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Beatles, Stones or Led Zeppelin? (or someone else?)

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Steak Snabler, Feb 20, 2008.

  1. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    Way too much credit is given to the Beatles. The door was thrown open to them thanks to a whole slew of screwy shit that went on with Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry as well as the deaths of Buddy Holly and Richie Valens. They were really lucky that American rock music did not have its shit together at the time or there would have been no British invasion.
     
  2. Steak Snabler

    Steak Snabler Well-Known Member

    But the biggest thing might have been that Elvis had been in the Army and was making shitty movies at the time ...
     
  3. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    Another thing to consider was this country was an emotional wreck having had their president assassinated less than 90 days prior to the Beatles arrival. The country needed something to cheer itself up, something positive, something to release their pent up energy for, and here comes the plane from London in February 1964.

    So, there were certainly circumstances that played in their favor. But, the Beatles were going to change rock and roll regardless of the landscape that fell in front of them.
     
  4. longgone

    longgone Member

    beatles easily no. 1. they changed not only music but also the culture.
     
  5. misterbc

    misterbc Well-Known Member

    Some terrific posts here. What the listener hears on any given album isn't the necessarily the sound of the instruments at the recording session; the production plays a big part in the final product.

    Beatles: George Martin could be considered to be as important as any of the other members of the band. His expertise in production of almost their entire body of work and his orchestral scoring of a great deal of the Beatle catalogue sets the Fab Four at the head of the list. The fact of the matter is he was not a member of the band, rather, an outside influence. Also, almost all Beatle music is in standard tuning (an exception like "Dear Prudence" is in drop D which is virtually standard) which limits the creation of certain sounds, although it never seemed to be an issue for them.

    Stones: Had a few producers (Glyn Johns, etc.) before internalizing this function for most of their albums. Early Stones was all in standard tuning, but open tunings are featured on many of their hits starting with "Honkey Tonk Women" and includes "Gimme Shelter", "Brown Sugar" et al.
    Not a negative factor, just gave them more options than the Beatles.

    Led Zeppelin:Jimmy Page and/or John Paul Jones produced all their music and were, obviously, members of the band. They used open tunings fairly extensively.

    My rankings:

    1. Beatles....quality, variety and inventiveness of the music in the limiting standard tuning outweighs the fact George Martin, to a great degree, crafted their sound.
    2. Led Zeppelin.....very close second as I take into account they did it all themselves. Inventive and groundbreaking sound, best ever guitar player; just not quite the variety of band #1.
    3. Rolling Stones....Love their music up to '75. Acoustic output doesn't measure up to Beatles or Zep.

    My opinion only.
     
  6. Oggiedoggie

    Oggiedoggie Well-Known Member

    Any, yet when the Chipmunks are mentioned, a band that has more albums than any of these groups, there's nothing but crickets (who, without Buddy Holly wee basically nothing).
     
  7. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    I don't see the big connection there at all.

    The Lennon-McCartney lyrics, latter-day Shakespearian sonnets which could bounce from saccharine to caustic to utterly random, were unprecedented, as was the outside-the-box instrumentation.

    When you pick up Metallica's S&M, for instance, you can directly thank the Beatles.
     
  8. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I would vote Zeppelin, but if someone said it was the Beatles, I wouldn't exactly call them an idiot...
     
  9. Zeppelin shouldn't even be in this discussion.
     
  10. See, I'd say the same about the Rolling Stones.
     
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