The Beatles Beatdown

[Zzzptm]

On my Saturday radio show, I do a segment called "Rock and Roll Football" where I treat two bands doing the same song like college football teams, with how well they do the song equal to how well they play. This morphed out of a segment where I was playing Beatles versions of older songs along with those older songs and, well, it was ugly most times. Even when we take polished album tracks and line them up against the original artists - and even when the original artists themselves were as young and inexperienced as The Beatles when they recorded their originals - The Beatles pretty much got massacred on the field. I've since switched over to better bands in head to head competition and also pitting The Rolling Stones against original artists, and WOW what a difference those Stones make.

And while The Beatles have distinctive singing voices, I don't consider them to be among the best vocalists. Their instrumental skills were usually adequate, with I think George Harrison having the best talent in that foursome. Ringo was awesome at being happy and goofy, but that's about it for him.

Why did they get so popular? There's cuteness involved. They became a big hit in the UK because of that and, well, maybe also because it was the thing to do in late '63, to go to a Beatles gig and lose your ever-lovin' mind. If you didn't do it, you just weren't cool. Or you were a Rolling Stones fan... in the USA, we had the JFK assassination in late 1963 that shattered things here, culturally speaking. Heck, Phil Spector pulled his awesome Christmas album because he didn't want it to be thought of as "The Kennedy Assassination Christmas Album". There were also pay-to-play scandals in American rock and roll radio, so the ground was ripe for a change. And then the Beatles show up in early '64 and that losing your ever-lovin' mind at a Beatles gig becomes popular in the USA.

Elvis was doing movies, Jerry Lee Lewis didn't get played here because he married his teenage cousin, Chuck Berry was in prison, and Little Richard didn't have a record label that was promoting him properly, so there were major US acts that weren't available to counter The Beatles. The strongest home-grown response was from Motown - but segregation, both formal and informal, meant that the major radio stations that catered to White audiences would play the heck out of British acts and only the big Motown crossover hits.

Post-1964, as everyone copied The Beatles, at least The Beatles themselves would try and innovate things. They tried different genres on 1965's Rubber Soul and practically launched three major new genres of rock, even though other performers were doing better stuff to less acclaim. 1966 saw Revolver and that pushed things with counterculture and psychedelia. 1967 was the year of Sgt. Pepper and Paul McCartney heavily infusing British musical theater into music, which would really get those prog-rockers going with extended concepts and electrifying older musical forms. 1968's "white album" was released to a world that would have bought a double album of Lennon and McCartney reading a phone book. It's highly uneven, but by that time, the band could do no wrong as far as sales went.

1969 gave us the contractual obligation Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and the sessions that produced a good chunk of Let It Be. 1970 saw the release of Let It Be and the band's public break-up. After that, nostalgia drove their sales and made them seem much better than they actually were. They had some great songs, but I always feel that most of their best moments were recorded by other musicians.

Just to show the comparison... here's a 1964 recording of Dizzy Miss Lizzy, done by The Beatles... play it, even if it hurts. The payoff is to follow...

Now Larry Williams' 1958 original:

For me, the difference is like hearing a high school band vs actual pro musicians.  And that's the case with almost any comparison between The Beatles and acts they copied tunes from.

[Zzzptm]

It gets even starker when you can compare The Beatles to an original as well as a Rolling Stones version. Here's those three options with Barrett Strong's "Money". Try them out and see how far you get with each...

The Beatles, around 1963... I played the whole thing, it made 2:49 feel like hours!

Barrett Strong's original from 1959...

That band is TIGHT and plays it clean and neat. So nice to hear.

And the Rolling Stones from their January 1964 EP...

WOW. They made it all Elmore James with the harmonica and guitar line there, and man those cats can jam! Charlie Watts takes Ringo Starr's ass, rolls it up in a paper, and smokes it to ashes.

It's like The Beatles were afraid to do anything different, Barrett Strong was doing his own thing, and the Stones were like "hell yeah, we'll do our own thing, too!" So much more confidence - and competence - in The Rolling Stones in that 63-64 time frame.

[Zzzptm]

Then there's Beatles tunes done by other artists... first "I've Got a Feeling" by The Beatles (with Billy Preston on organ, saving the recording)

And now as done by Billy Preston (with George Harrison on guitar for sure and maybe Ringo Starr on drums, but could be another player - liner notes not clear.)

Given the immediate complexity of the drum line, I'm going to go with some other drummer than Ringo hitting the skins. The bass player cooks way better than Paul McCartney, hands down. Preston's vocals are way better than McCartney's, I mean, damn, it's like The Beatles' version is a demo version of a songwriter selling a tune and Preston is they guy they sold it to who took it and fixed it up proper.

Fun fact: The Rolling Stones could have had any one of The Beatles in their band when they went through personnel changes, but they chose Billy Preston to play keys for them on tour. Well played, Rolling Stones, well played! 

[Vyn]

From the comments section to the Beatle's version of Dizzy Miss Lizzy:


@fireballplay2946
5 years ago
One of John’s best with vocals and guitar !

Good comparos, especially throwing the Stones in there on Money. Instrumentation, style, etc. aside, the thing that really stands out to me with both songs is the lack of emotive force in the Beatles' recordings. There's no accounting for taste, and I recognize that a lot of people get jizzy when they hear John sing Dizzy Miss Lizzy, but to me it sounds like the producer is standing off to the side and every once in a while mouths, "shout"...and John shouts. Right on cue.

As Frank Zappa would say: Freeze-dried.

[Zzzptm]

I've seen comments like that on other Beatles uploads, people confusing loudness with artistry. Yes, he and Paul can do raw, energetic shouting. So can Screaming Lord Sutch. The difference is that The Beatles got massive exposer and SLS was stuck playing clubs with one of the best backup bands ever at any given time.

For emotive force, I actually think it comes across best when George is doing lead vocals, he's able to actually put some feeling into his delivery. John sticks to acidity, Paul to "songs for grannies" as John called them and Ringo... well, bless his heart, but Ringo does try!