Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Togger]

Would the Beatles just be an average bar band? You gotta admit the ability to piece together a few seconds of music was a great advantage to them.

[Loco Mo]

Hey, Togger.  I think this is a great question.  The Beatles would have been a strictly live band then.  A lot of their experimental sounds would never have happened.  Many songs would never have happened, such as I am the Walrus, Tomorrow never knows, A day in the life, Rev 9, etc.  What a shame!  So much music that technology enabled!  We take it for granted and we don't often think of the alternative.  Think of how strange the thought of recording music would have seemed several centuries ago.  The process would have seemed like a work of magic.

One thing that bothers me is that all of the Beatles music could be lost forever if there is any kind of planetary catastrophe such as nuclear explosions/meltdowns or massively destructive events resulting from climate change.

[Loco Mo]

I think someone could write a book on this subject.  It could be very interesting.  How would our overall society and its technology be affected by the lack of recording technology?  I have the impression that there's a chain effect that links many technologies together as a natural progression of evolutionary steps in that one invention leads to another and so on.  It seems to me that creating visual products such as film and television is somehow inextricably linked to the development of recording and of radio waves that could be accessed via the necessary mechanisms needed to produce and translate them into usable product.  The first recordings were recordable only but not listenable.  That came years later.  The initial recordings appeared on graph paper via ink patterns.  I guess that was just to show that sound vibrations could be traced on paper.  Now, many decades later, we can actually listen to some of those "unlistenable" recordings that have survived to this day.

The idea of recording sound must have seemed preposterous in the times before it was invented.  By comparison, I wonder what else we may consider impossible that perhaps could be possible some day.

[nimrod]

Would the Beatles just be an average bar band? You gotta admit the ability to piece together a few seconds of music was a great advantage to them.

I think Lennon and McCartney would still be the greatest songwriters in history, there would still be 20,000 cover versions of their songs by the worlds greatest artists, they would still have wrote No1 hits for other bands.....so no, they wouldnt have been an "average bar band"

[Normandie]

I think Lennon and McCartney would still be the greatest songwriters in history, there would still be 20,000 cover versions of their songs by the worlds greatest artists, they would still have wrote No1 hits for other bands.....so no, they wouldnt have been an "average bar band"

 

[Moogmodule]

And even before that (the songwriting) the Beatles were an in demand live act in northern England playing halls and theatres daily. Certainly by 1962 the most popular band in Liverpool.  Their live act and the excitement they generated was what convinced Brian Epstein to manage them. So they were well beyond being an average bar band before they ever entered EMI studios.

[nimrod]

And even before that (the songwriting) the Beatles were an in demand live act in northern England playing halls and theatres daily. Certainly by 1962 the most popular band in Liverpool.  Their live act and the excitement they generated was what convinced Brian Epstein to manage them. So they were well beyond being an average bar band before they ever entered EMI studios.

"Like"

[fendertele]

I'm not sure tbh famous composers works managed to out live them despite no recording ability due to the composers being able to write down their music and it being passed on. With The Beatles they would have likely been big on the Liverpool scene and still wrote songs but with none of the boys able to read or write music they would have been forgotten when they stopped performing.

Also with no ability to record all of their inspirations would have also came from local musicians so no Elvis, no Perkins etc... their whole sound would have been different from the start and would likely never progressed without any outside inspiration beyond local acts... all playing the same style.

Then you have to wonder would any of them even bothered to pick up an instrument if they hadn't heard a record ? I think possibly Paul would have in some form but the others ?