What competitive bands or musicians did John Lennon admire

He seemed up on Neil Young.. unlike McCartney he was never vocal about Hendrix but he did nab his drummer for Dirty Mac. Oh, and by his Strawberry Fields demos you can tell he was into Nirvana.

 

He did say "I really miss that boy"

 

For sure he was a Bowie fan- in one his last interviews (the Peebles one?), he states that hearing the album “Heroes” inspired him to do his new album. The quote was something like “I was impressed that someone could make music from a late 30’s/40 year old person that was so good/relevant”.

 

Can’t find Lennon talking about Heroes album, but some high praise for Bowie here:

 

In 1970 he said he liked CCR. He also said he liked Dave Edmunds and Norman Greenbaum. I read that in Lennon Remembers.

 

He liked Lady Ga-Ga too because she didn't remind him of Yoko

 

He would have loved Oasis

 

Really?

 

He dug Genesis - Selling England By The Pound.

Later, he dug the Pretenders, Madness, Elvis Costello.

 

Ringo and Elton were much bigger than he was at that time, as was Bowie. He benefited from his appearances with them, and advanced his cause. That's the way the bizness works. All in the name of competition.

 

According to May Pang their "theme" song was Reminiscing by LRB. He loved it.

 

He cited The Pretenders and B-52s at the end of his life. He was also a big fan of David Bowie’s album “Heroes”. He said he would like to make something as good as that album.

 

Really thought "Mr Tamborine Man" and some of the early Byrds singles predated "Ticket To Ride" by a bit, but I see "TTR" was recorded Feb 1965 and released Apr 1965, right around the same time of the Byrds' debut single. I stand corrected.

 

Both The Beatles and The Byrds were likely influenced by The Searchers' version of "When You Walk in the Room" from September 1964 and The Kinks' own song "Tired of Waiting" from January 1965.

 

I doubt that is true (that Lennon was upset about Beatle Bones and Smoking Stones). I've seen people make that claim, but I've never seen anyone cite a source to back it up. There isn't any Lennon interview where he is negative about Beefheart. Lennon wasn't so thin-skinned that he couldn't handle being parodied. I bet he liked that song.

 

He sent a postcard to Ringo saying that he loved the disco of Blondie's Heart of glass.
Telling him that it's this kind of music they should all be doing.

 

n early interview he was asked someth

Can't imagine a Ringo cover of that.

 

Going by that quote, he may have enjoyed the TV show more than the music.

 

"I'm Only Sleeping" definitely sounds like a song influenced by the Kinks.

 

That's great !
John was perhaps ?easily? the most
unpredictable of the Beatles .. one
never knew just what might come
scrawling out from the point of his nib
or dancing off the tip of his tongue
one minute to the next. In one sense
it seemed as if he had a tapping finger
on the quickening pulse of the times in
which he lived; at the same time one was
left wondering if he hadn't single-handedly
invented the tinfoil helmet. It seems though
there may have been some serious intent
with regard to that postcard to Ringo, now
that you mention it - considered in the light
of what surfaced from the 'Milk & Honey'
sessions.

 

John's view of his competitors seemed to be mostly negative.

He was overawed and intimated by Dylan in the early days, but by the end of his life he was dismissive.

He told Joni Mitchell that her Court & Spark songs were 'the product of over-education'.

He disliked James Taylor, despite the fact that he was signed to Apple.

He was known to dislike Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and progressive rock generally (though he was supposedly encouraging to Ian Anderson on the Rock & Roll Circus shoot).

I think the appreciation for Elton John and David Bowie was strategic rather than genuine. He told Bowie that what he was doing was just '50s rock and roll with lipstick on'. And though he seemed to have a friendship with Mr. Dwight, I wonder whether he genuinely liked his stuff? That Elton 'goldust' certainly helped John in 1974, when his career seemed to be flagging.

The impression I get is that he liked a little bit of this and a little bit of that but was rarely a fan of an artist's entire oeuvre.

Harry Nilsson seems to have been the only exception to that general rule - the one artist John was genuinely a fan of, as well as a friend to. Nilsson fans often regret that friendship - isn't John supposed to have played a part in the reduction of Harry's vocal range during the debauched Pussycats sessions?

That John was a fan of Nilsson gives the lie to the idea that 'you can't be a fan of someone who's younger than you.'

 

How High The Moon - Gloria Gaynor - big in the London clubs in the mid 70s.

 

He said T.Rex was a good band in 74 and said "buy a couple of his records, he's getting fat with worry" (74 was an era of very fast commercial decline for T.Rex and an ill-fated, poorly calculated attempt at breaking the US market).

(This comment makes total sense as John gained some weight in 65 although his obsession with it makes me wonder if he was dysmorphic).

It's funny because both Bowie and Bolan namechecked Lennon in their lyrics.

 

I have heard that Beefheart thought the "I'd love to turn you on" line was conceited and crass.

There is a story about Beefheart on the night Lennon died, before the news reports. He may have been in the studio. He stopped everyone around him and said that something was happening that was very very big.

 

I’ve read somewhere that Lennon thought Elton was a phenomenal singer and with Bernie, a great songwriter. Spoke of Chuck Berry as a poet, and was a big fan of singing artists from the Deep South like Authur Alexander. (Anna, go to him). Wouldn’t it have been interesting to see John dig back into his soul and Motown influences later in his career had he lived. (Just conjecture of course!)