What direction would rock have gone without The Beatles?

As Bill Kennedy himself said, "when I first heard the Beatles I'd already heard those harmonies done by the Everly Bros." - interestingly Kennedy, was already aware of UK rock n roll prior to Feb. '64... he'd been stationed in West Germany and seen the Brit bands and bought the 45s... he was first North American to record "Shakin' All Over," stealing the march on the Guess Who by a year... this is the other side of his debut single, recorded live at Rollerland in Feb. '64

 

Would have been regarded as a passing fad before pop, soul, folk and film soundtracks largely pushed it off the charts by the mid 60s.

 

I'll get my coat.

 

Psychedelics were happening regardless of any music scene.
It is an easy conjecture to make that some musician(s) would eventually emerge to create tripped out sounds and thus a "new wave."
The Beatles do deserve great credit for their visionary, exploratory daring in expanding Pop horizons

 

Without The Beatles history wouldn't actually have been that different. It's just a band. One band!

 

The Stones knew of and were working the fertile ground around Clarksdale, Mississippi.
They didn't need the Beatles .

 

Psychedelics were already readily available prior to The Beatles, the folk movement at the time was the conduit.

STones, Kiss, ac/dc, etc., all fun, but easily replaceable.

Metal, the pentatonic electric blues from which it derives was alive and well, no Beatles input needed.

 

W/out the Beatles, the Grateful Dead would have been HUGE with people following them around
from concert to concert.

 

I don't understand your point in this alternative (Beatle-less) history. Didn't the Ravens break up in 1962 - long before anyone in America knew of the Beatles existence? So, they had their chance and were probably gone from the music scene before the Beatles even auditioned for George Martin, let alone eventually landing in the US. And what exactly was the Ravens lasting influence?

 

Most of the things I was going to say have already been posted... However I'll still add my 2c worth.

IMHO the absence of the Beatles would have cause one major shift: Folk would have become the foundation for much of pop music, not Rock. Garage rockers and frat bands who wanted to make more money would have "gone Folk", leading to things like Rock-Folk and, eventually, Blues-Folk, Soul-Folk, and Country-Folk.

 

#535

 

It made Edgar Allan Poe into a household name...

 

Nothing would change.

 

You seem to be implying that the Beatles some how stymied the potential success of groups of Wild Bill and the Twiliters - a "but for the existence of the Beatles they could have ..." situation. Would you explain exactly how the fortunes of Wild Bill and the Twiliters were derailed by the Beatles.

Oh ... and thanks for posting that video. What movie is that clip from?

 

Bands like the Beach Boys, solo Dylan, the Supremes, and the Beatles were strictly into the music and 'got lucky' enough to makes lots of money from it.

All the British groups in 1963 saw the success that the Beatles were having in the UK and decided that that (and great music) was the goal; riches (or at least lots of fun) could be had going the guitar-rock-group route. In 1964, American musicians saw the same thing - riches (or at least lots of fun) could be had going the guitar-rock-group route. Dylan might never have 'gone electric' beyond novelty in the 60s if not for the Beatles.

Would there still be Blues, Folk, Rock & Roll, and R&B music scenes in the US and UK without the Beatles? Sure, but they would have played out differently and likely had less crossover - whereas in the musical climate in the wake of the Beatles those music forms all somehow merged in a progressive manner - it was 'in the air'.

So it really boils down to whether one believes there would still have been a bunch of twenty-something longhairs playing a loud raga-Blues guitar type Rock by 1967-1969 on both sides of the Atlantic, informed by ideas of 'revolution', personal songwriting, and fueled partly by the ingestion of pot/LSD and speed, hand-in-hand with a troubadour revival of acoustic sinner-saints - without the Beatles having ever occurred (and without any of them having an impact on their own; sorry, Ring...).

What are the odds? #374

 

Huh? Mike Love and Diana Ross were "were strictly into the music" and not interested in money? Is that what you meant to post?

 

One revolutionary and groundbreaking band who had that rare gift of being radically experimental and commercially accessible at the same time.

 

I think Jesus would have played a bigger role in peoples lives without the Beatles.
I'm not sure who will go first now, Beatles or Christianity. It's hard to imagine
it. They were alway there for me as long as I can remember.

 

So what?! There still would have been Miles Davis, The Velvet Underground, Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, Phil Spector, The Kinks, Neil Young and countless others.

 

No, my point is that in general this is the direction it was going regardless of the Beatles... American rock n roll was not revived due to the Brits as the historians have foisted on us... it was an ongoing concern... the Wailers and Sonics prove that point... and in regards to the Ravens specifically, Brassard left the business because of the Beatles... "We'd been playing blues and then it became expected we change to that Merseybeat garbage... I didn't wanna do that kinda music so I quit. Jimmy, Bobby and Marc were happy to adapt. That's why they did 'Heart So Cold' as the Thunderbolts. And they did the Sullivan show a few months after the Beatles. That was the Ravens without me and some horrible chick singer, Sandu Scott. They'd sold out to get on Sullivan." - same lineup on this song as on the above "Oobie Doobie Do"...

 

If the Beatles hadn’t existed, you’d have been able to count the number of threads on this forum on one hand...

 

well let's find out...

 

Similar direction, but without The Beatles.

Tim

 

Miles may have eventually fused jazz with rock without the Beatles, but it will always be a matter of conjecture whether the Stones and Kinks would have existed, or if they had, would they have had as high a profile? The Stones found massive success with nitty-gritty blues-based rock'n'roll, but their experiments with Baroque and folk forms like "As Tears Go By", "Lady Jane", "Ruby Tuesday", "Dandelion", and the sitar-graced "Paint It,Black" were profoundly influenced by the Beatles. As I stated, having enough experimentation to move the music forward while maintaining enough commercial appeal to make it widespread is a delicate balance and a rare gift that only a few could pull off. The Velvet Underground were groundbreaking and ultimately very highly influential over time, but during their early days, the VU, the Mothers, and other innovators were strictly underground cult artists. The Beatles and Dylan got away with their experiments with their commercial profiles unscathed (although Dylan faced some heavy opposition at first), but when the Stones and Beach Boys tried to majorly push the envelope (with Satanic Majesties and the aborted Smile, respectively), most of the fans didn't want to hear it. The music may well have evolved into more experimental territory without the Beatles, but it most likely would have been a slower evolution.

 

So the question really is, without George Martin, would the Beatles have simply been the Stones ( with a rock and roll and rockabilly orientation rather blues and r&b)?