Just out of curiousity, of the people who are anti-beatles in this thread, how many consider themselves musicians or have tried writing a song?
It's not meant to be an "if you're not a musician, you just don't GET it, man" kind of statement, because i'm sure that there are plenty of pro-beatles people in this thread who aren't musicians/songwriters either.
So to boil it down from my perspective, bands need songs, and for those songs to be successful, they have to have a hook, whether it's the bass line from the Humpty Dance or the opening riff in Back in Black (cause it ain't the singing), but the greatest hook of all is melody. If you've got a good melody, the song has the ability to have it's own life in the heads of non-musicians.
Now you've got a melody, what chords do you frame it with? There are alot of options, and a choice unexpected chord can be a hook too. You don't have to be a musician to recognize those either, you just have to be an active listener as opposed to a passive one.
Let's say you've got a chorus, a verse, and a bridge (or middle 8), each part has a really good melody and some chords that support the melody, maybe even make the melody better by virtue of some hooks...
Sounds easy? (that's meant to be sarcastic) Well, we're not done yet. Now you have to record it. If you've ever had to record anything, from a PSA on your college radio station to a mix tape for a girl you like, let alone a song, you already know what a pain in the ass that can be. Well, there's two basic ways to record. Live one pass, and multi tracking. In live one pass, the band plays live, together, and no matter how well you baffle stuff, unless they're in separate rooms or isolation booths, there will be bleed between microphones. And that means that if anyone screws up, you pitch the take and do it again, you just can't edit something good together out of that. So multiply your own frustration at recording by let's say 4 (4 guys in a band trying to do a 3:30 song one time perfectly with no mistakes). So why would anyone do that? Because the performances tend to sound alot more energetic and real and fun. The other way to record is to multitrack. Each person lays their part separately to a metronome ( a steady click track in your earphones ). Then you can edit each part because there's no bleed, and build a take out of a bunch of takes. This makes a recording sound like, well present day radio. Slick and soulless and imperfectly perfect.
Now you're through the recording process, time to go hawk your wares, which means rocking out on stage. If you've never played in a rock band, well, it tends to be loud. It's hard to hear stuff even when you do have a p.a. with monitors. Monitors are the speakers pointed towards the band on the floor in front of them.
Oh by the way, you need to have personality too. Let's say we're in make-believe land and you've got a personality, songs, recordings, you're well rehearsed, and all of the above are solid in their quality.
The Beatles did this in their late teens through their mid to late twenties, playing so loud on stage because monitors didn't even exist and they couldn't hear over the crowds, they didn't mike up drum kits live back then, so all the early performance films, Ringo sounds awesome AND HE WASN'T EVEN MIKED, which means he was killing the drums, and the harmonies were all in tune while they were playing pretty difficult songs (oh you think they're simple? Go learn one. Then try and sing the vocal or a background over it, yes the early BORING ones).
Now think about your favorite band, how often do they put out albums? Let's look at Wilco, an exceptionally talented live band, and by most peoples accounts here, great songwriters. They're at what, 5 albums in over a decade? A look at allmusic's entry shows 21 "main" albums in 7 years (63-70 even though Let it Be was never intended to be released and was recorded before Abbey Road was released in 69. Alot of the early albums were released by various labels and contained many of the same recordings, but they still were recording a few new songs for each album, so it would be fair to say that they only released 13 albums in those 6 years of recording. Only 13. And in the beginning of that run they were touring like fiends. Go listen to that Live at The Hollywood Bowl album (not one of the 13-21 "main" albums) which was compiled from a performance in 64 and another in 65. 17,000 screaming kids make more sound than 4 guys in a band, and they still hold it together.
But let's just talk about songs.
Help
Hard Day's Night
I'm Only Sleeping
Sexy Sadie
Helter Skelter
It Won't Be Long
Can't Buy Me Love
Yesterday
Hey Jude
Eleanor Rigby
Strawberry Fields Forever
Hello Goodbye
Drive My Car
Michelle
we could go on, but these songs are more than just hits, they're all part of the greater pop culture consciousness, and they put out about 2 albums a year in the middle of playing their asses off. They were deported from Germany because George wasn't even old enough to have a visa while they were playing marathon gigs, popping pills to stay awake, boozing and screwing. They killed live, they killed in the studio, they wrote songs that everyone of us here knows and that most of us dig, and it's a good bet that most of the artists you do love were directly or indirectly influenced by them, if not by their music, then by techniques pioneered in the studio by them or for them. It's also probably a given that most of the artists you love respect The Beatles whether or not they like them.
Is that a cohesive enough statement?
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