Dissenting opinions on the Beatles

Long John wrote:“The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic.” - William F. Buckley, Jr.

“Theirs is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism… In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulgent amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivaled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. (Strawberry Fields suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.)” - Glenn Gould

Discuss.

Buckley sounds like he's spent the afternoon in a frustrating discussion with someone that was insisting the Beatles are better than Bach. It's like listening to someone argue that Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel prize for mastery of the English language. Eventually one runs out of patience and says something over the top.

Gould's evaluation doesn't seem too unfair coming from where he was at (to him, the Beatles probably sounded like the Shaggs). But he told Rolling Stone that his biggest complaint against the Beatles was that they buried the vocals, and that because of the Beatles, it became standard practice to bury the vocals in pop music, and Gould liked the vocals out front.

Were they around, those two clowns should listen to the remastered Abbey Road, and the track Because, where the plangent, heavenly vocals sit gloriously out front. Maybe they were Byrds fans, and got a bit jealous.

Rollin Post wrote:Maybe they were Byrds fans, and got a bit jealous.

Gould was a Barbara Streisand fan; I think he also like Petula Clark. Nonetheless he made some fine records.

Buckley had to rebut snotty teenagers that were arguing for school music curricula focused on teaching rock instead of Bach--who they called an "old dead punk." I think Buckley just got a bit overheated and lost his patience.

pinhedz wrote:

Rollin Post wrote:Maybe they were Byrds fans, and got a bit jealous.

Gould was a Barbara Streisand fan; I think he also like Petula Clark. Nonetheless he made some fine records.

Buckley had to rebut snotty teenagers that were arguing for school music curricula focused on teaching rock instead of Bach--who they called an "old dead punk." I think Buckley just got a bit overheated and lost his patience.

I knew a bit about about Buckley, but have to confess to never having heard of Mr. Gould. I wonder if he liked Herman & the Hermits? Pet was popular just about everywhere, it seems. She married a Frenchman and made it big there, too.

I'll see if I can find a good example of Gould on Youtube for the Classical Music section.

I think maybe his ears were accustomed to be able to sort out separate lines (he was a Bach specialist), and he couldn't handle massed or jangling sounds.

This thread probably should have a link to Piero Scruffy:

http://acrosstheuniverse.forummotion.com/t152-an-italian-perspective-on-the-beatles

Never liked The Beatles? Never trust a man that doesn't drink. Same difference.

I'm afraid that dissing the Fabs is a total rogues' quest. They were the best, and they had the honesty to admit it.