"You know my name - look up the number" or whatever it was called?

That was pants by anyone's definition.

that's a really interesting point. So secure were The Beatles of their place in the scheme of things that they could switch from being avant-garde revolutionaries to writers of twee songs for children as and when they felt like it.

This was their greatest achievement... to have been so confident in themselves as songwriters that 'The Beatles' could mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people. Granny likes The Beatles that do that nice 'Yesterday' song, little Billy loves 'Yellow Submarine', Uncle Frank enjoys 'Rocky Raccoon' and teenage wastoid Tarquin enjoys frazzling his brain with 'Revolution 9'.

Since you have already stated that anyone who disagrees with you is a lazy idiot, how are those of us who think these songs are utter shite supposed to respond to this post?

the worst of the Beatles *is* shit or pish or toss or drivel. The best of the Beatles is genius. The latter outweighs the former. Then there's a lot of stuff in between. This music criticism is easy.

as is my wife. However in our considered opinion both Ob La Di and Maxwell's Silver Hammer stink. Badly.

Maybe there's a difference if you get introduced to The Beatles very early on? I've been listening to them since I was a toddler, so Yellow Submarine and its ilk were what I was first drawn to. Whereas if you're first start buying their music in your twenties or as a moody teenager, the surreal and angst-ridden stuff is what you aim towards. But as the creationists like saying, it's just a theory.

I think this shows an extremely narrow appreciation of music that this post is reduced to acclaiming some half-arsed tracks recorded by a band 40 years ago as great and better than anything else. Seriously, are you saying you've haven't heard much better than octopus garden since it was sadly released to the public in all this time?
Have to say it was nice to have an 80's thread which clearly outlines how much great music was made in that period and which is rarely mentioned as bands like the beatles are continuously and very tediously re-evaluated.

You seem to have issues with spandau ballet for some reason. This is clearly not an argument worth pursuing as the citizen kane quote has nothing to do with my argument and you clearly live in an EMI sponsored Apple 'bubble' and refuse to acknowledge other artists and their output.
Finally, if there hadn't been another band more interesting than those 4 in the last 40 years Pop/Rock music would've died in 1972.

Unfortunately I had been unable to follow the link due to work firewall but have now found the source. What a breath of fresh air, I hope more people like Robert spring up in the media over the next few years. It's not that i have a deep loathing of the beatles, I own all the cd's from help onwards and appreciate their songwriting but I resent the endless lazy journalism which has become a mini industry around them, in particular in the monthly magazines, I would also instantly turn a radio programme if I heard them being played as it would tell me everything I needed to know about it.
No one has been allowed to be as interesting as the beatles because the sad hacks won't let bands since forget them.
As an aside, in my eyes/ears The Smiths were a far more interesting act during their 5 years together than the beatles ever were. I could name countless other bands who I would rather read about or listen to their obscurities than the beatles.

I'd say slice of life epics like Eleanor Rigby and She's Leaving Home are proto-type Smiths, a decade and a half before they existed. That's the problem with bands I get told are better than The Beatles. The Beatles did what they did for a couple of songs, a lot better, then moved on. An entire oeuvre beaten by a Beatle slither. As great as The Smiths are, it's still no competition.

As for Elms, there's nothing particularly new about anti-Beatle articles. They've been common currency in the music press since the late seventies. A yearly "Sgt Pepper isn't all it's cracked up to be" article had been practically mandatory in the music press for decades. It really is a breath of stale air to me. A few years ago I had a correspondence with a fellow Beatle fan, very clever chap, who went on a rant about many of the subjects raised here. Particularly "professional Beatle haters" like Elms. I'll quote some choice extracts, cause he made his points very well:

"I tend to try and avoid debates on the Beatles to be honest because they attract all kinds of irrational hatred and that tends to be demonstrated on the net better than anywhere I think."

But this was his view on the likes of Elms, and their self-proclaimed victim status (no offence intended to anyone here incidentally, he did write this two years ago).

"Professional Beatle-haters often perceive themselves to be isolated and brave voices of sanity in a sea of mindless Beatle adulation, and they assume anyone who likes the Beatles is unsophisticated musically and has been brainwashed by the 'Beatle myth' . In fact, almost without exception these characters are clueless and tone-deaf, complaining that they can't hear what's supposed to be so good about the Beatles' music without ever stopping to wonder whether the problem is with their own ears than with the music. It's nothing to do with taste and whether somebody likes the music or not, it's a question of appreciating innovative, inventive and expressive music. You don't have to like it, personal taste is nothing to do with it. I cannot stand most of Beethoven's symphonies (his piano compositions and string quartets are another matter). I find his symphonies noisy and melodramatic, I leave the concert hall after listening to one of his symphonies and I feel like I've had my ears battered for an hour. I'd rather listen to Debussy or Ravel, to me that's great music. That's my taste but that dosen't stop me appreciating how extraordinary, innovative and wonderfully expressive Beethoven's symphonies are or understanding why his influence is so profound. I wouldn't dream of belittling his talent or his obvious genius just because his symphonies aren’t to my taste.

The complaints from Beatle-haters are usually along the lines of "people order me to like the Beatles" and it's nonsense, nobody orders anybody to like the Beatles, they just understandably react badly to lectures from cloth-eared know-nothings prattling on about how they've been "programmed" to like a group by a media conspiracy. Plenty of people who know music don't like the Beatles, but they recognise their talent and don't lecture others on their musical tastes. The best example of a Beatle-hater is DJ and author Robert Elms, who makes the most absurd statements I have ever read from a pop culture writer (and not just on the Beatles), but his arrogance and self-regard are extraordinary. The Beatles unfortunately attract knockers because of their status but I find the endless attacks from souless and tone-deaf know-nothings tiresome."

I just love the Beatles more because they're better. ( Even Morrissey knows that ).

..I never could get on with The Long And Winding Road.

Also, Yer Blues and Piggies are somewhat below par.

sgt pepper being good or bad and being endlessly analysed on an annual basis is I'm sure most people's idea of hell. Anyway, I'm done on this post as i seem to have contributed to something which I loathe, more pointless words about a four piece from 40 years ago.

..(ie: the whole sound that those four men made together)... or you like some of their songs.

I fall into the former category and have done since an early age. Part of the adventure of a Beatles album is that it takes you from the sublime (Day in the Life) to the silly (Mr Kite), the indulgent (Within You Without You) and to the mundane (When I'm 64)... for me this is a fascinating journey so I like pretty much all of it. The very fact that there were 4 very different songwriters in the Beatles means that there will be a lot of people who cannot stomach the whole menu

The only things I'm not so keen on are the lacklustre cover versions that dominate Beatles For Sale and the massively overrated With The Beatles (although obviously "Money" is awesome).

Who are these young firebrands, Smithers?

It's the weird, iffy stuff, often made with the older, younger or avant garde listener in mind, that makes The Beatles and the era they came from (1956-1969) so incredible.

Too many well regarded (and extremely poor in the context of the 60s) groups from years later merely pandered to the inky press and forgot about the other 95% of the population......The Jam, The Clash, Joy Division are examples.
There is no 'Yellow Submarine' in their back catalogues because it would gone against the narrow confines of 'coolness' (cool?, in the 1980s!!!!) to attempt such a record.

Right now I'm listening to 'Wonderwall Music' by George Harrison from '68, a record way down in The Beatles/60s pecking order, and it points to the amazing range of styles and avenues they, and their generation of musicians and artists, explored in the 60s.

Personally, and with absolutely no irony, I think that Rock/Pop did die in 1972.
Actually I'd put it, with one or two exceptions (i.e. Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon' and a few stray folk and funk LPs), at 1970.

I'll go back to 'Wonderwall Music' now.....it goes well with the Non-League paper!

I thoroughly enjoy the vast majority of The Beatles below par performances, including those on Beatles For Sale & Let It Be. The other day, Bungalow Bill came on shuffle and it sounded great, far better than I remembered it. All Together Now & Hey Bulldog, discarded by them into the rubbish bin that was the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, are fantastic to my ears.

I also take umbridge with Walker 182 - With The Beatles is one of the best records ever made. It is brimful of energy, excitement and commitment with a splash of panache and style.

In The Beatles repetoire there is one exception for me and that's Run For Your Life - a song with a pleasing melody, a light feel to the vocal and the playing but a really, really nasty, unforgiveable lyric.

...is a tiny bit hilarious. The Beatles are infallible! All rock music made after 1972 is pish!

The inability to admit that your favourite band have any weaknesses just make your opinions a bit suspect in the eyes of those who aren't drinking the Kool Aid, extra t. It reminds me of blind patriotism: saying anything bad about Britain makes you a bad person and a traitor in some idiots' eyes, because they can't see that loving something - really loving it - is about taking the rough with the smooth, accepting that there's some shit involved. Otherwise, it's just a bit like a toddler loving their mummy. Uncritical love isn't love.

And I have to say, ranger, that if you really think that rock music died in the early 70s, that just suggests to me that you don't like music very much. Which I'm sure isn't a description of yourself which you would recognise. It's just that it's SUCH an extraordinary thing to say. I don't think I could count the number of genuinely amazing bands and artists who have appeared just in the last two decades, let alone four, purely working in the rock idiom. And that's entirely to discount all the pop, hip hop, metal, electronica, ambient, jazz, funk, r'n'b in its modern sense, grime, dubstep and god knows what else. Just the last twenty years' smorgasbord of rock music is plenty even without all that.

The sixties boasted a handful of great artists. The majority of sixties music was probably shit, though, just as in any era. Just as now. Just as in the eighties. Now, as then, a handful of really amazing, paradigm-shifting artists are working, who will be remembered in the same way. Open your mind, and ears!

(All of the above is meant in a spirit of friendly incredulity, by the way, and not as a casus belli.)

Saw this today

Kleptones - Come Again (Beatles vs Rare Earth vs Beaties vs Daft Punk vs Cypress Hill vs Boston) Video by Crumbs Chief from The Videotones on Vimeo.