Sorry for bumping this thread. I've been meaning to post this for quite a while now.
I can see why many people think The Beatles are overrated. Time has not been very kind to much of their music, and it is pretty hard to understand from our contemporary point of view how this actually pretty tame band could cause such a landslide.
I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I really have to say that people who think that do not understand what the Beatles were actually about.
When I was about eight years old, I heard my very first Beatles song. Before that, I had occasionally heard the odd rock song, but never really listened, and was not interested in music at all. One Sunday morning, I was for some reason in the living room while my brother was working on a video for a presentation he did in school. His topic was 'The Beatles', and he had rented pretty much all the Beatles films from the library and was editing them together on a blank video tape using to VCRs (a technical feat he was very proud of, given he was only 11 or 12 at that time). When I was in the living room, my brother just started playig 'All My Loving', and I stood there like a statue, staring at the television screen and absorbing every single note played. It was the first time I ever consciously listened to a piece of music that was not the 'Children's Classics' compilation or 'My Favourite Children Songs' or something like that. This was SERIOUS music. From that point on, I became a music freak, and I remember nights spent in the living room listening to my parents' Beatles and Simon&Garfunkel CDs with earphones on while my parents were watching TV. I was really listening, it was not background noise or anything for me. I listened to every guitar chord, every syllable sung, every beat of the drum. I bought some Beatles tapes for ridiculous money (my allowance at that time was about 1-2 CAN$, i.e. 50 Cents to one Euro) and listened to them over and over again. As a matter of fact, I liked it so much I wasn't even sure if I was allowed to listen to it, so I often did it in my bed, covered with my blanket.
As some of you might have noticed, I am currently in my digressive storyteller mood, so I'll tell you how it continued.
As time went by, my brother got me into Michael Jackson. Again, I spent even more money on those Michael Jackson tapes and listened to them over and over, and again, I was more absorbing than listening. However, by that time, I noticed those that really mostly interested in songs like 'Beat It' or 'Dirty Diana', i.e. the heavy-ish stuff. I had no clue what a distorted guitar was, so I kept wondering where those dark and mysterious sounds came from. These songs had something which became increasingly important to me as I broadened my musical horizon: A touch of evil.
The world turned, and I almost secretly entertained my passion for those 'evil' songs, and my brother got me into Queen. Here again, it was mostly the heavy songs that interested me. One fateful Christmas, my parents gave me Queen's 'Greatest Hits II', and two days later I got 'Greatest Hits I' from the money I got from an obscure family member. Those two CDs -they were now actually CDs, not tapes anymore- almost immediately pushed away all the other stuff I was listening to, and for about a year, they were pretty much the only thing I ever listened to. But again, it was mostly the heavier stuff that attracted me, like 'I Want It All', 'Hammer To Fall' or 'Innuendo'. As a matter of fact, my favourite moment on those CDs was Brian May's guitar solo on 'Innuendo'. The second part right after he echoed the Spanish guitar part. Had I been listening to Pop and Flower Power stuff before, I was now completely in the world of Queen.
But things became even worse. My brother had gotten Martin C. Strong's 'Great Rock Discography' for a Christmas, and kept getting all those 'important' songs and albums from the famous bands in that book. Now, the bands were called Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath, and the songs were called 'Smoke On The Water', 'Easy Livin'' and 'Paranoid', and of course, he had to spoil his younger brother's soul by playing that stuff to him. I loved every second of those songs. My parents did notice my passion for hard rock music, and although they later disapproved (though now accept) the musical taste I was developing, they were guilty of starting it all: They gave me my first Deep Purple and AC/DC CDs.
At about the same time, the world of Heavy Metal opened to me by the most spectacular case of backfiring I ever witnessed. I know that I might have told this story once too often for some people's taste, but it belongs here. We were discussing Satanism in my religion class, and during one lesson, my religion teacher announced he was going to play us some Satanist music for us to get an idea what it is like. He handed out a sheet with translated lyrics from the song he was going to play. The translation read 'Die Zahl Des Tieres'. He turned on the tape recorder, and the first thing I heard was "Woe to you, oh Earth and sea...". My life would never be the same again. When I heard this song, I knew this was the music I had been longing for all those years. I kept my love for my recent discoveries Pink Floyd, The Doors and Led Zeppelin, but this had the one thing I mentioned earlier: The touch of evil. It was dark, it was mysterious, and it was officially evil. I was not supposed to listen to it, and that was what attracted me to it.
We were already in the digital age, and my brother had advanced into the heavier directions. One day, he came to me and said "I just downloaded something from Napster- Iron Maiden, The Number Of The Beast." He was surprised when I grinned broadly and asked him to give the stuff to me immediately. This one time, he had been a bit too slow.
My mother was beginning to think there was something seriously wrong with my taste for music, and one day, I played 'The Wicker Man' a tad too loud while she was ironing next door. She screamed at me and commanded me to turn down that noise immediately. Here again, it was forbidden music, and that only made me love it even more. 'The Number Of The Beast' and 'Brave New World' -then the freshest, hottest thing on the planet- rotated in my disc man in every spare second. I expanded my CD and record collection to include real heavyweights, like Rainbow, and even more Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple. One day, my father came back from a business trip to Florida, and gave me a CD. He said he thought he should bring me something from America, and when he saw that band name, he thought it pretty much spelled out my name. The band was Judas Priest. I already owned 'Sad Wings Of Destiny' and 'Stained Class' at that time.
Time went by and by, and I got even more used LPs and new CDs from my favourites, discovering new bands and artists all the time. My brother already entirely lost control over my musical taste, and every time he looks at my CD shelf, he discovers something new, which he never heard of before and almost immediately disapproves of. Of course, the fascination I experienced when I heard that music for the first time is long gone, and I am no longer an adolescent, but I still listen to and love this music, although by now, it is really the musical value that attracts me. It is not 'forbidden' or 'evil' music anymore, it is just plain good.
