The Beatles vs. Pink Floyd

No matter the argument, The Beatles win.

NYSPORTSFAN wrote:    Interesting if you polled who was the most influential at their instrument Paul McCartney as a bassist is easily more influential than any member of Pink Floyd. Nick Mason is more of feel drummer than a technical wizard.   In terms of melody, arrangements, composition and going to sonic places where no rock band has gone before the Beatles easily takes it over Pink Floyd. Most of the Beatles songs even the early ones like "I Want To Hold Your Hand"  are ripe for discussing odd chord usage.   .

I love Pink Floyd

I love the Beatles

Sometimes PF is what does the job, other times, the Beatles gets you where it matters...

Two, totally WAYYYY  too far apart, musically, lyrically, no real connection at all//

I vote for PF, but I like both bands a lot.

Tom Ozric wrote: NYSPORTSFAN wrote: [QUOTE=Josef_K] In terms of melody, arrangements, composition and going to sonic places where no rock band has gone before the Beatles easily takes it over Pink Floyd. Most of the Beatles songs even the early ones like "I Want To Hold Your Hand"  are ripe for discussing odd chord usage.   . The Beatles have never trod the paths that Floyd trekked.  Take, for instance, Set The Controls........live - I've never heard The Beatles play dark, Farfisa organ driven Middle-Eastern scales of immense profoundness as Floyd.  Perhaps Floyd have taken some basic ideas from The Beatles, but John and Paul and George and Ringo never ventured into the musical depths the Floyd did.  Don't take it the wrong way, as there are many Beatles tracks I love, but as a musically adventurous band, they only hit the mark occasionally.......I'm not opposing their odd chord usage as they did this aplenty......

Tom Ozric wrote: The Beatles have never trod the paths that Floyd trekked.  Take, for instance, Set The Controls........live - I've never heard The Beatles play dark, Farfisa organ driven Middle-Eastern scales of immense profoundness as Floyd.  Perhaps Floyd have taken some basic ideas from The Beatles, but John and Paul and George and Ringo never ventured into the musical depths the Floyd did.  Don't take it the wrong way, as there are many Beatles tracks I love, but as a musically adventurous band, they only hit the mark occasionally.......I'm not opposing their odd chord usage as they did this aplenty......

Beatles actually compressed much longer tracks into pop -length versions for White album, so they would have never gone the long form route.  But the list of things that Beatles did that Floyd never touched is much longer than vice versa.   Beatles were helluva eclectic and embraced all sorts of styles and sounds seamlessly into their music.   Whereas, once Barrett was gone, Floyd steadily got into a rut musically after a short productive phase that ended roughly at DSOTM.  That is the telling difference between both bands...as Beatles got better, they liberated themselves more and more from commercial and touring considerations.   It was not internal differences but Phil Spector drowning their songs in orchestral overdubs that pushed Beatles to disband.   Whereas Floyd, like some other peers from the 70s, began to coast along once they got successful.   As Waters himself admitted, the success of DSOTM basically ended Floyd. Though his powerful lyrical vision kept the band going for a few more great albums, they were nevertheless content with musical stagnation.   Beatles have been derided earlier in this thread for supposedly being less commercial but they are really a lot less so than the big classic rock and prog rock bands of the 70s because they never sold out on their fans. 

^ So, in other words, The Beatles touched base with something, opened up some gateways, where the Floyd explored the stuff in depth. That said, both are (equally) important.

Edited by Dayvenkirq - November 08 2012 at 23:50

Both are well respected and creative bands.  I voted Floyd, but I would've liked to see what The Beatles could have come up with if they had composed lengthy pieces - bar Hey Jude and I Want You (She's So Heavy) ??  Magical Mystery Tour had potential......

Josef_K wrote: Never found The Beatles that interesting. Sure they began challenging and developing music on all sorts of levels after a few albums but the actual result was never that impressing imo. I would like to say that they were simply not good enough musicians, and most of all nowhere near the songwriting capability of many other artists, Pink Floyd among these.  Floyd on the other hand had great songwriters in their own right all over the place. One randomly chosen Syd Barrett song is more interesting to me than the whole Beatles discography. David Gilmour and Rick Wright wrote some great stuff as well (Narrow Way, Fat Old Sun, Paintbox, Remember a Day mostly) but were at their best when helping the master composer Roger Waters imo. Now, these guys were all obviously influenced by The Beatles, that is something to take into consideration of course. However, I've never been a fan of arguing that music should be seen as better just because it was influential.  Again, I can respect The Beatles for being innovative in developing music, but I cannot find much interest in their actual music. Pink Floyd also developed music in many ways, but their actual music is also in itself simply masterpiece after masterpiece.

Never found The Beatles that interesting. Sure they began challenging and developing music on all sorts of levels after a few albums but the actual result was never that impressing imo. I would like to say that they were simply not good enough musicians, and most of all nowhere near the songwriting capability of many other artists, Pink Floyd among these. 

Edited by Josef_K - October 15 2012 at 15:51