'How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'N' Roll' by Elijah Wald
Say You Want a Revolution…
The British Invasion that began with the Beatles' record-setting American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show not only transformed rock 'n' roll but in some ways marked the end of pop music as it had existed for the previous seventy years
Wald explains that the Beatles did in fact destroy rock 'n' roll by creating a schism between white and black music that's only grown farther apart in the decades since the dawn of Beatlemania (see: disco, soul, hip-hop). Like many early rock bands, the Beatles were rooted in the music of Chuck Berry and Little Richard. As the band found its creative voice, its members abandoned their early influences. The results included "the effetely sentimental ballad" "Yesterday," a song that Wald claims "diffused" rock's energy and opened the door for milquetoasts such as Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Billy Joel and Elton John. With the "Sgt. Pepper" album, the band draped their music "in a robe of arty mystification, opening the way for the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Yes, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer."
"Rather than being a high point of rock," he continues, "the Beatles destroyed rock 'n' roll, turning it from a vibrant (or integrated) dance music into a vehicle for white pap and pretension." And what, again, was so revolutionary about Pat Boone?
Every couple months some moron will say something like this just to get attention. Memo to Elijah, Pierro Scaruffi tried to build a career on bashing the Beatles, and he is widely considered a moron. What Mr. Wald is saying would be considered completely racist if he wasn’t a geeky little white boy. There is a this thing called evolution, it exists in music too. However, the arguments Mr. Wald is using are some of the worst I have heard. To bash a band for influencing Yes and Pink Floyd is ridiculous. Plus, Sgt. Peppers came out 3 months after Velvet Underground and Nico, so it was in the air already and the Beatles were already doing this kind of stuff on Revolver a year earlier.
How boring so let's criticize a band for evolving and going away from their roots. Mr. Wald is correct that Sgt Pepper inspired other bands but is it really their fault a lot what came out was dreck. The same could be said about any bands that might have been influenced by the Velvet Underground or what came after Nirvana in grunge