The Beatles invented Prog Rock - discuss

i like the beatles a lot but all of my friends (and probably most of my teenage generation) do not see them as a phoenomenom or as good songwriters. The whole 62-66 period is all happy and poppy and sounds samey. it only got slightly more interesting in the latter years with more realistic and depressing stuff.

I have a few of their albums and they are great, and me and my friends appreciate that at the time they were the best songwriters and had such a major influence (and still do). same with elvis, but they really cant compare to the modern stuff we listen to!

overall brilliant band... but us new kids cant see why they are given so much praise. maybe they just didnt age well or something! but their influence will never die or be forgotten!

the only thing is, if i or anyone else says a view like this we get sl*gged off, when it is very valid!

Edited by frenchie

The Beatles through the long apprenticeship of playing the clubs for many a hard day's night in Hamburg, had to have a big bag of tunes. Their early stuff was derived from Tamla Motown and other black soul music, plus the rockabilly and straight rock and roll. Plus some of their own music, based on the same. Their second album, With The Beatles when it was first released, was always played at parties because it had some great tunes to dance to and each only lasted 3 minutes at the most. Lennon and McCartney as one of the major song writers of the 20th century, had a great ability to write very catchy (and often timeless) pop tunes, which are now part of the popular music catalogue - fit for plunder by budding jazz divas who need a standard.  The Dylan influence comes around the period of Rubber Soul, when their compositions became more complex. However, it was often said in the mid 60's that the Beatles were great absorbers of what was going on around them musically, and had this all knowing ability to process those new sounds into something distinctly Beatlely. They visited the West Coast, came back doing Byrd-like or Beach Boy-like tunes. Then with the summer of love, absorption of the Haight Astbury psychedelic sound  re-evolving into the Englishness of Sgt Pepper. After the White Album and Magic Mystery Tour, with the Beatles slowly disintergrating, leading to  McCartney doing the pushing (often pushing his songs into the frame for the next album), some great riffs but the move back to mainstream simplicity of pop and rock'n'roll.

Indeed the Beatles shifted music forward, building their house often from borrowed bricks and mortar, constructed in a unique manner. Hence they progressed - but so did many other bands (Kinks for instance - and I often see Ray Davies being written up as a superior composer than Lennon and McCartney nowadays). Beatles 'inventing' progressive rock: no chance. Not one group or musican invented progressive rock, it evolved. The Beatles helped show was that there was more than just the 2 minute 30 second single to be composed, played and recorded for the young record buying market - what George Martin showed the Beatles and therefore other musicians, was how music could be arranged and be instrumented in unexpected ways. However, Beatles and Martin didn't corner the market in such innovation.

The Beatles led the evolution of rock music for 5 years, and to say they were crap musicians is to miss several points, as they (apart from Ringo) certainly weren't crap rock musicians by any stretch of th imagination.

Not one item on that top 10 list is actually true - for a start, musique concrete was "invented" many decades previously, and many composers and jazz bands have used "exotic" instrumentation, and the Moog was invented long before the Beatles got their hands on it. However, reword it to "The Beatles were the first rock band to..." and it becomes a bit more accurate.

Progressive rock was the culmination of many, many styles - the Beatles certainly played their part in its evolution, but so did the Byrds, the Nice, Pink Floyd and arguably John Mayall, Miles Davis and Rakhmaninov, among others.

To adequately discuss this subject would require far more time - but I think those are the bare bones.

Nobody invented the progressive rock, but the Beatles deserves credit.

They were the most famous "beat" band (and rock ´n roll band)at that time, but they weren´t satisfied with the music they were doing, so they experimented lots of things, trying to make their music richer. And they achieved their goal. They simply could keep doing I Wanna Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Help, and etc, but they changed their style and they, without a doubt, made psychedelic and progressive rock reach to the great audience. Without Beatles, the psychedelic and progressive rock would need a lot of more time to reach the mass audience and probably wouldn´t achieve so much success as they did. 

Moribund wrote: OK King Crimson may have been the first to recognise, refine and launch, but here's a quick list to agree/disagee/disprove/snarl at/laugh at:- The Beatles were the first to:- Use the studio as a writing tool Use the LP as an artform Use multitrack recording creatively DI the bass Use exotic & orchestral instruments creatively Produce the first concept album Use a moog synthesiser Use feedback creatively Use many FX and unusual recording techniques (vari-speed, voices thru Leslie Cab, flanging) Use musique concrete techniques All yours Ladies & Gentlemen..............................

 

Just one thing,even though Lennon & McCartney were probably the greatest song writers ever,they,together with George & ringo were crap musicians...Everything is owed to George Martin,without him they would have not been the great sussess they ended up as.

George Martin was the man behind every technique,he judged the way the album was to be produced,the way the effects were to be used,even the one who encouraged them to use Moog & Hammond.

For the time he pushed the studio as a recreational area as far forward as possible...

All yours

Yet the beatles never came up with a composition that was evolving, complex, intricating in the way musical layers interact and even VIRTUOUS.