I can't believe so many so-called music fans are playing down the importance of The Beatles.
I'm not the biggest Beatles fan in the world, but I don't see how you can turn a blind eye to their influence, impact and musical significance.
What they did in a recording studio alone is probably enough to justify them as the most important band of the past 50 years. The amazing things they were able to create on 4-tracks put the multi-track sessions of today to shame, and there's techniques that George Martin innovated that STILL haven't been replicated by today's artists.
As far as the music itself goes, almost any of the music that's recorded today can be directly or indirectly traced back to the band's post-Revolver work track by track. This is a band whose individual SONGS went on to form entire GENRES of music.
Further, no band I can think of has been able to release albums full of such diversity that are still coherent. Any given Beatles album from 1965 onward had four, five, six even seven or eight different styles of music, all beautifully packaged to fit into the album format. They were masters of the 3 minute single, but even more so masters of the LP.
Then there's their album artwork (they brought Pop Art to the masses with Peter Blake's Sgt. Pepper album sleeve, and released one of the must stunningly minimal album covers ever in an era of excess with The White Album), their films (which themselves could be argued as seminal), their style, etc, etc, etc.
If a recording artist today doesn't site them as a major influence, I guarantee you most of the artists they DO site were Beatles fans.
To say that the Beatles today wouldn't have the same impact because they were "at the right place at the right time" completely ignores the fact that the musical landscape would be an entirely different world without them.
Elvis, The Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin - they all had great bodies of work, but the level of evolution in The Beatles catalogue is just amazing... each release totally blew away the last and came out of left field to an unexpected audience.
Never again will such a talented, ground-breaking band garner as much mass appeal as The Beatles were able to with their genre defining work.
End of story.
Yesterday and Today Butcher Cover..an early anti war protest...pulled by Capitol Records. Introduced country music to non country fans (with songs like I Don't want to Spoil the Party and others). ..George Harrison with Within you Without you and the Wonderwall Soundtrack mostly likely "invented" or introduced what we now refer to popular World Music with the sitar and Ravi Shankar...and A Day in the Life which is probably one of the most important single recordings ever created. oh and All You Need is Love was written for and sung live (with a prerecorded original backing track) for the first ever World's Live Satellite broadcast. Today that is no big deal, but the Beatles represented Britain for that event.
