I'm with Bob Elms on this....his words, not mine, but I concur...you clearly won't sir!!!

WHY I HATE THE BEATLES
"The fact that 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' was surprisingly voted the worst song of all time in a recent poll, makes this a good time to explain again why I believe that The Beatles are the most ludicrously overrated band of all time and never play their records on the show.

While it's true that 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' is a truly embarrassing piece of twee cod reggae, sadly typical of the fab four at their most annoyingly nursery-rhyme banal, it is surely not the worst song of all time.

'Yellow Submarine' can justifiably claim that shameful title or 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer or 'Octopus's Garden' or 'When I'm Sixty-Four', or any number of the heinous crimes against popular song collectively committed by these inexplicably sanctified mop tops.

Truly great bands don't make terrible records.

Yelping

That lack of any editorial control and judgement is a large part of what I have against them.

Can you really imagine Smokey Robinson and the Miracles or The Band or Little Feat singing silly infant school rhymes?
Certainly in their earliest incarnation as a mop top shaking covers band, doing yelping versions of American R'n'B numbers, The Beatles had a raw charm and energy.

But no more so than half a dozen similar beat boom combos and nowhere near as much as either the magnificently strutting Rolling Stones or Belfast's brilliantly bitter, Them.

Do you agree or disagree with Robert? Have your say.

Self-aggrandisement

Compared to either of those The Beatles were British blues boom 'lite'.

And once they were given their head as song writers, that clawing tendency towards poppy soppy sentimentalism, a preponderance of playground sing-along la la las and na na nas, and a liking for clever, clever studio arrangements, took all the sex and the passion and the dirt out of raw rock and roll.

They took black American music and made it whiter than white. The Beatles were the four nice boys granny could happily hum along to.

Teaming up with George Martin, a middle class English gentleman famous for producing comedy records, The Beatles then started their ever more self-indulgent odyssey into double albums and concept albums, sitars, brass bands, gurus and self-aggrandisement.

Simplistic

Certainly they wrote some fine tunes; 'Something', 'Let It Be', 'Here Comes the Sun'? although all of those excellent songs are far better when covered by people who can actually sing.

Hear Aretha Franklin pull the full gospel majesty out of 'Let It Be' or Nina Simone, breath depth into 'Here Comes The Sun', and you realise that none of The Beatles were ever particularly good vocalists or great musicians.

And how can a truly great songwriter come up with something as ingratiatingly simplistic and syrupy as the awful 'All You Need Is Love'?

Perhaps the most annoying bit of the whole overblown Beatles myth is when people harp on about how 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is the greatest, most profound, most important album of all time.

Influential

No it isn't. Have you actually listened to it all the way through lately? It's a dated, soulless, overblown exercise in studio trickery and trite musical tourism.

Compare that to say Dylan's majestic 'Blonde On Blonde' or Marvin Gaye's achingly Heartfelt 'What's Going On', both records from roughly the same era and tell me which is the masterpiece.

The fact that so many superior artists were overlooked because so much attention was focused on the fab four is another reason to try and redress that balance.

Where people are right about Sgt Pepper's, is the claim that it was an influential record.

Noodling

The whole ludicrous era of self-important self-indulgence in pop music, the endless, pretentious concept albums, the studio noodling, the fake eastern mysticism, the deadbeats who believed they could change the world by sitting in a bag and humming a mantra, are all directly linked to that record.

We had to endure a decade of beards, platitudes and Tales From Topographic Oceans because Sgt Pepper's was influential.

It wasn't until punk came along and blew away all that nonsense that we got some passion and some soul back into rock music.

By then of course The Beatles were no more. But the dubious legacy continued in their solo careers.

Embarrassment

Only George Harrison, always the least objectionable Beatle, avoided further major embarrassments.

Poor Ringo gave us a series of awful records and the voice of Thomas the Tank.

Paul McCartney croaked his way through the Frog Song, Rupert the Bear and Rudolph The Red Nosed Reggae.

John Lennon meanwhile is the one most Beatles idolaters claim carried his genius on.

Well actually I take back everything I said about 'Yellow Submarine' and 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'.

The worst song of all time, by a mile, is Lennon's dire 'Imagine'.

That mawkish, manipulative dirge, in which the multi-millionaire with one temperature controlled room in his Manhattan mansion just to keep his fur coats in, whimpers "Imagine No Possessions" is the most sickly and irritating song ever.

That's why."

Posted By: Beth Nal Green on May 24th 2005 at 23:26:23

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