Ban The Beatles
(slightly revised 09 November 2002)
Ban The Beatles
(slightly revised 09 November 2002)
Hippy dippy mop-top haircut suit wearing straighter-than-thou boring unimaginative crass love-song writing bland loved-by-grandma multi-millionaires turned into hippy long haired drug-guzzling self-indulgent-filmmaking book-publishing boxed-set making ego-squabbling Hare-Krishna-chanting studio-experimenting disappearing-up-their-own-muse �60-for-140-minutes-of-hits-4-CD-endless-compilations-even-though-they-split-up-33-years-ago arrogant-worthless-venerated CUNTS.
Right. That's got all the righteous anger out of the way.
Just in case you didn�t get the hint - I fucking hate The Beatles. I�m fed up of people telling me that nobody, NOBODY, no matter how good they might be could ever compete with what The Beatles did. I�m sick to death of "MOJO" endlessly repeating the tiresome details of how a bunch of millionaires lost the plot in a pile of drugs and egos and ended up splitting up over tax returns.
The Beatles just aren't that great. Yeah, a few good songs, some nice ideals... but nothing special. There's a sickening Cult Of Lennon surrounding them - the main prophets being "MOJO", "Q", "ROLLING STONE" (and near enough every other mainstream print media) idolising The Beatles as the ONLY band that ever did anything important and everyone else after them is an imitator.
So you can stuff your ELVIS, your U2, your SEX PISTOLS, your PINK FLOYD, your KRAFTWERK. They're just copying The Beatles. According to recieved wisdom, there is no such thing as original thought. Quite insulting an insulting proposition to todays artists and in fact the entire of Western Culture since 1970. It's a modern symptom to always want to hark back to the 'golden days' when things were better and it was all fields round here...
The world doesn�t need any more Beatles records. There�s too many already.
I'm not ignorant of The Beatles - I don't have any of the records but 1962-66, and 67-70, (or Red & Blue, or whatever they're called) on old-fashioned vinyl - and there's something about putting those two 70 minute compilations onto �31 double CD sets when they could be placed onto one single CD for �16 that strikes me as greedy. And, at �61.98 for 140 minutes of music that are the �Red� and �Blue� albums spread over an eco-hostile 4CD�s, all you need is ca$h, ca$h, ca$h.
Of course, The Beatles also ran the idealistic Apple from London and New York, but after Epstein died and Klein came in they all of a sudden started paying attention to the ��� (from what the "Anthology" hardback tells me anyway) and since then they haven't been averse to running the Beatles as a business. There's been far too many ompilation albums that prove that.
I�m sick of the fact that, for a band that split up a third of a century ago, they�ve managed to release six compilation albums* in the past decade. I�m sick of the gall of a band that endlessly tries to sell us songs that far too many of us already own in new shiny sleeves with no reason whatsoever apart from greed.
If you were 20 when The Beatles cut their first record, you�ll be 60 now. I know about 60 year olds. Just like The Beatles, they started off idealistic, clean cut kids and became arrogant greedheads who lost all sense of morals and ideals. Just like The Beatles, they became hypocrites and the liars that pollute our planet and cannibalise the few resources left. Just like The Beatles, they live in enormous houses, whilst we exist in tiny, overpriced basement flats and scrabble around for enough money to eat food. All you need is love.
Be warned. If you listen to The Beatles, you�ll end up thinking that things were much better before you were born. You�ll be taught to idealise the past because whatever we try to do - music, politics, whatever, everything - The Beatles did it first and they did it best.
You should shut up, consume endless rehashes of the ancient past, and follow the herd. But all you need is love. Not equality, not some form of economic change, nothing. Shut up, be happy listening to to your dead heroes, don't think for yourself, glorify the past, don't try to build a better future.
p.s.
(* �Anthologies� 1,2,3, �Beatles At The BBC�, �Yellow Submarine�, �1�s�- not counting the 12 or so "Anthologies" videos.)
And the tide of drivel rolls on....
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