The Beatles Forever Unrivaled

Even today, when you look at surveys of the greatest rock groups of all time, the Beatles are always at the top of the list and many times listed as the number one rock group to date.

Usually those who disagree with this have heard only a smidgen of the group's music and it will usually be from their earliest recordings. For some reason, the more recent deejays tend to play only the earliest Beatles hits, such as "She Loves You" and "I want To Hold Your Hand". While these are terrific hits from those earliest years, they only represent the beginnings of an approximately 10 year span of Beatle music, which they stopped recording as a group, after they split up, in 1970. They did however, each also record some of the best music to date as solo artists as well.

There are also those out there, who for some reason, resent the Beatles, possibly for the same reason, of only being familiar with their early career or maybe they feel the Beatles were somewhat lame and lacked any cool or hard rock image that many fans look for in a group. To this, I would only say that the Beatles were also pioneers of hard rock and portrayed an image of ultra-coolness, as much as any group that came before or after them. They actually influenced hair style and fashion trends, more than any rock group in history and if someone names another rock group as actually setting the trend for the Beatles, rather than the other way around, they are simply misinformed. The Beatles also created psychedelic music and imagery, unparalleled by any other group of their time or of the present and at times sported beards and shoulder-length hair.

Are there groups that have developed an even bigger sound, meaning guitar cords and drums, that when struck, sound fuller and more stretched out, creating what you might call more of a fluff-sound? Certainly they have however, the Beatles played with as much energy as you will hear from any other rock group and many of their songs, beginning with the "Revolver" album, from 1966, contain lots of impressive hard rock guitar riffs, chords and drums. Some of the groups, later projects, also include remnants of the heavy metal sound, such as in the songs "Helter Skelter", "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey", "The End" and the fast version of "Revolution".

They also recorded with as much diversity as any other rock group, releasing some of the most beautiful and melodic loves songs that have ever been recorded. Songs such as "Here, There and Everywhere", "It's only Love" and "Something", are nothing short of brilliant and are only a few of many love songs the group recorded. To experience these magnificent love songs, one only needs to listen to the compiled "Love Songs" album, released in 1977 and you will agree, the songs are as good as it gets, period! I gave a copy of this double-album, to my wife, in 1983, when we were dating and she was simply in awe of the music it contained and the songs are still her favorites, now 24 years later.

The Beatles also ventured into rockabilly type music, with songs such as "What Goes On" and "I‘m A Loser" and also recorded their share of folk type music, very evident in their album "Rubber Soul", containing songs such as "I've Just Seen a Face".

The Beatles also experimented successfully, adding orchestrated music to their songs, at least as early as 1965, in songs such as "Yesterday" but with truly incredible effect in albums such as "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "The Magical Mystery Tour". Amazingly, orchestration was incorporated into not only the slow melodic songs, but also added into many of their hard rockers, such as the Sergeant Pepper album's opening song, which contains hard rock guitar and vocals with ingeniously blended orchestration added in.

Many "itty bittys" as John Lennon once referred to them were also added into the Beatle's songs, especially beginning in about 1965, when unusual, strange and weird sounds were added in, for strange effect. Synthesized sounds, bells, sirens, backward guitars/vocals, animal sounds and a variety of other strange and weird sounds were incorporated in the recordings, giving songs a very unusual but intriguing effect. The song that has this most evident in it, is the song "I Am The Walrus", from 1967.

Much of the Beatle's music has melodies and a feeling to them that is hard to describe. You might say they have a touch of sophistication to them, melodies that are mellow, intriguing and deeply moving but that also contain mystery and drama in them. Listen to such songs as "Eleanor Rigby", "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", among many others and you will find these elements that are just simply hard to describe in words.

All of these things together, made for some very complicated songs that were very well put together. The ingenious songwriting of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, has not been matched by any other pop/rock group to date and it is doubtful that it ever will be. Beatle-drummer Ringo Starr also made some amazing song writing contributions, such as "Octopus's Garden" and "Goodnight".

No group has ever had the number of singles and albums, at the top of the charts and number one hits as the Beatles have and this was true from the beginning of their career as the Beatles and throughout it, even to date, with the re-release of their recordings, newly compiled into these recent releases. Let's see any other group have this type success with songs that are released 36 years after the group disbands and many of the re-releases are not even "greatest hits" albums!

I first listened to the Beatles, as a child, in about 1970, when they were still a group and my sister bought the "Abby Road" album. I was only 7 years old and yet completely intrigued by their music. Songs from the album, such as "Here Comes The Sun" and "Carry That Weight", just simply amazed me.

Later, as a teenager, in about 1977 or 1978, I purchased a copy of Sergeant Pepper, on an eight track tape and this is where my decades of love for Beatles music actually grew. A friend of mine had purchased "The Magical Mystery Tour" on eight track at the same time and so I started out my passion for Beatle's music, with two of their greatest albums.

My brother was also bitten by the Beatle-bug and both of us became full-fledged Beatle-maniacs, so-called. Certainly we listened to many other groups and enjoyed them as well but no one ever matched the Beatles and I'm doubtful anyone ever will.

We collected every Beatle release that was available or that ever came along over the years and at one time, we had a very impressive record collection, most of which was purchased by my brother, who started working earlier than I did and always had more money than I.

At one point, years later, my brother gave me that entire collection as a gift. Unfortunately, a friend of mine and actually my first employer when I became an adult, convinced me, that as a Christian Youth Minister at the time, I should burn all of my rock music and other youth type materials such as my posters of super-models, rock stars etc..., and I did! I later regretted burning that collection that contained special releases of Beatle albums, picture albums, old originals, etc... I've known very few people of religious faith or otherwise, who do not enjoy some type of worldly entertainment, whether it be non-religious music of any kind, non-religious television, or sports, etc.... It would have been better for me to refrain from any of the music I had in my collection, by any group that I felt was inappropriate for me, rather than destroying all of it as a whole.

Although I do believe any type entertainment can be taken too far, I don't feel my love for the Beatles music, was taken too far. Although I admire their songwriting and incredible tunes, I also know that otherwise, they are just regular guys like you and I. Certainly there are people who do go too far with any type entertainment and what actually becomes "celebrity worship" and in my youth, this may very well have been the case at times but as an adult, I realized that the Beatles were simply part of my growing up and I have enjoyed their music many, many times over the years. It is also true, that the Beatles themselves released a few songs that did not send the best message for a youth to hear, case-in-point; "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" (likely intended as a spoof) from 1968 but this does not take away from the many other songs that do not at all send an inappropriate message.

The Beatles gave us a lot of songs that are simply beautiful, such as their love songs and ones that simply amaze you, such as "Hey Jude", "Let It Be" and "Getting Better".

If there are songs by any group that a person feels have drug-influence in them, violence or any other undesirable influence, simply don't listen to them. It's just like television, you can turn to the channels you feel okay to watch and turn off the bad ones!

I suppose if I were to sum it up, I would put it this way; As a pop/rock music group, the Beatles have been unsurpassed in their songwriting, diversity, melodies, harmonies and just flat out entertaining music and as a rock group, they still remain "unrivaled".