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Why the Beatles will never happen again
23 May 2013
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Ralphrennick
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Mod note: another thread on this topic is here https://www.beatlesbible.com/f…..r-beatles/

It’s just a mathematical anomoly that the two best songwriters of a century in a particular genre would be born in the same decade, never mind being roughly the same age, in the same country, same city, and after all that end up in the same band.  Because usually hugely talented people don’t like to share the spotlight with someone else on their same level.  It would be like if Michael Jackson and Madonna in the dance music/pop genre, had somehow ended up writing songs for the same group. 

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23 May 2013
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I’ve got nothing against Madonna or Michael (and I own several of their albums) but I don’t think either one are in the same league as Lennon-McCartney, if you’re talking about playing/singing/songwriting/composing. As celebrities & pop phenomenons, definitely. (Plus they’re much better dancers too!) A better comparison to McCartney would be Prince, as far as matching skill sets goes.

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23 May 2013
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Ralphrennick makes a good point, and one that I often marveled at.

But it does happen. In orthopedics,  two of the biggest names in knee biomechanics (Maquet and Pauwels) happen to have come from nearby towns in Belgium and lived around the same time. And yet, even so, they didn’t live in the exact same town and meet when they were teenagers!

With the Beatles, you also have to add Harrison and Starr. Neither is/has been a genius, but as often noted on this Forum, they fit in perfectly!

In music, you’d have to go with Mozart and Bach and a couple of other musicians who’d be capable of fitting in with both.

 

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23 May 2013
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Von Bontee said
I’ve got nothing against Madonna or Michael (and I own several of their albums) but I don’t think either one are in the same league as Lennon-McCartney, if you’re talking about playing/singing/songwriting/composing. As celebrities & pop phenomenons, definitely. (Plus they’re much better dancers too!) A better comparison to McCartney would be Prince, as far as matching skill sets goes.

No I don’t think either of them are in the same league as songwriters (although MJ’s way with a pop hook might be close).  I guess I was going more on sales and total number of hit songs when trying to compare rock with another genre.  And absolutely, Prince is amazing.  As great a songwriter as he was, he might also be one of the most underrated guitarists of all time.

 

I suppose another good reason a phenomenon like the Beatles won’t happen again is that music is so fragmented.  Back then there were a couple big Top 40 stations in each market, and they played all the best rock, R&B, Soul, whatever was a hit.  Now there are so many genres and subgenres of music; terrestrial radio is dying, and people listen to their own music on ipod or make their own Pandora stations based on just what they like.  I doubt with the way things are now there could be one group that captures everyone’s attention in the dramatic way the Beatles did.

 

It was just a perfect confluence of factors, the right guys met at the right time, in the right era.  I can’t see any single musician or group now having the cultural impact they did, to where, as my dad says, the day after the first Ed Sullivan appearance, all the kids at his school were combing their hair a different way.

24 May 2013
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Add this to the reasons:

What genre were/are the Beatles?  While the early albums were for the most part straightforward rock with a few curveballs, the band eventually made albums and singles that were completely uncategorizable by modern standards.  “Yellow Submarine ” “Elenor Rigby”, “Within You Without You “, “Hey Jude “, “When I’m 64”, “Honey Pie “…  The list goes on.   No band today could ever release songs in so many styles and expect any success.

I’m actually hard-pressed to name one other band that ever did it.  The Rolling Stones had a few diversions, but even they stuck mostly to a formula.  The Who may qualify, but they really were never a huge crossover band.  You either liked them, you hated them or you just knew a handful of songs on the radio.

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24 May 2013
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I think they appealed to the general public, as well. I know at first it was all about how long their hair was and the fact that they were from up north but once they had been in the public eye for a bit, and most in the UK knew of them, people got to see how charming these four lads were. I know they’re not all the same but if you look at the majority of artists nowadays, a lot of them haven’t got that (for whatever reason).

That’s a contributing factor as well, I think.

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25 May 2013
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This has probably already been said in some way, but I think one of the reasons would be that The Beatles have already changed things, and now those things can’t really be changed. For example, The Beatles’ music fit into many genres, and most people didn’t listen to very many genres before they listened to The Beatles. Today, there are many genres of music, and people listen to a lot of them (although not all by the same artist). Also, The Beatles wore their hair long, and boys/men didn’t do that before The Beatles were popular. Today, people wear their hair at all different lengths. There are probably many more examples. So, even if there were an artist/group similar to The Beatles today, they wouldn’t be able to change things as drastically as The Beatles did.

I don’t know if that makes any sense…

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28 May 2015
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Do you think it could ever happen again……..?

 

A new Beatles…..Not a new 5 min wonder, manufactured boy band…..that the girls will scream over until they bore of them and everyone else will largely ignore??

…But a band of some talent…….that becomes popular and then flowers and grows and changes beyond all expectations. So that from within the band songs emerge that the whole world will sing…….and want to hear again and again. A band that builds on existing formats and bends and shapes and fits new sounds into our ears. That unites East and West…North and South….Black and White…….And that 45 years after it’s last recordings sounds as fresh……and relevant as it did in the recording studio. That 50 years on people will still be writing about and discussing and respecting more with every new thing they learn.?

I hope it can………But I can’t see it ever happening again…..What do you think?

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28 May 2015
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@Wigwam This old thread may interest you as it asks the same question.

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28 May 2015
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I think it can, but it’d probably be a completely new type of music. I actually had an interesting discussion with my mum this morning. It’s safe to say the Beatles (but also other great names such as Queen, Michael Jackson, etc) are the modern-day equivalent of the famous classical composers. I do believe the Fab Four are to contemporary music what Mozart was to classical music. I know it’s a bold statement to make, but the parallels are there. And just like the popular composers are still relevant today, I also think the Beatles will remain relevant for many, many years. 

Given the current state of the music industry, I highly doubt we’ll see this happening again any time soon. But once music goes through another big transformation, the new music will undoubtedly have its own “Beatles”. 

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4 July 2015
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When Paul was asked if there could ever be another Beatles, here’s what he said.

ESQ: Not to diminish your achievements, but The Beatles’ success came at a very specific moment. Clearly, the world was ready for it. Could a band ever have that kind of impact again or has the culture changed too much?

PM: We don’t live in that culture any more, that’s true. We came out of a very rich period. But let’s not forgot, those four boys were f*****g good. It wasn’t just to do with the period. You name me another group of four chaps, or chapesses, who had what The Beatles had. Lennon’s skill, intelligence, acerbic wit, McCartney’s melody, whatever he’s got, Harrison’s spirituality, Ringo’s spirit of fun, great drumming. We all played, which is pretty hard. You don’t get a lot of that these days. The noise we made was just those four people playing. We came at the right time. We wrote some pretty good stuff, our own material. We didn’t have writers. Could that happen again? I don’t know. I wish people well but I have a feeling it couldn’t.

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Take a look at post 1 of this thread to see a link to another thread on this topic. That thread is now locked so we can channel the discussion to one thread. Always check the first post in a thread for any mod notes, instructions, information on the purpose of the thread, etc. As a mod, I will try to remember to always update post 1 of a thread if anything about a thread changes.

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The problem with a new Beatles is that they would be making new music so most of the forum peeps will miss it.

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18 October 2015
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Gene Simmons has been talking about this very subject to NME and he doesnt think there will be a next Beatles or Kiss either.

“”From 1988 until today… give me the new Beatles and the new Stones. Give me just one. You can’t. Rock is dead. And the reason for that? Downloading and filesharing. When you stop charging for things, it becomes worthless. And there’s gonna have to be a business model that’s gonna have to change. ‘Cause there are great bands out there, but there’s no support system…
Before The Beatles went into the studio to become The Beatles, they played clubs for ten thousand hours. That’s years. You have to do something for thousands and thousands of hours before you get any good on it. Nowadays, instant gratification means you can hum in your shower, then wind up on ‘The X Factor’ and you’re on television and you get a recording contract. But almost none of these singers who get recording contracts become huge.”

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18 October 2015
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From the McCartney interview quoted above:

 “Lennon’s skill, intelligence, acerbic wit, McCartney’s melody, whatever he’s got, Harrison’s spirituality……”  .

Spirituality, really? And what about his guitar playing, or his adventures in 12 strings or sitar..?  I think Harrison main contribution to the beatles is his playing and his interest in finding new instruments, not spirituality at all…

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18 October 2015
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meanmistermustard said

Gene Simmons has been talking about this very subject to NME and he doesnt think there will be a next Beatles or Kiss either.

“”From 1988 until today… give me the new Beatles and the new Stones. Give me just one. You can’t. Rock is dead. And the reason for that? Downloading and filesharing. When you stop charging for things, it becomes worthless. And there’s gonna have to be a business model that’s gonna have to change. ‘Cause there are great bands out there, but there’s no support system…
Before The Beatles went into the studio to become The Beatles, they played clubs for ten thousand hours. That’s years. You have to do something for thousands and thousands of hours before you get any good on it. Nowadays, instant gratification means you can hum in your shower, then wind up on ‘The X Factor’ and you’re on television and you get a recording contract. But almost none of these singers who get recording contracts become huge.”

Counterpoint:

Just because there isn’t money in it, doesn’t mean you aren’t good or popular, it means no one can tell you are because no one is being paid to count. Downloading doesn’t stop venues putting bands on, being replaced by poker machines does (and in some areas, ridiculous public performance royalty rules). It certainly hasn’t (so far) hurt the musical instrument industry. There have always been good live bands who never see the light of day in “industry” terms but that’s the industry’s fault, not the bands. The industry has turned its back on popular music and is churning out Tin Pan Alley lookalikes like it did back in the 1950’s which is why pop music hasn’t changed for a decade or so. It was never a support network, it was an exploitation network and its time is over. The industry needs X Factor more than we do, to pretend to itself it has relevance and to keep the myth of how it really works alive.

I think there can be another Beatles, but they won’t claim the same kind of focus because I do think that time is past. But someone can and will market themselves entirely on the internet without the help of the “industry” which can’t imagine any success outside itself, and they will have that crossover appeal. I don’t know if they can pull off the same trick of revitalizing Western music, but someone will have to. The bonus is that there are many defined genres now and someone who can appeal across those is going to be very, very talented. (It’s been claimed this has already happened but they turned out to be Kanye West fans).

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5 November 2015
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Another article, this time from the Daily Star so not too highbrow, on why there wont be another act like the Beatles. It ties in with the upcoming ITV special ‘The Nation’s Favourite Beatles Number One’ and the ‘1+’ release.

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lillo78 said
From the McCartney interview quoted above:

 “Lennon’s skill, intelligence, acerbic wit, McCartney’s melody, whatever he’s got, Harrison’s spirituality……”  .

Spirituality, really? And what about his guitar playing, or his adventures in 12 strings or sitar..?  I think Harrison main contribution to the beatles is his playing and his interest in finding new instruments, not spirituality at all…

Perhaps he means his spirited guitar playing. a-hard-days-night-george-10 

But yeah, I see what you mean. 

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ewe2 said

meanmistermustard said

Gene Simmons has been talking about this very subject to NME and he doesnt think there will be a next Beatles or Kiss either.

“”From 1988 until today… give me the new Beatles and the new Stones. Give me just one. You can’t. Rock is dead. And the reason for that? Downloading and filesharing. When you stop charging for things, it becomes worthless. And there’s gonna have to be a business model that’s gonna have to change. ‘Cause there are great bands out there, but there’s no support system…
Before The Beatles went into the studio to become The Beatles, they played clubs for ten thousand hours. That’s years. You have to do something for thousands and thousands of hours before you get any good on it. Nowadays, instant gratification means you can hum in your shower, then wind up on ‘The X Factor’ and you’re on television and you get a recording contract. But almost none of these singers who get recording contracts become huge.”

Counterpoint:

Just because there isn’t money in it, doesn’t mean you aren’t good or popular, it means no one can tell you are because no one is being paid to count. Downloading doesn’t stop venues putting bands on, being replaced by poker machines does (and in some areas, ridiculous public performance royalty rules). It certainly hasn’t (so far) hurt the musical instrument industry. There have always been good live bands who never see the light of day in “industry” terms but that’s the industry’s fault, not the bands. The industry has turned its back on popular music and is churning out Tin Pan Alley lookalikes like it did back in the 1950’s which is why pop music hasn’t changed for a decade or so. It was never a support network, it was an exploitation network and its time is over. The industry needs X Factor more than we do, to pretend to itself it has relevance and to keep the myth of how it really works alive.

I think there can be another Beatles, but they won’t claim the same kind of focus because I do think that time is past. But someone can and will market themselves entirely on the internet without the help of the “industry” which can’t imagine any success outside itself, and they will have that crossover appeal. I don’t know if they can pull off the same trick of revitalizing Western music, but someone will have to. The bonus is that there are many defined genres now and someone who can appeal across those is going to be very, very talented. (It’s been claimed this has already happened but they turned out to be Kanye West fans).

I don’t know if it’s possible to agree with your post any more than I am right now, other than the downloading bit.  I still have serious reservations that there will ever be a technology that eliminates freeloading (filesharing) even though (IMO) its the only thing that can save music as an industry in the end.  At the same time, because of the technology, I’m not so sure we actually need an ‘industry’ as we know it right now.

Back on topic; the part I bolded… while that was happening, we also need to remember that cultures in the U.S. began leaking into each other, largely due to radio (damn shame about it now) influencing those two guys from Pennsylvania who wrote a crazy song about dancing all night long and then had that one-eyed kid from Michigan with the curl of hair on his forehead sing it, the brown-eyed handsome man from Missouri who could play a guitar just like ringing a bell, the gangly kid from Texas who dared write his own songs and that truck driver from Mississippi who just wanted to sing to his momma, just to name a few… all happening during those years.  All these people, along with countless others from places in New York, Detroit, Kentucky… were all being heard and devoured, enigmatically, by teenagers living in a British port city struggling to rebuild after a terrible war…

Once rock took off, it became littered with instances of really talented people, all of relative age, all attending nearby (if not the same) schools… how many bands started in schools?  Neighborhood garages… the band Survivor came together in a garage 4 blocks from where I lived… all coming together to create some really great and important music.  Many of them comprised of a primary songwriting team.  And many of those teams being damn-fine songwriters.

But they all happened after the die had been cast and social anxieties had been relieved and countless genres attracting narrow demographics had all been developed.

There were no wars that dragged diverse nations together or threw them apart, no national horrors that sent the public into a funk, no need to burn off energy or shake off the yolk of a suppressive generation.  In my memory, it seemed like we all kept partying even while avoiding the draft or waiting in line for gasoline or watching the leader of the free world lie on national television.  Much of this is still happening.

Was it fate that just those four (and, to a greater degree, just Lennon and McCartney) were the focus of some cosmic alliance that resulted in The Beatles, never to happen again?  Or was it coincidence?

If you consider what it took to have them, maybe we don’t want another Beatles. 

But astronomical as the odds seem, history says “if it happened once…”

So I’m hoping.  My son is 13 years old and practices guitar.  All day long, of his own volition, he listens to The Beatles.  And Sam Cooke, Carl Perkins… and Van Halen and AC/DC… and new stuff that I’m not familiar with.

You just never know.

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Annadog40 said
The problem with a new Beatles is that they would be making new music so most of the forum peeps will miss it.

And they would be a different band and plus it takes lots of years for them to be lasting so it would take a while for the effects of Beatle level

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The next “Beatles” wouldn’t be rock they would be in a new genre which most forum members ain’t doing.

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