What about The Beatles?

While the early Beatles albums are well written pop music.. at that time they were still very much record company pawns.. it wasn't until they started writing the music they wanted to that they really blossomed into something great.

All Beatles albums are either pop or rock and  Beatles should not be discussed on this forum. To me Sgt Pepper. is not even prog in any sense of the word. Not even The White Album or Let It Bleed are prog albums. None of their albums are prog albums as far as I am concerned.

King Zappa wrote: I agree, you are a freak. Though I would go so far as to say that with rare exception they are unlistenable until the White Album.

Wow. Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Magical Mystery tour are all FAR FAR superior to the white album as far as progressiveness to me.

Deathrabbit wrote: I agree, every Beatles album was crap until Sgt. pepper.

So you guys really think that Revolver was crap?

Interesting.

As stated earlier, the early albums were pop albums to make money for the record companies.  The Beatles were one of the first, along with George Martin, to experiment and get away from the bubble gum rock that was being produced back then.  There was no prog movement to speak of until Revolver, Rubber Soul, etc.  The Beatles were one of the  few groups back then that, because of their popularity and ability to sell records, were actually not only allowed to experiment but, to a great degree, encouraged.  There is not  one well known prog oriented group that I know of that doesn't throw accolades upon The Beatles for having the balls to make the music that they wanted to make.  In many aspects, we might not have the prog music we love so much today had it not been for their lead.  Maybe I'm just an old fart, but having lived through that era, here in the U.S. and over in Europe, I have more of an appreciation for that era.  It opened up doors in many areas, not just in music, that might still be closed today.  If groups like The Beatles or artists like Bob Dylan hadn't used their popularity and their voices back then, you might not have this forum here today to express how much you liked them or they sucked.

So, it’s like I thought it would be. Beatles fans don’t come to progarchives (I know a couple and they don’t listen much prog), and prog lovers like us have nothing to do with early The Beatles. Maybe I’m extremely open-minded, listening not only prog and classic rock, but tango, blues, classical music, opera, and things like Sinatra, Edith Piaf (I don’t have albums but it’s OK) and Inti-Illimani and other groups from my country.

 

 

Proglodita wrote: So, it’s like I thought it would be. Beatles fans don’t come to progarchives (I know a couple and they don’t listen much prog), and prog lovers like us have nothing to do with early The Beatles. Maybe I’m extremely open-minded, listening not only prog and classic rock, but tango, blues, classical music, opera, and things like Sinatra, Edith Piaf (I don’t have albums but it’s OK) and Inti-Illimani and other groups from my country.

Many people on PA listen to a lot of music that is not prog.  Your problem may be with wording of the PA ratings system.  There are star ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 but the stars mean something specific--5 stars="a masterpiece of progressive music" and 4 stars="An excellent addition to any prog music collection.

I think people have trouble with this system both when rating and when looking at ratings of very excellent but absolutely non-prog albums by artists who, like the Beatles, are included on PA because of some of their other work.  It may be an excellent, 5-star album if you're writing a review for a general music site, but the PA system requires something to be an excellent progressive album in order to merit 4 stars.  A perfect system?  No, but I can't think of anything better.

Deathrabbit wrote: I agree, every Beatles album was crap until Sgt. pepper.

Malve87 wrote: Deathrabbit wrote: I agree, every Beatles album was crap until Sgt. pepper. Kinda silly sentence, not true at all.

Well, I'm not too mad about the first 2 albums apart from the odd track such as "Not a second time". From "A Hard Days Night" onwards there is good stuff to be found on every album, along with the occasional duffer such as Mr Moonlight. Even "Rubber Soul" had "Run for your Life" which Lennon himself hated.
However from then on nearly everything they did was revolutionary and superior to anything around at the time and most stuff since.
Going by the PA rating system,  it is hard even for me to give any of their albums 4or 5 stars. Probably only Revolver and Sgt Pepper are essential in a prog collection as part of the roots of prog.