Are the Beatles overrated?

[walrus]

The Beatles may have been a bit overrated, since George Martin never got the credit he deserved for refining their music.

But that being said, they were amazingly creative musicians. While many other bands did well for a year or two and then stopped being creative, the Beatles kept coming out with genuinely good music year after year, and continued doing so during their solo careers. Just when people said they were finished, they would bounce back with more good music.

While other groups got stuck in the kind of pop the Beatles were doing in 1963-64 (bands like The Dave Clark Five, The Searchers, and Gerry and the Pacemakers), they evolved (with the help of George Martin) and their music kept on improving as they became more more musically sophisticated, with Rubber Soul, Revolver and the Sgt Pepper's album.

I think John Lennon was mainly responsible for the Beatles early success, for example writing their first hit Please Please Me and writing the majority of songs on the Hard Day's Night album. He reached his musical prime around 1965 with songs like Ticket to Ride, Help, You're Going to Lose That Girl and the brilliant In My Life.

From 1966 to 1968 Paul became the main Beatle as John became more interested in LSD and other things. Paul wrote 8 of their last 10 #1 singles, and the majority of the music on Sgt Peppers. Paul was still writing nice songs in the winter of 68-69 with Let It Be and Long Winding Road (both released as singles more than a year later) but his contributions to Abbey Road such as Maxwell's Silver Hammer and Oh Darling sucked (that being said, he put some nice bass on Something and Come Together)

The best Beatles songs by mid-1969 (Abbey Road's Something and Here Comes the Sun) were from George Harrison, and the best solo album in 1970-1971 was from George (All Things Must Pass). Paul's first solo album was awful. John's Plastic One Band was much better, music critics at the time bashed Paul (calling him overrated) and praised John, and suggested that Paul couldn't write good songs without John. But John's subsequent albums had too many self-pity songs, and the critics and the public soon grew tired of his stuff (his Mind Games album was sickening). But then Lennon bounced back with a better album Walls and Bridges and a #1 single Whatever Get's You Through The Night.

And Paul eventually came out with a great album Band on the Run which had several hit singles. A couple of years later, the number one song on Billboard for the year of 1976 was by Paul, Silly Love Songs. In in the fall of 1987, after not doing much for several years, George Harrison had a #1 single, I've Got My Mind Set On You.

Beatles may have been a bit overrated. George Martin was producing commercials and odds and ends prior to the Beatles. I’m not minimizing Martin, he was the fifth Beatles, but he did not make the Beatles. Sorry freedom I now have to ask for u to be banned as well. Martin was a Beatle, he did not make the Beatles. Let it Be was a fine album and Martin was not involved in it.

[Freedom]

Beatles may have been a bit overrated. George Martin was producing commercials and odds and ends prior to the Beatles. I’m not minimizing Martin, he was the fifth Beatles, but he did not make the Beatles. Sorry freedom I now have to ask for u to be banned as well. Martin was a Beatle, he did not make the Beatles. Let it Be was a fine album and Martin was not involved in it.

I'm not saying Martin made the Beatles, but he added an element of sophistication that they needed in order to succeed. He was a capable musician and played piano far better than any Beatle - listen to Not a Second Time and In My Life.

Martin produced recordings for many other successful artists: Cilla Black, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, America, Jeff Beck, John Williams, Neil Sedaka, Kenny Rogers, Cheap Trick, Elton John, Little River Band, and Celine Dion.

Let it Be was produced by Phil Spector, a crazy man but one of the most capable and successful music producers in the USA. John Lennon's two Spector-produced albums were much better than the next two which were made with a lesser producer, and Spector did great work with George on All Things Must Pass. George's later albums didn't sound nearly as good as the first.

When Martin and Paul worked together, the results were very good. Tug of War, Pipes of Peace and Flaming Pie, were three of McCartney four best albums. Martin also worked with Paul on his first #1 single, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.

From wiki:

Martin's more formal musical expertise helped fill the gaps between the Beatles' unrefined talent and the sound which distinguished them from other groups, which eventually made them successful. Most of the Beatles' orchestral arrangements and instrumentation were written or performed by Martin, as well as frequent keyboard parts on the early records, in collaboration with the less musically experienced band.

It was Martin's idea to score a string quartet accompaniment for "Yesterday" against McCartney's initial reluctance. Martin played the song in the style of Bach to show McCartney the voicings that were available. Another example is the song "Penny Lane", which featured a piccolo trumpet solo that was requested by McCartney after hearing the instrument on a BBC broadcast. McCartney hummed the melody that he wanted, and Martin notated it for David Mason, the classically trained trumpeter.

Martin's work as an arranger was used for many Beatles recordings. For "Eleanor Rigby," he scored and conducted a strings-only accompaniment inspired by Bernard Herrmann. On a Canadian speaking tour in 2007, Martin said that his "Eleanor Rigby" score was influenced by Herrmann's score for the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho. For "Strawberry Fields Forever", he and recording engineer Geoff Emerick turned two very different takes into a single master through careful use of vari-speed and editing. For "I Am the Walrus", he provided a quirky and original arrangement for brass, violins, cellos, and the Mike Sammes Singers vocal ensemble. On "In My Life", he played a speeded-up baroque piano solo. He worked with McCartney to implement the orchestral climax in "A Day in the Life", and he and McCartney shared conducting duties the day that it was recorded.

Martin contributed integral parts to other songs, including the piano in "Lovely Rita", the harpsichord in songs such as "Because" and "Fixing a Hole"; the old steam organ and tape loop arrangement that created the Pablo Fanque circus atmosphere that Lennon requested on "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" (both Martin and Lennon played steam organ parts for this song), and the orchestration in "Good Night". Martin was in demand as an independent arranger and producer by the time of The White Album, so the Beatles were left to produce various tracks by themselves.

Martin composed and arranged the score for the Beatles' film Yellow Submarine and the James Bond film Live and Let Die, for which Paul McCartney wrote and sang the title song. He helped arrange Paul's first American # 1 single "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey".

[Freedom]

By the way Walrus, I've been a Beatles fan from the very beginning of their career in America.

I was age 8 and watching TV with my older teen-aged sister when the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. They were always my favorite band after that. I used to sing their songs while walking to school and other places. We kids used to buy Beatles bubble gum cards, I didn't know at the time that the sugary bubble gum was bad for my teeth.

I saw the movie A Hard Day's Night in the cinema when it came out in August 1964, and Help the next summer. I bought all the Beatles albums when I had more money in my later childhood. When I got a cheap guitar in my early teens, I learned to play a bit, and I bought a songbook with all the Lennon-McCartney compositions, and learned to play every one. I noticed Paul's compositions were more musically complex than John's, but I always liked John's use of certain major-to-minor chord sequences.

I remember being very excited about Lennon's and McCartney's first solo albums, but liking John's and being extremely disappointed in Paul's. However I preferred Paul's later good-natured songs from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s much more than John's self-pity/insecurity songs.

I still listen to the Beatles quite a bit. I do think they were and are a bit overrated, but they are still my favorite band of all time.

[walrus]

By the way Walrus, I've been a Beatles fan from the very beginning of their career in America.

I was age 8 and watching TV with my older teen-aged sister when the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. They were always my favorite band after that. I used to sing their songs while walking to school and other places. We kids used to buy Beatles bubble gum cards, I didn't know at the time that the sugary bubble gum was bad for my teeth.

I saw the movie A Hard Day's Night in the cinema when it came out in August 1964, and Help the next summer. I bought all the Beatles albums when I had more money in my later childhood. When I got a cheap guitar in my early teens, I learned to play a bit, and I bought a songbook with all the Lennon-McCartney compositions, and learned to play every one. I noticed Paul's compositions were more musically complex than John's, but I always liked John's use of certain major-to-minor chord sequences.

I remember being very excited about Lennon's and McCartney's first solo albums, but liking John's and being extremely disappointed in Paul's. However I liked Paul's later good-natured songs from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s much more than John's self-pity/insecurity songs.

I still listen to the Beatles quite a bit. I do think they were and are a bit overrated, but they are still my favorite band of all time.

Yet freedom, I just don’t get how a band that revolutionized music and continues to influence bands coming out today can be overated. I seriously think Beatles music is comparable to the Mozart’s and Beethoven’s. It will last forever.

[X]

[walrus]

I still think this thread is absolutely disgusting. And how the hell can you Brits stand for this. Why does beanz not attack this thread. Maybe because the Beatles the are white so he doesn’t care about bad mouthing them. I swore off violence many years ago but I’m going to hunt down the OP and slapping him.

[Master]

Have you heard about the movie where there is no Beatles ?