The Beatles

I’m not a big believer in God, so I’ve taken to thanking Darwin for stuff. Sure, Darwin didn’t invent or create anything, but he pointed some important stuff out to the rest of us.

Thank Darwin for the iPod. This life-changing device has forced me to convert my hundreds of CDs to digital format, a monumental task that is still unfinished, but in return, it’s given me instant access to ALL my music, anywhere, at any time. For a music lover such as myself, this is the greatest advancement in musical technology since the wax-tube recorder.

Seriously.

I know that having roaring competition will be good for the market and for music in general, but I wouldn’t mind seeing iTunes/iPod remaining on top a while. They’ve earned it. That device is the shit. And it’s really the last gasp for Apple, right? The whole world is determined to go PC, despite MACs being superior in almost every way. They’re like the Democrats of the computer world, and the iPod, as Aaron McGruder puts it, is Barack Obama. A great idea, but too little, too late.

Alas.

Anyway, having all this musical control has given me opportunity to revisit all sorts of sounds that had long-since passed out of heavy rotation when I was lugging CDs back and forth to work, or in the year when I was using the shitty 512MB MP3 player on my cell phone. What a tease that was, when it wasn’t crashing, which it did constantly.

World’s Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band?

One of the things I’ve been doing a lot of lately is listening to the 217 song, 13 album Beatles catalogue. You can listen to that shit for days and days on end. It is so fucking good. Just when you think you’re sick of the Beatles, you’re wandering around humming Lovely Rita, Meter Maid, and thinking how hot she must have been to get Paul into that car accident.

My wife and I have a long-standing argument. If you know us, I have no doubt you’ve heard it. If you don’t know it, count yourself lucky. We’re annoying as hell.

The argument centers around the question of which Rock n’ Roll band deserves the top title. This isn’t necessarily your FAVORITE band, or even the one with the most record sales, but the one with the greastest breadth and depth of music, and the most (positive) influence on other artists.

The Rolling Stones, like the Bush Administration in November of 2000, have already claimed victory, even though that victory is entirely undeserved. I think we can all agree with that.

I am a firm member of the Led Zeppelin camp. If James Brown is the Godfather of Soul, Led Zep are the Godfathers of Heavy Metal. You can’t touch Robert Plant’s voice, and their fearlessness in exploring new musical sounds has yielded some of the greatest songs ever written.

Long before rock music was boiled down by hack artists to cheesy love songs with over-repetition of the word “baby”, they were doing the Bron-y-aur Stomp around the Gallows Pole, and we should all respect.

And John Bonham was a fucking god. I mean, come on! Bonzo’s Montreux? Moby Dick? Can you see Ringo doing that shit? No way.

On the other hand, I’ve always been a huge Beatles fan. My parents had a ton of Beatles albums when I was a kid, and up until I was 12 or so, that was pretty much my only source for music.

My parents aren’t very musical people, and didn’t consider it a necessity the way many other people do. We had a decent record player that the kids weren’t allowed to touch, and my parents never turned the goddamn thing on, except to play Christmas music while we decorated the tree each year. And besides, the only records we had were the Beatles albums, the soundtracks to Saturday Night Fever & Grease, and the aforementioned Christmas music.

But like Frankenstein escaping and finding himself locked in a shack with the greatest works of literature known to man, it’s hard to complain too much when your only source of formative music is the Beatles’ catalogue.

My brother made crappy cassette copies of all the records, because we were allowed to use the tape player. I begged my parents for a walkman when they came out, and listened to that shit constantly. I think I had a Kenny Rogers tape, too. Not sure where I got that. To this day, though, I know all the words to Ruben James and Coward of the County.

Anyway, I love the Beatles. I respect what they’ve done for music. I respect the huge breadth of their work. I just think Zeppelin was ballsier.

Of course, both bands, despite being Brits, stole all their ideas from American music, particularly rhythm & blues, rock, jazz, soul, and country.

This is not to say that Zep and the Beats were hacks. Far from it. They popularized those old sounds in ways their originators never could (due to racism or taking one too many hits of that jug with all the X’s on it), and they found innovative ways to combine and apply what they stole into new sounds that took the best of everything.

I’m the first to speak up when these superbands get undue credit (some people would have you think the Beatles invented music itself), but I can’t deny they did some great shit.

My Inner Artist

I’ve always wanted to do this painting of the Beatles. Well, if always means since this one time a few years ago when I was high. Anyway, the concept would have been a visual interpretation of the musical vein of each of the four members by means of their closeness to the ground.

I will explain.

George Harrison, student of Ravi Shankar and master of the sitar and shit, wrote mostly trippy spiritual crap, ala The Inner Light. In the painting, he would be in the lotus position, floating above the clouds.

(He is by far my least favorite Beatle, when it comes to writing. I hate that trippy shit.)

Below George, with his head in the clouds but his arms and body grasping at air, would be Paul, whose writing centered almost entirely on love, for good or ill. All the Paul songs are about chicks in one way or another. It’s not all sappy bullshit by any means, but you could really believe that this guy died because he was distracted by some hot chick on the street.

(Paul’s my favorite.)

Jumping as hard as he can, arms stretched upwards, would be Ringo, perhaps a foot off the ground. Ringo wasn’t spiritual/stoned like George, or romantic/horny like Paul. Ringo just wanted everyone to get along and be friends. He wanted to take his buddies to an Octopus’ Garden or a Yellow Submarine where they could all sing and dance and bake cookies. Sweet, but naive and a little gay.

(I don’t have a lot of patience for Ringo. I know he deserves better, but if a Ringo song comes on, there’s a 30% chance I’m hitting ‘skip’. This, of course, is far better than the 70% chance of skip that George gets.)

Feet planted firmly on the ground, arms crossed, but with his head tilted upwards to watch the others in wry amusement, would be John. John played along with all that other shit, but he wasn’t so stoned/horny/naive to think that the world really worked that way. John was angry and political and frequently he was an asshole, but he knew what was what.

Imagine is one of the greatest songs ever written, because it describes a perfect world, but right there, smack dab in the fucking title, John reminds us all that it’s not a reality, and it never will be if we don’t get off our lazy, petty, small-minded asses and do something about it.

(On the other hand, John also did all that Yoko shit. That is the goddamn WORST.)

I think it’s a great idea for a painting. If I could paint, and I didn’t mind wasting my time and effort on fanboy stoner nonsense, I would totally paint it myself.

ADDENDUM

It occurs to me to add that I owe my ability to ANALYZE the Beatles entirely to my lovely wife. Having absorbed their catalog as a child in a house where music was never discussed, I never knew there were 4 distinct songwriting voices in that band. I never really thought about it at all. I could name all four guys, but I figured they just all made everything spontaneously in a big jam session.

I don’t know. I was like EIGHT. Whaddaya expect?

It’s only through discussion with Dani, who will note, instantly and aloud, the name of the Beatle who wrote whatever song you hear. It’s like she’s studying for a fricken’ test. I don’t even know if she’s aware she does it.

It is only due to this that I got the… decoder ring to break up and analyze this thing that was such HUGE part of my formative years, and understand how it affected me.

My wife’s idiosyncracies rock.

Posted on September 15, 2005 at 10:01 am by PeatB
Filed under Musings
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