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Taylor1
7 best Stones albums, The big 4, Tattoo You, and 2 others compare favorably in terms of song writing with the best 7 Beatles albums.The Beatles wrote lots of dreck .Half of the White Album is crap:BungalowBill, Glass Onion, Piggies, Happiness is a Warm Gun, Honey Pie, Revolution 9 Sexy Sadie,,Rocky Raccoon.Sgt Pepper has crap like Benefit of Mr Kite, Good Morning, WhenIm 64, Lovely Rita… There’s plenty of other crappy songs on their other albums like Your Mother Should Know, Run for Your Life, Maxwells Silver Hammer, For You Blue, Good Day Sunshine
Exactly-Beatle heads always tell me how “influential” they were and how they took music in so many different directions, ok great.I’m sure if you were doing acid in 1967 this was amazing stuff but it doesn’t hold up.
If the Beatles weren’t the first big English band they would be the Kinks.
When you bring out Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil, Midnight Rambler Jumpin Jack Flash etc it’s a complete wipeout in favor of The Stones.
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ironbelly
Technically, if you start with England's Newest Hitmakers, then you should put Introducing... The Beatles or Meet The Beatles! for comparison.
Otherwise the pair should be The Rolling Stones vs. Please Please Me.
I'm picking the US albums for the Stones and the UK albums for The Beatles as those are the most popular markets for them commercially.
Understandable that you do. However, as to the Stones, I as a European, who bought the Decca albums during the 60s, don't even know the US counterparts' contents, without looking at Album Talk threads. Even if I were to do so, I still would not at a personal level fully relate to those releases, and what they comprise.
So that makes me one of those, that will abstain from posting, maybe read some posts, others not, without looking at track listings. Not meant as an objection on my part, go ahead.
Edits: Correction of language error.
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LeonidP
of course, again its the Stones forum ... Stones would have the same disadvantage over in Beatles forums. That's like going to a Mets / Dodgers game in LA and saying no fair, too many Dodger fans.
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ironbelly
Technically, if you start with England's Newest Hitmakers, then you should put Introducing... The Beatles or Meet The Beatles! for comparison.
Otherwise the pair should be The Rolling Stones vs. Please Please Me.
I'm picking the US albums for the Stones and the UK albums for The Beatles as those are the most popular markets for them commercially.
Understandable that you do. However, as to the Stones, I as a European, who bought the Decca albums during the 60s, don't even know the US counterparts' contents, without looking at Album Talk threads. Even if I were to do so, I still would not at a personal level fully relate to those releases, and what they comprise.
So that makes me one of those, that will abstain from posting, maybe read some posts, others not, without looking at track listings. Not meant as an objection on my part, go ahead.
Edits: Correction of language error.
You can by all means compare the European releases on here!! No problem with that at all! I'd love to hear your opinion on those releases as I'm sure you've listened to those a lot more than I have!!
Again, it’s not fair to compare the Beatles and Stones songwriting at this juncture.Lennon and McCartney had been writing for 7 or 8 years by the time of their debut album.Wheras Mick and Keith maybe 6 months.And they came up with songs which weren’t r&b like AsTears Go By.I fail to hear great complexity in the Beatles music .Greatest vocals yes. But you fail to mention the importance of George Martin in creating their songs. Without him the songs and their harmonies are much less creative.Tim Rice said something like Jagger and Richards are amongst the greatest composers of the 2Otb centuryQuote
ash
Comparing the two toppermost of the poppermost bands debut LPs is tough for a number of reasons.
They are at completely different stages of development and playing very different music from each other. The Stones LP came a year after The Beatles debut and by the time the Stones LP was out, the Beatles were close to finishing their 3rd and best early period album, the entirely Lennon-McCartney composed A Hard Days Night which is the last of their “girl group with knobs on” trilogy.
Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away is given the Bo Diddley treatment and virtually every single track (bar Tell Me) could be characterised as a fairly standard (sometimes very exciting) 12 bar r ’n’ b cover. Interestingly, Buddy Holly and the Crickets were a massive influence on the Fab4 but they chose to record and release Words Of Love on their late 1964 4th LP, a much more subtle but equally worthy harmony and chiming-guitar Holly composition and this points to the essential differences between the two bands.
With the exception of Tell Me and You Can Make It If You Try, pretty much the whole LP (?) can be played using 3 chords but you couldn’t get through the first track on Please Please Me with such limitations…or the second or third…
Tell Me, the only significant original on the first Stones LP is popular with some fans and was a US hit despite the woefully out of tune and badly arranged backing vocals which would likely have led to the band having their contract ripped up if their producer was George Martin.
The Beatles show band may have had the waltz time A Waste Of Money cover for mums and dads but at least it varied the time signatures, pace and chord progressions on the album and only lasted 2.03. Tell Me outstays it’s welcome by at least that much and remains one of the worst Jagger-Richards originals of the 1960s. That Mick and Keith wrote Heart Of Stone so soon after is testimony to their rapid ability to learn, craftsmanship and quality.
Mick and Keith needed a lot more practice before they began regularly nailing the art of their songwriting - which was a very different art to the art of the Beatles songwriting. The (early) Beatles composed songs that had an emphasis on melody, harmony and lyrical inclusivity. The Stones wrote songs for their band and sole lead singer to perform as front man and personality. That’s two very different approaches required and partly explains why the range of people covering Beatles songs was so much wider than Stones songs.
Examples of the artists who covered (on disc or live) one or more of the 8 Lennon-McCartney originals from the Please Please Me LP include led zeppelin, count basie, jose feliciano, jerry garcia, bill haley, jerry lee lewis and little richard, the supremes, the who, link wray and who could forget the unforgettable covers by Alvin and the Chipmunks on their seminal 1964 classic “The Chipmunks Sing The Beatles”. er..and Tiffany and David Cassidy.
While the Beatles had been writing for quite a while by the time of their debut, their earliest songs were almost all rejected and more recent compositions used. You can hear them playing bits of their early shit songs during the Get Back sessions (I Fancy Me Chances, Too Bad About Sorrows etc..)
Their LP opens with a genuine (self-composed) pop classic - I Saw Her Standing There. A rock ’n’ roll derived number with a minor chord chucked in for the “oh” on the chorus. Is it my imagination or is Tell Me the only track on the Stones debut with a minor chord ??? They can still be rocking depending on how you use them as the Mop Headed Quartet demonstrate. Stu allegedly refused to play on songs with a minor chord.
The bass line of Standing There is lifted from Chuck Berry (nothing else on the LP is) and there’s a harmony from John on the chorus and middle 8.
Again, harmonies are not really part of the Stones thing so that strikes a clear difference between the two bands and how they sound and what they do. John and Paul are already outstanding lead singers, George is an excellent 3rd harmony secret weapon. Ringo and Paul are a great match for Bill and Charlie. The Beatles and Stones are pretty well matched guitar wise but George is compromised by often having to sing harmony and play guitar at the same time, something he complains about in the Get Back movie. Mind you, he wasn’t even 20 when the debut was recorded.
The Stones “ace in the hole” at this time was probably Jones slide guitar and harmonica. Jones and Lennon were both highly competent rhythm guitarists just as Bruce Welch was, pinning things down for The Shadows.
Harrison barely survived some of his debut LP lead guitar excursions and Richards too frequently resorted to standard Berry double stops and the “It’s All Over Now” solo noodle. Both developed into tasty players. Funnily enough, Harrison would become a great slide player but a melodic one rather than a blues slider like Jones emphasising again the contrasting styles and attitudes of the two groups of musicians.
Keys (boards, not Bobby) at this time were supplied by Ian Stewart and George Martin. Again, a contrast in styles - Martin adding a melodic touch here and there on the LP (piano, celeste) while Stewart was a full on boogie woogie dude.
However, they both had christian names as surnames and I grant them full 6th Stone and 5th Beatles status. Absolute music heroes the pair of them.
Back to I Saw Her Standing There - Written by Paul around October 62 when he was 20 years old with help from John, this standard still got regular outings from McCartney pre-covid. Nothing from the Stones debut has remained in their live repertoire although their most recent studio offering was another “r ’n’ b concept album” (lazy sods).
The take of I Saw Her Standing There used was take 1 (with overdubbed handclaps) as was Boys, Ringo’s finest, rocking-ist Beatles vocal which features the band’s immaculate girl group backing vocals. These guys are better than good.
All four band members sing lead at least once on the LP with many tracks featuring John, Paul and George together in harmony to some degree. Another clear difference between the Fabs and the Stones. This gives the group a variety few others had. Factor in the various vocal combinations and it’s no wonder the group were so revered for their singing. Pop music is all about songs and singing.
They (The Beatles) are pop. The Stones (at this stage) were not. They are an r ’n’ b covers club band.
What of bass and drums ? - McCartney and Wyman were both superb bass men but Paul sings (like a god) and plays bass at the same time. Ringo and Charlie are two of the all time greats. Both swing and lock / hold their respective band’s together. Proof that drummers can be intelligent animals !
Saddled with a stinking cold that grew progressively worse during the February 1963 day ten of the tracks were recorded, Lennon stands out with his passionate versions of Anna and Twist and Shout - listen to the snot on that one.
There’s A Place is the UK beat group equivalent of Brian Wilson’s In My Room with Lennon and McCartney harmonising like Phil and Don Everly. The harmony on that one is probably more sophisticated than any harmony in the Stones catalogue - though that was never something the Stones aspired to so that’s more a praise of the mop tops than a dig at the rolling richmonds.
It is however, a note that even on this debut LP, some of the Beatles work is very sophisticated by pop standards.
You may not consider that of any importance. Maybe you prefer the Stones debut precisely because it is whole-heartedly unsophisticated. That’s totally cool too.
There are several out of time moments (esp. percussion), out of tune vocals / guitars on the Stones LP.
The notable out of tune moment on Please Please Me is Lennon’s exhausted Ah in the middle of Twist and Shout recorded at the end of the day when his cold has nearly destroyed his voice. Proof though that perfection isn’t always required. It’s still a classic performance even though the band have stripped the r ’n’ b away to mould it more to the band’s identity, something the Stones had (naturally) yet to master. No excuse for the out of time percussion on the Stones LP though. Occasionally plain embarrassing rather than adding to the vibe but then I am a Beatles fan so i would say that.
The Beatles were influenced by a wider range of musical artists including Buddy Holly and the Crickets melody and different approaches to each song, the Everly’s sense of melody and harmony, show tunes, rock ’n’ roll, cha cha cha beat, Brill Building song-writing a la Goffin and King, beat group ballads, Arthur Alexander plus the call and response girl group sound. They are already turning out self-written classics. Do You Want To Know A Secret has just been used (in a cover version) in an advert.
In contrast (and making comparisons unfair), the Stones basically don’t have any of their own songs yet - “Nanker’s” Little By Little and Witness are cheap (enjoyable) re-writes. Tell Me is not even Billy J Kramer standard.
The Beatles do not sound in the slightest bit r ’n’ b even covering Anna, Twist and Shout etc. There is no Chuck Berry on the LP save for the “absorbing” of the Talkin’ ‘Bout You bass-line for their own purposes on Saw Her Standing There. They are a wide ranging, progressive pop group from the get go and have already worked out their identity. Their next album compositions would be lauded by the Times music correspondent and by that time Beatlemania was more prevalent than covid, a preferable state of affairs I can assure you as I have been ill with long covid since getting covid in March 2020. Let me tell you, even for Stones fans, Beatlemania is preferable.
The Stones (circa February 64) are an r ’n’ b covers band with notable drive and only the basics of their “character” in place. So were the Yardbirds, Who and Kinks at that time, No shame, shame, shame in that. They had tried matching suits, leather waist coats, breakfast cereal commercials but settled on a fake “anti-Beatle” image crafted by Effing Andrew. They were never anti Beatle any more than the Beatles were the anti Stones. I suspect that 45s aside, the Fabs were far more impressed when the Stones took their first quantum leap forward with Aftermath even if it still contained a lot of 12 bar derived numbers.
Their real major triumph (classic 45’s aside) came when they reverted to their r ’n’ b roots in 1968 after being distracted by pop to varying degrees of success. This time they came back to the r ’n’ b table with their own fully developed character and style. That they would need to jettison Jones is a sadness but seemingly entirely necessary to both their survival and progression.
If you like r ’n’ b you’ll probably prefer the Stones debut.
If you like vocals, melodies, harmonies and a bit of variety then you’ll be more impressed by The Beatles debut.
I like melodies and harmonies so I prefer the Beatles. I have multiple copies of both albums including the withdrawn UK first press of Rolling Stones which thankfully has a shorter version of Tell Me.
I like them both but if I have to choose one for the desert island, Beatles Please Please Me wins easy. It is fresh and original, the sound of joy.
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LeonidP
of course, again its the Stones forum ... Stones would have the same disadvantage over in Beatles forums. That's like going to a Mets / Dodgers game in LA and saying no fair, too many Dodger fans.
That's right.
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LeonidP
of course, again its the Stones forum ... Stones would have the same disadvantage over in Beatles forums. That's like going to a Mets / Dodgers game in LA and saying no fair, too many Dodger fans.
That's right.
So thanks, Captain Obvious.
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Taylor1
I love the Beatles, but John and Paul were good at lifting musical ideas from others.Like John lacking from Hey Baby for Please PleaseMe. .To say their music is great ,yes it is. But complex? No .Complex is Bach or Clementi
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frankotero
…The Stones first album is superior.
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frankotero
Although I’m a Beatles Fan first I have to say The Stones first album is superior.
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frankotero
Although I’m a Beatles Fan first I have to say The Stones first album is superior.
Maybe if you prefer good covers vs. groundbreaking original tunes, and the Stones were indeed a great covers band on their first album.
But personally, I don't think any of their covers from that album are better than the original versions (aside from Route 66 maybe), though they're much better than what they covered on the lazy Blue and Lonesome album.
As for Tell Me...nice cute little ditty, but really quite amateur when compared to the originals the Beatles were cranking out on their first album. Based on that, Beatles for the win easily.
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frankotero
Although I’m a Beatles Fan first I have to say The Stones first album is superior.
Maybe if you prefer good covers vs. groundbreaking original tunes, and the Stones were indeed a great covers band on their first album.
But personally, I don't think any of their covers from that album are better than the original versions (aside from Route 66 maybe), though they're much better than what they covered on the lazy Blue and Lonesome album.
As for Tell Me...nice cute little ditty, but really quite amateur when compared to the originals the Beatles were cranking out on their first album. Based on that, Beatles for the win easily.
Yes, the Beatles first album was revolutionary. Stones were great but truly hit their stride a year later.
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MKjan
Of course, as the years went by, the Stones songwriting, recordings, and live performances far eclipsed the Beatles, who stopped performing for a very good reason. They just couldn't do it. Give George Martin and Yoko(ha) the credit.