Did the Beatles destroy rock 'n roll? Discuss.

Bob-Dubery · 2009-06-06T05:54:48+00:00

I just received this on e-mail. I'm not sure yet where I stand on this, but I think it's pretty interesting to consider.... Elijah Wald’s provocative, meticulously researched new book, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music, turns the stock rock-and-roll narratives on their head. Wald — a working musician who moonlights as a musicologist — argues that popular music lost much of its power when it left the dance floor behind, and traces dancing’s slow transition from social activity (the Turkey Trot) to solitary occupation (the headphone head-nod). For him, Sgt. Pepper’s was a turning point: Afterward, musicians began thinking of themselves as artists rather than as entertainers. When the Beatles became “purely a recording group,” he writes, “they pointed toward a future in which there need be no unifying styles . . . bands can play what they like . . . and we can choose what to listen to in the privacy of our clubs, our homes, or, finally, our heads. Whether that was liberating or limiting is a matter of opinion and perception, but the whole idea of popular music had changed.”

Dave-the-Pub-muso

aubs1 wrote
Alan Ratcliffe wrote
Wizard wrote What exactly IS rock 'n roll?
Music of the '50s. Hybrid Blues/Gospel but faster with a strong backbeat. Think Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley & His Comets, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, The Shadows, etc.. Even the Beatles were Rock 'n Roll at first.

Pretty much how Levon Helm describes it in The Last Waltz - spot on Alan. Also, like that Sonny Terry song "The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll" Think Muddy recorded that.

AlanRatcliffe

There were other influences like country, and it was watered down and sanitised to a large degree for the radio. There were also subgenres within RnR - Rockabilly (Jerry Lee Lewis), British Invasion (or Breakthrough, depending on which side of the ocean you were), Merseybeat (Dave Clark 5), etc.. As with any music, it evolved and changed. British artists took RnR and added in the electric bass and sent it back. Some artists took the ultra tight vocal harmonies of the previous era of music and added them into the mix (Everley Brothers).

Back to the original topic - If you asked my mother the question in the title, she would have said yes, but she was a die-hard Elvis fan and had the distinction of telling the manager of the Cavern that if "that band" (The Beatles - at their first gig there) ever played there again she wouldn't return herself (probably why there was a distinct lack of Beatles played in our house as I grew up. ?). They were a bad RnR band in their earliest days and only really honed their craft during their intensive gigging in Germany. I really think that if the Beatles hadn't evolved, taking RnR with them, someone else would have done it - the time was ripe, the audiences were ready for it and mass-market media were burgeoning.

RnR isn't dead - like any parent, it lives on in it's children, who evolve and change based on the environment they grow up in. There are still players who keep the original RnR alive too - Brian Setzer is a good example.

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