So by your definition, Elvis "stopped rocking" as soon as he recorded "Love Me Tender."
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Hit Songs That Should Never Be Played On Radio Today
- Thread starter TheFonz
- Start date
"Paperback Writer" and "Lady Madonna" were elevator music and not rock and roll?
No. Elvis' follow-up Top 10 single after "Love Me Tender" was "Too Much". That's a rocker. The Beatles had no Top 10 rockers (singles) after 1966's "Paperback Writer" except "Get Back".
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"Paperback Writer" was 1966. I said after 1966. "Lady Madonna" is defiantly elevator music.
Why isn't "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" rock and roll?
I remember the day I walked into an office and couldn't believe this older woman was blasting that song from her radio. But she turned it off. She commented how that station used to play good music. Not any more.
Not in any elevator I've ever ridden. Too rhythmic. The stride piano lead is based on Fats Domino, who is a rock pioneer.
Does anyone know what this person is talking about? My first thought was that he was young and connecting present values to things in the past but he said he liked the music before 1967 but not later, which indicates to me that he must be over 65 and couldn't make the adjustment at the time. "Elevator Music" used to consist of lush strings performing songs from around 1890 to the present. I can't imagine an older person considering "Lady Madonna" to be "Elevator Music". There must be some definition of "rock music" that I'm missing. I'm sure that most Classic Rock stations consider the Beatles output after 1967 to qualify as "rock".
Actually I was just trying to rile up the Beatles fans a little bit. Some of them like to rip on Elvis, but think the Beatles were the best thing to come along since sliced bread. Both changed their style of music from their beginning to the ends of their careers. Some call it "evolving". I call it "wussing out". But you reminded me about another discussion we could have in another thread at another time: what is the difference between a "rock" song and a "rock & roll" song?
I would strongly caution you AGAINST judging any group strictly by their output of "hits." The corporate guys on this board already think that way. The fans should NOT judge them just by the "hits." The Beatles had several great rockers late in their career. "Birthday," "Back in the USSR," "Revolution," (b-side of "Hey Jude" and a hit in its own right) and the aforementioned "One After 909." Who cares if they weren't all "hits"? A real fan does not judge ANY group just by their "hits."
So you basically admit that you were trolling? Any real Beatles fan readily acknowledges the influence of Elvis (and others) on them. But many Elvis fans think the Beatles "ruined" rock & roll. Many of them had to wipe some egg off their faces when Elvis started singing Beatles songs in concert.
I am a diehard Beatles fan and a casual Elvis fan. The wife is a diehard Elvis fan, and a casual Beatles fan. We have some interesting discussions, and we have learned a LOT from each other. Since I am the one from Memphis, she has learned from me that there is a LOT more to Memphis than Elvis, but she can name all the Memphis Mafia members, while I cannot. She can pick out the different mix of an Elvis song, while they all sound the same to me, but I can pick out the differences in Beatles songs that she would otherwise miss.
I gathered that he is about my mother's age (75). My mother was just the right age (and a west TN native, at that!) to be an Elvis fan, but by her own admission, she was just never into him. She said that "Love Me Tender" was the first Elvis song to which she could ever understand the words. (50 years later, her daughter (my sister) would say the same thing about Lisa Marie's song, "Lights Out.") I still remember that a classmate signed her yearbook "Mrs. Elvis Presley of NHS" (Newbern High School).
I get what Elvis was doing when he sang "Love Me Tender." It was a beautiful song. Because the Beatles did the same thing a decade later when they (mostly Paul, actually) recorded "Yesterday."
I wasn't judging the group. I was explaining why I gave up on the Beatles in 1967. Although LP sales were starting to pick up in the mid '60s, singles still ruled. The songs you mentioned were virtually unheard back then. Those who did buy LPs rarely played them start to finish. They "dropped the needle" on the tracks they liked. As the saying goes, "so much good music, so little time". We wanted to play the hits.
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One of the earlier posters stated that he thought Elvis was "irrelevant" after 1966. I countered by saying that I thought the Beatles were irrelevant (to me) after 1966 and tried to explain why.
I never said that I didn't like the music from 1967 on. I said I didn't like what the Beatles were putting out on singles after 1966. CCR, the Monkees, the Turtles, the Box Tops, the Doors.................I didn't like all of their stuff but they had some good songs that made the charts.
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The Beatles had a number of songs that got significant airplay, yet were never released as singles, thus could never become "hits." Songs like "All My Loving" (which Paul STILL sings in concert), "Michelle," "In My Life," "Taxman," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Magical Mystery Tour," "Here Comes the Sun," and the aforementioned "Birthday" and "Back in the USSR." And NOTHING from Sgt. Pepper was ever released as a single, at least not until that lame movie came out in 1978.
I say that if the kids on American Bandstand in the 1950s couldn't dance to it, then it ain't rock & roll. "Helter Skelter" ain't "rock & roll". It's "rock".
Then what's the difference between pop and rock & roll?
Actually, "All My Loving" WAS released on a single (Capitol 72144). It was pressed in Canada but released in the US and reached #45 on the US charts in 1964. The other songs you mentioned didn't receive "significant airplay" in my town on AM Top 40 radio. FM radio, especially FM stereo, was starting to develop in the mid '60s and only "underground" FM stations were playing album cuts.
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