I just watched the anniversary show and was similarly struck that all the luminaries in that room were probably starstruck by Paul McCartney (with the possible exception of Keith Richards who may still view him as an equal or a rival)
Mick Jagger will never get over the fact that despite all his public machinations and p.r., hitmaking records, longetivity and hit songs, and literally nicknaming his crew "the greatest rock and roll band in the world", the Rolling Stones will always be #2 to the Beatles, and McCartney *and* Lennon will always be considered better than Mick in rock and roll history.
For an ego maniac like Jagger, it might be one of the few things that keeps him up at night.
True, but Bertrand Russell spent the first five years of his life in his grandfather's home for some reason due to his parents' advanced views. It's pretty hard to avoid grasping the hand of your toddler grandson even if you are a former prime minister.
Being PM is, and was, a big deal, but being a lord was a bigger deal, although primarily ministering likely sets one lord above another, if they’re competing, which they probably are, but not openly; that would be gauche
Still, I wonder if Lord Russell would have stooped to shake the hand of his grandson, a mere commoner, not yet elevated to the rank of earl. J/k, he probably did; after all, he was a liberal. I’m sure even Sir Paul McCartney would shake hands with a mere Yardbird, Dave Clark, or even one or more of Mr Clark’s surviving Five, if any
"Level 3 importance" articles, the highest-importance articles some force within the Wiki-verse has decided on. The six people named in the "Musicians" section for Level 3 articles:
.
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Louis Armstrong
- The Beatles
- Michael Jackson
.
(Is this a case of Sailerian "Plaques for Blacks"?)
.
------
.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 list for "Musicians and Composers" includes 150 articles; with 61 in the sub-category "Popular Music." They are:
.
[Popular Music: GENERAL]
- ABBA
- Bing Crosby
- Stephen Foster
- Michael Jackson (Level 3)
- Madonna
- Miriam Makeba
- Bob Marley
- Frank Sinatra
- Taylor Swift
.
[Popular Music: NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE SINGERS]
- Charles Aznavour
- Serge Gainsbourg
- Umm Kulthum
- Lata Mangeshkar
- Édith Piaf
- Teresa Teng
- Vladimir Vysotsky
.
[Popular Music: AFROBEAT]
- Fela Kuti
.
[Popular Music: BLUES, R&B, SOUL]
- Ray Charles
- Aretha Franklin
- Marvin Gaye
- Robert Johnson
- B. B. King
- The Supremes
- Stevie Wonder
.
[Popular Music: ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
- Brian Eno
- Kraftwerk
.
[Popular Music: FOLK AND COUNTRY]
- Johnny Cash
- Woody Guthrie
- Joni Mitchell
- Dolly Parton
- Hank Williams
.
[Popular Music: FUNK]
- James Brown
- Prince (musician)
.
[Popular Music: HIP-HOP AND RAP]
- Run-DMC
- Tupac Shakur
.
[Popular Music: LATIN]
- Celia Cruz
- Julio Iglesias
- Astor Piazzolla
- Selena
.
[Popular Music: FLAMENCO]
- Paco de Lucía
.
[Popular Music: MUSICAL COMEDY AND LYRICISTS]
- Irving Berlin
- Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Andrew Lloyd Webber
.
[Popular Music: ROCK]
- The Beach Boys
- The Beatles (Level 3)
- John Lennon
- Black Sabbath
- Chuck Berry
- David Bowie
- The Doors
- Bob Dylan
- Jimi Hendrix
- Buddy Holly
- Janis Joplin
- Led Zeppelin
- Little Richard
- Nirvana (band)
- Pink Floyd
- Elvis Presley
- Queen (band)
- The Rolling Stones
.
(end of list of 61 names in the "Popular Music" category of "Level-4 importance articles," Wikipedia).
Alongside Michael Jackson and The Beatles should also be included Elvis Presley, for having ushered in the culture that made The Beatles fame possible. The Beatles themselves acknowledged Elvis as a major influence on their early work.
> Is this a case of Sailerian "Plaques for Blacks"?
There are some interesting things to learn from the lists. For example, Level 3 designates the following as the most important "leaders and politicians" on wikipedia:
I had a discussion with a young podcaster who was trying to decide whether he wanted a wikipedia page or not and I told him that wikipedia page is now the lowest level, the entry level, of fame. When Wikipedia began and anyone could edit, there was a lot of culling done to get the non notables off it and over time they established some standards for who counts as notable., A friend of mine started a company to be Wikipedia for people not prominent enough to make it to Wikipedia.
I love the idea of 'Level 3' and hope and pray for the day when top celebrities obsess over it. Thanks for introducing me to it :)
Great piece, Mr. S., thank you! In Henry Winkler's memoir 'Being Henry' he writes of meeting McCartney on the street in the 1970s--- I'd type in the anecdote but I can't find the book. Here's a journo piece on it:
The Beatles were such a big deal to my parents' generation that lots of us genXers got mightily sick of them, and consequently our children hardly know anything about them.
But in hindsight that's too bad. They were really, genuinely great for about four years. I appreciate them, even if I have no use for geriatric beatlemania.
"What became known as ‘Beatlemania’ began on [February 7, 1964,] when the British band ‘The Beatles’ made their landmark visit to the United States, where they were greeted by 3,000 fans upon landing" (found online). They had been very popular in England since around October 1963, but the wave really crashed on US shores in February 1964.
The band itself is said to have emerged in the late-1950s youth of its core members, informally; then, in the period 1960-1962, as a "real band" of some sort. The break-through in the UK dates to some point in mid-late 1963 (?). Still no mainstream awareness in the USA as the year 1963 closed out? (Steve Sailer, turning age 5 about that time, won't likely remember one way or another).
The Beatles' little-if-any real exposure in the USA changes in early 1964, first (?) with the release of their first album in January 1964. Actually two albums, according to the Wikipedia Discography), released within two weeks in mid-late January 1964, ahead of their U.S. tour (album titles, "Introducing...The Beatles" and "Meet the Beatles"), the U.S. tour being etched in pop-culture legend as a Big Thing of the Sixties.
What were "the Sixties"? It was more than the Beatles, but the Beatles cannot be removed from it. It's been elsewhere proposed that the Sixties in some ways had gotten going in 1964; the romantics among the b.1940s-50s cohorts like to say it was after the smoke cleared from the "JFK assassination" a few weeks before 1964 opened.
Pat Buchanan, in a book, proposed November 1962 as the first that he sensed that a "volley" had been fired in the fights of this coming thing called The Sixties. In late November 1962, a White-vs-Black "race riot" at a title football game in Washington D.C., Pat Buchanan's native city, set the tenor for coming years; normal-Whites of non-LGBT and Christian origin largely abandoned the city proper, especially after the April 1968 riots; in any case, that such a riot could take place signaled something was afoot. Was Beatlesmania of 1964-66 another, more-sunny expression of the same?
The Beatles released a torrent number-one records between early 1964 and on up thru "Let It Be," their final album. "Let It Be" was released in May 1970 but had been recorded in the previous year,1969. The final break-up of the band occurred in a process between ca. mid-1969 and mid-1970.
Active 'Beatlemania' looks to have been already gone by the time the 1960s closed (Steve Sailer, age 10 in 1969, may remember otherwise). The remnant of Beatlemania that remained in 1970, propelling the Let It Be album to number-one, seem to have faded out quickly in the early 1970s. The success of Let It Be itself was already a nostalgia for a period only a few years earlier. Things moved fast in those days.
By the seven-year mark of the start of their huge U.S. fame (i.e., by early 1971), it was already all over. The oldest Beatles, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, were only 30 at this point (the others, between 27 and 29): and already they were "Has-Beens," albeit legendary ones, still Has-Beens towards which people would forever be looked backwards.
Less than seven years, from top-of-the-world sensation to Has-Been status! "Things moved fast in those days." Taylor Swift, meanwhile, is still a huge star as she fast approaches the 20-year mark of her debut (late 2006).
As of December 1962, the Beatles were still a cover band. I've got the bootleg album of their performances in Hamburg that Christmas and they were still doing Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and the rest.
I've heard they performed a while in Germany before they hit it big. Why? Were the Germans mad about English rock bands, or were there English servicemen stationed there?
The Beatles began to play in Hamburg in 1960. Hamburg was Germany's biggest port and ports in those days were places of diversity. Same with Liverpool. For instance, Ringo Starr picked up on American country music as a lad in Liverpool. In Hamburg, the Beatles played before almost entirely German crowds and rough ones at that. They played something like four and a half hours during the weekdays and six hours on weekends. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison mastered their crafts over parts of three years. Best did not. Starr became friends with Harrison in 1961 when he played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The Beatles would play for an hour and then the Hurricanes. Starr was an easy call to replace Best in August, 1962. He was a much better drummer and each of the Beatles liked Starr more as a pal.
American-style rock’n’roll had dipped in popularity in the UK, but the German youth still wanted to hear it, while lacking a natural aptitude for the idiom themselves (e.g., 70 years later the biggest German pop-rock act ever is probably Kraftwerk).
When the Beatles came back from their frustrating second stint in Hamburg, Paul quit and got a job at a business making and winding electrical coil. John and Brian Epstein had to talk him back into the band promising him guitar music was about to take off any day now. No doubt he would have been brilliantly successful in the electrical coil business, too.
Fashions in pop change quickly. If you have only one great album (the Strokes, the Killers, Oasis) you can still tour on it for life. If you have 2+ (Chilli Peppers, Metallica), you approach living legend status. If you can keep a hot streak going over more than three albums and more than five years, like the Beatles, Stones and Zeppelin you’re considered all-time greats.
I would imagine that Oasis' great album was (What's the Story) Morning Glory? although they were much more popular in their native England than they were here. Don't Look Back in Anger is one of the greatest songs ever written even though I'm not a fan of Oasis per se. Some would say that it is merely ripping off the Beatles; Noel Gallagher would be one of them
Late-August 1968 is the release-date for "Hey Jude" in the US and UK (the same week). Their super-stardom was approaching its five-year mark. They could all still be said to be in their mid-twenties (b.1940 to b.1943).
Not just the Beatles, every trivial aspect of importance to the boomers. We actually learned about it in school as if it were important history. Did you know the boomers liked howdy doody and coonskin caps and hoola hoops? Did you know that the Beatles were the most important band of all time but then it was a big deal when the cute one (or was it the smart one? I got a C in boomer trivia) said they were more important than Jesus and then I distracted myself by turning a corkscrew in my left eyeball.
Paul and Ringo (and maybe Cher and Barbara Streisand for women) are the last active examples of showbusiness as a monoculture, when people who got really famous were supposed to be pleasing to everyone. To be played on the big radio and TV stations was to achieve a level of fame that isn’t really possible any more, and even those who got famous in the wake of the Beatles (like Dylan and the Stones) didn’t have quite the same thing. After the now octogenarian generation goes it’s not really clear who inherits the crown. Maybe Tom Hanks?
Music really touches something in the human psyche. I think musicians generally top actors in the contest for demigod status.
And regarding that contest, media markets are highly fragmented now that the tech is widely available and the world outside the anglosphere is no longer as insanely violent or impoverished. Actors and are scrambling into their own production companies as the tide just rises and rises. Musicians have to dump their music on streaming and make sure and have a day job.
I doubt we'll ever have another Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger, or even another Gene Simmons as Gene Simmons will tell you. Farewell to kings.
The biggest mass culture phenomena ever are Charlie Chaplin, the Beatles, and the STAR WARS movies. Chaplin is long dead, STAR WARS was created by many people, so I suppose it is Paul. For people under 35 it is probably Taylor Swift.
Elvis is way bigger than Chaplin. In fact, THE biggest cultural phenomena of the latter half of 20th century remains Elvis. Chaplin doesnt have millions of anual fans going to visit his gravesite yr after yr.
Main reason, is that Dylan is still alive, and hence can help promote his work, which since he's been around 60+ yrs means that his work is nearly twice as large as Elvis.
During Elvis' lifetime, Dylan's record sales weren't anywhere close.
Also, its highly unlikely that Dylan can walk down a dirt road in a 2nd or 3rd world place (e.g. parts of Africa, Asia, etc) and instantly be recognized. During his lifetime, Elvis was recognized all over the globe.
Eh, the Beatles never did much for me. McCartney seems like a nice guy and I like some of his songs, but I’m not so sure in hundred years when the baby boomer reign of our culture is long forgotten that he’ll still be regarded so highly.
Technology has surely changed the equation as artists (politicians as well) can stay relevant longer. Beatles songs are still part of the popular zeitgeist. You couldn’t say the same thing about Louis Armstrong or Glenn Miller when I was a kid. And I don’t think it was because they were both inferior artists.
I didn’t watch the show, just wondering if they showed the old John Belushi skit of him outliving all his cast mates. I remember the skit having this eerie sunset boulevard type of vibe of reclusive, long forgotten stars. It’s amazing that snl is still around after 50 years. I’m not sure what that says about our culture.
I might have been a little young but I never got the hype about the show with the original cast. I do remember thinking it was pretty funny the sketch they did in which a reorg at NBC got John Belushi promoted to 'Grizzly Adams' and he was all upset.
If you have a hard time getting to sleep, I have been told that looping together "Yesterday", "Michelle", "Fool on the Hill", "Let it Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" will put you to sleep by the third time through.
The idea of the Beatles (originally a big deal in the mid-1960s) being remembered and revered in the mid-2020s:
It is chronologically equivalent to musical group of the mid-1900s (i.e., ten or so years before World War I) being considered a big deal in the mid-1960s.
True. I think that just shows you the colossal power and colossal ego of the Boomer generation: huge numbers to make the Beatles stars initially, and huge longevity and refusing to yield cultural reigns to keep them as stars.
I for one am sick of all the documentaries about the 60s, including the Beatles retrospectives about their "British Invasion." Band had some great marketing/management and talent, but Boomers refuse to give up the ghost that a commercial band playing with their image to keep themselves relevant was anything less than a World Changing Event and wasn't just good marketing.
McCartney and Ringo never took themselves too seriously publicly, so I've always liked them best.
There is a chronological equivalence but there is also a technological disparity in those timeframes. The first commercial radio station didn't debut until 1920, and the 45 didn't become a thing until 1949. While M*A*S*H was ostensibly set in Korea, most of the themes in the movie and TV show could be applied to Vietnam; however, the one thing that reminded us it was Korea was the lack of popular music in either, while any Vietnam film will have CCR's Fortunate Son in its soundtrack
I think the Beatles are entrenched and will be considered worthwhile a hundred years hence. The more interesting question is how will they be ranked by future musicologists/fans against other bands of the era. I'd like to think Led Zeppelin and The Clash will outrank them.
They’ll definitely remember Rock’n’Roll as a phenomenon, but at what level of detail (e.g the British Invasion, grunge, etc.)? In the end it’s only popular music played in pubs/bars and not at the symphony (insert snooty voice). In a hundred years will there still be beetles cover bands? Think of the tens of thousands of songs and new genres that will be created between now and then. The future seems overwhelming.
I was a huge Clash fan when they were together, but I can barely sit through a song anymore. I don’t see them being remembered in a century. Led Zeppelin, hard to say. A hundred years is a long time.
I love them both, but Zep had one sound and the Clash had two bad singers.
I don’t know jazz or classical well enough, but I can’t think of any other 7.5 year span of musical innovation to rival the Beatles’ period in the studio.
The Stones speak to me personally more than the Beatles do, but objectively it’s impossible to argue with the “Beatles as Best Band Ever” conclusion.
You are being hyperbolic, provocative ad tongue in cheek (I assume) claiming it is objective but offering no criteria. My subjective opinion is that they don't even crack the top five. Most innovative you might be able to convince me of, but again, difficult to reduce to objective criteria. The Beach Boys got there first in several ways and most of the innovation could be attributed to their producer. Sure Zep had a strong characteristic sound, but so did the Beatles.
In terms of musicianship most musicians I have known will defend the Beatles but conceded that they could name a dozen bands that were better musicians. John and Paul were good singers but there voices were a little thin for my taste. That might have been production decisions.
My biggest complaint though, if we are arguing greatest band is that they were more about catchiness than emotional expression. Catchy tunes are popular and appeal to a wider audience, but rock had an emotional palette that went beyond most earlier forms (except maybe Romantic Era music) and the Beatles didn't do much of it. Even Heater Skelter, supposedly inventing metal, is kind of pussified in my estimation.
As for amazing studios creations on multiple albums I assert Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel were superior to the Beatles.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Beatles and recognize these arguments will go on forever.
I try to be more like Sailer and less like Lester Bangs here and defer to the critical and popular consensus rather than my own unique tastes.
This is a new departure for me as I was a teenager in the CD age when music was very expensive. It meant I had to be highly selective with purchases and I engaged in a lot of ex-post rationalisation.
Now that I’m an adult with a Spotify subscription I’m slowly dipping into music I had long ignored and realising that it’s pretty good.
So personally I would take the complete work of the Rolling Stones to a desert island over the Beatles but I won’t argue with the average human who would do the opposite.
I wonder if the Duke of Wellington shook Napoleon's hand. Not that any of Wellington's ancestors are as famous as McCartney but there is a 9th Duke of Wellington today and in the House of Lords. The first duke showered his home with Napoleon artifacts so proud he was of defeating Napoleon. I would imagine that the Wellington home, Stratfield Saye House, is filled with Napoleon tidbits.
One of the better scenes in Ridley Scott's not very good Napoleon was Boney and Wellington squaring off. That didn't happen in real life, but it would have been cool if it did.
Anyone who has shaken hands with Winston Churchill would be linked to the Duke of Marlborough. I wonder if anyone is alive who shook hands with Churchill, who died in January 1965. His last daughter died a few years back. Prince Philip has been dead five years.
I'm guessing "Carry that Weight". "The Weight" is a song by 'The Band'. It was also the song all the guitar guys played together to conclude "It Might Get Loud".
There was a time when world-wide it might have been Michael Jordan and earlier Mohammed Ali, just because their popularity would have extended to more of the non western world.
I didn't see the show but perhaps they mentioned another reason for Paul's importance, which was an early running gag in which Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles a small amount of cash if they would do a reunion on the show. Supposedly John and Paul were hanging out and saw the show and briefly considered taking a cab to the studio to do it.
It is not. Paul has told the story several times over the years including in an interview in Playboy magazine. He could be lying but that's not the same thing as apocryphal .
perhaps they were not together but Paul has definitely told the story as if they discussed it while it was plausible to make it and decided not to. And they could have discussed it on Sunday and decided to to it some other time. I'm will to accept that the exact story may not be known but given that the source is one of the two guys I cannot accept the word 'apocryphal'
For those who don't want to watch Paul said he and John were watching the show on May 1 when John told Paul about the offer made the previous week on April 24 and that they should go down and take them up on it. The irony of this is that there was no episode on May 1, so Paul wasn't being completely literal either
Lennon said in 1980 when speaking with David Sheff for Playboy, “Paul was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired. He and I were just sitting there watching the show, and we went, ‘Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if we went down?’ But we didn’t.”
Paul McCartney would later confirm the story, saying: “John said, ‘We should go down, just you and me. There’s only two of us so we’ll take half the money.’ And for a second. But It would have been work, and we were having a night off, so we elected not to go. It was a nice idea – we nearly did it.”
I just watched the anniversary show and was similarly struck that all the luminaries in that room were probably starstruck by Paul McCartney (with the possible exception of Keith Richards who may still view him as an equal or a rival)
Mick Jagger will never get over the fact that despite all his public machinations and p.r., hitmaking records, longetivity and hit songs, and literally nicknaming his crew "the greatest rock and roll band in the world", the Rolling Stones will always be #2 to the Beatles, and McCartney *and* Lennon will always be considered better than Mick in rock and roll history.
For an ego maniac like Jagger, it might be one of the few things that keeps him up at night.
If Queen Elizabeth II had been a hand-shaker, consider how many people she met across the years of her life.
What if Sir John Russell and Lord Bertrand Russell never shook hands? These posh types were not keen on displays of affection.
True, but Bertrand Russell spent the first five years of his life in his grandfather's home for some reason due to his parents' advanced views. It's pretty hard to avoid grasping the hand of your toddler grandson even if you are a former prime minister.
Being PM is, and was, a big deal, but being a lord was a bigger deal, although primarily ministering likely sets one lord above another, if they’re competing, which they probably are, but not openly; that would be gauche
Still, I wonder if Lord Russell would have stooped to shake the hand of his grandson, a mere commoner, not yet elevated to the rank of earl. J/k, he probably did; after all, he was a liberal. I’m sure even Sir Paul McCartney would shake hands with a mere Yardbird, Dave Clark, or even one or more of Mr Clark’s surviving Five, if any
Interestingly wikipedia lists just over 100 people who have ever lived as "Level 3" importance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/3#People) - The Beatles is the only one with living members.
Arbitrary but not unreasonable...
"Level 3 importance" articles, the highest-importance articles some force within the Wiki-verse has decided on. The six people named in the "Musicians" section for Level 3 articles:
.
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Louis Armstrong
- The Beatles
- Michael Jackson
.
(Is this a case of Sailerian "Plaques for Blacks"?)
.
------
.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 list for "Musicians and Composers" includes 150 articles; with 61 in the sub-category "Popular Music." They are:
.
[Popular Music: GENERAL]
- ABBA
- Bing Crosby
- Stephen Foster
- Michael Jackson (Level 3)
- Madonna
- Miriam Makeba
- Bob Marley
- Frank Sinatra
- Taylor Swift
.
[Popular Music: NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE SINGERS]
- Charles Aznavour
- Serge Gainsbourg
- Umm Kulthum
- Lata Mangeshkar
- Édith Piaf
- Teresa Teng
- Vladimir Vysotsky
.
[Popular Music: AFROBEAT]
- Fela Kuti
.
[Popular Music: BLUES, R&B, SOUL]
- Ray Charles
- Aretha Franklin
- Marvin Gaye
- Robert Johnson
- B. B. King
- The Supremes
- Stevie Wonder
.
[Popular Music: ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
- Brian Eno
- Kraftwerk
.
[Popular Music: FOLK AND COUNTRY]
- Johnny Cash
- Woody Guthrie
- Joni Mitchell
- Dolly Parton
- Hank Williams
.
[Popular Music: FUNK]
- James Brown
- Prince (musician)
.
[Popular Music: HIP-HOP AND RAP]
- Run-DMC
- Tupac Shakur
.
[Popular Music: LATIN]
- Celia Cruz
- Julio Iglesias
- Astor Piazzolla
- Selena
.
[Popular Music: FLAMENCO]
- Paco de Lucía
.
[Popular Music: MUSICAL COMEDY AND LYRICISTS]
- Irving Berlin
- Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Andrew Lloyd Webber
.
[Popular Music: ROCK]
- The Beach Boys
- The Beatles (Level 3)
- John Lennon
- Black Sabbath
- Chuck Berry
- David Bowie
- The Doors
- Bob Dylan
- Jimi Hendrix
- Buddy Holly
- Janis Joplin
- Led Zeppelin
- Little Richard
- Nirvana (band)
- Pink Floyd
- Elvis Presley
- Queen (band)
- The Rolling Stones
.
(end of list of 61 names in the "Popular Music" category of "Level-4 importance articles," Wikipedia).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/4/People#Musicians_and_composers
Alongside Michael Jackson and The Beatles should also be included Elvis Presley, for having ushered in the culture that made The Beatles fame possible. The Beatles themselves acknowledged Elvis as a major influence on their early work.
"(Is this a case of Sailerian "Plaques for Blacks"?)"
You mean Beethoven? Nah, I'm pretty sure he's legit.
> Is this a case of Sailerian "Plaques for Blacks"?
There are some interesting things to learn from the lists. For example, Level 3 designates the following as the most important "leaders and politicians" on wikipedia:
- Cleopatra VII
- Augustus Caesar
- Genghis Khan
- Joan of Arc
- Elizabeth I
- George Washington
- Nelson Mandela
Least important (but still Level 3):
- Tamerlane
- Catherine the Great
- Napoleon
The ten most-important leaders in world history:
.
- 4 women
- 2 East-Asians (Mongolic steppe leaders)
- 1 Black male (famous for protesting, being in prison)
- 3 White males, all of them known for being generals.
.
Something about this list seems off to me.
People love to talk and write about female rulers. It’s not a new thing—Cleopatra was notorious in her own lifetime.
I had a discussion with a young podcaster who was trying to decide whether he wanted a wikipedia page or not and I told him that wikipedia page is now the lowest level, the entry level, of fame. When Wikipedia began and anyone could edit, there was a lot of culling done to get the non notables off it and over time they established some standards for who counts as notable., A friend of mine started a company to be Wikipedia for people not prominent enough to make it to Wikipedia.
I love the idea of 'Level 3' and hope and pray for the day when top celebrities obsess over it. Thanks for introducing me to it :)
Great piece, Mr. S., thank you! In Henry Winkler's memoir 'Being Henry' he writes of meeting McCartney on the street in the 1970s--- I'd type in the anecdote but I can't find the book. Here's a journo piece on it:
https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/23/henry-winkler-still-isnt-ghosted-paul-mccartney-20888263/
The Beatles were such a big deal to my parents' generation that lots of us genXers got mightily sick of them, and consequently our children hardly know anything about them.
But in hindsight that's too bad. They were really, genuinely great for about four years. I appreciate them, even if I have no use for geriatric beatlemania.
what were the four years?
'62-'66
"What became known as ‘Beatlemania’ began on [February 7, 1964,] when the British band ‘The Beatles’ made their landmark visit to the United States, where they were greeted by 3,000 fans upon landing" (found online). They had been very popular in England since around October 1963, but the wave really crashed on US shores in February 1964.
The band itself is said to have emerged in the late-1950s youth of its core members, informally; then, in the period 1960-1962, as a "real band" of some sort. The break-through in the UK dates to some point in mid-late 1963 (?). Still no mainstream awareness in the USA as the year 1963 closed out? (Steve Sailer, turning age 5 about that time, won't likely remember one way or another).
The Beatles' little-if-any real exposure in the USA changes in early 1964, first (?) with the release of their first album in January 1964. Actually two albums, according to the Wikipedia Discography), released within two weeks in mid-late January 1964, ahead of their U.S. tour (album titles, "Introducing...The Beatles" and "Meet the Beatles"), the U.S. tour being etched in pop-culture legend as a Big Thing of the Sixties.
What were "the Sixties"? It was more than the Beatles, but the Beatles cannot be removed from it. It's been elsewhere proposed that the Sixties in some ways had gotten going in 1964; the romantics among the b.1940s-50s cohorts like to say it was after the smoke cleared from the "JFK assassination" a few weeks before 1964 opened.
Pat Buchanan, in a book, proposed November 1962 as the first that he sensed that a "volley" had been fired in the fights of this coming thing called The Sixties. In late November 1962, a White-vs-Black "race riot" at a title football game in Washington D.C., Pat Buchanan's native city, set the tenor for coming years; normal-Whites of non-LGBT and Christian origin largely abandoned the city proper, especially after the April 1968 riots; in any case, that such a riot could take place signaled something was afoot. Was Beatlesmania of 1964-66 another, more-sunny expression of the same?
The Beatles released a torrent number-one records between early 1964 and on up thru "Let It Be," their final album. "Let It Be" was released in May 1970 but had been recorded in the previous year,1969. The final break-up of the band occurred in a process between ca. mid-1969 and mid-1970.
Active 'Beatlemania' looks to have been already gone by the time the 1960s closed (Steve Sailer, age 10 in 1969, may remember otherwise). The remnant of Beatlemania that remained in 1970, propelling the Let It Be album to number-one, seem to have faded out quickly in the early 1970s. The success of Let It Be itself was already a nostalgia for a period only a few years earlier. Things moved fast in those days.
By the seven-year mark of the start of their huge U.S. fame (i.e., by early 1971), it was already all over. The oldest Beatles, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, were only 30 at this point (the others, between 27 and 29): and already they were "Has-Beens," albeit legendary ones, still Has-Beens towards which people would forever be looked backwards.
Less than seven years, from top-of-the-world sensation to Has-Been status! "Things moved fast in those days." Taylor Swift, meanwhile, is still a huge star as she fast approaches the 20-year mark of her debut (late 2006).
As of December 1962, the Beatles were still a cover band. I've got the bootleg album of their performances in Hamburg that Christmas and they were still doing Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and the rest.
I've heard they performed a while in Germany before they hit it big. Why? Were the Germans mad about English rock bands, or were there English servicemen stationed there?
The Beatles began to play in Hamburg in 1960. Hamburg was Germany's biggest port and ports in those days were places of diversity. Same with Liverpool. For instance, Ringo Starr picked up on American country music as a lad in Liverpool. In Hamburg, the Beatles played before almost entirely German crowds and rough ones at that. They played something like four and a half hours during the weekdays and six hours on weekends. Lennon, McCartney and Harrison mastered their crafts over parts of three years. Best did not. Starr became friends with Harrison in 1961 when he played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The Beatles would play for an hour and then the Hurricanes. Starr was an easy call to replace Best in August, 1962. He was a much better drummer and each of the Beatles liked Starr more as a pal.
American-style rock’n’roll had dipped in popularity in the UK, but the German youth still wanted to hear it, while lacking a natural aptitude for the idiom themselves (e.g., 70 years later the biggest German pop-rock act ever is probably Kraftwerk).
When the Beatles came back from their frustrating second stint in Hamburg, Paul quit and got a job at a business making and winding electrical coil. John and Brian Epstein had to talk him back into the band promising him guitar music was about to take off any day now. No doubt he would have been brilliantly successful in the electrical coil business, too.
Fashions in pop change quickly. If you have only one great album (the Strokes, the Killers, Oasis) you can still tour on it for life. If you have 2+ (Chilli Peppers, Metallica), you approach living legend status. If you can keep a hot streak going over more than three albums and more than five years, like the Beatles, Stones and Zeppelin you’re considered all-time greats.
I would imagine that Oasis' great album was (What's the Story) Morning Glory? although they were much more popular in their native England than they were here. Don't Look Back in Anger is one of the greatest songs ever written even though I'm not a fan of Oasis per se. Some would say that it is merely ripping off the Beatles; Noel Gallagher would be one of them
The Beatles had about a half dozen great albums plus a whole bunch of great singles at a period of maximum change in musical styles.
I thought the Beatles began to take themselves too seriously in the latter years.
“Hey Jude” started the downward slide for me…about 5 minutes too long.
For the record on the chronology of the Beatles evolution into Has-Beens (see earlier long comment by me at https://www.stevesailer.net/p/is-paul-mccartney-the-worlds-most/comment/94349554):
Late-August 1968 is the release-date for "Hey Jude" in the US and UK (the same week). Their super-stardom was approaching its five-year mark. They could all still be said to be in their mid-twenties (b.1940 to b.1943).
Was it the song or the beginning of the breakup?
Not just the Beatles, every trivial aspect of importance to the boomers. We actually learned about it in school as if it were important history. Did you know the boomers liked howdy doody and coonskin caps and hoola hoops? Did you know that the Beatles were the most important band of all time but then it was a big deal when the cute one (or was it the smart one? I got a C in boomer trivia) said they were more important than Jesus and then I distracted myself by turning a corkscrew in my left eyeball.
> lots of us genXers got mightily sick of them, and consequently our children hardly know anything about them.
I think you're wrong here, although Vox Day is on your side as he reflexively hates boomers and everything associated with them
Paul and Ringo (and maybe Cher and Barbara Streisand for women) are the last active examples of showbusiness as a monoculture, when people who got really famous were supposed to be pleasing to everyone. To be played on the big radio and TV stations was to achieve a level of fame that isn’t really possible any more, and even those who got famous in the wake of the Beatles (like Dylan and the Stones) didn’t have quite the same thing. After the now octogenarian generation goes it’s not really clear who inherits the crown. Maybe Tom Hanks?
Thanks to Paul McCartney's show tunes background the Beatles were the boomer child band that their parents could concede had a few good songs.
Music really touches something in the human psyche. I think musicians generally top actors in the contest for demigod status.
And regarding that contest, media markets are highly fragmented now that the tech is widely available and the world outside the anglosphere is no longer as insanely violent or impoverished. Actors and are scrambling into their own production companies as the tide just rises and rises. Musicians have to dump their music on streaming and make sure and have a day job.
I doubt we'll ever have another Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger, or even another Gene Simmons as Gene Simmons will tell you. Farewell to kings.
"media markets are highly fragmented now"
An homage to Kramer, love it.
The Bonnie Stuart King we all sorely miss.
The biggest mass culture phenomena ever are Charlie Chaplin, the Beatles, and the STAR WARS movies. Chaplin is long dead, STAR WARS was created by many people, so I suppose it is Paul. For people under 35 it is probably Taylor Swift.
Bing Crosby…
Crosby was the first singer to really figure out the microphone, much like Hope was the first comedian to figure it out too.
Crosby was on the top of the music, radio and film at the same time. He was completely dominant…
Crosby was on the top of the music, radio and film at the same time. He was completely dominant…
I guess that's why Crosby and Hope were on the Road to Stardom...
Elvis is way bigger than Chaplin. In fact, THE biggest cultural phenomena of the latter half of 20th century remains Elvis. Chaplin doesnt have millions of anual fans going to visit his gravesite yr after yr.
Dylan has similar streaming numbers today to Elvis.
Main reason, is that Dylan is still alive, and hence can help promote his work, which since he's been around 60+ yrs means that his work is nearly twice as large as Elvis.
During Elvis' lifetime, Dylan's record sales weren't anywhere close.
Also, its highly unlikely that Dylan can walk down a dirt road in a 2nd or 3rd world place (e.g. parts of Africa, Asia, etc) and instantly be recognized. During his lifetime, Elvis was recognized all over the globe.
Dylan is not a very good promoter of his own work compared to someone like Springsteen!
On the other hand, if I have to hear “Wonderful Christmas” one more time…
Eh, the Beatles never did much for me. McCartney seems like a nice guy and I like some of his songs, but I’m not so sure in hundred years when the baby boomer reign of our culture is long forgotten that he’ll still be regarded so highly.
Technology has surely changed the equation as artists (politicians as well) can stay relevant longer. Beatles songs are still part of the popular zeitgeist. You couldn’t say the same thing about Louis Armstrong or Glenn Miller when I was a kid. And I don’t think it was because they were both inferior artists.
I didn’t watch the show, just wondering if they showed the old John Belushi skit of him outliving all his cast mates. I remember the skit having this eerie sunset boulevard type of vibe of reclusive, long forgotten stars. It’s amazing that snl is still around after 50 years. I’m not sure what that says about our culture.
Yes they showed it
I might have been a little young but I never got the hype about the show with the original cast. I do remember thinking it was pretty funny the sketch they did in which a reorg at NBC got John Belushi promoted to 'Grizzly Adams' and he was all upset.
If you have a hard time getting to sleep, I have been told that looping together "Yesterday", "Michelle", "Fool on the Hill", "Let it Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" will put you to sleep by the third time through.
That's like 45 minutes. A shot of 15 year old malt is faster and tastes better.
The idea of the Beatles (originally a big deal in the mid-1960s) being remembered and revered in the mid-2020s:
It is chronologically equivalent to musical group of the mid-1900s (i.e., ten or so years before World War I) being considered a big deal in the mid-1960s.
I was using my own reference point, the 1980s when I was young and cared about the top 40s.
True. I think that just shows you the colossal power and colossal ego of the Boomer generation: huge numbers to make the Beatles stars initially, and huge longevity and refusing to yield cultural reigns to keep them as stars.
I for one am sick of all the documentaries about the 60s, including the Beatles retrospectives about their "British Invasion." Band had some great marketing/management and talent, but Boomers refuse to give up the ghost that a commercial band playing with their image to keep themselves relevant was anything less than a World Changing Event and wasn't just good marketing.
McCartney and Ringo never took themselves too seriously publicly, so I've always liked them best.
There is a chronological equivalence but there is also a technological disparity in those timeframes. The first commercial radio station didn't debut until 1920, and the 45 didn't become a thing until 1949. While M*A*S*H was ostensibly set in Korea, most of the themes in the movie and TV show could be applied to Vietnam; however, the one thing that reminded us it was Korea was the lack of popular music in either, while any Vietnam film will have CCR's Fortunate Son in its soundtrack
I think the evolution of the medium matters here as well and recording up to about 1950 was primitive.
A better analogy is novels and there were very much authors from the early 1900s and before taken seriously and read in the 1960s.
Gee, it's almost as if I said the same thing eight hours earlier...
I think the Beatles are entrenched and will be considered worthwhile a hundred years hence. The more interesting question is how will they be ranked by future musicologists/fans against other bands of the era. I'd like to think Led Zeppelin and The Clash will outrank them.
They’ll definitely remember Rock’n’Roll as a phenomenon, but at what level of detail (e.g the British Invasion, grunge, etc.)? In the end it’s only popular music played in pubs/bars and not at the symphony (insert snooty voice). In a hundred years will there still be beetles cover bands? Think of the tens of thousands of songs and new genres that will be created between now and then. The future seems overwhelming.
I was a huge Clash fan when they were together, but I can barely sit through a song anymore. I don’t see them being remembered in a century. Led Zeppelin, hard to say. A hundred years is a long time.
I love them both, but Zep had one sound and the Clash had two bad singers.
I don’t know jazz or classical well enough, but I can’t think of any other 7.5 year span of musical innovation to rival the Beatles’ period in the studio.
The Stones speak to me personally more than the Beatles do, but objectively it’s impossible to argue with the “Beatles as Best Band Ever” conclusion.
You are being hyperbolic, provocative ad tongue in cheek (I assume) claiming it is objective but offering no criteria. My subjective opinion is that they don't even crack the top five. Most innovative you might be able to convince me of, but again, difficult to reduce to objective criteria. The Beach Boys got there first in several ways and most of the innovation could be attributed to their producer. Sure Zep had a strong characteristic sound, but so did the Beatles.
In terms of musicianship most musicians I have known will defend the Beatles but conceded that they could name a dozen bands that were better musicians. John and Paul were good singers but there voices were a little thin for my taste. That might have been production decisions.
My biggest complaint though, if we are arguing greatest band is that they were more about catchiness than emotional expression. Catchy tunes are popular and appeal to a wider audience, but rock had an emotional palette that went beyond most earlier forms (except maybe Romantic Era music) and the Beatles didn't do much of it. Even Heater Skelter, supposedly inventing metal, is kind of pussified in my estimation.
As for amazing studios creations on multiple albums I assert Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel were superior to the Beatles.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Beatles and recognize these arguments will go on forever.
I try to be more like Sailer and less like Lester Bangs here and defer to the critical and popular consensus rather than my own unique tastes.
This is a new departure for me as I was a teenager in the CD age when music was very expensive. It meant I had to be highly selective with purchases and I engaged in a lot of ex-post rationalisation.
Now that I’m an adult with a Spotify subscription I’m slowly dipping into music I had long ignored and realising that it’s pretty good.
So personally I would take the complete work of the Rolling Stones to a desert island over the Beatles but I won’t argue with the average human who would do the opposite.
Me too, I'd pick the Rolling Stones' collected works over the Beatles for my Desert Island list, but half the human race is female.
“Hey Jude” is one of the most emotionally expressive pieces of music ever composed or recorded.
But I take your point - their most popular track “Here Comes the Sun” is auditory cheesecake.
Still can say the same thing about Elvis. At his height, pretty much all over the corners of the earth knew who he was.
I wonder if the Duke of Wellington shook Napoleon's hand. Not that any of Wellington's ancestors are as famous as McCartney but there is a 9th Duke of Wellington today and in the House of Lords. The first duke showered his home with Napoleon artifacts so proud he was of defeating Napoleon. I would imagine that the Wellington home, Stratfield Saye House, is filled with Napoleon tidbits.
One of the better scenes in Ridley Scott's not very good Napoleon was Boney and Wellington squaring off. That didn't happen in real life, but it would have been cool if it did.
Anyone who has shaken hands with Winston Churchill would be linked to the Duke of Marlborough. I wonder if anyone is alive who shook hands with Churchill, who died in January 1965. His last daughter died a few years back. Prince Philip has been dead five years.
> I wonder if anyone is alive who shook hands with Churchill, who died in January 1965
King Charles was 16 and heir apparent when Churchill died; I would be stunned if the two of them never shook hands
Good call. Churchill was a member of parliament until about 1961. He very well could have shaken hands with Prince Charles.
> Ringo, Jagger, Richards, Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Paul Simon (who appeared)... But Paul McCartney was a Beatle and they were not.
Perhaps you didn't mean to include him or perhaps I am missing the higher-level irony of his inclusion, but Ringo was indeed a Beatle as well
I'm guessing "Carry that Weight". "The Weight" is a song by 'The Band'. It was also the song all the guitar guys played together to conclude "It Might Get Loud".
Yes, from context we all understood that Paul McCartney wasn't going to cover The Band in the middle of his SNL performance
There was a time when world-wide it might have been Michael Jordan and earlier Mohammed Ali, just because their popularity would have extended to more of the non western world.
I didn't see the show but perhaps they mentioned another reason for Paul's importance, which was an early running gag in which Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles a small amount of cash if they would do a reunion on the show. Supposedly John and Paul were hanging out and saw the show and briefly considered taking a cab to the studio to do it.
This is apocryphal
It is not. Paul has told the story several times over the years including in an interview in Playboy magazine. He could be lying but that's not the same thing as apocryphal .
No, Paul himself has said that John told him about the offer after it was made, not that the two of them were watching it together in real time
perhaps they were not together but Paul has definitely told the story as if they discussed it while it was plausible to make it and decided not to. And they could have discussed it on Sunday and decided to to it some other time. I'm will to accept that the exact story may not be known but given that the source is one of the two guys I cannot accept the word 'apocryphal'
Fair enough; here is Paul's version of the story...
https://youtu.be/HL3Foo7ZokY&t=22
For those who don't want to watch Paul said he and John were watching the show on May 1 when John told Paul about the offer made the previous week on April 24 and that they should go down and take them up on it. The irony of this is that there was no episode on May 1, so Paul wasn't being completely literal either
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-beatles-reunite-snl-mccartney-lennon-harrison/
Lennon said in 1980 when speaking with David Sheff for Playboy, “Paul was visiting us at our place in the Dakota. We were watching it and almost went down to the studio, just as a gag. We nearly got into a cab, but we were actually too tired. He and I were just sitting there watching the show, and we went, ‘Ha ha, wouldn’t it be funny if we went down?’ But we didn’t.”
Paul McCartney would later confirm the story, saying: “John said, ‘We should go down, just you and me. There’s only two of us so we’ll take half the money.’ And for a second. But It would have been work, and we were having a night off, so we elected not to go. It was a nice idea – we nearly did it.”