Midas

I guess not... I have read part of it and the Beatles have only chapter devoted to it. He actually really likes the early Beatles but not the experimental or Art-rock of the Beatles. I think what he is saying that Sgt Pepper lead to groups who were just not good enough to create their own Sgt Pepper which led to some awful music in it's wake. It's true songs like "Norwegian Wood" or "A Day in the Life" is not 50's R&R but if the Beatles were just recreating 50's R&R the Beatles would not be regarded as many the most influential rock act ever. It's also not really fair to pin this only on the Beatles there was others like Brian Wilson and Frank Zappa. I have no problem with George Harrison putting Classical Indian elements or McCartney putting avant electronics in their music. Jazz music was adding other elements to their genre also did it really hurt jazz music? The Beatles chapter should have been called "How the Beatles changed Rock & Roll Music" because they did not destroy rock and roll. They saved it actually. They started at least two major changing events in rock music. The first was the British Invasion which paved the way for acts like the Rolling Stones and the Kinks in the states. The Beatles at the same time influenced their American counterparts like the Byrds and Dylan to go electric. Bob Dylan said the Beatles were leading the direction of music. The second one was Sgt Pepper but the seeds of this started on Rubber Soul and Revolver. Like it or not- The Beatles influenced thousands of musicians. They also added a lot to rock music -with more interesting chord progressions and instrument arrangements (Eleanor Rigby, Strawberry Fields..) but also transformed the recording studio entirely and pioneered many recording techniques. Did this ruin R&R well they helped pushed it to rock music? Many of their early songs had Latin rhythms and songs like Yesterday and Girl were hardly

The British Invasion that began with the Beatles' record-setting American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show not only transformed rock 'n' roll but in some ways marked the end of pop music as it had existed for the previous seventy years". Wald explains that the Beatles did in fact destroy rock 'n' roll by creating a schism between white and black music that's only grown farther apart in the decades since the dawn of Beatlemania (see: disco, soul, hip-hop). Like many early rock bands, the Beatles were rooted in the music of Chuck Berry and Little Richard. As the band found its creative voice, its members abandoned their early influences. The results included "the effetely sentimental ballad" "Yesterday," a song that Wald claims "diffused" rock's energy and opened the door for milquetoasts such as Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Billy Joel and Elton John. With the "Sgt. Pepper" album, the band draped their music "in a robe of arty mystification, opening the way for the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Yes, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer." "Rather than being a high point of rock," he continues, "the Beatles destroyed rock 'n' roll, turning it from a vibrant (or integrated) dance music into a vehicle for white pap and pretension." And what, again, was so revolutionary about Pat Boone. Do you think they destroyed Rock and Roll? Well my opinion of course not they actually saved it and transformed it. Has anyone read this book?