I felt John Lennon hit it on the head:
“(The Rolling Stones) are not in the same class, music-wise…and never were.”
I went so hard on Beatles in my youth that I may be more inclined to listen to the Stones these days (and I indeed enjoy the Stones very much), but still remains true for me.
Beatles’ earliest compositions are much better than Stones’ earliest compositions. Much more memorable, much more harmonically sophisticated (I’m talking about the harmonic structure of the compositions themselves, not the vocals - which are obviously far more harmonically sophisticated as well).
Beatles first Parlophone B-side, “P.S. I Love You,” and other early songs like “From Me to You,” “There’s a Place,” “Please Please Me,” “All My Loving,” “It Won’t Be Long,” “This Boy,” and “All I’ve Got to Do.”
Those are 8 tremendous compositions just within their 13 months at EMI (their 1st sessions with the final lineup - Ringo on drums -were 9/62, the last of the aforementioned lot were 10/63).
“Tell Me,” “Empty Heart,” “Congratulations,” “Off the Hook,” “Heart of Stone,” “The Last Time,” “Play With Fire,” and “(I Can’t No) Satisfaction,” just doesn’t compare to me.
Era 2 Stones:
Aftermath/Between the Buttons/Their Satanic Majesties Request
“Get Off My Cloud,” “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Sad Day,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” “Paint it Black,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Dandelion”
Era 2 Beatles:
A Hard Day’s Night/Beatles For Sale/Help/Rubber Soul/Revolver/Sgt. Pepper’s
“Yes it Is,” “Day Tripper,” “Paperback Writer,” “Rain,” “Penny Lane,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “It’s All Too Much,” “All You Need is Love,” “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” “Hello, Goodbye,” “I Am the Walrus”
I’ll go with Beatles.
Era 3 Stones:
Beggar’s Banquet/Let it Bleed/Sticky Fingers/Exile on Main St:
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Honky Tonk Women.”
Era 3 Beatles:.
White Album/Let it Be/Abbey Road.
“Hey Jude,” “Lady Madonna, “Hey Bulldog,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” “Old Brown Shoe,” “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number”.
This one’s pretty even. Outside of “I Dig a Pony” and, especially great, “Across the Universe, I think Let it Be sucks, but, IMO, The White Album is their best, those other ‘68 songs are simply tremendous, and there are a few all-timers on Abbey Road as well, particularly “Because,” and “You Never Give Me Your Money.”.
Considering how great this Stones era is, and how sucky Let it Be is, I’m going to go with Stones here by a somewhat-slim margin.
Whatever good stuff the Stones do henceforth still can’t cause them to catch the Beatles to my mind.
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@jonwolfpell “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” has never come even remotely close to getting old for me.
This track, as you mentioned, turned up loud on a good system, might be as convincing as anything in terms of demonstrating the greatness of the Stones.
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@bdp24 “…I consider the idolization of the music of 1960’s groups over-the-top.”
Without sounding gushy or “over-the-top,” what is “over-the-top” about folks putting Beatles #1, or putting a band that made “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Satisfaction,” “She’s a Rainbow,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” “Dandelion,” “Paint it, Black,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Sing This All Together,” Beggar’s Banquet, and Let it Bleed way up in the upper echelon of pop history?
Velvet Underground? Sly and the Family Stone? Silver Apples? Kinks? Miracles? Stooges? Delfonics? Can? Zombies? Famous Flames? Bee Gees? Os Mutantes? White Noise? Beach Boys?
That bunch of groups (throw Beatles/Stones in there) composed music that essentially laid the foundation of all popular music of the last 50-odd years.
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@onhwy61 I thought you were joking at first, but the last bit of your post leaves me confused. Are you making these comments sincerely or as satire?
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@bdp24 I’m a bigtime Carol King nut.
I’m packed to the gills with knowledge and reverence of her stupefying ‘60s catalog (and Tapestry, of course).
I’ve only heard the original Tony Orlando version of “Halfway to Paradise.”
I dig Nick Lowe, so thanks for the suggestion.
I heard a John Lennon piano demo of “I’m in Love” from an iTunes comp from ‘13 called “The Beatles Bootleg Recordings 1963” that knocked me out.
Bonkers that they just tossed out excellence so willy-nilly.
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@bdp24
Both Beatles and Stones, like pretty much every band that ever existed (as you noted, The Everly Brothers didn’t invent sublime two-part vocal harmony and had a wealth of recordings featuring such preceding them) started with covers, and generally mimicked their idols.
Their clearly-inferior-to-the-original-version covers
(although the Beatles’ August ‘63 live BBC performance of ‘Don’t Ever Change’ by Carole King/Gerry Goffin - the duo that wrote ‘Crying in the Rain’ by the Everly Brothers, the group for whom ‘Don’t Ever Change’ was originally written - is outrageously good, identical to the melodically-complex/difficult vocal harmony studio original by the Crickets…only live…)
are a mute point.
Even then, I would still put the earliest Beatles compositions, i.e. “P.S. I Love You,” “Ask Me Why,” “Love of the Loved,” “Please Please Me,” all from ‘62, to say nothing of the dozen-plus knockout originals in ‘63 - yep, that early -
(the likes of which include classics as non-album singles, the best originals on their two ‘63 LPs, and the handful of stone-cold gems written for other artists in ‘63, i.e. ‘Bad to Me,’ ‘I’m in Love,’ ‘I’ll Be On My Way,’ - Paul actually wrote ‘World Without Love’ when he was 16)
up against any pop group of the time in ‘63.
Obviously, mid-‘60s-to-early-‘70s Beatles/Stones is canonical.
Everly Brothers wrote a handful of great songs, but their catalog is non-original dominant (particularly by the Bryants).
The fact that one guy, Clapton, desired late-‘60s pop to be more “roots oriented” is nowhere near some “last word on music,” is by no means an expression of anything resembling “universal truth” on where popular music “should have” been heading.
Maybe there were a ton of music fans/artists in the ‘60s whose minds were blown by “Tomorrow Never Knows” and Revolver, by Pet Sounds, and the innumerable records then that created something entirely new, innovative, and as far from “dudes regurgitating rural Americana” as possible.
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Abbey Road falls further down the list for me, Beatles-album-wise.
“Because” and “You Never Give Me Your Money” are world-beaters, especially “Because.” There are some things about “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” I really like.
I find the intensity of adulation “Something” receives somewhat mystifying. It’s nice and all, but, IMO, not the composition so many characterize it as. I like “Here Comes the Sun” a bit more, I suppose (I really like when George and Paul Simon did it live/acoustic with harmonies and all on SNL in ‘76), but a certain Pop Culture Mythology Machine has branded these two George songs as something I don’t personally recognize.
If I never heard “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “Oh! Darling,” or “Come Together” ever again, I wouldn’t cry.
The rest of the stuff is…nice.
I’ll take stunning compositions/arrangements (I don’t judge music by whether or not playing it on a fancy system may impress audio nerds) like “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here There, and Everywhere,” and “For No One” with excellent 2nd-tier songs like “And Your Bird Can Sing,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” “Love You To,” “She Said, She Said,” and “Got to Get You Into My Life.”
If the only good track on the album was “Tomorrow Never Knows,” that alone would be well worth the price of admission. Still astonishing.
If all that occurred on the album, studio-innovation-wise was “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Revolver would automatically be a huge milestone in popular music.
For anyone who wants to know the depth of Revolver’s studio innovations, I would suggest reading chief engineer Geoff Emerick’s book, Here, There and Everywhere. It’s safe to say that the recording of that album employed far more than “a couple uses of new techniques,” to say nothing of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and is pulling out all the stops, engineering-innovation-wise, in ways Abbey Road simply isn’t.
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@bdp24 Love The Kinks. Generally go for them over Stones, can’t say necessarily the same w/Beatles. Beatles are just…too good. I could certainly, however, produce a “short novella” on my love of The Kinks.
I consider Sgt. Pepper’s long-held status as #1-all-time-worthy incommensurate with the actual songs. The studio innovation, sure. Songs, not so much. I consider “She’s Leaving Home” gorgeous, brilliant, haunting, indelible and impervious to overplayedness. “A Day in the Life” is just…incredible (I also enjoy the early takes on Anthology 2…Jesus…).
Obviously this is all subjective but, “Way over half of the White Album is unlistenable”…boy…
“Dear Prudence,” “Glass Onion,” “Bungalow Bill,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” “Martha My Dear,” “I’m So Tired,” “Blackbird,” “Piggies,” “I Will,” “Julia,” “Mother Nature’s Son,” “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” “Sexy Sadie,” “Helter Skelter,” “Long, Long, Long,” “Honey Pie,” “Savoy Truffle,” “Cry Baby Cry,” “Goodnight.”
20 of the 30 tracks that are as sublime as pop music gets.
Legit avant-garde songs like “Wild Honey Pie,” “Revolution 9.” Super ballsy to put stuff like that on an LP by the biggest band in the world. Irrespective of artistic courage, I still consider those tracks sonically and artistically remarkable.
Rod Temperton (author of Heatwave, Brothers Johnson, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones classics), Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff (authors of and producers of too many glorious records by way too many incredible artists to begin to mention), the brothers Gibb, Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson, Giorgio Moroder, and Niles Rodgers (author of Chic, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, David Bowie) may have something to say about someone using the word “disco” as merely a pejorative.
The primes of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Bach ended a lot more than fifty years ago. This has no bearing on whether their art was good.
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@bigtwin I’m something of a film buff.
I watch anything and everything from any time and anywhere in that medium.
Obviously, a) Get Back is not a traditional documentary, it’s closer to an archaeological film product, b) documentaries can’t be compared to fiction films, and c) I’m a huge Beatles fan.
All these things aside, I’m not sure any film has necessarily brought me as much joy and enthrallment as Get Back. I’m so grateful to Peter Jackson and his colleagues and Paul/Ringo/Yoko/Olivia for this film.
One doesn’t need to like the Beatles or even music to be enthralled by the film.
Peter Jackson had me with merely the intro. I’m sure we all would have our choices as to which pieces of footage made the final film (having seen the original Michael Lindsay-Hogg Let it Be, I know I missed a few bits Jackson left out - particularly when Paul & John share a mic for a run through of ‘Two of Us’ and go full-on silly in extremely funny fashion, or when the band is jamming w/Preston and start playing ‘Besame Mucho’ and Paul goes into ridiculously-silly over-the-top singing to hilarious effect) but I felt completely in trust of Jackson that he made a tremendous film based on what I saw.
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@bigtwin At a birthday party for Mick Jagger in ‘68, at a really popular joint in London called the Vesuvio Club, the place was going crazy listening to an advance pressing of the upcoming Stones LP, Beggar’s Banquet that Mick had brought along to play on the house system.
Paul McCartney arrived and handed an acetate of the upcoming Beatles single, Hey Jude/Revolution to the club’s owner, saying, “here’s our new one, see what you think of it.”
After everyone went crazy for the Beatles single, asking it to be played repeatedly, Mick, according to some attendees, seemed peeved. Paul does say that Mick was also quite impressed with “Hey Jude.”
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