Kraftwerk More Influential Than the Beatles

Love Kraftwerk; but.......No!

 

I don't actually feel insulted. I find it laughable, but the tenor of some posts here seem to be attempting to insult.
I just thought the conversation should stick to music.

 

Research discovers LSD influence on Tomorrow Never Knows

 

Yes, and a little bit of Hawkwind's Spirit of the Age (from '77 ).

 

Ha, didn't expect to find Kraftwerk at an US tv show in 1975! (could have known, 'Autobahn' was also a great hit in the US charts of that year, was'n it? Would have been seen as a novelty act, I'm afraid)

This must be a real cultural shock for the conservative part of the American audience in 1975: that strange electronic music, that modern fashion, those short haircuts... (and I'm afraid it still is a shock for a part of the SHTV audience anno 2017... )

It's beautiful to watch here at this video clip how they created their analog electronic sounds and beats...

 

Both "Autobahn" and "Trans-Europe Express" got a lot of airplay in the US--I heard them both fairly regularly at the time in three different markets (I lived in South Florida, and I spent time in Cleveland and LA every year).

Re it being a "shock" I don't remember anyone reacting that way to them. During the 70s there was one gimmick after another, and musically it seemed pretty discoey.

 

Here live views of Kraftwerk playing live in 1970 (!!), in Soest (is it Soest, Holland or is there also a Soest in Germany?) , when the Beatles were still a band

Europe meets krautrock, allready much electronics involved, but little fine pop tunes Kraftwerk is wellknown for...

 

Well said! Thank you for posting the video clip. I agree... the band members are dressed and groomed like its 2017. They are definitely influential..not in the same overall cultural way as The Beatles or Elvis, but their influence is definitely heard today.

 

If you took a random sampling of 100 people and asked if they know who the Beatles were and Kraftworks, what do you think the results would be?

Hard to be more influential when you are generally unknown to the masses.

 

What masses and where? Masses of musicians? Masses in Ohio? Masses in Europe?

 

How about the Masses in Liverpool?

Tongue In Cheek Time!

 

Once again, the term 'influential' is still being misused and/or misconstrued.

Confirmation Bias

The Misconception: Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis.

The Truth: Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.


Measuring Influence: Don't take common sense out of the equation

The size of a persons audience, gained naturally or otherwise, really doesn’t matter when it comes to measuring influence; what matters is whether or not they have the ability to persuade their audience to take a desired action. While massive follower counts and high engagement rates might get someone on your “influencer radar,” common sense should not be taken out of the equation when it comes to determining whether or not their influence is relevant to your industry, your needs or your goals.

 

I wonder if Ralf und Florian ever were exposed to The Monks? An American band in West Germany circa 1966 and on tv quite a bit... das ist de klein 'motorik', nein?

Presenter is Uschi Nerke.

 

To be fair, there are insults coming from both sides.
Now why there need be "sides" is another issue altogether.
There is plenty of room for both bands in the world.

 

The Monks have been mentioned as being influential on German music of the late 60s and 70s.

 

Please, not again. It's becoming embarrassing.

Thank you.
Next.

 

facts are facts, nothing to be embarrassed about. This is a ridiculous conversation. The only embarrassing part is participating in it.

 

German Immigrants who settled in America, in parts of the Midwest, at the turn of the Century (20th Century) are great fans of Kraftwerk.

Or would have been if they were still around in the Seventies.

The Southeastern Region of the U.S.A. loves race car driving, especially on interstates.

That part of America particularly is fond of Autobahn.

 

I wonder if Berlin brings out the Chill/"Coldness" in artists. Not sure if Kraftwerk were Berlin oriented.

When David Bowie spent time there, I believe that's when his "coldest" material with Brian Eno came out.

His trilogy.

Transcending emotions, apparently.

Or a new language of emotions...

Per Amazon.com: David Bowie: Under Review 1976-79 - The Berlin Trilogy: David Bowie: Movies & TV

"A review of the pop star in his heyday, featuring live and studio performances, rare interviews and commentary from a panel of music experts. By the mid 1970s Bowie was the biggest pop star in the UK, but his personal life was in turmoil. In a bid to escape the chaos of his drug problems and to flee from the media spotlight, the singer eventually found his way to Berlin, where he started to work on what would become some of the most memorable and critically lauded recordings of his career. Bowie stopped moving from persona to persona as he had previously done, settling instead on being simply himself, and began to blend the music he was hearing in his adopted homeland (Kraftwerk and the like) with the avant-garde methodologies used by his friend and colleague Brian Eno."

Amazon.com: Low: David Bowie: MP3 Downloads

Actually, this is a great song, full of emotion:

Amazon.com: Be My Wife (1999 Remastered Version): David Bowie: MP3 Downloads

 

One could also ask 100 random people, "Who is most influential to the world of film? George Lucas or the Lumiere brothers?" What percentage will have answered correctly?

 

Good point.

 

I don't think Kraftworks invented music.

 

Something else they share with the Beatles.

 

That is a very good point; my Beatles covers thread ( Covers Of Every Beatles Song ) certainly shows how far their reach and influence has been, even on current acts like Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Broken Bells, who are all known to be Beatles fans, as well as on acts like Elton John, The Who and 80's bands like The Stone Roses and Echo And The Bunnymen.

The quotes below show how many diverse acts they have influenced (some are quite surprising, because the acts in question don't necessarily sound 'Beatlesque'):


Frank Ocean:

Frank Ocean has revealed that listening to The Beatles “almost single-handedly got me out writer’s block” during writing sessions for his last two albums ‘Endless' and 'Blonde'.

Ocean sampled the Beatles song ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ on ‘White Ferrari’, which featured on ‘Blonde’. The sample saw John Lennon and Paul McCartney be awarded songwriters’ credit on the track, which also contained contributions from Kanye West.

Making a rare speaking appearance on his now-regular radio show ‘Blonded’ on Apple Music’s Beats 1, Ocean introduced ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ by revealing that listening to The Fab Four helped him regain his creative powers.

“I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block,” Ocean said. “Do you hear this?”



Zedd:

One of the things that's great about "Clarity" is that it has a real classic pop songwriting sound. I was curious about your influences outside of EDM. Who inspired you in that way of writing?

''To be completely honest, I'm not very inspired by EDM at all. I have a really hard time listening to EDM and being like, "Wow, that's really inspiring, I want to do something like that." There's a handful of artists that will do that. I'm way more inspired listening to, song-structure-wise, the Beatles. The Beatles have never stretched things unnecessarily if it didn't help the song. In dance music, you will sometimes find those structure of, like, a one-minute intro. And, like, why do you need a one-minute intro? That's not necessary at all. I kind of went about it in a very Beatles way.''


David Bowie:

''It's impossible for me to talk about popular music without mentioning probably my greatest mentor, John Lennon. I guess he defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fabric of pop and imbue it with elements from other artforms, often producing something extremely beautiful, very powerful and imbued with strangeness. Also, uninvited, John would wax on endlessly about any topic under the sun and was over-endowed with opinions. I immediately felt empathy with that. Whenever the two of us got together it started to resemble Beavis and Butthead on "Crossfire."


James Murphy, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM:

''I never used to dance. I would listen to Kraftwerk and R&B and a lot of other synthy stuff as rock music, not dance music. Then, quite late on, I got into going out dancing and doing a bunch of drugs and that changed my perspective on music. The first song I ever really danced to was a Beatles song, 'Tomorrow Never Knows', when David Holmes played it during one of his DJ sets. It made me ask: What do I want out of music? What do I hear in music? It changed everything.''

He listed Tomorrow Never Knows in an interview about his favourite songs and influences, saying that it was 'by a little known band called the Beatles'. He went on to say :''Well, I was really into the physicality of music and that, to me, was my favorite Beatles song, always, because it wasn't cerebral, it wasn't like... (singing) And here's another core change, that is clever. It was just like this relentless kind of nodding thing, like this hypnotizing thing. I was always really entranced when things were really hypnotizing. I used to listen to humming machines, anything that was kind of repetitive and loopy, like Chopin's Berceuse, things that are like the lullabies and stuff like that. The things that are just like monotonous. When I found Can I was in heaven 'cause they were just like, "Here's this for 30 minutes." But that is the first song that I heard, that's a story.''

Murphy said that the descending guitar lines in the song (Never As Tired) bares a striking resemblance to Dear Prudence. He went on to say: "I thought it was funny and did a George Harrison guitar solo and then did a Paul McCartney bit-- it was like putting a big X through something that you've drawn," Murphy told XLR8R. "I had it on CD for friends, like, 'Here, this is what I made yesterday,' and Tim [Goldsworthy] was kind of insistent; he said it was cowardly not to put it out. I realized it would be a good challenge to see if I could make an album that it fits on, so that became another challenge."


Can:

When Holger heard The Beatles’ 'I Am A Walrus' in 1967, he was captivated by this psychedelic rock single. Holger describes this “as a life-changing moment…the music of the past and present came together.” At last, “here was music that made the connection between what I’d studied and I was striving towards” With the innovative use of bursts of radio and the experimental sound and structure, “I went in search of similar music.”


Kanye West:

“Every time that I perform I’m always thinking … my plan is to be the greatest performer of this generation,” West says in a clip of the interview. Aspiring to become that kind of transcendent artist, West said that when he performs older songs like “Jesus Walks” or “Through the Wire” now, those tunes have become “embedded” in his fans’ minds as they’ve lived with the songs. “That’s why whenever bands come out and say, ‘This album is better than the Beatles,’ it is impossible to make an album better than the Beatles unless you’ve got 30 years,” he explained. “Beatles records — people have known them their whole lives … hopefully five years from now people still play ‘Love Lockdown’ and people still play the records that I’m doing right now.”

Lowe presses West to discuss working with "Only One" and "FourFiveSeconds" collaborator Paul McCartney specifically, and West spoke with reverence about the former Beatle. "Meeting Paul McCartney was like meeting Ralph Lauren," he states. "[They are] the greatest of their fields. Period. Of all time."

Working with McCartney was a great learning experience for West, musically. "The types of chord changes that Paul does...I don't even understand them," he said. "That's because he invented them," added Lowe. West continued "To be able to be involved with writing a song like that is way next [level]." He notes that on "FourFiveSeconds" the cadence is trap above the "Seventies FM radio" sound that Lowe pointed out.


Ne-Yo :

'I think that Paul McCartney and the Beatles were doing things with melodies that people hadn't heard before, or hadn't heard in a really, really long time.'


Rae Sremmurd :

Were you and your brother fans of the Beatles' music before?

We always liked their tunes; the whole movement, their style.

Any collaborations with Paul McCartney in the future? It wouldn't be his first foray into hip-hop.

Oh man, you never know. I'm definitely very down for that. That’s necessary for the culture. It's only right. We can mellow down and make some crazy stuff. Make some platinum stuff. That would be like the real Beatles.


Kate Bush:

From the 1985 Musician article:

I think that, because I was too young to be caught up in Beatlemania, then when I did hear them - and that wasn't perhaps till four or five years ago, I heard them objectively, if you like. And I was just so astounded by their musical quality, I mean, every track! And something like the ``walrus'' track, it's still so contemporary. I mean, there are very few people who are doing something really good. But apart from the sixties, when there was this huge wealth of stuff like Motown and everything, it really does seem that you get just two or three who are fantastic. Occasionally you get great bursts of wonderful things, but not often.

...and from the Tower Records Pulse magazine:

On the twentieth anniversary of the Beatles' invasion, Kate said she only became very interested in the Beatles about four years ago. "I'd always liked their singles but only really started listening to their albums a little while ago. I think they are a great influence on any writer, the quality of their work is something, I feel, every composer aspires to."

Kate bush relaxes with a silk cut-a habit common among ballet dancers past and present-and is asked once again to contemplate the life of isolation. In other words,to select her desert island discs. Sitting as we are in the legendary Abbey Road studios, her choice of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour could not be more appropriate

It's interesting that your first favorite record is a Beatles number. Why do you like that so much?

Well that particular song I think is an absolute classic. I think it's brilliant. And the particular cover version, Bryan Ferry, I think is one of the best cover versions I've ever heard. Because so often it's just nowhere as good as the original song and I think it's brilliant.

We should play it. It's ``She's Leaving Home.'' [Bryan Ferry's cover of ``she's leaving home'' is played] Yeah, it's a beautiful song isn't it?

Incredible, I think.

Has it any personal sorta meaning to you? You haven't left home have you?

[Laughs] no, no. It's nothing personal, it's just whenever... I mean that whole album Sergeant Pepper is just a phenomena. It's an absolute classic and all the songs on it are so beautiful. And it's just good to hear a very, very excellent cover version because often they lack something. I think he's captured George Martin, The Beatles, everything. I think it's very clever. (1979)



Bob Dylan:

''We were driving through Colorado [and] we had the radio on and eight of the Top Ten songs were Beatles songs. In Colorado! 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones.

They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid… But I kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go… in my head, The Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking about it but it was so far out I couldn’t deal with it - eight in the Top Ten.

It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn. This was something that never happened before.

"You could only do that with other musicians. Even if you're playing your own chords you had to have other people playing with you. That was obvious. And it started me thinking about other people."

"Lennon, to this day, it's hard to find a singer better than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is. I'm in awe of McCartney. He's about the only one that I'm in awe of. He can do it all. And he's never let up. He's got the gift for melody, he's got the gift for rhythm, he can play any instrument. He can scream and shout as good as anyone, and he can sing a ballad as good as anyone. And his melodies are effortless, that's what you have to be in awe of.... he's just so damn effortless. I just wish he'd quit (laughs). Everything that comes out of his mouth is just framed in melody."



Brian Wilson:

''Lennon and McCartney are fantastic. They turn out so much good material. They're very melodic – they rely on melody and harmony rather than beat. They will simplify to it's skeletal form and arrangement where I would be impelled to make it more complex. Like Norwegian Wood, with it's one voice and a sitar. I would have orchestrated it – put in background voices – done a thousand thing. But the fact that the Beatles can do things with such simplicity is what makes them so good.

We recognised that the Beatles had cut Rubber Soul, and I really wasn't quite ready for it's unity – it felt like it all belonged together. [The American version of] Rubber Soul was like a folk album by the Beatles that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I had to go [into the studio] and experiment with sounds. I really felt challenged to do it – and I followed through with it [on Pet Sounds].''


“Rubber Soul inspired Pet Sounds, which inspired Sgt. Pepper’s and that inspired me to make Smile,” Brian Wilson tells me, recalling his 1960s game of one-upmanship with the Beach Boys’ so-called rivals The Beatles.

“It wasn’t really a rivalry, though. I was jealous!” Wilson says with a hearty laugh. “It was really just mutual inspiration, I think. I would get to hear their records before they came out and I was totally blown away by Rubber Soul. And Sgt. Pepper’s? I was totally blown away by that. But it was inspirational, too. Then I did “Good Vibrations” and Smile and it was exciting. I got into it and really produced my head off.”

It must have been in November of 1965. I was living in this house in the Hollywood Hills then, way up on Laurel Way, and I remember sitting in the living room one night talking with some friends when another friend came in with a copy of the Beatles’ new one, Rubber Soul, I don’t know if it had even come out yet. But he had it and so we put it on the record player and, wow. As soon as I started hearing it I loved it. I mean, LOVED it!

I still remember hearing Michelle for the first time, and Girl. What an incredible song! Everything about the way John Lennon sang, and the lyrics he was writing. “Oh, girl, girl.” It sounded amazing.

Norwegian Wood is my favourite, too. The lyrics are so good, and so creative, right from the first line: “I once had a girl/ Or should I say, she once had me.” It’s so mysterious. Is he into her, or she into him? It just blew my mind. And in the end, when he wakes up and she’s gone, so he lights a fire. “Isn’t it good? Norwegian wood.” Is he setting her house on fire? I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I thought that was fantastic. I can’t forget the sitar, too, I’d never heard that before, that unbelievable sound. No one had heard that in rock’n’roll back then, this amazing, exotic sound. It really did inspire the instrumentation I ended up using for Pet Sounds.

So many other songs are on there, too. You Won’t See Me is like a cheerful pop song, and Think for Yourself is kind of dark. I’d forgotten that was George’s song. He really wrote that? Well, I know it has that cool fuzzy bass sound. I’d used that already on Little Honda, so it was more familiar to me. But then came The Word, and that was something else, too. A song about love, but not just about girls and boys.

Then there’s In My Life, that’s another John song. And that’s my favorite song on the record too, except for Norwegian Wood. I loved the sound of John’s voice. I’d never heard a collection of songs that were all that good before. It’s like a collection of folk songs, and they’re all just really, really great songs. And not just about love. They’re about a lot of different things, but they all go together, somehow.

Listening to Rubber Soul didn’t clarify my ideas for Pet Sounds, exactly. But it inspired me. When we were listening to it that night I said to myself, “Now I’m gonna make an album just as good as Rubber Soul.” Not the same album. Obviously there can only be one album that’s Rubber Soul, just like there can only be one Pet Sounds. But it inspired me to do my own thing, and so the next morning I went to the piano and wrote God Only Knows with Tony Asher.

And it’s still my favourite Beatles album. That and Let It Be. Obviously, they’re very different records. But the Beatles changed musically, and got better over the years. So did I.''


Perry Farrell:

"I was so influenced by Paul McCartney and the Beatles that, when I was in kindergarten, I faked a British accent and told everyone I was from England," he tells Rolling Stone at a tasting event for Dobel tequila, for which he's a spokesman. "I was born in 1959 and can sing every Beatles song."


Quincy Jones:

"I thought [the Beatles] were the most incredible songwriters that ever lived. It had nothing to do with rock & roll. They're classic songs,".


T-Bone Burnett:

''If it weren’t for the Beatles, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I worked with Paul McCartney on Elvis Costello’s Spike, and he’s probably the most musical person I’ve ever met. Music comes out of his pores. He played bass on a couple of tunes, and it was completely effortless. He wasn’t trying to do anything. From him, I learned something about ease and grace.''


Roger Waters:

''In fact, it was during that tour that we pulled off into a lay-by, turned the engine off in a Zephyr IV, since we traveled in a car — we wouldn't go in a bus with the rest of them — put the radio on and listened to Sgt. Pepper. They played the whole album on Radio 1, when it came out. I'll never forget sitting there and going, "**** me. Whoa. This is such an amazing album." Well, we'd heard quite a lot because they were recording, we were in the same studio, at the same time, making our first album. Yeah, it was pretty revolutionary.''

Dave Gilmour :

“I really wish I had been in The Beatles,” Gilmour tells MOJO of the genesis behind his cover. “[They] taught me how to play guitar, I learnt everything. The bass parts, the lead, the rhythm, everything. They were fantastic.”


The Smiths:

Johnny Marr - “The White Album was the strongest influence on us towards the end, things like “Cry Baby Cry.”

Marr said: ''That was a big thing for me at the time, purely because I knew there was an atmospheric aspect ot the White Album that we could relate to musically.''

When writing for Strangeways, Here We Come, he was subconsciously chasing the atmoshpere of the White Album; what he called 'a certain bleakness'.

''The great thing about Harrison'', comments Marr, ''is if you watch early clips of The Beatles and the way he used his Gretsch, sometimes in between verses and choruses he's clicking his switches and using different pick-ups to change the sound; using his guitar like an electric machine, which is what it is. Very few people were doing that at the time. He was amazing, particularly what he did with slide and wah-wah.''

In 1984 Morrissey admitted to being a Beatles fan, something he considered 'dramatically unfashionable' at the time. Years later, he praised parts of the Sgt. Pepper's album, specifically A Day In The Life and Lovely Rita.

The Smiths used the Lennon/McCartney song 'Love of the Loved', recorded by Cilla Black, as their stage entrance music when touring the UK to promote their debut album.


The Doors:

Indeed, the Doors’ drummer, John Densmore, told The Times recently, “We were working on our second album, ‘Strange Days’ [in 1967] and while we were working on it, we got an early copy of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and we just died. That made us experiment more, inspired us to try the Moog synthesizer, made us generally be wild and just say ‘What the hell?''


Roland Orlazabal / Tears For Fears:

"When you have an album called 'Everybody Loves a Happy Ending,' you're just asking for McCartney to walk into the room and start playing some sort of music on the piano."


The Velvet Underground:

John Cale said: ''They were a driving force in the Velvets, and made us work harder and got us on our bikes. Rubber Soul was where you were forced to deal with them as something other than a flash in the pan. It was rich in ideas and I loved the way George managed to find a way to include all those Indian instruments. Lou and I had tried to work with the Sarinda. We were only playing it just to get a noise but I realised you could play melody on the sitar as good as Norwegian Wood. Norwegian Wood had this atmosphere of being very acid. I don't think anybody has ever got that sound or that feeling as well as the Beatles.''

Sterling Morrison said that Abbey Road was a direct influence on the VU song 'Who Loves The Sun'.

''Shortly after The Velvet Underground & Nico is released, Lou Reed tells Jackson Browne & rock critic Richard Meltzer that his two favorite guitarists are George Harrison & The Byrds' Roger McGuinn. He is later quoted in Lou Reed: Between The Lines as calling the Beatles "the most incredible songwriters ever...I don't think people realize how sad it is that the Beatles broke up"....

The earlier quote comes from a 1970 interview:

[Goes on to say he did like the first Moby Grape album & Buffalo Springfield. Hates FM radio, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, and early Velvet drone-songs with John Cale. Praises Mick Jagger's lyrics. Mourns the breakup of the Beatles. "I don't think people realize how sad it is that the Beatles broke up. That means there's not going to be any more Beatles music.... We were hearing this bootleg tape of the original Get Back album before Spector, and it's really fabulous."]



King Crimson/Robert Fripp:

Fripp on the Beatles. "The Beatles achieve probably better than anyone the ability to make you tap your foot first time round, dig the words sixth time round, and get into the guitar slowly panning the twentieth time." Fripp wished Crimson could "achieve entertainment on as many levels as that."

Two quotes from Fripp's diary:

Oct. 9th, 2000

"Beatles' song are now staples of muzak around the world. It makes me angry that music of this power & authenticity should be trivialised..."

Oct. 12th 1999

Referring to his own choice of music:

"This evening's music has moved from Eddie the Elgar to The Beatles' "Revolver". Now onto "Rubber Soul". Were The Beatles the last example of group genius in Western popular culture? "

Oct 12, 1999...

"In My Life": how could a young man write something this profoundly nostalgic & reflective? This is the song of an old man, reminiscing & recapitulating on what life & loves have meant to him.''


Art Garfunkel:

"Who were your peers?

''The Mamas and the Papas. John Sebastian and the Lovin’ Spoonful. The Beatles, of course; I wasn’t a great Stones fan. The Beatles were it, when they made Rubber Soul and moved onto Revolver and Sgt Pepper – not just a collection of songs, but the album as art form. We were terribly impressed, and that shone a light on the path that led to Bookends [Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 album]."


John McLaughlin/Mahavishnu Orchestra:



“I'm an old hippy. I grew up with The Beatles. The early stuff wasn't my cup of tea, but by the time they got to Revolver and Sgt Pepper – wow – that had a really big effect on me.''


Dave Roback (Mazzy Star):

"When I started playing music, it came out sounding very psychedelic for whatever reason," he said, explaining the reason for Rain Parade's "paisley" connections. "I guess it was just what I grew up liking. The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix were the best groups for me. . . . The late Beatles more than the early Beatles--their message, the whole political and spiritual involvement."


Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre):

Newcombe tweeted: "@PaulMcCartney 's bass sound underrated? Not by me. its pretty much the foundation of my approach."


Ween:

AF: I think when you first come out of something and launch into something new, you want to be really basic, so I wanted to be really basic and just have songs, not have it be an orchestrated odyssey with a million overdubs. I think you have to be vulnerable. I take my juice from Paul McCartney or John Lennon: when they came out of their thing, their records were very stripped down for the first couple of records. And that's a really cool way to approach that.

Paul McCartney, I have always loved him. His first few solo records they are such a big part of my musical thing. He has a way of making light of all the drama. And I love John Lennon for the other reason—he's psychedelic and he's uninhibited and unafraid to scream. I love them both for different reasons. I drew a lot of comfort in the last year and a half from them. When I was getting bashed on the internet and all that crap, I would just listen to nice music and that would really help. The Beatles are what got me harmonizing in the first place. When I was growing up, I would listen to the Beatles and all I would do is try to harmonize with them and that's really how I learned how to do that. And you'll see that on "All The Way To China"—that's like Paul MCartney Harmonies 101.''


Nirvana:

Butch Vig (Nirvana Producer):

"When in January of 1992 that album reached Number One on the charts, it changed music history. Many credited Vig. He shrugs it off. "Nevermind was just starting to take off," Vig told Musician. "I was talking about this whole grunge thing with a friend … when ’Helter Skelter’ [by seminal pop band the Beatles] came on the juke box. I said: ’Here’s the first grunge song, listen to it!’… So it wasn’t really anything new. I didn’t invent grunge. And Seattle didn’t either."



Dave Grohl:


“When I was young, that’s how I learned how to play music – I had a guitar and a Beatles songbook. I would listen to the records and play along. Of course, it didn’t sound like the Beatles, but it got me to understand song structure and melody and harmony and arrangement. So, I never had a teacher – I just had these Beatles records.”

Even the late Cobain admired the Beatles, said Grohl. “Even in Nirvana – the Beatles [were] such a huge influence. Kurt loved the Beatles because it was just so simple. Well, it seemed simple… they sound easy to play, but you know what? They’re hard!”

''If it weren't for The Beatles, I would not be a musician, From a very young age I became fascinated with their songs, and over the years have drowned myself in the depth of their catalogue. Their groove and their swagger. Their grace and their beauty. Their dark and their light. The Beatles seemed to be capable of anything.
Recently I showed my 6-year-old daughter, Violet, the brilliant 'Yellow Submarine' movie. It was her introduction to The Beatles, and she instantly shared the same fascination I felt when I was her age discovering The Beatles for the first time. From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time. Just ask Violet.''

Morgen (Cobain documentary director) : "But nobody in Kurt's life — not his management, wife, bandmates — had ever heard his Beatles thing [a snippet of 'And I Love Her']. I found it on a random tape. It's a Paul [McCartney] song. How's that for shattering the myth?"



Queen:

Brian May:

''The Beatles were our Bible it has to be said in a lot of ways although we were able to take some things further than the Beatles because we had better technology and we had the benefit of their experience. But the Beatles just did so many things right.''

Brian May: [Brian was asked about trademark chord sequence at ends of songs - "use of the E flat chord after the G before the rousing finale [God Save The Queen, Buckingham Palace roof].... the end of Too Much Love - and there are comparisons between that and D going to B flat (One Vision, Great Pretender etc...)" :

''Yes, that little ending sequence is a quirk of mine, I suppose. Maybe it comes from a reluctance to let things go! You're right, it was me who put it into One Vision. And a few other things besides. But I didn't invent it. Well, I suppose I invented my own special version of it, but it certainly goes back quite a long way in essence. If you listen to The Beatles' song "With A Little Help From My Friends", you'll hear something very similar - and actually I think McCartney has it written in his Genes too - because the end of the song proper in "Hello Goodbye" has the same feature. That's before they start the "Hey-La Hey Lo Ha" coda section.''



ABBA:

''[The Beatles were] absolutely by far the most influential and most important band [for myself and Benny Andersson]. It was the idea that two people in a group could write their own songs and we thought, if they can do it, why can't we? That changed everything for us. Before the Beatles, songwriters were very anonymous people and nobody paid any attention to them.''

''We tried to emulate what The Beatles had done, which was to develop from album to album… to take another step and be more daring.''



Ryan Ross (Panic At The Disco): 'It's great that he's (Paul McCartney) being honoured once again because he is my favourite songwriter of all time.'


Gilbert O'Sullivan:

On his single, "Ooh Wakka Do Wakka Day" (1972) : "McCartney's influence led me back to music hall, in the same way some of Ray Davies's songs have."

From the album, Himself (1971):

On "If I Don't Get You Back Again": "... it's a lovely melody, and I love counter melodies. That's an art form a few of us do. McCartney was the first one I heard do that."

On "Doing the Best That I Can": "Beatle-influenced, McCartney-esque track, odd chord sequence. You look for those kinds of things, but sometimes they just happen. It's nice though when it does".


Andrew Liles:

‘‘Revolver’ is arguably the first mainstream pop album to explore esoteric themes, ‘exotic’ instrumentation and use the studio as a tool to create otherworldly unimagined sounds. It’s an album that rewrote the rules and laid the foundations for audioscopic cosmonauts like myself to venture deeper into uncharted universes of sound. We have the fab five (how can we forget George Martin) to thank for opening new possibilities and new dimensions. Without their innovation the world of sound would be a lot less colourful.
Surrender to the void, turn off your mind, relax and float down stream with my impossibly elongated, psychedelic, smokeathonic adaptation of Tomorrow Never Knows.’’


Nick Baines of Kaiser Chiefs : 'I love Paul McCartney, he is the best and he has inspired me and the band and everybody a lot.'


Tom Chaplin of Keane: 'Without the Beatles, we probably wouldn't be sitting here. They are the most influential rock band in the history of rock and roll. Paul McCartney is obviously a huge part of that.'


Corey Taylor of Slipknot (on The Beatles) : 'That's songwriting 101. I mean that's religion.'


Rob Trujillo of Metallica: 'Honouring Paul McCartney is the greatest thing. Thank God that you are a bass player Paul.'


Cheap Trick:

For Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick) and Robert Cray it was the most potent guitar advert possible:

[It] was the beginning. That got me to learn how to play the guitar. The girls were screaming at The Beatles, as an 11/12 year old kid, by the time I got the guitar, I wanted that, too.


Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) says
I remember exactly where I was sitting. It was amazing. It was like the axis shifted ... It was kind of like an alien invasion.


Suede:

''Because'' : Chosen By: Mat Osman, Suede


Mat: “I really love ‘Because’. That’s just one of those pieces of music you hear and you think they almost created a whole genre and did it once and didn’t bother again.”


U2:

Bono: 'For someone who maked a living in rock and roll to be asked to say a few words about Paul McCartney is like asking a Catholic priest if he wouldn't mind stopping off in Rome to give an award to St. Peter. This is the man who invented my job. Now these MTV awards are great and glamourous occasions and it is wonderful to be in the room with so many great musicians; the great Kanye, Queen Beyonce, Grace Jones, The Killers, Kid Rock, so many talented and gifted people. But on behalf of all of the artists in this room I will tell you something I think we all suspect. Someday, when all of us are gone, 200 or 300 years from now, we sense, we fear, that our names will be forgotten. There is one person in this hall tonight who's songs we know will be here now and forever. His songs will be continued to be sung and heard and played as long as humans care about beauty and longing, heartbreak, perseverance, faith and mourning. There is one person in this hall tonight who's work is immortal. There is only one Paul McCartney.'


Nathan Watts (bass player):

“I did ‘Say Say Say’ with Michael Jackson at Hollywood Sound, and it was supposed to be a demo for Michael and Paul. Michael was the most incredible musical cat. He didn’t really tell me what to play on it, I just played the feel and Michael said ‘I like that, do that!’ And I thought that Paul McCartney was gonna overdub it, because he’s Paul McCartney. But when it got to Paul, he said he liked the feel so much he was leaving it the way it was. Now that was a compliment! That was the compliment of compliments man, because that’s Paul McCartney, one of the most melodic bass players ever in history. I mean, come on!” Nate sings Paul’s bass line from the Beatles song ‘Come Together’. “That’s classic, one of the most classic bass parts that’s ever been written, ever been played, you know what I mean?”





Richard M. Sherman (Disney Songwriter alongside his Brother Robert) :



''The people who I just admire the most in the whole popular music business [are] the Beatles. I just think the Beatles were an incredible, incredible, incredible group - talent in every direction. I loved them ... the songs they wrote will live forever. They sang so well, so beautifully, with emotion and feel. My God they were good songwriters.''






Pet Shop Boys:



Occasionally in interviews the Boys have said things that indicate that they themselves feel a sort of "artistic kinship," so to speak, with the earlier pair (Lennon/McCartney). (Perhaps not incidentally, Neil has said that the first album he ever bought was the Beatles' "White Album.") So it's not surprising that "Beatles connections" should turn up now and then in Pet Shop Boys songs:



Home And Dry: Toward the end Chris twice speaks the words "We're going home," which the Boys have acknowledged to be a tip of the hat to the Beatles' song "Two of Us," the refrain of which ends with those same words.

I Made My Excuses And Left: Neil's lyrics for this song were partly inspired by the story of John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, coming home one day to find John and Yoko sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring into each other's eyes. Almost immediately she realized that her marriage was over.

I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing: While the lyrics don't specifically relate to the Beatles in any way, this song is replete with "Beatles references." It was shortly after the release of VERY that Neil told an interviewer that what he and Chris were doing was akin to what Lennon and McCartney might have done if they'd had access to nineties musical technology back in the sixties. As if to underscore that very point, the single version of "Normally" (as opposed to the much sparser album version) was embellished with instrumental flourishes highly reminiscent of "psychedelic era" Beatles: droning tambouras, piccolo trumpets, and backwards percussion, yet all done with a decidedly "nineties flavor." And the video similarly hybridized 1967 and 1993, featuring Chris and Neil wearing "moptop" wigs and cavorting with twin go-go dancers against a backdrop of computer-generated psychedelia. In short, lyrical references were hardly necessary.

Luna Park: Chris has noted that the overall "sound" of this song was inspired by the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

Metamorphosis: The line "Somebody spoke and I went into a dream" is lifted directly from the Beatles classic "A Day in the Life."


Uncle Tupelo:

From a February 20, 2004 article in the San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jane Ganahl interview with "the minstrel of alt-country" Jay Farrar:

"Of the latest, 'Terroir Blues,' he notes, 'I was using two albums that I like, (Neil Young's) 'Tonight's the Night' and (the Beatles') 'Revolver,' as touchstones.'

“Jay had a head start on me and Jeff for sure,” says Heidorn. “I went to see them in eighth grade at a junior high dance, and they were playing the Stones, the Beatles, the Kinks, the Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello. “You could hear how these bands were influencing them,” says Byrne, who accompanied the band on a few short tours in the late ’80s. “But they really wanted to mix all those sounds with a base of traditional folk-country and distorted blues filtered through the British Invasion.''


Blur:

Graham Coxon:

Laid out neatly on the table are Coxon's chosen albums, and first up is Abbey Road by the Beatles:

"Out of habit, I always say Rubber Soul is my favourite Beatles album," he says. "I like the way it's recorded - you can hear microphone feedback, there are no effects and it sounds great. The most influential thing about all the Beatles' songs, for me, was that anything more or anything less would ruin them."

So why Abbey Road? "Because it came out in the year I was born - 1969. Also, they had got through their problems with The White Album and Let It Be and this was a really good goal after two deflections. What makes me think a lot about the Beatles, and English 1960s people in general, is the way they expressed a blackness and a soul in their singing.


Graham Nash:

''I first heard the Beatles first single*, Please Please Me, on an acetate in the offices of Dick James, a publisher of their music. It was an obvious smash hit record. Everyone knew it. Everyone.

The Beatles' album Please Please Me was incredible to listen to – new, fantastically energetic … up to this point long-playing records were basically a bunch of singles put out to capitalize on the success of the singles. But John realized that they could actually be a collection of music that made a statement, and after Please Please Me that's what they did. Of course it affected every band; the Beatles opened up the door and we all ran through it.

How could you not be affected by their energy and song writing abilities. They, and Bob Dylan, showed us the way to create music that meant something other than "moon, june" lyrics.''



The E Street Band:

February 9th, 1964, it all began for me. Suddenly, maybe there's hope for my life. Because I didn't fit in anywhere. And I was starting to get concerned! I didn't know that I could actually try and make a living out of doing this, make a career out of it.

This was the main event of my life. It was certainly the major event for many others, whether or not they knew it at the time. For me, it was no less dramatic than aliens landing on the planet.


Gene Simmons:

"I remember thinking they look weird. They were very small people by American standards, and they looked feminine. They didn't look Italian or Jewish or Greek or black. They didn't even look like hoodlums.

"[I started to think they were cool] because my mother thought they looked silly," Gene laughed to Bass Guitar magazine.

"They looked like what they sounded like. I was watching the music. I was listening with my eyes and I noticed the girls were screaming and that they were playing their own instruments."

“I’ve been fascinated by the place ever since I heard the Beatles,” Simmons told the Liverpool Echo when he arrived in 2010. “There is no way I’d be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for the Beatles. I was watching The Ed Sullivan Show and I saw them. Those skinny little boys, kind of androgynous, with long hair like girls. It blew me away that these four boys in the middle of nowhere could make that music. Then they spoke and I thought, ‘What are they talking like?’ We had never heard the Liverpool accent before.

“I thought that all British people spoke like the Queen. The only time you heard a British accent was when they played the Nazi in war films.

“Overnight I became an Anglophile,” Simmons continued. “I read up on the Beatles, who they were, where they were from. I learnt about Liverpool, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Ringo’s band, and the Quarrymen and all that. I read up on everything they did in the news. I followed their failures and their successes. The Beatles were a band, of course, and I loved their music. But they were also a cultural force that made it OK to be different.”

''I’m a child of The Beatles. They created this sort of hybrid white version of American music. They could do it all - Little Richard, country, pop, soul, psychedelia. They had no rules. That had a major effect on me.''

''The Beatles were a big slice of our lives, and [Across The Universe] is one of the most hauntingly lilting songs I’ve ever heard. I don’t know what it means to this day, but I don’t care. The song works as word imagery. Lennon sings this half-tone movement back and forth repeatedly; it’s like the two-note theme from Jaws. Lennon did that in a lot in his songs, including I Am The Walrus. It’s very unusual, but effective.''

 

The Police:

Are you a big fan of the Beatles?

''Isn't everyone? Andy Summers

I was drawn to [Strawberry Fields Forever] in particular because it’s dark and a bit more twisted. Plus they had that fascinating backwards thing going around in it. And the Lennon vocal gets me every time. McCartney wrote the up, ingratiating melodies while Lennon usually wrote f***ed up and down. So even though this is sort of an avant-garde pop piece, Lennon brings an aspect of the blues to it. ''

Sting: ''I recently sent Paul McCartney a letter thanking him for making it possible for us to have careers as musicians. Especially those of us who have to write and sing in counterpoint to our bass lines! [Love Me Do] was the first Beatles song we heard in England. It was 1962, I was about 10, and I was at the swimming baths with my mates. Suddenly this came over the sound system, and we all just stopped, mesmerised. It was a simple tune, two chords, harmonica, but there was this incredible feeling and energy. Nothing was ever the same.''


Fleetwood Mac:

Q: Several critics compared the record to The Beatles "White Album."

LINDSEY: I was real happy about that. Any comparison to The Beatles is a compliment in my book.

Q: Actually though, I felt some of that comparison was negative, because it implied—just as similar criticism of the "White Album" implied—that on Tusk we weren’t hearing much of Fleetwood Mac, but rather Lindsey Buckingham fronting a band for his songs, Stevie Nicks fronting a band for hers, and so on.

LINDSEY: I think the "White Album" is one of the most exciting and divergent albums The Beatles ever made. By far, Revolver is probably one of their best albums in most people’s opinions, but even then it was Paul doing Paul’s music and John doing John’s with support from the others. They’d been doing that since Rubber Soul, yet no one criticized those albums for that.


Stevie Nicks on The Beatles :

'I was blasted by them, dead. I walked around singing 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' for a week. I knew something big had happened. I knew something had come into my life; I was what, sixteen? I was already writing songs, and I bought the record and started learning them, because they were simple enough that I could play them on guitar. And I started learning them, and the harmonies. I knew that when we saw that TV show, we had witnessed something that was gonna change our lives.''

In 2007, Amazon did this thing where they asked artists to choose a love song which moved them, etc.

Lindsey's choice? No Reply.

Lindsey says, "Romance need not be defined only by the illusions it creates. In 'No Reply,' penned by John Lennon, a man confronts his lover with her infidelities while she denies them. Although his proof is clear, he seeks only to reestablish trust, which elevates 'No Reply' from a song of alienation to one of forgiveness and romantic faith."

''When you think about the Beatles, it’s usually about the sophisticated way they used pop elements and whatever they were being turned on to by George Martin to do things that hadn’t been done before. [I Saw Her Standing There] is just a standard three chord song, but it’s a rock and roll classic. It still explodes at you when you hear it today. There’s even a terrific live version on [Anthology 1] that made me go, “My God, these guys could really play." It represents in its earliest and most naïve incarnation all the buoyancy the Beatles had to offer.''


David Bazan:

People that claim to value music but won't actually spend money on music are liars. If I had to pay a thousand dollars for The White Album now, having heard it and knowing what it's like, I would save up the money and buy it because it's a very, very important record.


Badfinger:

Joey Molland:

“I simply looked at The Beatles as having become the absolute greatest four-piece rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. To this day, I’ve never heard anybody better than them, doing any kind of song. And I haven’t heard singers like those guys. I haven’t heard anyone sing harmony like that. I just never heard anybody better. And that’s what’s enthralling to me about The Beatles — their music, and the life and fire in it. They kept it all alive and burning.”


Aerosmith:

Steven Tylyer :

“‘Eleanor Rigby’ has always been a favorite. There’s something really haunting about it.”

For Joe Perry (Aerosmith) the experience was
... akin to a national holiday … I wasn’t prepared by how powerful and totally mesmerizing they were to watch. It changed me completely. I knew something was different in the world that night. Next day at school, the Beatles were all anybody could talk about.


Taylor Swift:


'Paul McCartney is my hero. He and Emmylou are people who have maintained careers of longevity and also grace. They've taken chances, but they've also been the same artist for their entire careers."

'Paul writes about his life and the things he’s learned about love in such a brilliantly simple way. I feel as if I’ve been let into his heart and his mind. I discovered his music on my own as a child, then bought all of the Beatles and Paul McCartney tapes and CDs I could find.

When I met him backstage at his 2010 concert in Nashville, I remember being excited that he was such a kind person. Seeing him sing “Blackbird” live will always be a moment I won’t forget. His music makes me feel there’s more good in the world than we think, and maybe love can really exist in a pure form. And isn’t that what we want to feel when we listen to music? To see Paul doing what he’s doing at 69 is so inspiring. He’s out there continuing to make his fans so happy. Any musician could only dream of a legacy like that.''


Joe Walsh:

“I took one look on The Ed Sullivan Show and it was, ‘**** school. This makes it! I memorized every Beatles song and went to Shea Stadium and screamed right along with all those chicks,” Walsh told Rolling Stone. “My parents still have a picture of me all slicked up, with a collarless Beatles jacket and Beatles boots, playing at the prom.”


Nancy Wilson, Heart:


Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart have said they never wanted to be the girlfriends of the Beatles or the wives of the Beatles – they wanted to be the Beatles. “The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me the first time we saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Nancy told Believer. “There’d been so much anticipation and hype about the Beatles that it was a huge event, like the lunar landing: that was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians. I was seven or eight at the time.

“They were really pushing hard against the morality of the times. That might seem funny to say now, since it was in their early days and they were still wearing suits. But the sexuality was bursting out of the seams. They had crazy long hair. They seemed to us then like the punks seemed to the next generation – way out of the box for the time… Right away we started doing air guitar shows in the living room, faking English accents, and studying all the fanzines… Luckily, our parents were both musical and supportive about us getting into music. So it didn’t take all the begging in the world to convince them we had to have guitars. We taught ourselves to play off the Beatles’ albums and the trusty old Mel Bay chord book. Pretty soon we knew every Brit pop song that was out.”


Green Day:

''A lot of punk rock bands are always trying to be so hard all of the time, macho brutality doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good songwriter. I think that some of the Beatles’ songs are way more punk rock than most punk songs written today. Like the song Yesterday. It’s such a bittersweet song. It’s very important for me to have a message that goes along with the writing. So...what comes to mind for me is a song like The Ballad of John & Yoko, where [Lennon] had this really nice sounding song. But the lyrics penetrate like a knife. “They’re gonna crucify me…” That’s kind of nice way — nice, I mean, in an oxymoronic sense – to put forward something you want to attack.''


''There are Beatles songs that are way more punk rock than anything the Circle Jerks or Bad Religion ever put out. That guitar figure at the beginning [of In My Life] introduces the song perfectly. Plus the harmonies and backup playing are terrific. John Lennon is analysing his past, all the people that came in and out of his life. He’s sort of bitter, but he’s trying to be levelheaded about it. I can imagine him singing it and having a very sly smile on his face. It’s almost like he’s sincerely bidding someone farewell - but telling them to f*** off at the same time.''


Billy Joel:


One of Billy Joel’s most requested songs is Theme From an Italian Restaurant, a medley of three individual pieces that began as one, The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie. “Then I wrote the other pieces either prior to that or after that,” Joel explained to The Republican. “It was kind of based on side two of Abbey Road. I think the Beatles all came in with individual song fragments and George Martin helped them sew it all together. It’s looked on now as a work of genius but I said, ‘I know what happened. They didn’t finish the songs, they didn’t feel like it, and George Martin said, ‘Why don’t we do this?’ and then they called it Golden Slumbers.”

The Beatles inspired Joel to become a musician during an era of clean-cut teen idols. “The single biggest moment that I can remember being galvanized into wanting to be a musician for life was seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show,” Joel told Spinner.

“Hollywood tried to take control of rock ‘n’ roll… they tried to pretty it up, they tried to sanitize it. So they come out with Frankie Avalon and Fabian and Bobby Rydell… and all of a sudden there’s this band with hair like girls… and they played their own instruments and they wrote their own songs. And they didn’t look like Fabian, they looked like these working class kids like we all knew… and I said at that moment, I said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to do that. I want to be like those guys.’”

''....the single biggest moment that I can remember being galvanized into wanting to be a musician for life ... all of a sudden there’s this band, and they played their own instruments and they wrote their own songs, they looked like working class kids and I said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to be like those guys.’ That one performance changed my life. Up to that moment I'd never considered playing rock as a career.''


Mamas And Papas:

“We were trying to get out of folk music and into whatever this was that was coming out of Britain. I don’t think we even called it the British Invasion at that point,” Michelle Phillips told Retrosellers.

“The first night we ever took acid we heard our first Beatles album. It was such an eye opener. We wanted to do commercial music but we just didn’t know exactly what it was. And it wasn’t folk anymore.

“We knew we had to get out of folk music as it was dying a quick death but when we listened to that Beatles album, and it wasn’t the first Beatles album – I don’t know where we were when the first Beatles album came out. It was the second Beatles album and our jaws just dropped and I remember Denny was the one who said, ‘Now, we wanna be doing more stuff like this.’”


The Bee Gees:

“In those days, I used to think like Sinatra and Elvis and all of them used to write their own songs and do their own thing,” said Maurice. “You never knew what label the pop people were on. You never knew who produced them. You never knew the names of the people in the band.”

“They were a great influence to us because they were songwriters, they broke a lot of rules and they created an artistic credibility in the pop music business, which was never there before,” added Robin. “The Beatles broke those walls down and started selling a lot of albums, which pop artists didn’t do before them… When the Beatles came on they changed all that. And pop music started.”


Joni Mitchell:

Like Brian Wilson, Mitchell was influenced by the Beatles’ 1965 masterpiece, Rubber Soul. That year the Canadian folk singer had moved to the United States, where her music evolved to include rock ‘n’ roll and jazz elements. “Rubber Soul was the Beatle album I played over and over,” Mitchell related in Lava. “I think they were discovering Dylan, and the songs often had an acoustic feel. I used to sing [Norwegian Wood] in my coffeehouse days in Detroit before I started writing for myself.

“The whole scenario has this whimsical, charmingly wry quality with a bit of a dark undertone. I’d sing it to put some levity in my set. I got a kick out of throwing it in there amongst all these tragic English folk ballads.”


Roger McGuinn:

Early on the Byrds went to see A Hard Day’s Night, a kind of reconnaissance trip,” McGuinn recalled in Modern Guitars. “And we took notes on what the Beatles were playing and bought instruments like they had. We got a Gretsch Country Gentleman and the Rick.

“I got really jazzed by the Beatles. I loved what they were doing… I imagined that they were more folk-oriented than they really were. I thought they were probably more a folk band that could play bluegrass banjo and mandolin, but they chose to do pop music because it was more commercial. Turned out not to be the case. But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there. To the point where a guy put out a sign outside that said, ‘Beatle Imitations.’ I was kind of put off by that.”


Bon Jovi:

And Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi)
One of my earliest memories was sitting cross-legged on the floor … and watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was five years old and I remember thinking, 'Wow! That's what I want to do.' I always knew I wanted to be a rock star, and The Beatles set that in motion. They were the most incredible thing I ever saw. I couldn't put it into any kind of historical context at the time … but I knew, even at that young age … that I was witnessing something truly life-changing. And not just for me, but for everybody as well.





Tom Petty:

The minute I saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show – and it's true of thousands of guys - there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you're a self-contained unit. And you make the music. … I really saw in The Beatles that here's something I could do.



Within weeks, you could drive through literally any neighbourhood in Gainesville and you would hear the strains of garage bands playing ... I mean everywhere. And I'd say by a year from that time, Gainesville probably had 50 bands.


Lynyrd Skynyrd:

Gary Rossington:

''This incredible music [A Day In The Life] just overwhelmed us. When it came to the middle of the song, where the orchestra rises, it sounded like a plane taking off in the room. It just killed us. And when it ended with that incredible chord, we all sat there stunned.

For me [While My Guitar Gently Weeps] was the song of the century. This may sound naïve now, but the Beatles were like gods to me as a kid. Not literally, of course, but it was like they were more than human in some way. This was the point where they embraced heavy blues-based guitar, which made musicians realise you could write modern songs with cool chords that weren't necessarily blues-based and still stick some heavy guitar in them. There were no credits on this album, so I didn't even know it was Clapton for a few weeks, and Eric literally makes his guitar weep at the end. Every guitar player loves this song – because every guitar player has a tear-stained guitar.''


John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers):

''The Beatles showed us that four people could be one, as perfectly balanced as the four elements. The macrocosm and the microcosm. All things as one.''



Joe Elliott (Def Leppard):

''The Beatles gave us something we wouldn't have otherwise had because they spent so long in the studio with Lennon and McCartney no doubt saying, 'What does that machine do? What happens if we turn it upside down?'. When Leppard were in the studio with Mutt Lange we said, 'we wouldn't have been able to do this if The Beatles hadn't done it first'. They showed everybody the way. Our production techniques were influenced by what they were doing on Sgt. Pepper, the White Album... That influenced us more than us trying to rip off their chord structures.''


Angus Young (AC/DC):

''Even a great band like the Beatles goes off on a detour and does a bit of cabaret for awhile. But you’ll find that the truly great ones always come back to playing real rock and roll, I thought [Abbey Road] got a bit glossed over at the time it was released. But those bluesy fills and huge riffs [in I Want You (She’s So Heavy)] showed they were still terrific rockers right to the end. ''


Eddie Van Halen:

''That whole [Abbey Road] album takes you for a ride. And I Want You (She’s So Heavy) takes you for a ride within that ride. Those monster riffs seem to go on forever and then suddenly drop you off a cliff. Lennon’s vocals are just so passionate. He hated his voice, as Hendrix hated his. I think the fact that they weren’t typical singers made them even more expressive. A lot of trained singers have less impact than someone who’s just flying by the seat of his or her pants.''


George Thorogood:

[I'm Down] absolutely terrifies me. It's as good as anything Little Richard ever did. This is what they probably sounded like in Hamburg before they got into writing their own material. It's almost as if they were saying, “See, we're the greatest rock and roll band as performers too, not just the greatest songwriters”

Funnily enough, I got into [Elmore James] because of The Beatles. Remember that moment in the song For You Blue where George Harrison goes, 'Elmore James got nothin' on this baby!'? That made me say, 'Wow, so there's somebody The Beatles think is as heavy as The Beatles, huh? OK, I'll check him out.'

The Beatles represented freedom to me, they had all the freedom in the world...they were young, they were good-looking, they were talented, they were rich, they were famous...they had it all.


Joe Satriani:

[Across The Universe is] such a beautiful song, and it captures the naiveté of the time. Lennon was so talented in that he could be the funniest, the snidest, and yet ultimately the most poignant guy in the band. Often you find that when the joker in the crowd finally says something serious, it’s far more profound than what the so-called "serious" guys come up with.

John Lennon's fuzzed out guitar playing on the Revolution single is one of my favourite guitar performances. He had a raw and muscular way of playing with distortion that I always found to be unique. David Bowie's Fame features John playing in that way, and it makes the track swing for me.

His rhythm guitar playing was always spot on, with lots of feel and groove. His knowledge of chords and how to use harmony creatively was evident throughout both The Beatles catalogue and his own. These days ‘Lennonesque’ is a term one could use to describe how using diminished and augmented chords to bring a chord sequence to a higher level. All in all, John Lennon was really a superb player.


Megadeth:

''My oldest sister's name is Michelle, so I was curious about [the song Michelle]. And as soon as they started singing in French I was hooked. Plus the arrangement of the french horn part at the end is so passionate.

But what I learned from the Beatles was how to move the root a half or full step while keeping the rest of the chord suspended, which is really cool. We do that quite a lot. They also used a lot of 7th chords, whether they were major, minor or augmented, and I found that fascinating.

Listen to the White Album, songs like Cry Baby Cry, Rocky Raccoon and Dear Prudence, and you'll hear them hold the chord while moving the root.''


Richard Thompson:

''[Taxman is] my favourite Beatles track – I just love the sounds on it. You could strive forever to get that fantastic guitar tone, which is probably some crappy old Epiphone Casino run through who knows what. But what a fabulous sound and performance. The economy and tightness of it is amazing. The bass line is brilliant, and McCartney also does the guitar solo, which is like Hendrix crossed with a bit of Indian raga. He found something really unique there. ''





Chris Ballew (The Presidents Of The United States Of America):



''[My biggest songwriting influence is] The Beatles. Totally. I grew up with the Beatles. From the time I was two until I was about 14 or 15, I didn't even know there was another band in the world besides the Beatles. I'd save up my allowance every month and go get another record for $4.97 at Budget Tapes and Records. I got them all and cycled around in them for about 10 years. Nothing [else]. Until I got into Nazareth and Blue Oyster Cult. I went right from the Beatles to schlock rock.

The Presidents are noted for including mashed up Beatles quotes and parodies into their live sets

Originally [Feather Pluckin'] was just an excuse to play with a phase shifter. Then it became kind of a Beatles thing as it progressed. Actually, we were playing around with that in our practice space, and somebody started singing “I've Got A Feeling” over it.''






Guns And Roses:

Duff McKagan:


''I remember being captivated by Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The picture on the cover is what got my attention – the marching-band uniforms, all the faces. But then I started listening to the music. I listened to Lovely Rita over and over, fascinated with the way the words sounded, the exotic cadence. I was amazed how the lyrics managed to paint a picture in my mind. I listened to that song so many times that I even convinced myself that I had written it – for a girl I had a crush on in my kindergarten class. The music had the ability to conjure images in my head and help me drown out the tension and noise I was trying to avoid at my house.

The first song I learned how to play was the Beatles' Birthday. Your first song always remains a musical touchstone and this one not only taught me finger dexterity, but also included the rudiments of the whole blues major scale, a scale that I would use and use again in my later career in Guns N' Roses.''


Lemmy (Motorhead):

''[I Saw Her Standing There] was the first track on their first album. Paul counted them in with 1,2,3,4, - a great introduction to the greatest rock band of all time. Nobody even comes into the same planetary system in terms of songwriting and presentation, They never repeated themselves, they kept going from strength to strength.

Liverpool was only 60 miles from where I grew up in Wales, and lots of girls would come down from there for holidays … this one girl wrote ‘Beatles’ all over my wall, and I asked who they were. She said they were this incredible new band in Liverpool. So I hitch-hiked up there - this was late 1961- and saw them play a number of times at the Cavern. And I can tell you the intensity and excitement everybody felt a couple of years later was already happening ... A magic time.''


Chris Cornell (Soundgarden):

''Before I got into songwriting, the Beatles had the biggest impact on me musically. That had to do with how young I was, and getting into their whole catalog at the same time. I had stolen a stack of Beatles vinyl that covered their whole career. Two of the records were those ‘best of’ era compilations — those double record sets where one was red and one was blue.

I listened to it all but I gravitated toward the later stuff. Even though I was 9 years old, and had no way of knowing, it was influential in every way as a songwriter and as a singer. Essentially everyone in that band sang at some point. I didn’t know who was who, or if there even was a primary singer, and that had an impact on me. I’ve always approached singing songs in the studio in terms of what is going to sound the best texturally. I’ve never been too worried about having my own specific style as I have in singing a style that’s appropriate to the song. That’s where my range comes from. I really wanted it to sound a certain way, but wanted it to sound, in a certain sense, like a fictional character who is the narrator singing this song.

And in terms of production, those albums influenced me hugely and it took me years to understand that I was doing things a certain way because I loved the way they sound on Beatles records. Sounds and textures and panning and funny, dramatic mixes — what would normally be an inconsequential part where someone sang, or a triangle or something that would come from nowhere, and be the loudest part and then kind of disappear awkwardly. Because it was the Beatles, you didn’t question it. All of that had a huge effect on me.

It wasn’t like the story that I hear a lot of times, where some kid is sitting in his bedroom and he hears KISS for the first time, picks up a guitar and becomes Slash. I didn’t have that moment. I never thought that I would be capable of doing something like that. I was discovering that music would be important in my life as a listener and as a fan.''


Phish:

Trey Anastasio:

''My parents had a pretty good record collection, and they used to give me albums to listen to on my little record player. I got [The White Album] from them in about fourth grade, and I played it until I wore through the grooves. It's so universal, and as I get older and come back to it, it's better than ever. Over the years my favourite song changes, however. In those days I liked Rocky Raccoon and Ob La Di, Ob La Da. Now I really like Long, Long, Long,...Who knows what my favourite will be next year? ''


Ozzy Osbourne:

''John Lennon was my God ... Lennon knew how to be aggressive with a great melody, and I find that's something that's lacking in a lot of current music: it's just aggression; where's the f***** melody? Lennon could deliver the heaviest message with a terrific melody. And at the same time he'd paint this abstract, Salvador Dali picture in your head.

They did every form of music and made it their own. I owe my career to the Beatles. I wanted that excitement – they gave me a reason to carry on with my life...They had as much impact as World War II, but in a positive way. I remember feeling so good about buying [Strawberry Fields Forever]. It somehow made me feel good about myself. My confidence went up. The Beatles gave me hope.

Everybody knows what an incredible Beatles fan I am by now! But they influenced everybody, one way or another... If I ever get some terminal disease, just give me my medication, put on any Beatles album and just let me die like a f***** Viking. That's my last request. ''


Primus (Les Claypool):

'' My mom … bought Abbey Road, and I wore that sucker out on my little phonograph as a kid. I used to put it on before I went to bed and would fall asleep listening to it. [I Want You (She's So Heavy) is] the last song on the first side, and it's very moody, with amazing guitar tones and a nice little bass groove. One night, I'm drifting off and the song keeps going on and on at the end, making storm noises and things. It freaked me out! I was a little kid and I got scared. I actually had to jump up and turn it off because I thought the devil had possessed my turntable.''


Boo Radleys (Martin Carr):

"There's never been a time when they haven't been a part of my life," songwriter/guitarist, Martin Carr, told Melody Maker in 1994.


Oasis:

"It's beyond an obsession. It's an ideal for living. I don't even know how to justify it to myself. With every song that I write, I compare it to The Beatles," Noel Gallagher told Q in 1996.


Radiohead:

Thom Yorke: [Paranoid Android was written] in three different sections at different times in different states of mind, and then put together. Our working model for it was Happiness Is A Warm Gun. Walked into the rehearsal room one day, 'Well you know Happiness Is A Warm Gun, you know that's like three songs put together? Let's do that.' And I didn't obviously think it was going to work, until we put it together finally, which was a f***ing shock”

Colin Greenwood: [We had become interested in] brutal editing, where you just splice bits of music together, like the Beatles on Magical Mystery Tour or whatever.

Thom Yorke: What can you say about the IMF, or politicians? Or people selling arms to African countries, employing slave labour or whatever. What can you say? You just write down “Cattle prods and the IMF' and people who know, know. I can't express it any clearer than that, I don't know how to yet, I'm stuck. That's how I feel about A Day In The Life, Lennon was obviously stuck and said, 'I'm going to write a song because I've got to get this down' and it's everything he didn't say by doing that...That was what I dreamed of doing on [OK Computer]



Elvis Costello:

''I first heard of the Beatles when I was nine years old. I spent most of
my holidays on Merseyside then, and a local girl gave me a bad
publicity shot of them with their names scrawled on the back. This was
1962 or '63, before they came to America. The photo was badly lit, and
they didn't quite have their look down; Ringo had his hair slightly
swept back, as if he wasn't quite sold on the Beatles haircut yet. I
didn't care about that; they were the band for me. The funny thing is
that parents and all their friends from Liverpool were also curious and
proud about this local group. Prior to that, the people in show
business from the north of England had all been comedians. Come to
think of it, the Beatles recorded for Parlophone, which was a comedy
label.

I was exactly the right age to be hit by them full on. My experience --
seizing on every picture, saving money for singles and EPs, catching
them on a local news show -- was repeated over and over again around
the world. It was the first time anything like this had happened on
this scale. But it wasn't just about the numbers; Michael Jackson can
sell records until the end of time, but he'll never matter to people as
much as the Beatles did.

Every record was a shock when it came out. Compared to rabid R&B
evangelists like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived sounding like
nothing else. They had already absorbed Buddy Holly, the Everly
Brothers and Chuck Berry, but they were also writing their own songs.
They made writing your own material expected, rather than exceptional.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney were exceptional songwriters; McCartney
was, and is, a truly virtuoso musician; George Harrison wasn't the kind
of guitar player who tore off wild, unpredictable solos, but you can
sing the melodies of nearly all of his breaks. Most important, they
always fit right into the arrangement. Ringo Starr played the drums
with an incredibly unique feel that nobody can really copy, although
many fine drummers have tried and failed. Most of all, John and Paul
were fantastic singers.

Lennon, McCartney and Harrison had stunningly high standards as
writers. Imagine releasing a song like "Ask Me Why" or "Things We Said
Today" as a B side. They made such fantastic records as "Paperback
Writer" b/w "Rain" or "Penny Lane" b/w "Strawberry Fields Forever" and
only put them out as singles. These records were events, and not just
advance notice of an album release.

Then they started to really grow up. Simple love lyrics to adult
stories like "Norwegian Wood," which spoke of the sour side of love,
and on to bigger ideas than you would expect to find in catchy pop
lyrics.

They were pretty much the first group to mess with the aural
perspective of their recordings and have it be more than just a
gimmick. Brilliant engineers at Abbey Road Studios like Geoff Emerick
invented techniques that we now take for granted in response to the
group's imagination. Before the Beatles, you had guys in lab coats
doing recording experiments in the Fifties, but you didn't have rockers
deliberately putting things out of balance, like a quiet vocal in front
of a loud track on "Strawberry Fields Forever." You can't exaggerate
the license that this gave to everyone from Motown to Jimi Hendrix.

My absolute favorite albums are Rubber Soul and Revolver . On both
records you can hear references to other music -- R&B, Dylan,
psychedelia -- but it's not done in a way that is obvious or dates the
records. When you picked up Revolver , you knew it was something
different. Heck, they are wearing sunglasses indoors in the picture on
the back of the cover and not even looking at the camera . . . and the
music was so strange and yet so vivid. If I had to pick a favorite song
from those albums, it would be "And Your Bird Can Sing" . . . no,
"Girl" . . . no, "For No One" . . . and so on, and so on. . . .

Their breakup album, Let It Be , contains songs both gorgeous and
jagged. I suppose ambition and human frailty creep into every group,
but they managed to deliver some incredible performances. I remember
going to Leicester Square and seeing the film of Let It Be in 1970. I
left with a melancholy feeling.

The word Beatlesque has been in the dictionary for a while now. I can
hear them in the Prince album Around the World in a Day ; in Ron
Sexsmith's tunes; in Harry Nilsson's melodies. You can hear that Kurt
Cobain listened to the Beatles and mixed them in with punk and metal in
some of his songs. You probably wouldn't be listening to the ambition
of the latest OutKast record if the Beatles hadn't made the White Album
into a double LP!

I've co-written some songs with Paul McCartney and performed with him
in concert on two occasions. In 1999, a little time after Linda
McCartney's death, Paul did the Concert for Linda, organized by
Chrissie Hynde. During the rehearsal, I was singing harmony on a Ricky
Nelson song, and Paul called out the next tune: "All My Loving." I
said, "Do you want me to take the harmony line the second time round?"
And he said, "Yeah, give it a try." I'd only had thirty-five years to
learn the part. It was a very poignant performance, witnessed only by
the crew and other artists on the bill.

At the show, it was very different. The second he sang the opening
lines -- "Close your eyes, and I'll kiss you" -- the crowd's reaction
was so intense that it all but drowned the song out. It was very
thrilling but also rather disconcerting. Perhaps I understood in that
moment one of the reasons why the Beatles had to stop performing. The
songs weren't theirs anymore. They were everybody's.''



About the specific influence of ''Tomorrow Never Knows" on modern music:

”Tomorrow Never Knows’ is one of those songs that’s in the DNA of so much going on these days that it’s hard to know where to start,” said DJ Spooky, electronic music virtuoso and author of Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. “Its tape collage alone makes it one of the first tracks to use sampling really successfully. I also think that Brian Eno’s idea of the studio-as-instrument comes from this kind of recording.”

“‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is the ultimate future moment for The Beatles,” Autolux guitarist Greg Edwards told Wired.com last year, before the band’s drummer, Carla Azar, revised the song with The Kills’ Allison Mosshart for Zack Snyder’s techno-fantasy film flop Sucker Punch. “That song basically transcends time. It still lands years ahead of us, no matter when we hear it.”

The song exerts widespread influence decades after its recording, said DJ Spooky, who cataloged a star-studded list of artists who have used the song in their own music or generally been shaped by its sound.

‘When I made my first tape loops, man was it a buzz!’

“Flaming Lips? Check,” he said. “Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head? Check. Anything from Radiohead? Check. Sonic Youth? A Tribe Called Quest? Check. The song has one of those kind of cinematic breakdowns that artists like Danger Mouse and David Lynch could check out again and again. The only thing that the record didn’t affect was Jamaican dub, but the Jamaican scene was smoking something different than John Lennon’s LSD trips, so that’s another story.”