Helter Skelter, Revolution, Yer Blues, A Day in the Life, the Abbey Road Medley, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Get Back, I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Back in the USSR (a fun Chuck Berry/Beach boys inspired rocker), Blackbird (inspired by the civil rights movement and the Little Rock Nine), I Am the Walrus, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Oh Darling (especially Paul’s impassioned vocals during the bridge), Strawberry Fields Forever, Tomorrow Never Knows, etc. etc. etc., are simple, boring pop songs?
Quotes from members of the bands you believe are the greatest:
Brian May: “The Beatles were our bible. Absolutely at every stage in their career and their music development, they were models. And they still are to me, I must say. I love all those albums. To me, they are the greatest. They are the pinnacle of writing, performance and ethos of rock music. They broke down so many barriers, they changed the world many times. I will always love The Beatles without any reservation.”
Angus Young: “I think the '60s was a great time for music, especially for rock and roll. It was the era of The Beatles, of The Stones, and then later on The Who and Zeppelin. But at one point in the '70s, it just kind of became... mellow.” Or "Even a great band like the Beatles goes off on a detour and does a bit of cabaret for awhile. But you’ll find that the truly great ones always come back to playing real rock and roll, I thought [Abbey Road] got a bit glossed over at the time it was released. But those bluesy fills and huge riffs [in I Want You (She’s So Heavy)] showed they were still terrific rockers right to the end.”
Brian Johnson (when asked if he has ever met somebody famous that he was "in awe" of): “Yes, that has happened, and it was Paul McCartney. I didn't know what to say to him. I mean, for the first time I was absolutely tongue-tied. And then Ringo Starr walked in beside him. And it was Paul that spoke to me, 'cause he heard me talking to somebody. And he said, 'Hello, Geordie.' You know, because they call us Geordies, with the accent. And I went, 'Hello, Paul. Sir Paul. Your honor. Your majesty.' I didn't know what [to call him]. [Laughs] I just came across like I was breaking a friend's teeth in — I couldn't speak. So it was hard. And then we became friends, which is even harder to describe.”
Brian Johnson (when asked what his favorite song is): "Right off the top of me head, the thing that makes me smile every time I hear it is 'Get Back'. And if you listen to Ringo's drumming on there, it's sensational."
Roger Waters: “I learned from John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison that it was OK for us to write about our lives, and what we felt — and to express ourselves. […] That we could be free artists and that there was a value in that freedom. And there was.”
Nick Mason (on The Beatles and watching them record at Abbey Road studios): “They all seemed extremely nice, but they were in a strata so far beyond us that they were out of our league. The music sounded wonderful, and incredibly professional. We sat humbly and humbled, at the back of the control room while they worked on the mix, and after a suitable period of time had elapsed, we were ushered out again… They were God-like figures to us.”
John Illsley (on The Beatles): “The secret is to write good songs and I think that’s where they were the absolute masters at. They just kept coming up with great songs. You’ve got to really think about music now on a global scale and I think the Beatles put music on a global scale. They reached every corner of the earth, because they were communicating with people in a certain way that nobody else had before. Not easy.”
Sting: “I'm glad you mentioned the Beatles because the reason I'm a musician is because of the Beatles. We owe a lot to the Beatles, they really were an amazing influence on all of our lives.”
Stewart Copeland (speaking about how he felt when he met his drumming hero Ringo Starr): "I go all googly when I meet Ringo, Mr. Starkey. But sitting next to him at a dinner party, what do you say to a Beatle other than, 'so, Ringo, how do you like that Ludwig bass drum pedal?' And to my surprise 'well, actually, you know, I prefer the Rogers' and we get into a whole discussion.There's little old me talking to a Beatle, Ringo, no less, about bass drum pedals. How cool is that?"
Steve Hackett: “I couldn’t help but be greatly influenced by all of that – the fact that musicians had assimilated the Beatles approach and were coming up with their own versions. Genesis, for example, was a spin-off or a footnote to what the Beatles had done. I guess we were all splinters off the big tree.”
Bono: “We still look to [The Beatles] as models of what can be achieved when four people get into a room and start experimenting. It’s always worth reminding ourselves how lucky we are to be alive at a time when we grew up with the Beatles. They wrote the blueprint for really any rock ’n’ roll band”. (Not to mention all the Beatles covers U2 performed).
Peter Gabriel: “The Beatles were a huge influence as I was growing up, and continued to be as there was all that revolution around their success. [Their first album I ever bought] sounded far more radical and revolutionary than punk did in its day, you know. It was rough and raw, exciting. I was Beatles obsessed from then on.“
Freddie Mercury on John Lennon: “He just had that magic… to be honest, I would never like to put myself on a par with John Lennon at all, because he was the greatest, as far as I’m concerned.” “Even at a very early stage when they were The Beatles, I always preferred John Lennon’s things.”
The incredible number of artists who credit the Beatles as a major influence is unparalleled. They were extremely versatile and prolific. There is hardly a genre that they didn’t experiment with. Not to mention how funny, irreverent, unpredictable - and even warm and down to earth - they were.
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