So let's talk about The Beatles

The Beatles were the most popular band of all time.


Beach Boys>Beatles tho :fact:

20 year old American chicks listen to the Beatles on the reg (in my small sample of reference of course). No Beach Boys.

quote:

---

The Beatles were the most popular band of all time.

---

I was old enough to remember Beatle Mania- no young person today will ever understand. The Beatles changed EVERYTHING. A lot of singers were no longer relevant because the Beatles pushed them out of the charts. I went to see Help! at the show- girls screamed the entire time through the film! But they were not just some teen idols- they changed along with their audience, stayed in the forefront of music. The Beatles had kids picking up a guitar everyone wanted to be a Beatle. Sgt. Pepper? Talk about shaking up the rock world!
I laugh when people talk about 'Queen' or 'Michael Jackson' being the ultimate superstars...that is a joke! There was the Beatles & Elvis- nothing else will ever come close in the last 60 years of music and how it affected our culture. Bob Dylan too, but more so just in the rock world. Again, younger kids will never know what it was like- I feel sorry for them. You Tube and Pandora may expose a lot of groups, but there was nothing like just buying an album. Shame that radio today is just rap/hip-hop crap, RnB pop crap, watered down alternative crap and same old, same old, commercialized so-called classic rock, which is certainly not classic in my book & I grew up in the 60's onward. But to get back on track, the Beatles were always on the radio & on the charts. Hell, my 93 year old dad grew up in the Big Band era, yet he still loves the Beatles and appreciates their song writing abilities. Here in Houston, we even had a station playing nothing but Beatles music in the early 80's- remember, this was decades before XM radio. Only the Beatles could have pulled that off.

LINK

quote:

---

and yet I have friends who claim The Beach Boys are far more influential

---

You have some dumb friends.

quote:

---

20 year old American chicks listen to the Beatles on the reg (in my small sample of reference of course). No B

---

20 year old American chicks have the best taste in music

quote:

---

I see where they are called the most influential pop/rock group of all-time and yet I have friends who claim The Beach Boys are far more influential.

---

The massive success of the Beatles in leading the british invasion overshadows their American precursors - you can almost point to the Beach Boys as the "American" Beatles - and, further, the Beach Boys were big, first.

If you think back to the classic rock and roll period - even the early "pre" rock antecedents - you had black blues and R&B artists, some with strong jazz backgrounds, picking up the tempo (and I'm thinking of Fats, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, here, among others), Elvis, Perkins, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly - and even if they were associated with a band (Bill Haley's "Comets" and Holly's "Crickets"), there was this strong "front man" persona. The Beach Boys were a very, very early example of a self-contained band that worked, primarily, on albums and actively moved away from the singles format.

And that became the template for the 1960s and 1970s - self-contained bands that did not have extensive horn sections (although soul, funk and some rock acts of the 70s brought that back, some - EWF and Chicago, notably, had huge footprints) or other baggage like that, and, more importantly, wrote their own songs (many of the early rock acts and pop singing groups performed, primarily, songs written by others).


And your early bands that had success with this organizational structure were the Beach Boys (American) and The Beatles (UK).

But, Brian Wilson, particularly, is one of the most influential musicians of all time. Virtually every band that came after them - and made albums, pointed to Pet Sounds (1966). Hard to argue with that as being quite influential, particularly internationally for the up and coming British Invasion acts.

quote:

---

Beach Boys>Beatles tho :fact:

---

The Beach Boys couldn't and still can't hold John or Paul's jock strap.

I like the Beach Boys more than the Beatles, but I can't say the Beach Boys were more influential than the Beatles. Two different categories imo. I don't think the Beach Boys were nearly as consistent, but I don't think the Beatles ever made a song better than Good Vibrations or a better album than Pet Sounds.