The Most Innovative Rock Artists Ever.
Submitted by Revolver on Mon, 10/01/2007 - 04:03
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To be the most innovative artist the act should have brought new sounds to rock music or popularize a subgenre, and the act should also have done it for more than one album or single. Also the act should be able to merge different genres into a new sound example Strawberry Fields Forever or Eight Miles High.
Captain Beefheart should be included
The Beatles. And that's it :)
Frank Zappa, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, and Kraftwerk. Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly need to be on the top three.
I Feel Fine - a sustained low A on bass as a foundation for feedback from Lennon's Rickenbacker obtained by striking the note with the volume switch down then turning up while pointing the pickups towards the amp.
Progressively though, the Beatles drifted away from the rock'n'roll style over-used and endlessly repeated by most of their counterparts and began exploring new musical avenues. Nothing was left aside in this exploration: harmony, orchestration and rhythm were all revived and transformed by the Beatles's genius. In 'Eleanor Rigby', they used a quasi-Baroque string orchestration. The construction of 'Penny Lane' is based on a systematic and very unusual change of keys. In their later albums, they sucessfully incorporated traditional Indian music harmony "Love You Too" and Avant-garde techniques used by classical musicians, such as the use of distorted tape loops in studios to create new sounds "Tommorow Never Knows" or aleatoric music "A Day in the Life"
"Tomorrow Never Knows", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am The Walrus" and "A Day in the Life" are some of the most innovative rock songs ever. The Beatles Electronic/Psychedelic rock fusion on Tomorrow Never Knows and Strawberry Fields Forever were important stepping stones to Progressive Rock and Experimental Rock.
Correction there is no sustained feedback on the Yardbrids "Got To Hurry" or the "Johnny Burnette Trio "Train Kept A Rollin". The Beatles fuzzed toned feedback without the use of a fuzz box another inovation was sustained on "I Feel Fine" as was The Kinks "I Need You" and the Who "Anyhow Anywhere" I don't know who invented guitar feedback but the Beatles put on the map. "A Hard Day's Night" and the solo on "Baby In Black" are almost there just like the Yardbirds "Got To Hurry". Check out "Yes it Is" and "I Need You" that have extended use of volume swells with some feedback on those tracks.
It really doesn't matter whether they used a fuzzbox or not. Feedback is interesting because of the way it sounds and if another band made that sound first - even via another means - that should count for something.
The sound is on an alternate version of "Got to Hurry" and besides, they were using it in concert. It's also, (a little) on the 5 Royales' "The Slummer the Slum" (1958) and Johnny Guitar Watson's "Space Guitar" (1954).
I hear the sound you're referring to in Baby's In Black but it's really no different than, say, "Rumble" by Link Wray for example.
Also, pretty sure the weird sounds in "Yes It Is" and "I Need You" are only the volume pedal. Either way, it wasn't until "Anyway Anyhow, Anywhere" that feedback was really used in a way that deserves it's rebellious reputation. The Kinks' "I Need You" was actually reorded over the same two day span as the Who song and had pretty abrasive feedback but like "I Feel Fine", only in the beginning of the track (probably a parody/tribute/reference to it)
The feedback on "I Feel Fine" is sustained and it's distorted which the later counts for something. I don't know any song prior to "I Feel Fine" that uses sustained guitar feedback as a recording effect. Maybe acccidetally or done live but as a recording effect on purpose I have not heard one. "I Need You" has some guitar feedback with extensive use of volume swells. "Yes It Is" has I think it's mainly volume pedal. One alternate track mentioned before is the Alternate outake of "Eight Days A Week'" on Anthology 1 the feedback is extensive on that track. "Baby in Black" is volume swells with a hint of droning on guitar on some parts of the song. Whatever the Beatles were certainly one of the bands along with the Who and the Yardbirds who were using it early.
On a side note both "What You're Doing" and "Eight Days a Week" have bass parts that are sustained.
The Byrds are highly overrated. Revolver I like your other post of most Innovative rock songs much better. The Beatles deserve the top spot just for this reason the Beatles were able to make overtly experimental music for everyone to enjoy without making mindless noise rock. That is innovation of the highest order.
Great poll.
For me, Chuck Berry by a mile or more...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
You know I thought of the Velvet Underground and they are deserving. King Crimson is a band I like a lot because I love progressive rock but even that band was highly influenced by the Beatles and like it or not the Beatles are one of cornerstones of progressive rock. Chuck Berry is the father of rock guitar, but is his influence really that felt anymore today Elvis, and Buddy Holly are other examples can you name any major band today who is influenced by them. To me Innovation is someone who did something different in mixing genres with influence, new recording techniques, new sounds, popularizing a subgenre or reinventing a subgenre in rock music, songwriting, melodies and vocal harmonies to me that's why you would have hard time convincing me it's anyone else other than the Beatles.
Well, to a large degree, you can play with this proposed formula.
The Beatles - Chuck Berry = The Everly Brother + Lonnie Donegan
Like most silly generalizations, it is far too broad, but it certainly has loads of truth to it.
The Beatles, The Stones, The Velvet Underground, nearly every post-punk band, Zep, The White Stripes, heck, nearly anybody who licks that lead blues guitar backed by that driving beat owes tons to Chuck Berry.
If you can't hear him ringing throughout modern music, I suspect you just aren't listening close enough...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Innovative and influential don't necessarily mean the same thing. Chuck Berry could easily be called the most influential artist in rock music history, but it would be a stretch to say he was the most innovative (in my opinion).
I'll agree with the first sentence.
Unfortunately, when you prove that influential, it is all too easy to have your innovation overlooked.
Here is a good question - who before Berry sounded anything like him?
Who was slinging the guitar like that, leading a band like that, writing songs about teenage concerns and race like that, and singing them at the same time with that smoothed-out blues inflection?
The closest you can get pre-Chuck is - What? - Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, and Joe Turner? A few listens to them, however, prove they all just provided small parts to the whole Chuck cobbled together and plastered down, that blueprint most post-1955 popular music has worked from, on, or against.
Now, if we expand this conversation beyond that timeframe to all non-classical popular music, the winner is easily Louis Armstrong, but that's another thread...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
It's hard to argue with either of you (Parable and lbangs). After a bit of deliberation I would have to go with Capt Beefheart as being the most innovative and Berry as the most influential. I think The Velvet Underground would be the greatest combo of influential and innovation though and are probably the best overall pick if the poll's intention was to mean innovation and influential are more or less the same thing--because there is no way many of the bands on the poll (the Beatles included) should win for innovation. Their "innovations" are blown way out of proportion simply because they are so famous and loved.
I have do disgree how many songs are as innovative as Tomorrow Never Knows you could play Velvet Underground songs live but how are you going play Harrison backwar guitar live or the samples or tape loops of that song or who in rock was using true Indian drone or even Lennon vocals. Another point you listen to modern music today how many artists are using samples with dance like drum beats mostly everyone.
Naturally you disagree...
"While repetition is used in the musics of all cultures the first musicians to use loops were electronic pioneers Pierre Henry, Edgard Varèse and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen's music in turn influenced the Beatles to experiment with tape loops, and their use of loops in early psychedelic works (most notably 1966's "Tomorrow Never Knows" and 1968's avant-garde "Revolution 9") brought the technique into the mainstream. Later, inspired by Terry Riley's use of one tape on two tape machines, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp created the technical basis for their No Pussyfooting album - this technological concept was later dubbed Frippertronics."
--Wikipedia
The Beatles were almost never the pioneers of anything musical. It would be much more accurate to describe them as a band who borrowed techniques from the pioneers and transferred them into more accessible sounds for the masses to digest.
The Beatles use of tape loops of early psychedelic music you put your foot in your mouth there. Psychedelic music was early in the game when Revolver came out also using tape loops also was very new in rock music. Tomorrow Never Knows is basically a one chord raga rock song who was doing that in rock music. Who else was using backward guitar and backward samples in rock music. By the way Robert Fripp very inluenced the Beatles. Yes the Beatles use of tape loops with rock music or in this psychedelic music should not be ignored as a major innovation.
The Beatles were also the first band to title a song "Tomorrow Never Knows". And the first band to have an album called "Revolver". Also, they were the first band to have four members with the names John, Paul, Ringo and George--uhh, especially unique was that Ringo one. Not to mention the first band called the Beatles.
Forget about the fact the Velvet Underground invented entire genres of music within the running time of single albums, thus forwarding the majority of the following 3 1/2 decades and development in rock music almost single-handedly--but wait, The Beatles used tape loops in a pop song...and they also implemented backwards guitar on And Your Bird Can Sing...and before I disappoint you, they even wrote down the lyrics to one of their albums on the inner sleeve that came with it!
The Beatles also used sitars, whole orchestras, forty second piano chords, backward drum loops double bass sound one distored one regular, pianos that sound like harpsichords, drone songs Indian ensembles, double medleys and tamboura drone ushered in the classic rock era yeah those Beatles were not innovative. You have your opionion and I have mine lets move on to a different topic. By the way my name is Andrew ok but I go as Revolver.
Captain Who, who has he really influenced. I have listened to the almighty Trout Mask Replica and I could not listen to it without wondering why did I buy this record? Name a record that is directly influenced by this album. You like the music fine. Strange or different music does not equate all the time to a masterpiece.
Royal Trux - Twin Infinitives. Neil Hagerty has specifically lauded Trout Mask Replica as a big influence on Twin Infinitives. A quote: "We simply wanted to push rock and roll songwriting as far as we could go. It was still rock and roll but
people wouldn't see it that way. It was a sincerely anti-authoritarian, class-hatred and so forth statement. Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" was a big influence. That's totally the sculpting of 'Twin Infinitives'."
That's one record that is directly influenced by this album.
Afterhours I think you are obviously anti-Beatles because me and others have pointed to the Beatles innovations. When you say innovation is itroduced new ideas or practices. The Beatles introduced more ideas to rock music than I would say more than anyone else in the past 40 years.
1. The Beatles were using folk rock before Dylan.
2. Feedback and guitar drone were done by the Beatles and other artists before Velvet Underground.
3. The Beatles used audio feedback to introduce a song on I Feel Fine on record.
4. The Beatles used tamboura drone first in rock.
5. Tomorrow Never Knows is a one chord raga drone song
6. Norwegian Wood uses sitar with folk rock.
7. The Beatles uses tape loops to create ambient noises.
8. The Beatles uses tape loops like synthesizers.
9. The Beatles uses backward vocals and backward guitars.
10. Automatic Double Tracking devoloped on the insistance on Lennon.
11. Vocals through leslie speakers
12. Mixing avant with Indian on Tomorrow Never Knows.
13. 12 string jangle sound with folk rock without this No Byrds.
14. Rubber Soul has elements of psychedelic rock.
15. Day in the Life 40 second piano chord.
16. A Day in the Life considered by many the first symphonic rock song.
17. Tomorrow Never Knows- Avant-Indian-Psyche
18. Love You To- classical Indian-psyche
19. She Said She Said- Acid Rock
20. A Day in the Life- Avant- classical- psyche
21. Happiness is Warm Gun- 4 part song with a polyrhythm in 2 and half minutes.
22. Helter Skelter proto metal- without blues influences the moderen type of hard rock.
23. I Want You- progressive rock with heavy metal in second part of the song
24. Symphonic double medley of Abbey Road.
25. Extreme Distortion- Revolution
26. The use of drones for a pschedelic effect
27. Distorted backward strings Straweberry Fields Forver
28. Live Sampling- I Am The Walrus
29. Orchestral crescendo- A Day in the Life
30. A Hard Day's Night Chord.
31. Sgt Peppers the song uses 19th century music with distorted hard rock.
32. Within You Without You uses a string section with Indian Instrument backing
33. A Day in the Life uses a symphony orchestra
34. The POP hits of 1964 Can'T Buy Me Love and A Hard Day's Night are considered by many the beginning of power pop.
35. I'll Cry Instead 1964 and early example of country rock
36. Girl- acoustic sounding greek guitar sound.
I have more. The tape loops were McCartneys idea.
The Beatles first folk-rock song was Ticket To Ride, recorded in February 1965. Before that they were mixing the two genres vaguely, like many bands before (and not to the extent of the Animals' House of the Rising Sun anyway). The Byrds and Dylan co-invented the style in January 1965.
The Yardbirds beat the Beatles to feedback. And the Beatles didn't really do Indian droning until 1966, since Norweigan Wood is just a folk-rock song that happens to feature a sitar ornamentally. The Kinks beat them to it despite using a guitar. It doesn't matter what instrument is used or how it's accomplished in the studio or whatever. It just matters what it sounds like, which in the Beatles case was never as interesting/far out as others who preceded them. So the fact that TMK (which has more than 1 chord, by the way) uses tape loops is really irrelevant (and Miki Dallon beat them by two years, by the way). Also there's nothing "ambient" about tha tone.
Same goes for backward recordings and leslie speakers and such (not the first also, by the way). It's just a "high tech" mechanism for making weird timbres, but they weren't THAT weird, and they were in the context of songs which were just pop songs to begin with, so big deal. ADT is just a way to duplicate a vocal to avoid overdubbing - it has nothing to do with musical innovation.
The Byrds admired the Beatles 12-string sound, but they proceded to do make something of it it, the jingle jangle, which the Beatles DIDN'T do (also the Searchers came much earlier anyway).
Rubber Soul doesn't really have any psychedelic elements. Norweigan Wood, like I said, is not really trippy or anything, just a normal song which applies an exotic instrument in a non-exotic way. By this time there was already a whole bunch of bands making psychedelic music although most didn't record it: San Fran (Charlatans, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Great Society), LA (Byrds, Doors), London (Eyes, Big Boy Pete).
Day in the Life's piano chord is not a big deal. Nor was it the first symphonic rock song by any means. Love You To is a raga-rock song (not just a vaguely Indian song like Norweigan Wood), but the Byrds and others preceded them in a more interesting way.
Happiness is a multi-part song like many others of the day, and doesn't have polyrhythms.
I definitely hear the blues-rock influence in Helter Skelter, and lots of songs earlier in '68 rocked harder. Heavy Metal didn't come along until like late late 1969, and I Want You is not even close - nor is Abbey Road innovative for having a medley or double medley or whatever.
I could go on, but basically the Beatles just applied ideas other rock bands had already applied, and did them in a less extensive way, in the context of songs which were more watered down to begin with. So they're three times removed from lots of their more innovative contemporaries.
Dude you must be the same person who says the same things all the time. Some corrections
The Beatles were bringing folk and rock together on Beatles For Sale have you heard of I'm A Loser the Dylan influenced song. The song is clever fusion of Beatles pop and country and folk. The Byrds also fused the Beatles with folk. Even someone like you hates the Beatles should give them some credit for this. Then you are believer of Peirro Scaruffi from the sound of it.
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds-there is phasing on the mono version.
Ticket to Ride- has guitar drone
I Feel Fine- has guitar feedback on record before any Yardbirds song
Yesterday- that song influenced all sorts of chamber types of arrangements in rock music. Have you heard of Left Banke or the Beach Boys.
Eight Days A Week- with the fade in guitar parts why is that not important. You are deemer of what's important
It's Only Love- has a leslie guitar effect. In Fact it's one of the first to do so. The effect was used by everyone to Hendrix to the Byrds later
Norwegian Wood- was the first record released to have sitar
Love You To- is not even raga rock it more like Indian Prog which is a genre in rock music.
Doctor Robert- does have a slight country influence
Think for yourself uses "fuzz bass lead - but big deal well it was to Jack Bruce and others
Tomorrow Never Knows- did you say simple pop song with effects come on go ask the Chemical Brothers what the song song meant to techno
Strawberry Fields Forever- Go find a song that combines avant music with rock with classical music influence.
Happiness- does have polyrhythms
Walrus is definitely a collage of all sorts of interesting effects, but that sample is barely audible and not important- well I can hear it and who you are to say it's not important. ELO AND CAN BASED THEIR SOUND ON SONGS LIKE THIS
Revolution #9 is not just composed of tape loops. The's all sorts of other stuff going on. And the fact that it's by a rock band means nothing.
Again who are you to say that since it was a rock group doing it should you give them some credit for doing it. Revolution#9 backing track is actually a sample of one their songs so the whole song is basically tape loops, samples and sound effects. None of it was with the band recording music
Their work with backward tapes especially guitar and vocals were very influential on psychedelic music but also todays music. Dick Dale from what I read was known for playing his guitar backward like Jimi Hendrix not for backward tape.
Really does it matter in the end the Beatles were not two step behind like you make it. More like always one of the first.
Helter Skelter or Revolution is a big step from 1965 when it comes to Heavy Metal. Though you forget songs like PaperBack Writer or It's All To Much.
Day in the Life's piano chord is not a big deal. Again who are you to deem what's important. Have you heard of Symphonic Prog many people class this song as the first one. It's also a definite prog songs
Norweigan Wood is just a folk-rock song no the first raga folk song ANOTHER GENRE IN MUSIC. ALSO THE FIRST PROMINENT SITAR PART IN ROCK MUSIC. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT THE YARDBIRDS DID NOT RELEASE SHAPES OF THINGS WITH SITAR ONLY TRIED IT
Whoever you are keep the jokes or laughs coming. My fellow Beatles people keep coming in with the facts
Of course the Beatles were playing folk-ish rock before the actual folk-rock genre appeared a year later, but so were lots of other bands.
Ok I don't hate the Beatles by any means, man. Just stating facts.
Lucy has no phasing at all. They didn't start using that one until the next album, after the Small Faces already used it.
Ticket to Ride does not have a "guitar drone", just a jangling/chiming part that sounds almost droney, but not quite, and only for like a quarter of a second at a time, not long engough to be droney.
I Feel Fine was recorded in October 1964, but the Yardbirds recorded Got to Hurry in August or September, plus were using feedback in concert for several months prior.
There were classical/chamber style arrangements in rock dating back to 1959. So why credit the Beatles with influencing who came later, when credit really goes to THEIR predecessors. Plus Yesterday isn't a rock song anyway.
The fade in of Eight Days a Week does not have weird chords, weird rhythm, weird timbre, etc. It's just a regular song fragment which is at increasing volume. Seriously, not a big deal in the big picture
It doesn't matter if the Beatles used a leslie speaker on It's Only Love. We're talking about creative/original/groundbreaking music, when the leslie speaker is just a matter of recording TECHNOLOGY - in other words, the way it was MADE vs. its SOUND.Granted the specific use of some technology can potentially make the music itself sound different, but not so much in the case of this song. It's jus a normal song with slightly slightly different timbres for it's genre.
Same goes for Norwegian Wood. Simply having a sitar is meaningless. All that should matter for these purposes is whether the sitar contributes an experimental sound. In this song, all I hear is the sitar's twangy timbre, not much Indian flavor. There's a drone on the first note of each line (III once had a girl... SHEEE showed me her room), but that's nothing compared to the Kinks' earlier song, See My Friends, which accomplished what it did with GUITAR. There's also the Yardbirds Heart Full of Soul, preceeding the Kinks with a version recorded with a sitar. The whole song was recorded, but just not released until years later (and you're Shapes of Things with this in your note at the bottom).
Love You To is not "prog". It's a short song with a normal song structure (although a long-ish intro), with no jazz or classical aspects. It' just Indian music with a rocking beat, something already tried. Within You Without You might come closer to "indian prog", but that was much later and had precedents.
Doctor Robert to me sounds like an R&B influence - but whatever, even if it had country that's no match for the originality and
"stylistic blendedness" of plenty of songs from earlier in 1966.
All fuzz bass does is at a little more "bite" to the song. But there's no use making the case that Think For Yourself was the rawest, most biting sound at the time. I mean, that's way far off.
The Chemical Brothers are not a "techno band". They play in a style called "big beat". So the fact that they were FANS of Tomorrow Never Knows and wrote some songs inspired by it does not mean the song influenced the birth of techno (which was over a decade before them, by the way).
I don't hear any "classical" on the great song Strawberry Fields. It's basically a baroque psychedelic song with all sorts of effects - not really even "avant garde" per se. But then there's earlier stuff like Zappa's Return of the Sun of the Monster Magnet, which was extremely original.
Not sure you know what polyrhythms are, but in black-based popular music, they're what makes songs "funky", which Happiness is not. Great song though.
ELO is a mainstream pop band, so it doesn't matter who they based their songs off of. Can is one of the most interesting and ahead of their time experimental rock bands ever. The "sample" in I Am the Walrus is just a few seconds long. And it doesn't matter that it's a sample, becuase, again, that's just an issue of "how it was made". In terms of how it sounds, for all we care, it could've been one of the Beatles quoting Shakespeare (Take this brother, may it serve you well).
Revolution #9 is in the purely avant garde category, and should be compared to numerous avant garde musicans from the previous 18 years -such as Stockhausen with his Gesang der Junglinge. They made the song by laying it on top of a long coda of the folksy version of Revolution (not the single), then removed that backing track.
Actually you're right about Dick Dale, he played his guitar "backwards" a la Hendrix, so maybe he didn't use "backward tapes", a totally different thing. But backward recording technology was pionerred by people like Les Paul in the mid 1940's. Maybe the Beatles WERE the first to use it in rock, but again, it just accounts for weird timbres (reversing the "attack and decay" rates of instruments), and in the case of Rain and I'm Only Sleeping and such, they weren't that weird, especially compared to tons of earlier songs with weird effects. So Hendrix might have been inspired by the Beatls use of this, but he proceeded to actually make very strange sounds with it. I mean, that's like crediting the inventor of an instrument with the creativity others show when using it.
So yeah, they were often times "one of the first", but in each case they paled in comparison with the "first" as far as originality goes because they were creatively separated from those songs by 3 factors: the fact that others came first, the fact that they weren't using the innovative aspects to the extent of these others, and the fact that they were appying these innovations in the context of songs that were more mainstream-sounding to begin with. So it's today's experimental poppy rock vs. yesterday's very experimental rock.
Helter Skelter amd Revolution were from 1968, not 1965. I'll assume that was a typo. Anyway, there are plenty of proto-hard rock songs form that era which rock harder than both, especially by Blue Cheer. It's All Too Much is a heavily distorted/processed trippy pop-rock song, nothing to do with the development of the eventual hard rock or heavy metal genres. And Paper Back writer was an attempt to imitate the "mod" sound of Bands like the Who, to which it didn't even compare.
A Day in the Life is not really "prog". It comes kind of close, maybe. It's mult-part, for one thing: 2 verse/refrain combos of psychedelic folk-rock, swell of 40 piece orchestra, McCartney's musical-ish part, 40 piece part, big piano chord, tape looped voices at the end. But only the verses are really "rock" anyway (so it can't be prog rock on the whole) and the symphonic aspects are separated from those parts.
Lucy has no phasing at all. They didn't start using that one until the next album, after the Small Faces already used it.
Ticket to Ride does not have a "guitar drone", just a jangling/chiming part that sounds almost droney, but not quite, and only for like a quarter of a second at a time, not long engough to be droney.
I Feel Fine was recorded in October 1964, but the Yardbirds recorded Got to Hurry in August or September, plus were using feedback in concert for several months prior.
There were classical/chamber style arrangements in rock dating back to 1959. So why credit the Beatles with influencing who came later, when credit really goes to THEIR predecessors. Plus Yesterday isn't a rock song anyway.
The fade in of Eight Days a Week does not have weird chords, weird rhythm, weird timbre, etc. It's just a regular song fragment which is at increasing volume. Seriously, not a big deal.
It doesn't matter if the Beatles used a leslie speaker on It's Only Love. We're talking about creative/original/groundbreaking music, when the leslie speaker is just a matter of recording TECHNOLOGY - in other words, the way it was MADE vs. its SOUNDS Granted the specific use of some technology can potentially make the music itself sound different, but not so much in the case of this song. It's jus a normal song with slightly different timbres.
Same goes for Norwegian Wood. Simply having a sitar is meaningless. All that should matter for these purposes is whether the sitar contributes an experimental sound. In this song, all I hear is the sitar's twangy timbre, not much Indian flavor. There's a drone on the first note of each line (III once had a girl... SHEEE showed me her room), but that's nothing compared to the Kinks' earlier song, See My Friends, which accomplished what it did with GUITAR. There's also the Yardbirds Heart Full of Soul, preceeding the Kinks with a version recorded with a sitar. The whole song was recorded, but just not released until years later (and you're Shapes of Things with this in your note at the bottom).
Love You To is not "prog". It's a short song with a normal song structure (although a long-ish intro), with no jazz or classical aspects. It' just Indian music with a rocking beat, something already tried. Within You Without You might come closer to "indian prog", but that was much later and had precedents.
Doctor Robert to me sounds like an R&B influence - but whatever, even if it had country that's no match for the originality and
"stylistic blendedness" of plenty of songs from earlier in 1966.
All fuzz bass does is at a little more "bite" to the song. But there's no use making the case that Think For Yourself was the rawest, most biting sound at the time. I mean, that's way far off.
The Chemical Brothers are not a "techno band". They play in a style called "big beat". So the fact that they were FANS of Tomorrow Never Knows and wrote some songs inspired by it does not mean the song influenced the birth of techno (which was over a decade before them, by the way).
I don't hear any "classical" on the great song Strawberry Fields. It's basically a baroque psychedelic song with all sorts of effects - not really even "avant garde" per se. But then there's earlier stuff like Zappa's Return of the Sun of the Monster Magnet, which was extremely original.
Not sure you know what polyrhythms are, but in black-based popular music, they're what makes songs "funky", which Happiness is not. Great song though.
ELO is a mainstream pop band, so it doesn't matter who they based their songs off of. Can is one of the most interesting and ahead of their time experimental rock bands ever. The "sample" in I Am the Walrus is just a few seconds long. And it doesn't matter that it's a sample, becuase, again, that's just an issue of "how it was made". In terms of how it sounds, for all we care, it could've been one of the Beatles quoting Shakespeare (Take this brother, may it serve you well).
Revolution #9 is in the purely avant garde category, and should be compared to numerous avant garde musicans from the previous 18 years -such as Stockhausen with his Gesang der Junglinge. They made the song by laying it on top of a long coda of the folksy version of Revolution (not the single), then removed that backing track.
Actually you're right about Dick Dale, he played his guitar "backwards" a la Hendrix, so maybe he didn't use "backward tapes", a totally different thing. But backward recording technology was pionerred by people like Les Paul in the mid 1940's. Maybe the Beatles WERE the first to use it in rock, but again, it just accounts for weird timbres (reversing the "attack and decay" rates of instruments), and in the case of Rain and I'm Only Sleeping and such, they weren't that weird, especially compared to tons of earlier songs with weird effects. So Hendrix might have been inspired by the Beatls use of this, but he proceeded to actually make very strange sounds with it. I mean, that's like crediting the inventor of an instrument with the creativity others show when using it.
So yeah, they were often times "one of the first", but in each case they paled in comparison with the "first" as far as originality goes because they were creatively separated from those songs by 3 factors: the fact that others came first, the fact that they weren't using the innovative aspects to the extent of these others, and the fact that they were appying these innovations in the context of songs that were more mainstream-sounding to begin with. So it's today's experimental poppy rock vs. yesterday's very experimental rock.
Helter Skelter amd Revolution were from 1968, not 1965. I'll assume that was a typo. Anyway, there are plenty of proto-hard rock songs form that era which rock harder than both, especially by Blue Cheer. It's All Too Much is a heavily distorted/processed trippy pop-rock song, nothing to do with the development of the eventual hard rock or heavy metal genres. And Paper Back writer was an attempt to imitate the "mod" sound of Bands like the Who, to which it didn't even compare.
A Day in the Life is not really "prog". It comes kind of close, maybe. It's mult-part, for one thing: 2 verse/refrain combos of psychedelic folk-rock, swell of 40 piece orchestra, McCartney's musical-ish part, 40 piece part, big piano chord, tape looped voices at the end. But only the verses are really "rock" anyway (so it can't be prog rock on the whole) and the symphonic aspects are separated from those parts.
There is phasing on Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds on the mono mix get your facts straight. Ticket To Ride has drone for more than half the song. Really are you the same person who went on Wiki and cited Pierro Scaruffi and wiped the Beatles completely off the percusors of progressive rock. Everything you have said is your opinion no facts you deem what's important and everyhting the Beatles as useless and not important. You don't hear classical music influence on Stawberry Fields Forever or you don't think A Day in the Life is progressive rock. You don't need jazz influence to to be progressive rock. That's is why there genres called Indian Prog which Love You To is a percusor to. For the last time Happiness Is A Warm Gun is a polyrhythm it's very popular in Math Rock and Progressive Rock. Frank Zappa is known for using it also. Really in my opinion you have lost the plot. You have not proved anything that I said was wrong.
Ok one more time in a simpler way, with 2 more new points.
1. Everything they did to introduce a new-ish sound to rock music had a precedent and compared to the precedent, was vague (less in-depth).
2. All other supposed innovations were just of the production/arrangement/technological sort - the use of new technology in the making of music.
3. The technological innovations and new-for-rock instruments were used in traditional ways, which did not amount to making the music itself.
4. The fact that they didn't impact the music itself is the reason I say the technological advances were not a big deal. They might be a big deal for other reasons, but not for this discussion.
5. The technological innovations ALSO had precedents anyway.
6. Blue Jay Way was their first one to use phasing, a technique first used in rock with the Small Faces song "Itchykoo Park".
7. In Pollack's "Notes On" musicological guide to every Beatles song, he doesn't say Ticket to Ride has a drone. The only source for that is probably that "Revolution in the Head" book and the people who quote it.
8. Sounds like your prog definition is tailor-suited to fit your point. You could just as easily say that Britney Spears is dance-pop prog, and Chuck Berry is rock and roll-prog. It's just that Love You To isn't very "progressive": still ultimarely a pop song.
9. Maybe you mean that Happiness is a Warm Gun has several (the pre-fix "poly") rhythms because it's a multi-part suite. Pollack doesn't note the polyrhythms although he does say this about the "Mother Superior" section (tell me if it's what you mean):
This third part is characterized by a special rhythmic effect that occurs in the first measure of every phrase, technically referred to as a "hemiola". The term is applied to any situation in which a phrase of music written in a ternary meter (e.g. 3/4) contains one or more instances where either an isolated single measure is accented as if were two triplets (i.e. 6/8), or a pair of measures are accented as if they were three measures of 2/4. If you're at a loss for a pop-music precedent, try "America" from Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story".
The first true Beatles folk rock song was Things We Said Today, I'll Be Back on A Hard Days Night. Beatles For Sale I'll Follow the Sun and the Byrdish Sounding What Your'e Doing, ALL IN 1964.
The fact that the Bryds have said the Beatles were MIXING folk with rock in songs like She Loves You in 1963. Ticket To Ride already shows guitar drone before See My Friends. The Beatles beat the Yardbirds on intentional guitar feedback as a recording effect do you see the difference.
Norwegian Wood is a mix of folk with raga or Indian elements. The Kinks See My Frieds is not folk influenced it's a Indian influenced song. Norwegian Wood combines both so it is a raga folk rock song. Norwegian Wood uses drone by the way an Indian element so you are wrong again.
The Beatles also used drone from tamboura which the Kinks and the Byrds never did.
Tomorrow Never Knows is based on one chord in real time but the sample that was put into the mix made it two. The sounds of seagulls produced by the tape loops make it ambient. So what if someone used tape loops before the Beatles the song still was very influential to techno and modern dance musicians.
The Beatles were the first artists to use the leslie vocal effect, Automatic Double Tracking and they beat the Small Faces with phasing on Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds.
You hear the twelve string jangle sound on the end of the A Hard Days Night which McGuinn based his sound on. You hear the jangle sound on The Beatles All My Loving and their cover Words Of Love.
The song Word has trippy harmonioum parts, Nowhere Man is psychedelic pop even your hero Pierro Scaruffi said that and the only thing he said that I agreed with IMO. Yes again before the Byrds
To someone like you the Day in the Life Chord is not a big deal but to other people it was. A Day in the Life is classed as symphonic prog stop changing classifications on your best interest. Love You To combines TRUE classical Indian music with rock and so does Within You Without You.
The Beatles early efforts, The Byrds and the Kinks is pseudo or raga rock get the difference between classical Indian or Indian influence applications of music.
Happiness Is Warm Gun does have a polyrhythms.
in its song and the Beatles combined with a four parts makes it proto prog or math rock song.
Helter Skelter is considered proto metal and it was listed on 500 greatest Heavy Metal songs. I Want You in my opinion with its two separate songs with first part bluesy and the second part you hear proto metal, jazz and avant garde elements. Very PROGRESSIVE ROCK.
ITS YOUR OPINION THAT ABBEY ROAD IS NOT INNOVATIVE FOR HAVING TWO MEDLEYS OR THE WAY THE MEDLEYS WERE MADE. Go ask what Yes Or Genesis what they thought of Abbey Road.
The evidence is there that the Beatles were either one of the first or pioneers in their field. It does not matter if they went the road in the experiment-pop rock way becuase their way
The 1964 songs you mention are all proto-folk-rock. Other bands came even closer that year
There's this book Revolution in the Head which is the only source of the idea that Ticket to Ride has a drone. Pollack's Notes On series, a detailed musicological study, doesn't say that at all. Intentional guitar feedback was already used by the Yardbrids in concert and in their song Got to Hurry, before I Feel Fine. There's also The Five Royale's "The Slummer the Slum" (1958).
Yea Norwegian Wood has a sitar drone on the first note of each line (III once had a girl...SHEEE showed be her room), but that's a moot point considering the Kinks already doing it. And yes it does have a folk influence, unlike See My Friends, but it's not really a rock song anyway...it's just raga folk. But for a reference check out Davy Graham or Sandy Bull from 1962 and 1963. The latter wrote a 20 minute piece even.
It doesn't matter what instrument is used or how a recording is made, so the fact that they used a tamboura is irrelevant.
Ambient music is music that barely changes and is just there to mix with the atmosphere. The seagull sounds are aggressive and turbulent on the other hand. and Tomorrow Never knows is not really influential to techno at all. It' features tape loops of sampled mellotron sounds, of McCartney's laughter (the seagull sounds), some weird guitar lines, and a sitar drone. None of those are techno-ish. You're just thinking of the rhythm. No big deal though in the scheme of things.
The Leslie vocal effect just made the vocal timbres kind of weird. No revolutionary event, especially compared to lots of songs with weird timbres. ADT is a high tech way of avoding doing touble-tracking. It is not an innovation in the way music can sound, so it's irrelevant for this post. Also, Lucy has no phasing, sorry. Check any serious academic book. They first used it on the Magical Mystery Tour album (by the way Phil Spector used it in 1959 and the avantgarde used it in the early 60's too)
My mistake about jingle jangle. They were using it in 1964 before the Byrds even formed. But so were the Searchers and Jackie DeShannon, before All My Loving even, and in Buddy Holly's originals.
Nowhere Man and the Word were recorded on 10/21 amd 11/11, respectively. For the first one, he meant that the song were "barely psychedelic". The Word is not really trippy at all. Maybe by the standards of someone completely unfamiliar with the rest of rock music. By this time there were all sorts of underground bands, some of them even RECORDING by then. Check out Big Boy Pete's "Baby I Got News For You" and Eyes "When the Night Falls", or even the Who's "The Ox", the Grateful Dead's "Confusion Prince", etc.
A Day in the life is not a prog song. It comes close, but it's just not made up of "rock" music for the majority of it's duration anyway, so it can't be prog. Plus the symphonic parts are separated from the rock parts. It's a long suite with some rock and some symphonic parts. I'm not changing classificiations, I think other people are, especially since symphonic prog is not a real term but a description...and I have no "best interest". I like the Beatles music and I'm not "out to get them" or anything.
Yes Love You To has some aspects TRUE Indian classical music..but little rock. Same with Within You Without You. So their not really "raga rock". The Byrds' "Why", the Grateful Dead's "Confusion Prince", and the Great Society's "Free Advice" were raga rock though, which is of course separate and distinct and a step up from simply droning rock like the Kinks.
To call Happiness is a Warm Gun "math rock" is off base. That term refers to music with highly sophisticated time signatures. Check out Frank Zappa's early work for earlier multi-part songs, far more proggy. Happiness has an age-old syncopated rhythm effect called a hemiola, often confused with a polyrhythm..
Helter Skelter doesn't rock as hard as other songs from that year like Blue Cheer's album, or even as hard as 1964 garage rockers like the Sonics. I Want You is a great song but doesn't have "avant garde" elements. Maybe you're thinking of how it uses a synthesizer (already used in rock by the way), but it only uses it to add weird timbres to the arrangement. And prog was already around by the this time. The suite on Abbey Road is great. I love how it reprises some of the earlier parts at the end. But that's what a suite is supposed to do. And the fact that they made it by stringing together separate pieces and also by adding on a chord which they thought they thew in the garbage is "interesting" but it doesn't say anything about the content of the music itself. It would sound equally as interesting (or uninteresting or whatever you think) no matter how it was made.
Also, the fact that Yes or Genesis were fans doesn't say much about the actual music.
I'm just saying that what they did, as great as it sounded, was ALWAYS already done by another rock band, that the earlier band did it in a less banal/shallow and more indepth/extensive way, and that if you strip them and their contemporaries of the innovative aspects, the Beatles were working in a more watered down context to begin with (so today's poppy lightly avant garde rock vs. yesterday's heavily experimental rock). So not that they were trying to copy or be trendy, but culturally, their function was to just "clean up" the interesting undergournd sounds of their day. (Now you might say that's a noble cause because it helped people appreciate that music and led to lots of others contributing to creative music who might have never heard it if not for the Beatles.
"The Beatles introduced more ideas to rock music than I would say more than anyone else in the past 40 years."
Ah, but there's the paradox. The Beatles DID introduce a few nifty ideas and production techniques to rock music. OK. I don't think that's as innovative as what the Captain did: total deconstruction of the music landscape and reinvention on his own terms, based on his own philosophies on the current state of rock music. As he put it, "Rock and roll is a fixation. I don't like hypnotics. I'm doing non-hypnotic music to break up the catatonic state, and I think there is one right now."
Does incorporating new ideas into a form of music require as much innovation as redefining the very fundamental compositional groundworks of a form of music? Or is that one and the same?
I think honestly and I get my opinion from what other musicians say. Starting with Rubber Soul and esepcially with Revolver the Beatles are the act most resposible from taking rock and roll away from it's 50's roots. Listen I did not say the only one but the one who is most responsible. Captain Beefhart is considered to be progressive rock/ experimental rock. The Beatles are considered to be ones who put those forms of music on the map. It's just the truth. Revolver is proto-prog, world music, art rock, experimental rock and psychedelia meets pop. Taking nothing away from Beefhart but it was the Beatles not Beefhart who opened the avenues for this type of music rock.
Well, I have to say, judging by what your musical tastes seem to be favored towards I too am wondering why the heck you even bother listening to an album like Trout Mask Replica. A couple weeks ago you were complaining to me about Bob Dylan's "terrible" voice and I can only imagine what you would think of Captain Beefheart's.
With this post you're off on the wrong foot because you think I am speaking of "influence" when infact I am speaking of "innovation" (just like the title "Most Innovative Rock Artists" says). The definition of innovate is, per the dictionary:
"To introduce new ideas or practices."
Relative to Capt Beefheart or the Velvet Underground or Bob Dylan and many other artists, the Beatles didn't do much of this in their careers. They were more innovative than most pop bands (mostly because "innovative pop band" is nearly an oxy moron) but within the scheme of rock history were not very significant from a musical innovation standpoint. Trout Mask Replica alone easily has more innovation than all of the Beatles albums combined.
I agree with you that strange or different music does not equate all the time to a masterpiece.
The Velvet Underground...it's not even that close (excepting Berry of course, who may be #1). Their blueprint has been being followed and contorted for the better part of 3 decades now.
Captain Beefheart needs to be on this list. I would also recommenend adding John Cale and Robert Fripp.