"The Beatles are the absolute curse of modern indie music!!!"

[Brian Damage]

James Bond apparently hated The Beatles.

In Goldfinger, he advises Jill Masterson that "drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees" is "as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs".

The Bond girl's own verdict on the Fab Four, unfortunately, is not recorded before her untimely demise on the inside of a coating of gold paint.

That was 1964, when 007 may have felt threatened by that year's global success of The Beatles' first movie, A Hard Day's Night.


Beatles for Sale - the new Rock Band game could net $40m for the Beatles
Two years into their recording career and with Beatlemania raging on both sides of the Atlantic though, Bond was going characteristically violently against the prevailing mood. Forty-five years later, four decades after the Fab Four parted ways, his remark would be considered even more extraordinary, almost sacrilegious.

The devotional, feverish excitement over this week's release of re-mastered versions of all 13 UK Beatles albums highlights the band's unique, enduring appeal.

The first 50,000 box sets of mono versions of the discs, priced at £170, have already sold out, according to record company EMI.

Saturation media coverage to mark the release of the albums, of which an estimated billion copies already reside in record collections worldwide, has been led by the BBC's "Beatles Week" series of programmes.

The Beatles seem to occupy a uniquely unassailable position in popular culture - everybody loves them. Don't they?

What year did Paul McCartney write Silly Love Songs? 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967...

I Hate the Beatles website

Not Robert Elms. The author and broadcaster is one of a tiny minority who seem willing to stick their heads above the parapet and rubbish this most sacred of British institutions.

"They did a few things that lots of people liked," says Elms. "Everybody can like them, from grandma singing along to When I'm Sixty-Four to the little girl singing Yellow Submarine."

But he adds: "I just think they are either childlike and simple or rather leaden and pompous - one or the other all the time."

Theirs is a sanitised and anaemic version of American blues-inspired rock and roll, he complains.

"For me they turned something that was once sexy and raw and had roots, into something that was totally soulless, playground sing-along music."

It's the sort of talk which risks a midnight knock on the door from Britain's popular culture thought police.


Guaranteed a place on every Beatles fan's dartboard - Robert Elms
While he concedes that they did write some good songs, he can list rather more of what he calls The Beatles' "crimes against music" - Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Octopus's Garden.

Elms will not play The Beatles on his BBC London daily radio show, and says feedback from listeners suggests "there is a perhaps relatively small but vociferous group of people" who share his opinion of the band.

In an article for the Glasgow paper The Herald some years ago, author and music critic David Keenan set out to find musicians who shared his dislike of The Beatles - and could find no-one.

"It is a canon that you cannot question," he says. "Most people actually think you are just doing it for effect, putting on a front, playing the devil's advocate."

That this is the usual response is confirmed by Elms, who insists: "I do mean it; it's not made up."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8246313.stm

[JT]

I agree with Elms. The Beatles are so overrated in such an over-the-top way, it's not even funny.

[MickeyMac]

I like the Beatles, but I like other bands better. On one hand I can understand and appreciate that people think they are overrated. On the other hand you have to look at what they accomplished. When they did the Sullivan show for the first time in 1964, 73,000,000 million people tuned in to watch. That was the highest TV audience at that time and for a rock and roll band(and from England), and this is when rock was considered to be "teenage music". In April of that year they had the top 5 spots on the Billboard charts. Nobody has done that since.

[catlover79]

I must disagree. I love the Beatles and they changed the face of rock music.

[tv star collector]

"James Bond ... hated the Beatles"??

Yeah, right. So, how come Paul McCartney was picked to write the theme
for the Bond flick "Live and Let Die"?

[catlover79]

Originally Posted by tv star collector

"James Bond ... hated the Beatles"??

Yeah, right. So, how come Paul McCartney was picked to write the theme
for the Bond flick "Live and Let Die"?

Technically, Paul was with Wings then, but I know what you mean. Good catch - he wrote AND recorded the song for that movie!

[Retro4Life]

Absolute 100 percent disagree.

While there's the risk of overkill with anything or anyone who's super popular and super successful, for me, the strongest piece of evidence in favor of the Beatles skill and power is their legacy.

There will never be another band that is remembered as long and as affectionately as them. Now you may argue that that doesn't make them great, that popularity doesn't equal quality, but ultimately, people decide a phenomenon's legacy, and in this case the people have spoken.

Loudly.