Music Banter - View Single Post - The Rolling Stones vs. The Beatles
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Old 10-16-2008, 05:14 PM   #575 (permalink)
Radiohead90
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The Beatles were more musically innovative and influential.

A Day in the Life", "I am the Walrus", "Within You, Without You", "Strawberry Fields"... not really blues tunes, are they (Doh?). They were able to draw from diverse sources, like Indian classical music (Within You uses a raga-like form that contains both major and minor thirds in different octaves, kind of a combination of mixolydian and dorian modalities). Lennon used forms similar to Tibetan chants. They were versed in the same types of cadential cycles that had evolved from Dixieland and Tin Pan Alley, the pop music of the previous era (and also a primary underpinning for jazz). And they invented many new forms in between. IOW, while most other bands of that era were still working within simple I-IV-vi-V frameworks, the Beatles had assimilated musical forms, languages and rhythms from around the world. They built their own unique musical sounds, and wrote some of the most widely recorded music in history. Hardly a trivial accomplishment.
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