It Be as a single on an Apple label 45. I don't remember what was on the B side.

Again, I'll go with Steve's assessment that non-Beatle fans are just being difficult. They just don't understand that everything that came after would forever be influenced by the Beatles and their imitators. Everything.

Just like it was 20 years prior when everyone listened to Chuck Berry and Little Richard for the first time and all of the American Black music which made rock and roll possible.

As for the Gen Xers, Yers and beyond, I wish them all good luck. The world is too speedy and too jaded now to spawn something as innocent and organic as the Beatles.

Oh, and if you ask the kids, they'll say that their deity of pop music has in fact arrived.

And he is Justin Timberlake. JT is Elvis, Michael, Eminem AND the Beatles all rolled up in one neato, mom friendly, disnified package...or so they tell me.

Anonymous said...

Well, you can't blame Springsteen for making the music he wanted and also having commercial success with it.

Well, gee, I didn't say I was rational. (And Blondie's and the Head's success came a bit later.)

The first record I bought was Let It Be as a single on an Apple label 45. I don't remember what was on the B side.

The very goofy, You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), I believe. With Brian Jones on saxophone.

dave™© said...

With Patti Smith, the Ramones, Television, T. Heads, Pere Ubu, we had music that really sounded NEW, for the first time in almost a decade; it was fun, it was fresh, it was strange.

But radio refused to play it, clinging to old artists or new artists who sounded like old artists...


Not necessarily true. KSAN, the underground FM pioneer in San Francisco, jumped on the punk/new wave trolly car back in the 70s. They played the Sex Pistols, and the Pistols gave them their only serious interview when they came to town for their final show at Winterland. They "broke" Elvis Costello, playing "My Aim Is True" day after day after day when it was still import-only (and playing the single "Watching the Detectives" as soon as it was released). They played Talking Heads, and broadcast their first live SF gigs. KSAN is where I first heard Television, Blondie, Ramones, Plastique Bertrand, Buzzcocks... and this was all around '77-78.

And what was their reward for this breaking of ground? Their previously loyal listeners left them in droves for the new "AOR" station, KMEL, that featured a steady diet of Journey, Eagles, Pink Floyd, etc etc etc.

In this day of Elvis and Blondie being used to sell cars on TV, people forget how despised that music was by the "average" music fan when it came out. Yeah, most radio stations wouldn't touch punk with a ten-foot pole. There was a reason: the LISTENERS didn't want 'em to.

Anonymous said...

And what was their reward for this breaking of ground? Their previously loyal listeners left them in droves for the new "AOR" station, KMEL, that featured a steady diet of Journey, Eagles, Pink Floyd, etc etc etc.

My point exactly.

Atually, there WAS a commercial station here in NYC that played a mix of punk, New Wave and old Motown; it was the old WPIX-FX (now a 'soft jazz' (elevator music) station). They lasted about a year - 18 months. And then there were none.