Beatles vs Rolling Stones

[RocDoc]

_{No 'Exile'? Somehow that's very wrong...}

[Rit]

i've just tuned my guitar to open G tuning, and have committed to learning the entirety of Exile's riffs in the next two weeks. I started with "Rocks Off". Just thought that might interest you.

Good posts from all of you, must say.

I still irrationally can't stand the Beatles though.

What's so special about the Beatles anyway? They created memorable riffs, but what do they represent? Nothing but messy values. Coating the world in sugarpop sentiment or self-conscious melodies. There's very little toughness about them, very little abandon, very little authentic soul...

..for example, their upward artistic growth resulted in the ridiculous artifice of George's "ramakrishna" mysticism. What kind of b.s. is that? That may have flown in the the flaky Sixties, but western pop mainstream culture's growth since then has been accelerated and multilevelled... few people are convinced by the search for transcendance leading to Universal Brotherhood, expressed in such songs as "All You Need Is Love"...

our cultural defences are more cynical than that.. we would rather have the ambivalent but skeptical Goodwill embodied by the Velvet Underground's more basic and temperamental so-called "transdendant" songs, such as "Rock and Roll" or "Beginning To See The Light".

What i love about the Stones is that they sidestepped any bogus "mystical moments", admitted their failure to do so on Satanic Majesties (which is an utter travesty), and sang about various degrees of social decay. Good enough for me, and good enough to remain culturally relevant, as DED was saying in his previous early post.

Very little authentic soul-baring aliveness. That's the way i feel about the Beatles.

[JACkory]

You can be Yin, I'll be Yang...

...or vice versa, as you prefer...

[Rit]

a dualist, eh?
what if there's only action in this Life, no reaction?
...okay, i'm bullshitting, heh.


fair enough. i happen to like the Stones, and most of you heppen to like the Beatles. that's life.

[strat-0]

Hey, I love the Stones!

Rit, I love the idea of just keeping your guitar tuned to open G for a while. Break out a slide, while you're there! I've never got very proficient on slide, but it's a lot of fun. E or A, too.

[Kensterberg]

Roc Doc -- I subscribe to the now minority opinion that Exile on Main Street, well, is a less than steller album. I don't like the mix, Jagger's lyrics are the worst he'd come up with in years at that point, and the whole thing is just less than memorable IMO. Frankly, it comes down to the fact that I don't think that most of these songs are really that good. I haven't listened to the whole thing in years, and it is an album I need to revisit in the near future, but I just don't see myself becoming a huge fan of Exile.

Rit -- I don't see cynicism as being somehow more advanced than hope as far as a world view goes. In fact, I think that it generally requires more effort to avoid cynicism, which is often the easy way out. I guess this is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of Exile. It's also interesting that even the Stones biggest fans never point to what is easily their most cynical era -- the unabashed sell-out of the early seventies. The band even admitted that they were making records during this period (and touring into the eighties) because they simply needed the money. It is indisputable that the Stones made their best records when they were young and, yes! naive. Satisfaction? Jumping Jack Flash? Paint It Black? Gimme Shelter? These aren't the songs of a cynical or jaded band, these are the songs of pissed-off youngsters who actually thought they could do something about the world. As Dobs (I believe it was, a huge Stones fan, BTW) would often argue, Jagger lost his lyrical bit after Altamont, when he realized the effect that his songs could have on people. In that respect, yeah, Exile is an extremely cynical or jaded record, in that it is the result of Jagger running from the challenges the world still held post-Altamont, and instead embracing the easy way out.

Peace and love may sound dated today, but it sure makes a hell of a lot better world view than "make money and try not to affect people in a meaningful way."

I hope that all made some sort of sense ... and again, I don't hate the Stones. Hell, I just put Gimme Shelter on this year's 9/11 mix as the closing song! But they don't hold up to the Beatles ... or the Who and the Kinks ... or the Clash ... or X ... you get the idea.

[Mary]

Really interesting conversation guys.... you had to know the conversation about hope vs. cynicism would lure me right in!!

Sooo, first off - I do tend to find the Beatles at their most dippy - i.e. All You Need is Love - pretty hard to stomach. But that's not because I find "hope" to be inherently shallow or superficial - I just think there are shallow versions of both hope and cynicism, and All You Need is Love is a pretty fuckin shallow version of hope. But what's objectionable is the knee-jerk superficiality of it, not the fact that it expresses an optimistic vision. I find knee-jerk nihilism every bit as irritating - it's what I hate about Todd Solondz movies, for example.

warning...about to go off on pretentious navel-gazing expedition.... stop reading right now if you want to remain awake for the next 15 minutes...

See, for me, hope, despair, cynicism, nihilism, optimism, and pessimism - all these things are inextricably connected to one another and harbor the seeds of one another. Any time you sever these relations, you get a superficial and shallow and inauthentic version of the emotion or outlook. Take hope and despair, for example - hope is about something that hasn't yet happened - once you obtain something, you stop "hoping" for it because you already have it. So the very fact that hope is about what you don't have, what you're lacking, an unfulfilled desire, an uncertain future, an object that has thus far exceeded your grasp - means that it carries within itself the seeds of despair, because all these things are also the catalysts of despair. And vice versa, if you're in despair, it's because hope hasn't entirely been killed yet - you despair because you still desperately want something that you don't have, which implies the ever-so-slight glimmer of hope is still present - if only the hope for hope. Once you stop despairing - once you just don't give a shit anymore - you also stop hoping. Thus, hope and despair aren't antithetical to each other, in fact, they're dialectically intertwined. And I just really can't tolerate any cultural artifacts which deal with hope or despair but fail to recognize this intertwining - it's why I equally loathe teenage nihilism and bland optimism.

I'm not against hope, then. But the kind of hope I love, the kind of hope I find most compelling, is the hope against hope, the desperate hope that keeps slipping back into despair, the impossible hope that knows itself to be impossible. That's interesting, that's beautiful, that's dramatic, that's human. Pure sunny optimistic hope is just self-denial.

Bringing this back to the Beatles, though, I think it's utterly unfair to suggest pure sunny optimistic hope is the only kind of hope the Beatles trafficked in. They were infinitely more complicated than that, as Ken's list of "dark" Beatles songs demonstrates. Yeah, All You Need is Love is treacly, shallow, and superficial, but it's a gross misunderstanding of the Beatles to suggest that the mood of All You Need is Love is the only mood they ever struck. For every All You Need is Love, there's also a Let It Be - a song that absolutely perfectly captues the despair within hope and the hope within despair, the impossibility of extricating the two from each other, the ultimate fact that hope IS despair and despair IS hope.

....

fuck me, i need to stop reading hegel.

Cheers,
M

[Mary]

kenholzman said:

or the Who and the Kinks ... or the Clash ... or X ... you get the idea.

Now X are a band who really fuckin GET IT when it comes to hope and despair. That's why they were soooooooooooooooo much more interesting than any other band that came out of L.A. punk. They were never cartoonish because they never went for the simplistic nihilism of their peers. Because their songs invariably captured the panorama of emotions, even though they were also invariably bleak, dark, and pessimistic. But they were bleak, dark, and pessimistic because they were still lamenting the loss of hope and the death of optimism - and in lamenting these things, they were still caught up in them.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love X?

Most. criminally. underrated. American. band. EVER.

Cheers,
M

[JACkory]

Then there's always the possibility that Lennon was being ironic when he wrote "All You Need Is Love".
But probably not, eh?
Well. when your flying high on the wave of fame and tripping on acid constantly to the point where you think you're actually Jesus Christ Himself I suppose it's easy to let your Utopian fantasies spin out of control.
I used to hate "All You Need Is Love" for the same reasons cited above by several, but then one day I decided to listen to it's arrangement, it's melody, it's music...paying some attention to the verses but ignoring the sloganeering choruses and guess what? I actually enjoyed it.
It's a big production number and the closing section is as psychedelic as anything else they ever did (I mean, how strange to hear that orchestra fade in with "Greensleeves"/"What Child Is This" at the end)...
Maybe Lennon wanted a very simple, easily understood distillation of the main theme the Beatles generally worked (ie. peace and love) to present on the worldwide television special that the song was written especially for...after all, it was the first time that such a broadcast was ever presented "live" and "around the world", and if memory serves, the whole theme of the show was "world peace".
And in regards to the Beatles/Stones, I would submit that "She's a Rainbow" is infinitely sappier than anything the Beatles ever did...

She comes in colors ev'rywhere;
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

She comes in colors ev'rywhere;
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

Have you seen her dressed in blue?
See the sky in front of you
And her face is lik a sail
Speck of white so fair and pale
Have you seen a lady fairer?

She comes in colors ev'rywhere;
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

Have you seen her all in gold?
Like a queen in days of old
She shoots her colors all around
Like a sunset going down
Have you seen a lady fairer?

She comes in colors ev'rywhere;
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

She combs her hair? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

[Rit]

"She's A Rainbow" was horrible. but it came from Satanic Majesties, which was a bad idea through and through, as the Stones were trying to be Sgt. Pepper clones. Jagger only wrote them lyrics coz he thought that's what the psychedelic kidz were listening to.

to be precise though, i recall that "She's a Rainbow" was a rip off from an Arthur Lee/ Love song.

Yes, Jagger is an ass and an yuppie at heart. The two go together well. But he was also a great showman.

[Rit]

the hope vs cynicism thing is interesting. i mean, why would you as a music fan even demand such a thing from your rockstars? Its entertainment in the end, not meant to take a world on itself.. that's just arrogance and ego talking.

well, the above line of thought would be Wrong! I don't get my underwear in a knot over how marvelous a song is crafted. Any wank can write fantastically pretty songs, given enough time or motivation -- Peter Gabriel said that. And he was right.

IMO, ultimately, if you pay a serious compliment to a song by saying that merely it's melody and music moved you to rapturous heights, then you are not demanding enough. I don't want some surface agreeability from some creep who happens to channel the right vibes at me. I instinctively recoil at any artist who hides his persona behind "glorious pop music".

I like the Stones because i know Kieth's just playing the blues, man, just playing the blues with a satisfying blend of insight and love of the music, and tinkers with the form of the blues as a fan first and foremost. Many people do that -- Keith just happens to be a natural poet at it, which is why he's rightly celebrated.

[phil]

Hé ! "All You Need Is Love" was written specificaly
for the "Our World" special broadcast in 1967,
the first live via satellite link-up over the five continents.

Somehow I feel a song like "Helter Skelter"
would have felt slightly out of place for the occasion ...

The song integrates part of
the French national anthem,
Glen Miller's "In The Mood",
J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 2
and The Beatles' own "She Loves You" ...

P.S. I'm curious to learn where John Lennon said
he was actualy Jesus-Christ himself ... ??

[Rit]

you know what JAC means, Philemon.

[phil]

Any wank can write fantastically pretty songs, given enough time or motivation --
Peter Gabriel said that. And he was right.


But only a very gifted musician
can say something like that
without sounding like an idiot ...

[JACkory]

phil said:

P.S. I'm curious to learn where John Lennon said
he was actualy Jesus-Christ himself ... ??

Phil, I've read so many "Beatles Books" that I'm not even sure which one I read about this in.
I think it's documented in the Anthology book, but Lennon actually claimed he was Christ at an Apple board meeting. In addition there was a point where Lennon was so drugged-up that he came to the studio and told everyone that he'd come to the realization that he was indeed Jesus Christ.