The Smiley Smile Message Board

My first BB 45 purchase.  Just to put this in perspective, I also purchased Peter, Paul, and Mary, If I Had a Hammer on the same day.  these songs were both getting heavy airplay in the USA.   Beatle songs (I wanna hold your hand) we're release in the USA less than two months earlier.   they were days short of performing for the first time on Ed Sullivan.  I was not yet sold on the Beatles.  I watched their appearance on Sullivan with curiosity.  they seemed to be "interesting" but not nearly as good or cool as PPM or the BBs.    50 years ago.   the production and engineering on the Beatles early records was not nearly as good as the US bands on the major labels.    the Beatles were doing covers of American artists.   took me along time to "get" the Beatles.  Meanwhile, American artists being copied by the British' disappeared or languished.
don't know where I'm going with this, but, the Beach Boys are still alive and we'll.  All of these years later.  As fans, we must appreciate and celebrate the survival and continued presence on the scene of these American heroes who continue to astonish long after the British invaders have been vanquished.     (With respect for and appreciation of the true and talented Anglo survivors such as Macca, Davies, and Burdon).

It's nice to know someone else is less than enthusiastic about the British Invasion! At the time I was in a tiny minority at school (in the UK) who preferred music from the US. All the other pop music lovers were besotted with The Beatles and the other UK beat groups.

When people pigeon hole the Beach Boys in the early surf and sun era and complain that they became irrelevant, this is what I go back to: Of all the groups in the US in the early sixties, it was the boys who not only survived the British Invasion, but continued to create hits right through it, and ultimately influenced it.

You nailed that one!

 :beer - it's four o'clock somewhere!

My dad used to talk about all this stuff to me.  He didn't really like the Beatles, he blamed them for changing music for the worse.  In his experience, he said that when they came out he thought "I wanna hold your hand" was the stupidest song he'd ever heard.  Then he said, a couple weeks later he caught himself walking down the street humming it.  They were infectious. 

I think it's pretty impressive, if for the first few years, you compare what the Beatles were doing with what the Beach Boys were doing.  the Beach Boys were superior in about every way for the first couple years, the stuff they were doing in 1963 was ahead of what the Beatles were doing a year later. 

I don't think comparing the Beach Boys with the Beatles serves much of a purpose, though, to be honest and it seems more like an apples and oranges comparison when you consider the music with the history of the bands. They were coming from different influences, different life experiences and backgrounds, totally different experiences of "paying dues" and learning how to be both a stage band and polishing up their skills enough to be a self-contained studio band, and both bands' earlier works point as much to where they came from and who they were at the time enough to make comparisons irrelevant.

If we do try to compare them, then it's fair to ask how the Beach Boys would have fared serving the kind of apprenticeship and trial-by-fire learning experiences the Beatles got playing those all-nighter marathon gigs in Hamburg, 7 nights a week during several residencies. Likewise, it would be fair to ask how the Beatles would have fared had they not connected with George Martin and had his ear for production and song structure available to them the way Brian worked his magic for the BB's. And it was Brian and only Brian who took on that role within the band, while the Beatles didn't have any member who could do that.

The comparison falls apart even more when it's mentioned that both groups really did love each others music and said so both publicly and privately...not to mention how they showed their admiration and influence in their music.

That's odd - my first rock n roll lp purchase was Shut Down, Vol 2, the core of which is a great, great album.

As for the comparison with the Beatles, I'd say an entirely appropriate line of thought.

I think the Beach Boys might have been "better," but the Beatles were definitely greater.

I still don't see much of a point in trying to compare the two and say one is this or that over the other, but I never did and that's just me.  ;D

As far as longevity and who is still out there doing their thing, after Lennon was murdered that effectively ended that type of longevity for the Beatles as far as playing live shows every year as a band, so even that comparison/critique falls flat. The spectacle of Paul, George, and Ringo staging a live "Beatles" show at any time without Lennon would have been a farce, and to their credit they never did it.

Honestly, I don't get the point of all this.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that both Ringo and Paul have toured and played live regularly since the late 80's under their own names, selling tons of tickets and packing the seats at each show, so both of those former Beatles are very much alive and well as performers.

I don't think a comparison of the two bands needs to be a "who was better" sort of thing.

Maybe points of convergence/divergence would be a more interesting way to go.

Begin with the respective names, which placed their respective product back to back in record store bins.

The two bands certainly converged at Capitol and this is reflected in the physical product - the singles and album labels being indistinguishable up to 1967.

Both bands were road dogs. On-stage instrumentation matches, but for the specific makes and models.

Convergence/divergence in influences - Chuck Berry comes first to mind...

A similarity in the timing and arc of creative ascent, peak and breakdown.