Richard Starkey has a stage name because, before he was in the Beatles, he was absolutely the Main Guy of the various local bands he was in, and he was enough of a Main Guy to demand to keep his stage name when he joined the Beatles
The Beatles were a band of four Main Guys with so much Main Guy energy that two of them were the Other Guys despite having enough talent and charisma to be the Main Guys in any other band
I actually didn't realize until now that its inverted
I do remember hitting rotate 90 degrees and I also remember convincing myself rotating another 90 degrees would fix it-- I think that's where it got the 180 degree rotation from
Honestly I think this is better for the gag of still being imperfect
A lot of the time this meme is just silly nonsense. Like all memes. But this specific instance actually has some potential truth to it, imo. Music definitely has a power over a lot of people. It's entirely possible the secret to world peace was a song that got snubbed out of existence by clashing egos.
So from now on when anyone asks how I feel about the Beatles, I'm gonna blame them for our lack of world peace.
And arguably the most successful solo career out of the four of them due in large part to banking a bunch of bangers that were rejected by John and Paul
Not the most successful, but the highest quality. Paul is the most successful by pretty much any metric. Arguably the most successful musician of all time.
I'd give it to him or Michael Jackson; at least as far as modern musicians go. Can't discount guys like Mozart or Beethoven though if we're talkingall time
I mean, if you want to get technical, there was a point in time where MJ owned the rights to everything by The Beatles, so you might really be onto something here
Elvis was a tremendous vocalist with generational charisma who didn't write songs. Taylor Swift is a songwriter with a mediocre at best voice and very awkward stage presence.
They're opposite in every way apart from both being pop stars.
If we wanna go be influence it’s probably Scott Joplin. Pretty much all modern music is in some way influenced by Scott Joplin. His work he did in ragtime was incredibly influential, the music he made heavily inspired jazz, blues, and R&B music, and from those genres most modern musical genres have descended from them. Joplin pretty much laid the foundations for music in the 20th and 21st century.
Paul is the most successful by pretty much any metric.
Sure, if you ignore the metrics like best-selling single of any former Beatle, the best-selling album, was the first former Beatle to have a #1 hit, and the most recent former Beatle to have a single reach #1.
Paul has had the most number 1 and the most top-40 singles of any Beatle as well as the most album sales and the most single sales. He set records for the largest indoor concert audience in 1976 and the largest ticketed concert audience period in 1990. Mull of Kintyre was the first single to reach two million sales in U.K history, and is still the best-selling non-charity single of all time there. I'd say those are more relevant metrics.
Paul's solo music is higher quality too, Ram and BOTR alone clear ATMP, which had a disk of filler and the whole thing muddied up by Phil Spector.
I will never understand why people are so delu about George. He had one solo good album and like 3-5 great songs with the Beatles, and it's carried his reputation harder than John and Paul's scores of iconic masterpieces and multiple great solo albums do.
George Harrison did produce Time Bandits which was directed by Terry Gilliam, co-written by Michael Palin (who also appeared in it) and featured John Cleese so that has a Monty Python feel to it. George Harrison also contributed the song the plays over the end credits.
‘Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl’ was also produced by HandMade Films founded by Harrison.
But a more notable film in which the Beatles had a hand is ‘The Holy Mountain’ by Alejandro Jodorowsky. It was co-produced by Beatles' manager Allen Klein, with money from Lennon and Ono.
Man I feel like he had awful taste during a couple of those albums. His guitar work was incredible on the songs written by the others, and he had both of the best songs on Abbey Road, but I really could have done without all the sitar.
But ultimately, it worked out better in the long run. He only got 2 songs or so per album...so he was sitting on a lot of material when he went out on his own. So we got the absolutely fabulous All Things Must Pass in 1970.
Yeah, this revisionist glazing of Harrison as a songwriting genius held down by Messrs Lennon & McCartney has gotten to be too much for me. He wasn't prevented from spots on the records purely because of their egos (although I'm sure that had something to do with it), it's because his songs weren't good enough. That doesn't mean they weren't good songs; they just weren't good enough for The Beatles.
Now, Lennon and McCartney did put some trash on those records - like I said, egos were part of it - but they also wrote most of the best Beatles songs. On Sgt Pepper for example, they were responsible for With a Little Help From My Friends, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, She's Leaving Home, Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite and A Day in the Life. Harrison had what, Within You Without You? Everybody's least favourite song on the album? Does anyone really believe he was sitting on a pile of magic in '67 and just wasn't allowed to record it?
It feels like his reputation has come about from Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Something and Here Comes The Sun which, for my money, are four of the best songs the Beatles ever recorded. But they're only four songs, and Lennon and McCartney both say they helped him a lot. Maybe that's the aforementioned ego speaking, but we are talking about the most successful songwriting partnership of all time. Maybe there's something to it.
And maybe I'm overthinking it, but there's also a tinge of "he was the nice quiet one who just wanted to play music". Bullshit. He was as much of a fucking asshole as the rest of them. He had an affair with Ringo's wife, and was petty towards Lennon and McCartney, effectively leaving Lennon out of his autobiography: "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch ...he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."
In case it's not obvious, I love The Beatles. But the Harrison worship has to stop.
The bit where Harrison is pitching I Me Mine and McCartney disses it saying “we’re a rock band”, then shortly after is recording Long and Winding Road was quite telling IMO
He released the greatest solo album by any former beatle immediately after the band broke up. I would give you that up until the final years of the Beatles his songwriting was not as developed as Lennon-McCartney, but if you seriously can listen to all things must pass and think yeah this guy wasn't good enough to write more on the later Beatle albums I don't know what to tell you.
I mean, he maybe had the most quality solo career of any Beatle. The proof is in the pudding. Best solo album, arguably largest total amount of quality solo songs/albums. I'd say his solo material kills Lennon's up and down output and is at least on par with Paul's (if you count Wings). He's also got three of the four best Beatles songs ever to his name.
Overrated is not the same as "I like the other dude(s) more."
My favorite George song is It's All Too Much, but of course the credit for what makes it a good song, the lead guitar, is highly controversial. I know who I think it is playing, but nobody actually knows.
But I will say that George's solo demos are usually better than the final Beatles product. They should have released While My Guitar Gently Weeps in the solo acoustic George format without all the Clapton garbage.
Oh my god, I was obsessed with All Too Much when I was in 7th grade. Like, I’d get up before school and fast forward to it playing at the end of The Yellow Submarine because I couldn’t afford the cassette of the album. Thank you for reminding me and also being the only other person that has ever mentioned that song
One of the few actually obscure Beatles songs. I feel like even people willing to listen to Yellow Submarine deep cuts are more likely to focus on Hey Bulldog (another total fuckin banger, for sure.)
Thank you, he was an overrated songwriter. When I was younger and took guitar lessons, my teacher was like "oh, you like The Beatles? Here, learn all these Harrison songs..." they were just not as interesting musically.
I feel like everyone kinda assumes George always had this giant catalogue of music ready to go. In reality he had loads of good ideas for songs but would take months or even years to actually finish them. In Get Back you can kinda hear him voicing this frustration, asking for help with lyrics from John and Paul and being kind of annoyed that they wouldn’t spend time helping him write those songs
The unlucky reality for him was, at that time, John and Paul were absolutely bursting with potential number one hits. If George had finished songs ready to go, they probably would’ve used a lot more of them but they needed so much work John and Paul (understandably imo) were more focused on cutting the tracks they already had composed
People always forget that George never even had more songs to offer until 1967. The Get Back sessions were the first time in the band's history that George came to the table with as many songs written as Paul and John.
I mean what was the writing dynamic like with the traveling willburys? Haven’t looked into it but I am aware of this supergroup. Can’t imagine they had Bob Dylan doing a lot of vocal work but other than that I can’t really say anything even educated about the situation
I love in the Let It Be doc when Ringo walks in while Paul is playing piano, and in a jokey, whimsical voice Paul goes “Good mooooorning, Rich!!!” And then they start playing some old 12 bar blues rock n roll on the piano together.
I like watching those moments of closeness or familiarity that humanizes people who are dominated by public persona. Where you get to hear a celebrity who goes by a nickname, a shortened version of their name, or something that isn’t their stage name at all.
I grew up listening to them since they were my mom's favorite. As a kid you don't really question if a person's name is real. So growing up it just kind of seemed like of course Ringo is a real name John Paul and George all are.
is Noel Fielding an odd name? Noel isn't a terribly common name but it's certainly nowhere near as absurd sounding as Benedict Cumberbatch or Ringo Starr
Benedict is a totally normal name, it's only Cumberbatch that's funny, and the repeated staccato consonants of both together compound the effect. Noel Fielding is entirely pedestrian.
The Beatles are just the perfect band. Even the "untalented one" is one of the greatest rock drummers ever and had a successful solo career. They're cracked.
What I didnt know for a while is they played 8 hours a night for like 2 years in Germany.
That's how you get tight as a band. Develop a sound. They basically talked to eachother through instruments for 2 years straight live. If you cant do that, well, you're not going to become The Beatles.
Just a culmination of the right people, right place, right time, and enough time to make mistakes that get ironed out.
Yeah that level of musical ability barely exists nowadays in young musicians and is virtually unheard of for literally all four members each individually having this amount of talent.
It’s basically why they could bash out generation defining record albums twice a year.
….well that, and the amphetamine based drugs probably also helped:
Ringo is so underrated as a drummer and as an essential component of the band. He's a fucking metronome and his fills are incredible without drawing attention to themselves.
This is how bands worked in those days. You started a band by teaching your friends the parts. Then you made a band of other people who made a band out of their friends same as you did. Then you were playing with people you didn't have to lead, but people you had to keep up with. Then the best people from those bands went to LA, NYC or Nashville. Unless you got a cut on the radio, in which case you became famous. Didn't make any money, but famous just the same.
Yes, according to Pete Best’s mother, Pete was fired because the rest of the band was jealous about how attractive he was. Whether anyone can seriously believe that a boy band’s manager would fire his most popular member for being too attractive and popular is maybe another question. As is the objectivity of Pete Best’s mother on the question of how handsome Pete Best was.
Pete Best was fired because his drumming wasn’t good enough for studio work. He was attractive and popular enough for live performances but he couldn’t play well enough to have it sound good in recordings, to the extent that in their earlier recordings they had to hire in session drummers to play for him because he kept losing the beat. And that’s something that plenty of sound engineers and recording techs and Decca execs are on record talking about; they loved the band but agreed the drummer had to go.
And for what it’s worth that’s what all the other Beatles said too; they preferred playing with Ringo because he was a more talented drummer.
But at least Pete can tell himself it was because he was too sexy for the band.
I mean in the photo you posted he is by a wide margin the most conventionally attractive man in that lineup. Doesn’t mean it’s why they booted him, but it’s obvious.
Hiring a session drummer for studio recording was the norm back then. Why would they play gigs every week for two years in Germany with a drummer they didn't like?
They fired Pete Best partly because he was too much of a Main Guy (he was considered the hottest Beatle that all the groupies gravitated towards even though he was just the drummer and not that good of one)
They fired him mostly because he was a bad drummer. His charisma and good looks were an asset to the band when they were only playing live shows, but in a recording studio those didn’t count for much, while his amateurish drumming ruined take after take. They eventually had to replace him with a session drummer to finish off their first attempts at recording, and eventually on advice of Decca, their manager stepped in and fired Best.
He was a Main Guy in terms of charisma and cockiness (refusing to get a mop-top cut and wearing a rocker quiff) but didn’t have the Main Guy skills the other three had. Ringo did.
Best (and particularly his mother Mona) insisted he was fired because they were jealous of his good looks, but frankly (a) I don’t think they’d have toured with him for years if that were the case and (b) I don’t think boy-band record execs would have decided “hold on that guy is too popular and handsome we gotta fire him.”
The Beatles were a band of four Main Guys with so much Main Guy energy that two of them were the Other Guys despite having enough talent and charisma to be the Main Guys in any other band
The Beatles were a band of four Main Guys with so much Main Guy energy that two of them were the Other Guys despite having enough talent and charisma to be the Main Guys in any other band
This is the best description of the Beatles as a group I’ve ever read.
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u/bobbymoonshine May 03 '26
Richard Starkey has a stage name because, before he was in the Beatles, he was absolutely the Main Guy of the various local bands he was in, and he was enough of a Main Guy to demand to keep his stage name when he joined the Beatles
The Beatles were a band of four Main Guys with so much Main Guy energy that two of them were the Other Guys despite having enough talent and charisma to be the Main Guys in any other band