Gunnar wrote:
I'm glad that you get pleasure from hearing The Rolling Stones, and I hope you thoroughly enjoy their concert, but I don't share your high opinion of them. I have heard rock and roll music that I really enjoyed, but it is not really my thing. As far as rock and roll is concerned, I thought the Beetles were better, and some of their music was pure genius. I am particularly impressed with their Eleanor Rigby, especially versions of that tune arranged for a concert orchestra. I, personally, would not pay good money to hear a Rolling Stones concert, based on what little I have heard of their music.
Keep in mind that the producer of the most of the Beatles' recordings was
George Martin, who had an extensive classical music background. It's instructive to listen to the Beatles produced by Phil Spector on Let It Be. For comparison, listen to the 'Let it Be - Naked' where you hear the music with all of Spector's syrupy orchestration. Or
Free As a Bird, produced by ELO's Jeff Lynn (the music video is like an Easter Egg Hunt for Beatle fans).
The Beatles could be a lot more raw and unpolished. My favorite takes of
I am the Walrus are the ones without all of the orchestration. Having said that, through 1967 the Stones were produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, a man with no prior experience as a record producer. If you ask me it shows. The early Stones recordings were poorly produced and engineered. The Beatles recordings were generally more polished, but part of that was by design by both groups.
George Harrison was a far more lyrical lead guitarist than Keith Richards. Keith's style is more primitive at first glance, but Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry are the only other guys who wrote as many great hooks as Keith Richards. After
Start Me Up came out, it was pretty much the official song of NFL Kickoffs for a number of years.
For many years, my go-to guitar solo was
Eric Clapton's Crossroads. More recently it's
Keith Richard at the end of ____. Much less flashy than Clapton, but the repetition serves the purpose of driving the song.
But ultimately this is all subjective. The roots of rock are in blues, music that casts a spell,
music that is hypnotic. Hypnotic effect is obtained by repetition, and if you are looking for virtuosity, that repetition can sound like a lack of it. I'm having a hard time describing this, but the closest thing I can come up with is that you listen to blues with a different part of your brain, a different part of musical consciousness.
