Beatle-mania

[Gimlet]

My favorite Beatles story is the band checking out a Jimi Hendrix show 3 days after Sgt. Pepper's was released. Hendrix covered the whole album and the Beatles were blown away.

Stories

www.beatlesstory.com

Hendrix was a highly eclectic musician. He rented a flat in Mayfair, London, in the sixties and discovered he was living next door to the former home of George Frederick Handel. Hendrix didn't know who Handel was but intrigued to be living next door to the one time home of a composer so esteemed that he warranted a commemorative plaque on the wall he set about finding out about him and came to greatly appreciate his music, several examples of which were found among Hendrix's record collection after his death. The connection between the two musicians, centuries apart in time and style, is maintained to this day by the Handel Society.

Baroque 'n' roll: Jimi hendrix and the Handel connection

Forty years after the guitarist's death, a new exhibition reveals how he found unlikely inspiration in the life and works of England's master composer. Jonathan Brown reports

www.independent.co.uk

It shows Hendrix as an enquiring artist and makes you wonder how his music might have evolved had he lived. I suspect he would have matured into a great musical polymath, experimenting in all manner of genres.

 

[Cloozoe]

You're remarkably coherent for someone who died nine years ago.

Thank you. Admittedly I was more clear-headed ante mortem but I keep plugging.

 

[sablebrush52]

You had to be alive, and old enough, to perceive the mania. which like most manias doesn't much touch on logic. Women went bug nuts crazy, screaming through their concerts.

Maybe it was that they appeared to be "good" boys, in their suits and haircuts, a change from the usual badass rocker persona, that attracted such intensity from women. Maybe their ballads really touched their audience.

Maybe it was that they embraced trends, like the fascination with Eastern spiritualism, or that they broke musical limits that other rock bands didn't until later. Maybe it was because they were more obviously political and challenging to "norms" while other band weren't. They weren't just a band, they were a phenomenon. Of course the it all imploded since there was a constant tug of war going on within the group. And nothing cements elevation to cult status like an early end.

I liked the Beatles, didn't love them, and rarely listen to their output. But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate what they were.

 

[Gimlet]

You had to be alive, and old enough, to perceive the mania. which like most manias doesn't much touch on logic. Women went bug nuts crazy, screaming through their concerts.

You may be right. I lived through the Duran Duran mania of the '80's and the Take That mania of the '90's. I assumed both bands were all gay and couldn't understand why girls preferred effeminate fops with Princess Di hair and painted nails who prodded Bontempi keyboards with one finger; or gyrating weirdos in vinyl hotpants and mascara who looked like they liked to share the same hot tub, when the chicks could have had a decent bike-mad proper bloke who had a mullet, an XS 400 and smelled of tobacco and real ale.
But women have always been foolish creatures who don't know a good thing when they see one. Consequently I immersed myself in British heavy metal during the '80's and was profoundly glad when the Brit-Pop bands came along in the 90's who at least played proper instruments instead of mincing around like a gender-realigned version of the Nolan sisters.
But I still think Beethoven was better than any of them.

 

[Briar Lee]

I was six years old in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.

My mother made me and my father quit getting weekly short buzz haircuts.

The Beatles were the worst thing that ever happened to barbers in the United States, but only temporarily.

In our little town a young man and his wife built a side by side beauty shop and barber shop and the barber charged $2 for a haircut and the beauty shop operator charged $5 and up. The wives forced their sons and husbands to get a weekly trim of their longer hair and prosperity soon returned to the barbershops.

And the Beatles replaced Godless Communism as the standard bogeyman for the old men in the barbershop to blame the world’s problems on.

“Ah tellya whut, it wuz them there Beatles that come over here frum England and started all this here long haired hippy bidnez and yuh cain’t tell the boys frum the girls no more.”

They were also implicated in causing the Vietnam War and Watergate and the Gas Crisis and many other social ills.

What I didn’t line about the Beatles, was that Nashville forsook the true country sound for crossover, to get more of the youth market.

Roger Miller 1964

Look at the girls in the crowd

si=MJKG5DJY9ih8N9H1

In a little more than ten years, Lefty Frizzell would be dead.

 

[Gimlet]

Look at the girls in the crowd

si=MJKG5DJY9ih8N9H1

Their timing is a little off..

 

[Briar Lee]

Their timing is a little off..

If they are still alive they are all old grandmas today.

Human nature does not and will never change in all cultures and languages around the world.

But fashion and styles change by the seasons.

One year after the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show I fell in endless love with Priscilla Mitchell (Reed) when she and some guy named Roy Drusky started all the country duets when they appeared on Ed Sullivan.

She was 24 and married to singer Jerry Reed and had kids. And every little girl in the Ozarks wanted to look just like her, when they grew up, and we all wanted to be her Roy Drusky.

She only had that one hit, and lived well off royalties until she died an old lady and her kids still get paid whenever that song spins.

Taylor Swift, just became a billionaire they claim.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

I was six years old in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.

My mother made me and my father quit getting weekly short buzz haircuts.

The Beatles were the worst thing that ever happened to barbers in the United States, but only temporarily.

In our little town a young man and his wife built a side by side beauty shop and barber shop and the barber charged $2 for a haircut and the beauty shop operator charged $5 and up. The wives forced their sons and husbands to get a weekly trim of their longer hair and prosperity soon returned to the barbershops.

And the Beatles replaced Godless Communism as the standard bogeyman for the old men in the barbershop to blame the world’s problems on.

“Ah tellya whut, it wuz them there Beatles that come over here frum England and started all this here long haired hippy bidnez and yuh cain’t tell the boys frum the girls no more.”

They were also implicated in causing the Vietnam War and Watergate and the Gas Crisis and many other social ills.

What I didn’t line about the Beatles, was that Nashville forsook the true country sound for crossover, to get more of the youth market.

Roger Miller 1964

Look at the girls in the crowd

si=MJKG5DJY9ih8N9H1

In a little more than ten years, Lefty Frizzell would be dead.

Roger Miller was a big deal!

Give me “Engine, Engine #9” and “Old Toy Trains” any time - great artist.

 

[Gimlet]

Roger Miller was a big deal!

Give me “Engine, Engine #9” and “Old Toy Trains” any time - great artist.

He makes it look effortless. Always a sign of greatness.

 

[anotherbob]

I don't get it.

Don't know if this has really been news state-side, but in the UK there's been a lot of a fuss around the upcoming release of a "new" Beatles single recorded using AI to resurrect some old John Lennon vocals and Harrison guitar playing from an old unrecorded song.

I've never understood the fascination with the Beatles. Yes they wrote some great songs, and plenty of duds as well, like all bands. But they were only together seven years. What they did they did well but it wasn't particularly ground-breaking in musical terms.

Nope but they did introduce those things to a wide audience.
One guy I worked with said that he thought they were a great band because it was hard to find someone who didn't love at least one of their songs.

 

[Briar Lee]

I think it is true what the old men in the barbershop said about the Beatles really getting that long hair hippy rock and roll music started off really good.

They minted money because young people and old people and all people liked the Beatles. Others just took it a little farther, that’s all.

But before the Beatles there was Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and before them was the incomparable Moon Mullican.

This is the first glimmer of rock and roll, in the late forties.

Look at the girls adoring Moon.

But Moon also did hillbilly standards every country honky tonk country singer still has to know today.

Goodnight Irene - https://youtu.be/_r7pNVmB02A?si=ue8bQoz-OBvKpSLK

Moon might have been the first cross over artist from country to rock.

 

[sablebrush52]

But I still think Beethoven was better than any of them.

So do I. I'm an unreconstructed and unabashed consumer of classical music from plain chant to the present. I'll take Beethoven, Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, Chopin, Vaughn Williams, Bach, Mahler, Rossini, Elgar, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, etc, etc, etc, etc, over all of it. But I can also enjoy Vampire Weekend, Two Cellos playing Thunderstruck, or The Roches etc, etc, etc. I respond to musicianship when I encounter it, in many forms. In college I was part of a band that played, hot jazz, ragtime, bluegrass, old timey, and whatever else we thought would be fun to perform, Charlie Poole being a favorite, and we played a lot of gigs.
But, I have to admit that I've never been fond of "Hawaiian" music, of the type performed by Don Ho, which my mother adored. She would put that shit on the stereo and I'd hightail it out of the house. And there are a few other forms that I won't mention here as I don't need to gore someone else's ox.

 

[Cloozoe]

I was six years old in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.

I was twelve. I'm so depressed.

 

[Gimlet]

So do I. I'm an unreconstructed and unabashed consumer of classical music from plain chant to the present. I'll take Beethoven, Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, Chopin, Vaughn Williams, Bach, Mahler, Rossini, Elgar, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, etc, etc, etc, etc, over all of it. But I can also enjoy Vampire Weekend, Two Cellos playing Thunderstruck, or The Roches etc, etc, etc. I respond to musicianship when I encounter it, in many forms. In college I was part of a band that played, hot jazz, ragtime, bluegrass, old timey, and whatever else we thought would be fun to perform, Charlie Poole being a favorite, and we played a lot of gigs.
But, I have to admit that I've never been fond of "Hawaiian" music, of the type performed by Don Ho, which my mother adored. She would put that shit on the stereo and I'd hightail it out of the house. And there are a few other forms that I won't mention here as I don't need to gore someone else's ox.

I'm the same with rap and '80's synth music. That's because as a child I slept directly above the living room where the grand piano stood and many times I went to sleep to the sound of Liszt coming through the floorboards (I love Liszt to this day). I guess that conditions you in some way, and seeing someone hamming it up while they play simplistic and predictable (the worst error you can make in music IMO) chords with two fingers, or someone reciting a monotone into a microphone and calling it singing offends you sense of what is right in the world.

Saying that, my Dad was an organ scholar and he frequently practiced pieces by Messiaen and Hindermith. Hindermith I quite liked but Messiaen I found "challenging". My mother couldn't bear it. She thought it sinister. As an adult I get it now. I understand the birdsong inspiration in his music. But as a child weaned on Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Bach and Handel etc, it flew (no pun intended) straight over my head.

How you were introduced to the language of music as a child definitely has a profound and lasting effect.

Going back to Beethoven, I learned the story of his life at a very early age. I suspect if he were alive today he would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum and probably synesthesic as well. His personal relationships, despite his best efforts, were pretty uniformly disastrous and his frustration in expressing himself was palpable. I can't think of another composer who put so much of his own spirit into his music. Listening to him is like reading a mute persons diary. You can hear his thoughts. Where other composers moved auditory shapes around the page to create beautiful patterns, Beethoven really used music as language. He was always trying to tell you something he couldn't express in any other way.

 

[Gimlet]

I was twelve. I'm so depressed.

I was still third in the queue. Had to wait another four years.

 

[Cloozoe]

You may be right. I lived through the Duran Duran mania of the '80's and the Take That mania of the '90's.

Duran Duran mania is to Beatle mania as:

Neville Chamberlain is to Winston Churchill

Bud Light is to Orval

Tofu is to steak

Dandelion is to orchid

 

[Cloozoe]

And of the last four, Beethoven for me. But that's just me.

So I suppose, therefore, we can look forward to your informed exposition on Coltrane soon?

 

[Cloozoe]

Not withstanding that this has turned into an entertaining thread, and after my various ironic/insightful/snide/rude (take your pick) comments and disregarding the merits or lack thereof of the Beatles, it finally dawned on me what irked from jump:

If you're about to make a comment that starts conceptually with "I don't get it", don't bother; you have nothing of worth to say on the subject and all you'll do is expose your ignorance and sound silly to those who do get it.

Opera sucks

Richard Pryor isn't funny

Soccer's a stupid game where nobody scores

I mean, why?

Rule of thumb: if something is valued/enjoyed/studied over an extended period of time by a large number of seemingly sentient beings and its appeal eludes you, you can't necessarily help it but I would eschew boasting about it.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Not withstanding that this has turned into an entertaining thread, and after my various ironic/insightful/snide/rude (take your pick) comments ..... << Snipped bits out >>

You are a man of most assured opinions. I'd advise you to tone down the insults lest you soon find yourself writing to a readership of one.

I normally let folks with an attitude die by themselves, but you write well and are intelligent; I'd hope you are able to hang around.

 

[sablebrush52]

Not withstanding that this has turned into an entertaining thread, and after my various ironic/insightful/snide/rude (take your pick) comments and disregarding the merits or lack thereof of the Beatles, it finally dawned on me what irked from jump:

If you're about to make a comment that starts conceptually with "I don't get it", don't bother; you have nothing of worth to say on the subject and all you'll do is expose your ignorance and sound silly to those who do get it.

Opera sucks

Richard Pryor isn't funny

Soccer's a stupid game where nobody scores

I mean, why?

Rule of thumb: if something is valued/enjoyed/studied over an extended period of time by a large number of seemingly sentient beings and its appeal eludes you, you can't necessarily help it but I would eschew boasting about it.

It's entirely possible for great numbers of seemingly sentient beings to be dead wrong, hence the invention of politics, and political parties.