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
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