The Beatles Suck – The History Of Punk
As we have already said 1967 was a momentous year as the Velvet Underground’s first record was released. Unfortunately, another album was also released and we’ve never had a moment’s peace from it and the band who made it. Yep, Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and below are some quotes from dodos at the time commenting on it.
“It was strange. You found that there was other music behind it. You were hearing other music behind it. You were hearing secret harmonies I suppose, echoes of something else.”
“The words…They were about something. It was much more intelligent..”
“It wasn’t just an LP, it was a complete experience !”
“Until Lennon rock’n’roll had rarely been so abrasive, confessional, otherworldly, primal, political or so deeply moving and thought provoking”
Q magazine on Lennon, Aug 1999
My arse it was! It was complete shite and how many forests have died as journos worked themselves into a frenzy over the ‘experience’ of it all for the past 2000 years!
Look! By 1967 the Beatles were addled by success and adulation and fast disappearing up their own backsides in a welter of mysticism and pseudo-intellectualism. They wanted acceptance intellectually…to elevate pop to a kind of art and legitimise themselves in the eyes of the very people pop was supposed to upset.
Unfortunately, they did it. Replacing excitement and energy with torpor and studio tricks (that magical bit where the piano chord sounds forever…. god help us) they and their producer came up with an album that they could never perform live and which would hang round the necks of future generations like a mill stone as ‘the greatest album ever ‘etc yawn … ‘the defining music of the sixties’ etc yawn. This myth of the Beatles has been expounded year after year and still manages to provide journalists with copy, income and a license to fuel the myth. Why?
Sgt Peppers received the accolades they craved being compared musically to Beethoven and Schumann and lyrically to TS Eliott and Joyce. It all seemed a long way from Chuck Berry and Elvis. At best Sgt Peppers is a collection of reasonable tunes. At worst whimsical and lyrically embarrassing.. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds….wow spells ‘LSD.’ They were clever boys to write that!
They are responsible for every other musician thinking he is an artist and that his music means something intellectually. They are responsible for concept albums and studio boredom and of bloated double albums (that The Clash would better with triple album Sandanaista). In short the 3 minute toon nearly died with the Beatles but would re-surface again in a few years but the seeds were sown for rocks dark days. They sucked all the fun out of music and gave us pretentiousness and progressive music. They bought into Eastern religion and found the purveyors and gurus as corrupt and as shallow as themselves before moving on to the next big thing. As if we cared!
And what was the sum of all their cleverness.. a pregnant woman dying of multiple stab wounds on the orders of a nutter who took the words of Helter Skelter and other lyrics off the White Album as his own blueprint. That’s when the real world collides not some crappy boat on tangerine skies. Like the Stones at Altamont reality hurts… and kills.
Above – You would have to be insane not to like the Beatles like Charlie Mansonhere!
Right – Give me Money, women and 4 gullible Mop tops please!
As they shuffled off and split the Beatles went back to what they did best second hand rock’n’ roll tunes and skiffle beat. They made some good tunes…some great tunes even…but then so did Abba….and come to think of it so did the Smurfs.
God bless Melody Maker’s “Pop ! The Golden Years ” from sometime in the Eighties where I nicked some of this from and added .
TalkPunk
Post comments, images & videos - Posts are checked and offensive or irrelevant ones will be removed
So what did you nick and what did you add? lol 😀 I guess it doesn’t matter. Look, cards on the table, ‘Sgt Pepper’ is the Beatles lp I listen to the least, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever listened from start to finish in order – something always seems to distract me, lol – and remember it’s only a single lp! The White Album is the only double they released, and *that* album I do have time for, their only lp that even comes close to The Velvets for me. I also like Revolver a whole lot and the Beatles’ albums either side of those milestones have their moments too. No doubt too many critics have gone way over the top with the ‘Sgt Pepper’ eulogising as well as putting Lennon on a pedestal (if there was ever a true maverick and pioneer of that band it turns out it was McCartney) but the fact remains The Beatles couldn’t carry on doing the same kind of material they started out with, great as some of it was. In punk/post-punk terms that would be like Wire releasing a facsimile of ‘Pink Flag’ over and over again. Maybe the more conservative ‘punks’ would have liked that, but they’d be missing the point. Rules are there to be broken, and punk painted itself into a corner for a while until some more creative souls pushed the envelope – Magazine, Pil, Wire and New Order among them – but I guess if you’re allergic to “studio tricks” you wouldn’t wanna go there would ya. Stick with UK Subs and Discharge maybe (great as they were), or new groups who sound like your heroes of old (great as some of them *are* too). But I say there’s room for a group with talent and ideas to progress, to move on and, yeah why not, create some art. You find that a cringe? Fair enough, a lot of people don’t. There’s room in this world for The Buzzcocks AND King Crimson (‘Ever Fallen In Love’ is great art for my money anyhow). In fact ‘Red’ is as aggressive as ‘Metal Box’ or ‘The Sky’s Gone Out’…but that’s another conversation. Likewise your apparent assertion that it’s ok for the Clash to release a triple but not for The Beatles to release one measly double (for all that pretentiousness).
On a more serious note regarding ‘Helter Skelter’ and The White Album’s lyrics, if you really think that somehow The Beatles themselves (or their generation/genre of songwriters) bearone iota of responsibility for the obtuse mischaracterisation and mistranslation of the lyrics by Manson & Family, then I guess by the same logic you think Judas Priest were responsible for that kid shooting himself in the face? Or messrs Klebold and Harris could argue Marilyn Manson’s lyrics as an excuse for the atrocity they committed at Columbine. Not buying either. As for Altamont, well that was a different thing altogether…poor decisions made about security and public safety by hippie millionaires, naive at best, arrogant at worst, leaving the carnage behind in their private helicopter…and thankfully lessons were learnt, but unless you think ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ was somehow responsible for what happened in that field in 1969 then I fail to see your point. I agree with you that the bloated 60s dream had to end, sure, and it did rather spectacularly. Some say punk was a reaction to that (another one for another time).
Ultimately I think we’re mainly at odds on on the one topic. I think rock music, like jazz or classical OR even pop, *can* rise to the level of an art form, and even combine and hybridise into something magnificent occasionally. this doesn’t mean it can’t be something to get your rocks off to, or just dance around like a loon for three mins. Neither The Beatles, nor Pink Floyd, or The Orb or anyone else could destroy pop music. *That* can look after itself.
Hello there – first off thank you for the comment because that must have taken time and it is well thought out and expressed.
I think I borrowed a fair amount of it, but I loved the irreverence of it. Sgt Peppers is almost worshipped and as such, is a fair target because is it really that special and then the copies of it… my god!
That said I love Caravanserai by Santana, loads of Pink Floyd and so on…. that probably some else could destruct in words 🙂
And yes The Clash triple was sheer self indulgence and shame on them – even worse if as rumours said they thought delivering a triple would count as 3 separate albums in their contract when it fact it was just one and they were still enslaved to CBS!
I like the cut of your jib. If you ever fancy writing for the site the door is open 🙂
That’s really kind of you, thanks. I must’ve needed something to get stuck into yesterday as I’ve had better days (put it that way!) – and rather than edit for brevity I just left it all in – it’s good to discuss sacred cows and you don’t get much more of one than Sgt. Pepper. ヅ