Bob Olhsson wrote on Wed, 08 June 2005 20:01 |
The Beatles also weren't nearly as innovative as the pop-culture pundits would have people believe. They expanded the pallet of what could get radio which was a big deal but this was a product of their unprecedented celebrity rather than of their technology.
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I have the utmost respect for you Bob, but on his one, I don't believe it for a second.
I was playing guitar and already studying pop records (instead being outside playing ball or whatever) as a young kid two years before they came out. I was already well schooled in The Everly's, Rick Nelson, Beach Boys, and the like.
One listen to "I Want To Hold Your Hand," vs. all that had come before however, should quiet any "not innovative" in the audience. No record had ever had guitars like that on it, and the even the song structure was inspired....the intro being a section of what you would later hear in the bridge. Brilliant single, a fit intro to the US audience. One has only to listen to the "Top 40" from the weeks before it hit the US airwaves to get an inkling of just how different a band this was going to be.
There just weren't pop/rock records being made like "Hand," "Hard Days Night," "Ticket to Ride," "I Feel Fine" (first feedback on a pop single), and that's just the pop, early Beatles. Once it got to "Strawberry Fields," or "A Day in The Life," or "Eleanor Rigby," it becomes a no-brainer for who was the most innovative pop group of all time. There just wasn't anyone else doing anything like them, except of course, after they would do it.
They were the first to acknowledge their influences, Motown being a big one on John especially. The Everlys, James Burton, Chet Atkins, and even the girl groups had enormous influence on them.
But their records were groundbreaking.
They were indeed able to get things on the radio that others weren't, but it wasn't because they had clever haircuts;)
TH
PS. Off Topic......>Bob, was it the producer's idea to get that oscillator thing going in "Reflections," and then did he turn to you and say "Figure out how to do it?".....always loved that!