The Age Ole Question; Beatles or Stones?

[Rocco]

kinda funny age ole question

[RJFait]

Well, thank you for that, Don.

[kopper]

I'm a Beatles-in-the-AM/Stones-in-the-PM kinda guy.

[DEEZEN]

Some like the Beatles, some like the Stones, but we all love the Kinks!

[Thane Cesar]

All I'm saying is that if you have a massive machine like EMI behind you, you will be big. Not to say they didn't have talent, but they had a lot of breaks other bands didn't. Not ever band gets their own Alan Parsons, you know what I mean?

[RJFait]

There is truth to that. Many of the great bands of the time couldn't get any better than minimal local air play and school dances for gigs - and all because most of them were too everything that was supposedly so great about The Beatles.

Thane Cesar said:

All I'm saying is that if you have a massive machine like EMI behind you, you will be big. Not to say they didn't have talent, but they had a lot of breaks other bands didn't. Not ever band gets their own Alan Parsons, you know what I mean?

[Rockin Rod Strychnine]

Nobody likes to admit it but the Stones were almost a cult following in the States for the first year and a half before Satisfaction came along and the other thing is....Capitol kept pushing the Beatles aside until the DJs in the States forced their hand to rethink their position in releasing their records and re-releasing earlier records put out by other labels that originally got ignored.  And the only reason the DJs started playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was because of a few people who accidently heard it and thought the tune was catchy.  Nobody remembers but Dick Clark actually put out a Beatles record (She Loves You) in the summer of 1963 and debuted it on Bandstand and it flopped amongst the kids.  He even showed their photo and the kids laughed.  So there is a little truth behind Capitol telling the kids that Beatles are cool but you still gotta give some credit to everybody who believed in "I Want To Hold Your Hand" before it got released in America. 

[RJFait]

Not to start another argument, I really don't want that, but when you say what you said out loud, it really sounds like The Beatles weren't going anywhere until the money came into play.

Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

"the only reason the DJs started playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was because of a few people who accidently heard it and thought the tune was catchy.  Nobody remembers but Dick Clark actually put out a Beatles record (She Loves You) in the summer of 1963 and debuted it on Bandstand and it flopped amongst the kids.  He even showed their photo and the kids laughed"

And then, a couple months later (when the record companies finally started throwing money at them), everyone who had never heard of The Beatles all fell madly in love.

[Don]

Money bought exposure. That for the most part is all it'll buy but without it no one hears the music, no one buys the music, the machine never builds up any momentum.

And yes that is why many great bands never "made it" big.

Another was lack of originality - the thing that makes for product differentiation.

BTW, ever hear of "Payola"?

Have you seen the film Cadillac Records?

Its all there.

-don

[RJFait]

I don't believe that it was simply money that made The Beatles, though the massive exposure didn't hurt. I really believe that America needed a change, something to happen or kids were going to start killing their rigid, stodgy 1950's parents. The Beatles were something new - not so much for what they were doing, but because of who they were. Local bands only got local exposure, and were therefore only hated by local parents. The Beatles were hated by virtually every parent in America. The kids had a common hero because their parents had a common enemy. I don't think this alone was the reason for Beatle Mania either, but I think it was one of the major factors. The series of events that all coincided at the time are so mathematically phenomenal and rare that there will never be another Beatle Mania.

[RJFait]

Strategic exposure is key. If Ed Sullivan said you were cool, dammit, you were cool. I'm not saying anybody got paid, and Ed only put them on because they were already cool, but he had never heard them prior to that show. But, I stand by my above statement about the rare sequence of events.
 
Don said:

Money bought exposure. That for the most part is all it'll buy but without it no one hears the music, no one buys the music, the machine never builds up any momentum.

And yes that is why many great bands never "made it" big.

Another was lack of originality - the thing that makes for product differentiation.

BTW, ever hear of "Payola"?

Have you seen the film Cadillac Records?

Its all there.

-don

[Rockin Rod Strychnine]

That's definitely a fact.  Chances are "I Want To Hold your Hand" could have died down before it ever took off simply because Capitol refused to get behind it.  DJs were playing imported Parlophone (EMI) copies at the request of a few fans. So they might have gone bust by 1965 or even a little earlier.

RJFait said:

Not to start another argument, I really don't want that, but when you say what you said out loud, it really sounds like The Beatles weren't going anywhere until the money came into play.

Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

"the only reason the DJs started playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was because of a few people who accidently heard it and thought the tune was catchy.  Nobody remembers but Dick Clark actually put out a Beatles record (She Loves You) in the summer of 1963 and debuted it on Bandstand and it flopped amongst the kids.  He even showed their photo and the kids laughed"

And then, a couple months later (when the record companies finally started throwing money at them), everyone who had never heard of The Beatles all fell madly in love.

[Cavemanmark]

BOTH! Don't get this one or the other hoo ha. Two massive ground breaking bands that influenced music in all four corners of the globe. It's easy to LOVE both you know!