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Which is better, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, and why?
I expect this to be very controversial in a mainly Beatles/MLT forum, but here goes. Just one opinion of many. I welcome your views.
I think this is a great response in “Quora” from David Stewart, Lifetime Beatles fan.
“It depends on the criteria you use.
Musical ability
The Stones are way out in front. Charlie is a much better drummer than Ringo. Darryl is better than Paul on the bass. All four guitarists in the Stones were better than the three guitarists in the Beatles (and Mick Taylor was better than almost anyone else alive at the time) and Mick Jagger is the greatest front man in rock and roll history.
Innovation
Nobody touches the Beatles for musical groundbreakingness (which isn’t a word but I refuse to correct it). They broke new territory constantly and tore up rule books left right and centre. The Stones followed in their wake as they took music in new directions.
Longevity
Obviously the Stones have the edge here. The Beatles had (roughly) a decade, the Stones had five decades. And while it’s clear their later albums aren’t as great as their earlier ones, they’re still recording good music and putting on amazing live shows.
Albums
The Beatles were the most consistent album band of all time. Every LP they released (I’m talking about the UK catalogue, not the US catalog which isn’t nearly as good) was at worst fantastic and at best exceptional. There isn’t a dud in their repertoire. The Stones on the other hand had long stretches where they released albums that just weren’t worth hearing more than once (this isn’t my opinion – Howard). But they had a golden run for a while Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street are four of the best rock and roll albums ever recorded. Nobody has ever managed to match that run of hits.
Live performances
The Stones have the edge again. The Beatles were good in Hamburg and the Cavern but from all reports Pete Best held them back. The Stones were really ripping up everywhere they played and making jaws drop in their early days. Once both bands became huge, the Beatles shows quickly became half-hearted affairs drowned out by audience screaming and then they stopped performing altogether. The Stones put on some of the greatest concerts rock and roll has ever seen. The Mick Taylor Era shows were just outstanding and a lucky audience in Brussells got to witness Rock’s finest hour. Even fifty years after they began, the Stones are still putting on great shows and they’re still a brilliant live act.
Rock interpretations
In their early days, both bands brought the rock and roll greats to a white audience. Both their early albums are full of Chuck Berry covers and there are lots of other crossovers between their two repertoires. Songs like Carol – let us compare both bands playing the same track. It appeared on the Stones debut album and was played by the Beatles at the BBC. Harrison can’t quite nail the riff and The Beatles struggle to make the track work. The Stones absolutely nail it and produce the best version of Carol anyone has ever played ever.
Songwriting.
The number of hits that both bands produced is absolutely staggering. No other bands have as many outright classic hits in their catalogue as The Stones and The Beatles. It’s no exaggeration to say that both acts have 100 original songs each which are just brilliant. The difference between the two is that The Beatles recorded their 100 in seven years, while the Stones have taken fifty.
Which one is better? Neither. They’re both great, they’re both streets ahead of everyone else and they’re both essential to the sound of modern music.
But if you held me down and demanded I choose one or the other, I would pick The Stones mainly because of their live shows. The Beatles released some great albums, some interesting Anthology collections and two sets of BBC performances which are fun but not essential. And that’s pretty much it. But the Stones have been performing for 50 years and broadcasting their shows on radio, TV and lately webcasting from time to time. As a result, there are dozens and dozens of exceptional quality bootlegs from their entire career. I’ve got lots of great quality shows and listen to them often. The Taylor era stuff is just superb but even the later shows contain some brilliant Jagger Swagger and Richards riffage. I’ve got 50+ versions of Jumping Jack Flash but every one sounds fresh and new and not a single performance sounds phoned in.
The Beatles and Stones could both write great songs, but only the Stones added an extra 20% of brilliance in a live setting. It just gives them the edge for me.”
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172 Replies
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You’re right, Howard: you could start a real war here. There’s a danger of conflating the objective (like the things you listed here) with the subjective (the reasons you prefer listening to one group or the other).
Sticking to the objective, let me just state that I don’t know enough about the Rolling Stones to say how good they are. That pretty much tips you off to my subjective opinion as well.
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Why rank them? If you like both groups, that’s totally OK. You don’t have to like one more than the other.
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Yes, David, music appreciation usually comes down to personal preferences, which are mainly based on subjective values and likes. I don’t mind these comparisons as long as we don’t take them too seriously. For me personally, I prefer not to have to make a choice as these are my two favourite bands (apart from MLT of course), and sometimes I prefer the Beatles and sometimes I prefer the Stones. It all depends entirely on my mood at any given time and also the environmental atmosphere.
I grew up listening to the Rolling Stones (older brothers), but the first new album I purchased was by the Beatles. I could not afford to buy albums before “Sgt. Peppers” came out and I had to make a special effort to purchase this album in 1967.
Early on in this club, a couple of members attempted to start a comparison between the MonaLisa Twins but were quickly censored by other members, including myself. That was a comparison we believed added no value to the club and was basically pointless. I expect you would have gathered by now that there is much love in this club for both twins, equally!
By the way, the comparison in my original post is not mine.
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This topic actually reminded me of a short promo commercial for an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live in the early 90’s. The host says, “Hi, I’m Alec Baldwin, and boy did I pick the wrong week to host SNL. Last week the musical guest was Mick Jagger. How are they gonna top that?” Then Paul McCartney pokes his head into the shot and says “Hello.”
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For balance, the following is a contribution from Charles Simms, A fanatical Beatles fan, scholar and musician. Updated Jul 14, 2018.
“For me, there are two factors above all that establish The Beatles as superior to every other artist. First, quality. Nearly every aspect of The Beatles catalogue represents quality. The vocals are peerless. As one obvious observation, The Beatles possessed a three-part harmony that The Stones could never approach. Lennon and McCartney are two of the greatest rock vocalists in history. Either one could assay shredding rock (Twist and Shout for John, Long Tall Sally for Paul) or poignant ballads.
Another aspect of quality was The Beatles were blessed with a production team that was sympathetic and innovative. Their early records possess clarity, and with each release, they set the standards for others to aspire to.
Most importantly, the quality of their songwriting offers a depth few could ever rival. There is virtually no ‘B’ material. Songs as memorable and iconic as Nowhere Man, And I Love Her, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away… all album tracks. For most artists, those would be the single they’d be remembered for.
Which suggests the other factor in The Beatles dominance: variety. There’s no single template for a Beatles record. You can’t reduce their career to a single hit or two repeated ad infinitum. From the heady rush and energy of She Loves You (with that surprising three-part harmony finish where George’s resolves on a sixth) to the throwdown recklessness of Helter Skelter, the startling austere beauty of Blackbird to the thundering psychedelic masterpiece of Tomorrow Never Knows, the lilting harmony warmth of Because to the sly rock of Get Back, the pop perfection of Here Comes the Sun to the ultimate distillation and high watermark of the British Invasion with I Feel Fine, the crashing metallic ring and world-weary vocal of Ticket to Ride, the singalong majesty of Hey Jude… The Beatles catalogue has depth and breadth. There is virtually no repetition, and every single and album progressed.
I love The Stones, but their early catalogue is often inferior versions of R&B songs, and even when they did release a double album very little of it strays from their roots. There are no Stones records that are consistent from first to last cut until Beggars Banquet. They had a dominant vocalist who is a dynamic frontman and talented writer, but in comparison to Lennon and McCartney has significant vocal limitations. The Stones have some of the most durable rock classics in history and a particularly creative period from ‘65-’71. But from 1963 to 2018, the Stones haven’t really strayed far from covering Chuck Berry songs.
Why are The Beatles the greatest? Quality and variety. As much as I love The Stones, there’s a clear winner for me.”
I personally have issues with some of this assessment. In particular Simms’ contention – “But from 1963 to 2018, the Stones haven’t really strayed far from covering Chuck Berry songs”. This is definitely not true, as from late 1965 through to late 1967, the Stones produced some of their most innovative and creative music with their albums “Aftermath”, “Between the Buttons”, “Flowers” and “Their Satanic Majesties Request”. Along with the songwriting creativity of Jagger/Richards, their music of this era was greatly enhanced by the instrumental diversity of Brian Jones during this, their classic pop period.
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I’ve come across this question a few times over the years, and often times a more general question like does anyone else even come close to the Beatles. General consensus has been the gap between #1 (Beatles) and #2 is a non contest. The Beatles tower above the rest. How many Beatles melodies have been incorporated into other classical genres like Hey Jude, Yesterday, Long and Winding Road, Here Comes the Sun etc compared to Rolling Stones. Just musically Beatles tunes are universal and a household name. The Rolling Stones have a big following inside the Rock/POP community, but outside of that, no as much as the Beatles. A 7 years old in TimBukToo would likely recognize an iconic Beatles melody, probably not a Rolling Stones one. You could debate the nuances of a Rolling Stones song or album to a Beatles one all day long, but the truth is in the pudding. The influence of Beatles music on the rest of the music world is incomparable. Some Stones ballads, a Simon and Garfunkle melody, a John Denver tune, an Elton John or Bee Gees tune here or there, but nothing to the extent of how the Beatles influenced music globally and across the generations. You are more likely to come across a grade 3 class do a Beatles festival show than a Rolling Stones or anyone else. That is how prolific Beatles music is globally, no one else comes close, except Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. They had the advantage of time 🙂
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Yes Jung, the Beatles have always had more universal appeal and across generations. However, when I was a teenager, we were able to claim the Stones for ourselves as our parents were into the Beatles and didn’t dig the Stones, whom they had to lock up their daughters from! LOL!
The Stones have always been able to put on a top live show and are still doing it, right around the world, so that little 7 year old is probably now more likely to recognise an iconic Stones tune over a Beatles one!
Hopefully that 7 year old from Timbuktu recognises a MLT cover of a Beatles song than any Stones song though!
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Howard, certainly no one can deny the Rolling Stones are one of the greatest rock bands of all time, at the upper stratosphere echelon in the Hall of Fame. Their accomplishments are impressive and are as relevant today as they were 6 decades ago.
As for that 7 years old, that’s why we are all here to one day have MLT music recognized in every corner of the world. 🙂
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Howard,
I think it’s good that you bring this up, as it prompts me to point something out. The essay you mention is nothing but a hit piece. First, the writer is not the David Stewart that has worked with Ringo and former member of Eurithmics. It’s some random guy on Quora, a place where a lot of … hmm … crap is posted. Secondly, I disagree with everything said in that post.
I have noticed there’s a tactic to discredit someone or something is by saying “I’m a fan of X” and then trashing X in every way. For some reason I have seen this happen to The Beatles over and over again. Whether it’s for shock value or simply to trash them. Quotes like “I’m the biggest fan of John Lennon, but he was a bad person” are obviously a lie, and prompts me to think that whoever is stating that is saying that they are a fan of bad people. It’s a way of perpetuating a lie, giving themselves an authority that they do not have and to put themselves above one of the greatest examples of Peace and Love we have ever seen.
Saying that the Stones have more musical ability than The Beatles is not only devious, but absolutely inaccurate. To produce the music that they did, it doesn’t come from thin air, they are masters with their instruments. Clearly the musical impact of The Beatles dwarfs everything the Stones ever did. Yet, the writer slithers his way to trash the individual members starting with Ringo. There’s a lie being perpetuated that John Lennon said that “Ringo isn’t the Best drummer in The Beatles”. He never said that, and he regarded Ringo as the best drummer. That quote came from a comedian in the 80’s making a pun on Pete Best’s name, yet they’ve attributed it to John and spread it regularly.
I don’t know how somebody can say with a straight face that the songwriting of Lennon and McCartney is equal to that of Jagger and Richards. I guess he was writing, so… he could have been giggling and we wouldn’t know.
I’ve learned long ago not to engage online with those posts as they are usually trolls trying to pick a fight.
In this safe space I wanted to point out that I have seen this pattern out there and it has ill intentions.
Tomás
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Both of these bands are great in their own way, I listen to very wide variety of music and it depends on what im in the mood for. If we are talking bands that started in that era, I think the Who are as good as either one of them.
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It’s interesting that if you do a Google search on “The Greatest Rock band of all time..” or anything to that affect, there is consensus between most lists in placing the Beatles at #1, but there is no consensus on #2 and below. Depending on the source, anything below #1 is almost anyone’s guess. It’s all over the place.
For example:
-Rolling Stones Magazine provides a list called the top Rock artists of all time:
1..Beatles
2..Bob Dylan
3..Elvis Presley
4..Rolling Stones-Spinditty
1..Beatles
2..Led Zeppelin
3..Rolling Stones
4..Jimi Hendrix-CNN
1..Beatles
2..Led Zeppelin
3..Eagles
4..Pink Floyd-Fox
1..Beatles
2..Rolling Stones
3..Led Zeppelin
4..AC/DCIt supports what I said earlier that the Beatles towers above the rest. After the Beatles, the #2 is anyone’s guess and subject to personal preference, but hardly anyone can deny #1 is the Beatles.
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Don’t get me wrong, I think The Rolling Stones are an amazing band with Amazing songs. Everyone has their personal preference, but like Jung said, arguing that the Beatles are not the best band is really disingenuous, whether you like them or not.
My intention was to point out a deceptive writer (not you Howard!) who veils his poison with a purported educated opinion.
That being said, if I find myself at a music festival and the Stones are playing on one stage and at the same time the MonaLisa Twins are playing on another stage, you’ll find me at the Orange stage, no doubt. ?
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Well said Tomás. You make some very pertinent points, especially about John Lennon. The “not even the best drummer in the Beatles” comment has been attributed to both him and Paul and was discussed very early in the club Forum. I will do some research and direct you to it. I believe it may have been a DJ who made the comment.
I also ignore those Internet comments suggesting Lennon was a bad person. Some people are purposely controversial for effect and hits. That’s how the commercial, capitalist world works sometimes.
However, there was a definite Beatles/Stones divide at my High School in the sixties, and as I have suggested, while the Beatles always had more universal appeal, and across generations at the time, the Rolling Stones had a more radical youth appeal.
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I don’t think your google search does the debate much justice Jung. Opinions need to be backed up with detail and an assessment that can be evaluated and David Stewart does just that in his Quora response. And yes Tomás, some crap is published in Quora but the best is elevated to the top through the usual selection process, carefully monitored by all contributors. Quora has very strict guidelines for participation.
I also disagree with your belief that this Dave Stewart is a Troll looking for a fight as I think he gives a fair assessment of both groups and looks at the strengths of both. Just because the Beatles weren’t the greatest instrumentalists in the world doesn’t mean they can’t be the best group. Their forté was writing, singing, harmonising and improvising. I think you are being a little bit too sensitive as the reviewer was in no way trashing individual Beatles with his comparisons. Ringo’s playing style suited the Beatles and Charlie’s suited the Stones. Maybe you missed the Beatle positives in the review.
I totally understand where you are coming from with your reminder that it is a tactic to claim to be a fan, in order to give your argument more authenticity. If I can use a totally different analogy, Q: How can you pick a racist? A: they usually start a sentence with, I am not a racist, but ……..!
As for the comment “Ringo isn’t the Best drummer in The Beatles”, I’ll post a link to where this was previously discussed in the forum. Personally, I don’t like the idea of having to make a choice as there are occasions where each of these two groups is my favourite!
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Jung, further to my previous post, the following is another assessment of the top rock groups, with reasons, and includes the criteria. My initial post was a simple comparison between the two groups only.
Although this topic will always be very subjective, some reviewers do a good job of justifying their choices, as I believe the following reviewer does.
This review comes from Eric Olsen and was published 15 years ago.
How? Why?
While I speak with the thunderous voice of truth, this list of “the 10 best rock bands ever” isn’t a purely arbitrary designation yanked from my nether regions. First, the winners had to be an actual band, which eliminated most of the first wave rock ‘n’ roll greats of the ’50s like Elvis and Chuck Berry, who were essentially solo artists with backup bands, other towering figures like Bob Dylan, and vocal groups. The bands had to be within the greater circle of “rock” music and generate most or all of their own material. I took into account musical and cultural influence, popularity over time (staying power), and the “It’s a Wonderful Life” factor: What damage would be done if the band were to be removed from rock history? — the greater the damage, the greater the band. Removal of any of the below 10 would render rock history unrecognizable.
1. The Beatles
The Beatles are unquestionably the best and most important band in rock history, as well as the most compelling story. Almost miraculously, they embodied the apex of the form artistically, commercially, culturally and spiritually at just the right time, the tumultuous ’60s, when music had the power to literally change the world (or at least to give the impression that it could, which may be the same thing). The Beatles are the archetype: there is no term in the language analogous to “Beatlemania.”
Three lads from Liverpool — John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison — came together at a time of great cultural fluidity in 1960 (with bit players Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best), absorbed and recapitulated American rock ‘n’ roll and British pop history unto that point, hardened into a razor sharp unit playing five amphetamine-fueled sets a night in the tough port town of Hamburg, Germany, returned to Liverpool, found their ideal manager in Brian Epstein and ideal producer in George Martin, added the final piece of the puzzle when Ringo Starr replaced Best on drums, and released their first single in the U.K., “Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You,” all by October of 1962.
Their second single, “Please Please Me,” followed by British chart-toppers “From Me to You,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Can’t Buy Me Love” (all Lennon/McCartney originals), and the group’s pleasing image, wit and charm, solidified the Fab Four’s delirious grip on their homeland in 1963.
But it was when the group arrived in the U.S. in February 1964 that the full extent of Beatlemania became manifest. Their pandemonium-inducing five-song performance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9 is one of the cornerstone mass media events of the 20th century. I was five at the time — my parents tell me I watched it with them, but I honestly don’t remember. I do remember, though, that the girls next door, four and six years older than I, flipped over that appearance and dragged me into their giddy madness soon thereafter. I loved “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the Beatles’ first No. 1 in the U.S. (they had 19 more, still the record), more than any other song I have ever heard, or almost assuredly will ever hear, with a consuming intensity that I can only now touch as a memory.
The Beatles generated an intensity of joy that slapped tens of millions of people in the face with the awareness that happiness and exuberance were not only possible, but in their presence, inevitable. They generated an energy that was amplified a million times over and returned to them in a deafening tidal wave of grateful hysteria.
A partial result of that deafening hysteria was that the band became frustrated with their concerts and stopped performing live after a San Francisco show on August 29, 1966. Yet even this frustration bore fruit, as the four musicians, aided almost incalculably by producer Martin, turned their creative energies to the recording studio, producing ever more sophisticated and accomplished albums “Rubber Soul” (1965, “Drive My Car,” “Norwegian Wood,” “You Won’t See Me,” “Nowhere Man,” “Michelle”), “Revolver” (1966, Harrison’s “Taxman,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “And Your Bird Can Sing”), the majestic and epochal “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967, title track, “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” “A Day In the Life”).
Though centrifugal force began to take its toll, they still managed to produce three more album masterpieces, double-album “The Beatles” (1968, a.k.a. “The White Album,” with “Back In the USSR,” “Dear Prudence,” “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da,” Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Blackbird,” “Birthday,” “Helter Skelter”), “Let It Be” (recorded in early 1969 but not released until 1970, with the title track, “Two Of Us,” “Across the Universe,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “The Long and Winding Road” and “Get Back”), and the fitting climax “Abbey Road” (1969, Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something,” Ringo’s “Octopus’s Garden,” “Come Together,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “I Want You,” “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window”).
They made an incredible promise and instead of backing down from that promise they delivered and delivered and delivered for eight years until the full implications of the promise finally hit them: they were staring into the jaws of an insatiable, ravenous beast that was no less beastly because it smiled and waved and gave them money. The Beatles finally suffered a collective inability to pretend that the beast was not a beast, and in 1970 they broke up and returned to being human.
Beatlemania redux
A small but significant slice of the Beatles’ magic came back in 1986 with release of the classic John Hughes teen flick “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” wherein Matthew Broderick’s title character lip-syncs the early Beatles classic “Twist and Shout” (ironically, a song they didn’t write) from the top of a float in a downtown Chicago parade.
John Lennon sang “Twist and Shout” as though the words were joyful corrosive poison, that his only hope of survival was to expel them with all the vehemence that his rhythm-besotted body could muster, and so does Ferris in the scene. Paul and George’s responses matched John’s zeal at the end of each stanza with their delirious “Ooohs.” They were enjoying themselves so much that this song seemed the most important thing in their lives at that moment. The Beatles knew the awesome responsibilities of pleasure.
Ferris lips lustily, the frauleins on the float shimmy and shake and bounce off of Ferris like electrons, the thousands in the crowd sing along from the pits of their pelvises. Chicago jams as one, recreating the Beatles’ amazing real-life feat of a unifying mass-madness that changed people’s lives for a time.
When I saw the movie in the theater in ‘86, people actually stood up and danced in the aisles. How could they not? The “Twist and Shout” segment was the most exciting and joyous musical moment in a movie since the Beatles own “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), and was the perfect climax to Ferris Bueller’s film exploits.
The public was so wistful for Beatlemania that “Twist and Shout” returned to the charts for 15 weeks that year, a brief but sweet reminder of the real thing.
2. The Rolling Stones
When the Beatles ceased to exist in 1970, the title of “World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band” fell with very little dispute to the Rolling Stones, who by then were in the middle of such a wondrous creative peak that they might have challenged the Fab Four for the title anyway. It’s a title the one-time “anti-Beatles” haven’t relinquished since. Not only have the Stones been the greatest rock band in the world for more than 30 years, but they have been a functioning rock ‘n’ roll unit for more than 40, the longest run in history.
Boyhood friends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, along with guitarist Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, formed the first version of the Rollin’ Stones in 1962, and with the crack rhythm section of Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass soon on board, were ripping it up in an eight-month residency at London’s Crawdaddy Club shortly thereafter. A young and ambitious Andrew Loog Oldham saw them there:
“I saw them April 23, 1963 and then I knew what I had been training for,” he said in a phone interview from his home in Colombia. “The main thing they had was passion, which has served them to this day,” Oldham continued. Oldham’s first act as manager was to demote the shambling Stewart from the band’s live act for not keeping with his image of a lean, mean and sexy Stones (Stewart was the band’s road manager and recorded with them until his death in 1985).
At the time the Rollin’ Stones (named for the Muddy Waters song, Oldham added the “g”) were a ragged R&B cover band, but their run at the Crawdaddy had generated much attention, and with the Beatles on their way up no one wanted to miss the next big thing. Oldham quickly got them signed to Decca Records, which was still smarting from having turned down the Beatles.
In June of ’63 the Stones’ first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On” went to No. 21 in the UK. The follow-up in November was a cover of the dreaded Beatles’ “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which rose to UK No. 12. By February of ’64, they reached the UK Top 10 with Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” which also cracked the Top 50 in the U.S. — the bad boys were on their way.
Oldham split with the band amid the insanity and media frenzy of drug busts in 1967, but he and the band generated some amazing music during the two years between the squirmingly lascivious “Satisfaction” — considered by many the greatest rock song ever — released in May 1965, and the hit-filled “Flowers” compilation, released in July ’67. Included was the incredibly self-aware narcissism of “Get Off Of My Cloud,” chamber music gentility and vulnerability of “As Tears Go By,” bemused urban modernity of “19thNervous Breakdown”; and the Stones’ first classic album, “Aftermath,” with the simultaneously mocking and empathetic drug song “Mother’s Little Helper,” deeply groovy and misogynistic “Under My Thumb” and “Out Of Time,” lovely “Lady Jane,” and exotic, roiling “Paint It Black.”
Then came the Stones classic late-’60s/early-’70s period between “Beggar’s Banquet” and “Exile On Main Street,” possibly the most productive run in rock history, when the Stones turned an unequaled alchemy of rock ‘n’ roll, blues and country into something dark, dangerous and enduringly deep.
The 1967 busts seemed to spur Jagger and Richards to another creative level, but Brian Jones appeared beaten and sinking fast. He was absent from the devilish, riff-rocking “Jumping Jack Flash” single. He barely worked on 1968’s exceptional, bluesy “Beggar’s Banquet” (seductive, percussive and stinging “Sympathy For the Devil,” guitar-pounding “Street Fighting Man,” slashing and sinful “Stray Cat Blues”), was out of the group by June ’69, and dead at the bottom of his swimming pool less than a month later.
Young Mick Taylor joined as Jones’s replacement, and his hefty bluesy leads were the perfect foil for Richards’ open-tuned rhythm work, and the sound and imagery grew darker and harder still on “Let it Bleed” (the sex and death apocalypse “Gimme Shelter,” Robert Johnson’s anguished blues “Love In Vain,” mysterious “Monkey Man,” the druggy camaraderie of the title track, powerful and murderous “Midnight Rambler,” and the oblique, uplifting coda “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”).
The band’s dance with the devil bore bitter fruit when they put on a free concert at Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco on December 6, 1969 (just three months after Woodstock) where a fan was stabbed to death in view of the stage by Hell’s Angels (all the mounting bad juju was captured for posterity in the film “Gimme Shelter”).
“Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out” (1970), one of the most satisfying live rock albums ever, focused on their ’68-’69 hits, including an extended, definitive “Midnight Rambler,” and showed how integral Mick Taylor had become to the Stones’ roaring live sound.
The band’s first release on their own Rolling Stones Records was the druggy, shambling, brilliant “Sticky Fingers” (1971), with the infamous working-zipper cover by Andy Warhol. Taylor again sparkled and the Jagger/Richards songwriting continued at the highest level: swaggering “Brown Sugar,” plaintive “Wild Horses,” jazzy grooving “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” horn-rocking “Bitch,” chilling “Sister Morphine” and countrified “Dead Flowers.”
The Stones have been a different band ever since: Mick Taylor left in 1974, replaced by the stalwart Ronnie Wood. They have released a couple great albums: “Some Girls” (1978), their rough response to the challenges of disco and punk (“Miss You,” “Some Girls,” “Respectable,” “Beast of Burden,” “Shattered”), and “Tattoo You” (1981, their top-charting album ever — nine weeks at No. 1) with standouts “Start Me Up,” “Hang Fire” and “Waiting On a Friend.” They have also released a lot of simply good albums: the ’70s were better than the ’80s, which were better than the ’90s.
But they have soldiered on, taking breaks but focusing more and more on getting the music out to the fans live, becoming particularly reinvigorated with the “Steel Wheels” album and world tour in 1989. I caught that tour in Los Angeles and the Stones came on with an air of eager assurance. All of the elements clicked: the guitars cut and slashed, the rhythm section locked in and rode it out, the songs were a perfect blending of old and new, the band was abundantly enthusiastic.
Jagger didn’t exhibit a drop of Cool Star attitude: he worked, talked, sang with energy and attention to detail. He was obviously happy to be liked again. The collective joyous relief of the stadium buoyed Jagger to childlike vulnerability:
“Do ya like the new songs?” he almost pleaded of the throng.
”We love them, Mick!”
”We love you!”
”Yeahh!”
Maybe Mick was reminded of his quote from the ’70s, “Sometimes I prefer being on stage, sometimes I prefer orgasm.” That night, I’m pretty sure the stage won.
In the 1990s, the band took in a staggering $750 million from three tours. When I watched them live from Madison Square Garden on HBO early last year my eyes confirmed that these craggy, gaunt guys are about 60 years old, but when the cameras pulled back 30 years melted away and the magic was real and grew in intensity as the night wore on.
What a great show! The Stones are a better band live now than they were in the ’70s when their lives, bodies and minds were a quagmire of sex, drugs and alcohol. Age has focused them, yet taken away very little of their maniacal energy, and Keith Richards is still the greatest rhythm guitarist who ever lived.
Long live rock ‘n’ roll — long live the Rolling Stones!
3. U2
Ireland’s U2 is the most important and influential band of the post-punk era, joining ringing guitar rock, punkish independence, Celtic spirituality, innovative production techniques and electronic experimentalism — all held together by singer/lyricist Bono’s transcendent vision and charisma.
U2 — Bono (Paul Hewson), guitarist the Edge (Dave Evans), bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen — formed in Dublin in 1976 as a Beatles and Stones cover band while the players were all still in high school. In 1980 they were signed to Island Records and released their spectacular first album, “Boy,” produced by Steve Lillywhite.
In preparation for 1984’s “The Unforgettable Fire,” producer Brian Eno had a long conversation with Bono, as he later told Q Magazine. “I said, ‘Look, if I work with you, I will want to change lots of things you do, because I’m not interested in records as a document of a rock band playing on stage, I’m more interested in painting pictures. I want to create a landscape within which this music happens.’ And Bono said, ‘Exactly, that’s what we want too.’”
The results of this fateful change of direction were Eno productions of U2 standards “The Unforgettable Fire” (including “Bad,” “Pride In the Name of Love”); Grammy’s 1987 Album of the Year, the personal yet universal “The Joshua Tree,” which made the band superstars (with “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “With Or Without You” and “One Tree Hill”); 1991’s “Achtung Baby,” a brilliant and emotionally dark move toward electronica (“Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “One,” “Until the End of the World,” “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” and “Mysterious Ways”); and “Zooropa,” deeper still into Euro-dance music and electronics (‘93, with the title track, “Numb,” “Lemon,” “Stay”). Wow, what a journey.
U2 was the leading rock band of the ’80s because its members, like perhaps only Bruce Springsteen in the U.S., still believed that rock ‘n’ roll could save the world, and they had the talent to make that notion not seem hopelessly naive.
This earnestness and willingness to shoulder the heaviest of responsibilities led to soaring heights of achievement and escalating psychic and artistic demands that eventually led the band to adopt irony as its basic means of expression for a time in the ’90s.
All bands want to be cool, and in the ’80s U2 almost single-handedly made earnestness cool, but it was hard, relentless work. After the gritty, chunky guitars-and-idealism of the ’80s, the ’90s saw the diaphanous chill of electronics-and-irony, which was literally and metaphorically cool, but ultimately not what the band is about.
“All That You Can’t Leave Behind” (‘00) returned to what the band isabout, and is the sonic and spiritual follow up to the “The Joshua Tree,” the band’s most idealistic, spiritual and melodically consistent album.
Remnants of the band’s forays into electronics seasoned the album (especially the impressionistic “New York”), but the Edge’s guitar returned to center stage where his unique, chiming style belongs, though it never upstages the songs, every one of which is blessed with a memorable tune.
Following the ecstatic release of the opening track “Beautiful Day,” the second song “Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” states a seemingly modest but deeply profound, earnest and idealistic notion:
“I’m just trying to find a decent melody
A song I can sing in my own company”
They have found it and then some. U2 is now a mature, confident, still amazing band that knows it doesn’t have all the answers, but isn’t afraid to keep asking the right questions.
4. The Grateful Dead
Out on the road today/I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac/A little voice inside my head/Said ‘don’t look back, you can never look back.’ — Don Henley, “Boys of Summer”
When Henley wrote “The Boys of Summer’ in 1984, he saw the sticker on luxurious Detroit steel as a contradiction of values: a symbolic matter/antimatter collision that obliterated the meaning of both. But Henley didn’t realize that his symbol of a Dead past was in reality a very powerful symbol of the present and future.
The Vietnam War was the perfect polarizer between youth and adult culture: it had no clear objective, it was far away, it cost many lives, and it was involuntary — the old made the decisions, the young died. After the war was mercifully killed in the mid-’70s, the nation came to realize that it had hated the internal confusion more than it had hated the external enemy — blood is thicker than ideology.
The Dead became the symbol of this blending of ideologies until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995: a well-oiled money making machine ($50 million a year in concert revenue) that sold peace, love and understanding to a legion of internally divided admirers. The Dead sold out every show because a Dead show was a socially acceptable place to temporarily take a break from the rat race and try on ’60s hippie values without having to live them. People who didn’t do drugs any other time indulged and danced around like pixies to the Dead and their light, rhythmic, pleasant, sometimes inspired, extended musical journeys.
On that musical front, Rhino’s “Very Best of the Grateful Dead” is an excellent representation of the band’s eclectic blending of country, folk, psychedelic rock, R&B, jazz and Afro-Caribbean rhythms on classics like “Friend of the Devil,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Ripple,” “Truckin’,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Casey Jones,” “Franklin’s Tower,” and their lone hit single “Touch of Grey.”
“Grateful Dead” (1971) is my favorite live set by the band — it rolls along with “Bertha,” “Mama Tried,” “Playing in the Band,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Not Fade Away” and “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad,” showing great energy and versatility.
The Dead’s success inspired the entire jam band movement, which carries on its musical and cultural lineage to this day.
5. Velvet Underground
Brian Eno has famously said that not many people bought the Velvet’s albums when they were originally released, but everyone who did formed a band. After bravely jousting the twin enemies of indifference and open hostility in its lifetime, the Velvet Underground has gradually been embraced as one of the best and most important bands in rock history.
The Velvet Underground formed in 1964 when singer/guitarist/songwriter Lou Reed and Welsh multi-instrumentalist John Cale met and decided to form a rock band (eventually with Sterling Morrison on bass and guitar and Maureen “Mo” Tucker on percussion), drawing upon their mutual interest in R&B, the free-form jazz of Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman and the avant-garde minimalism of John Cage and La Monte Young.
The band sought not just to entertain, but to challenge, to prove that rock ‘n’ roll could be dangerous again. They gravitated toward Andy Warhol — who brought Austrian actress/model/chanteuse Nico into the fold — and became fixtures in Warhol’s multimedia organization, the Factory, and in the Village bohemian art scene.
Live, the Velvets were a bizarre amalgam of vigorous R&B, pretty pop songs, extended experimental noise jams and the performance art of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The original band lasted just two albums, “The Velvet Underground and Nico,” and “White Light, White Heat” (both 1967), the first of which stands among the greatest of all rock albums.
“Waiting for the Man,” with a breezy rock groove, follows a Reed character in pursuit of drugs. Reed is almost giddy with self-contempt as his need for drugs drags his social status below that of ghetto dwellers, and that defiant self-contempt defines the Velvet’s status as the first post-modern band and the progenitor of the entire punk/new wave movement.
“Heroin” takes the external adventure of obtaining drugs into the internal realm and captures the seduction of addiction with a power, beauty and grace that makes it all the more frightening. “Venus in Furs,” an unblinking examination of an S&M relationship, conveys ennui of almost black hole density. “All Tomorrow’’s Parties” is Nico’s finest moment, a towering aural monument to ephemeral glamour, with the pulse of dread and Reed’s destabilizing frantic guitar.
Also on the record are two more pretty, Reed penned/Nico sung jewels, “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Femme Fatale,” and the loveliest song of Reed’s career, the preternatural “Sunday Morning,” which captures the hope and regret of a dawning Sunday with awe and delicacy.
The group’s remaining three albums produced several more gems in “White Light, White Heat,” “What Goes On,” “Beginning to See the Light,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “Sweet Jane,” and “Rock and Roll,” all of which and more can be found in the highly recommended box set “Peel Slowly and See.”
6. Led Zeppelin
Over a 10-year, nine-album career from 1969-79, Led Zeppelin was the most popular rock group in the world, ultimately selling more than 50 million records in the U.S. alone (more than 200 million worldwide), developing the blues-based power trio-plus-lead singer archetype in many directions including mystical English folk-rock, Middle Eastern-influenced exotica, quirky pop and every manner of heaviness. They also came to symbolize the Dionysian excesses of the rock lifestyle.
Their ubiquity on classic rock radio formats and the aforementioned excesses have led many to dismiss the band as overrated and symptomatic of the decline of rock ‘n’ roll in the ’70s. The super value collection “Early Days and Latter Days: Best of Vols. 1 and 2” (two discs) prove that, if anything, the band’s musical greatness is still underappreciated, due to the previously mentioned resentments and the fact that the band had no greater cultural impact — they didn’t much stand for anything.
They were both wrong: “Led Zeppelin 1” (“Good Times Bad Times,” “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Communication Breakdown”), “Led Zeppelin 2” (“Whole Lotta Love,” “The Lemon Song,” “Hearbreaker,” “Living Loving Maid,” “Ramble On”) and “Led Zeppelin 4” (a.k.a. “Zoso,” with “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “When the Levee Breaks,” “Stairway to Heaven”) are among rock’s greatest albums.
Plant’s vocals reached levels of deranged ecstasy matched perhaps only by Little Richard on lyrics typically either oozing with sexuality or derived from Anglo-Saxon myth and/or the occult. Bonham (whose accidental death in 1980 broke up the band) pounded his drums relentlessly like a nimble elephant dancing through the house. Jones’s bass and strategic keyboards glued the disparate elements together. And Page, who did most of the writing and production, played some of the most fundamental and memorable guitar in rock history — from the heaviest crunch to the most delicate acoustic finger picking.
Proving the band’s vast enduring popularity, the band’s live two-DVD set “Led Zeppelin,” released last May, has sold more than 600,000 copies.
7. Ramones
The Ramones — Dee Dee (bass, vocals), Joey (vocals), Johnny (guitar), Tommy (drums, later replaced by Marky) — were the American punk band, an endless wellspring of noise, energy, attitude, humor and (sometimes forgotten) great songs, who helped reinvent rock ‘n’ roll when it needed it most in the mid-’70s.
Working for indie Sire Records in the mid-’70s, producer/talent scout Craig Leon became involved with the percolating New York underground music scene. One summer night in 1975 he went to CBGB’s and saw two bands, the Talking Heads and the Ramones.
“I went to that show and there were literally four people in the audience besides me, but the bands were phenomenal,” Leon said. “A lot of people didn’t even think the Ramones could make a record. There were weeks of preproduction on a very basic level: like when the songs started and when they ended. Their early sets were one long song until they ran out of steam or fought. You could see it as a performance art-type thing, where you had a 17-minute concise capsule of everything you ever knew about rock ‘n’ roll, or you could see it as 22 little songs,” he said. They went for the songs.
The Ramones’ first album (1976) is a roaring minimalist icon — the first real American punk record. Layers and layers of accumulated bloat and sheen were stripped away to reveal rock ‘n’ roll at its most basic and vital on songs like “Blitzkreig Bop,” “Beat On the Brat” and “Let’s Dance.” The Ramones’ sound was blazing early-’60s surf music played through the overdriven distortion of Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath. Yet, according to Leon, the Ramones saw themselves as a pop band. “In our naivete, we thought they were going to be bigger than the Beatles. They had even named themselves after Paul McCartney’s early stage name, ‘Paul Ramone,’” Leon said.
While most agree the Ramones’ astonishing first album — which cut through the competition like a 747 in a paper airplane contest — is their most important album, it isn’t my favorite. My favorite is one of the band’s most eccentric, “End of the Century” — produced by the enigmatic pop icon (and now murder suspect) Phil Spector — and the album that explicitly acknowledged such a thing as “pop punk” for the first time.
Recorded in 1979, the album made explicit the connection between early-’60s pop-rock and the punk band’s psyche, and holds up as both a Ramones and a Spector classic — Spector’s idiosyncrasies never overwhelm the roar of “Chinese Rock” or “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School,” and the Spectorish “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio” rollicks with just the right retro touches. The band’s remake of the Ronette’s “Baby I Love You” is as touching as it is fun, and shed a whole new light on singer Joey Ramone (who died in 2002 after a long bout with cancer — I sure do miss that guy).
The two-CD set “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go” is a spectacular overview of the band, with all of the above songs (except “Baby I Love You”) plus “California Sun,” “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” “Cretin Hop,” “Rockaway Beach,” “Teenage Lobotomy,” “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “She’s the One,” “She’s a Sensation,” “We Want the Airwaves” and many, many more.
8. Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd is the most eccentric and experimental multi-platinum band of the album rock era, creating exceptional cinematic sound sculptures “Meddle,” “Dark Side of the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here,” and the band’s popular apex and conceptual death knell, “The Wall.”
Beginning in the mid-’60s as a R&B-based hard rock band, the band (named after Piedmont blues men Pink Anderson and Floyd Council) — Syd Barrett on guitar and vocals, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, Richard Wright on keyboards, and Nick Mason on drums — mutated quickly into a strange combination of twee British psychedelia (“See Emily Play,” “Arnold Layne”) and long-form instrumental space rock (“Astronomy Domine,” “Interstellar Overdrive”), inspired by Barrett’s liberal LSD use: a Cambridge English garden transported to Mars.
Guitarist David Gilmour joined the group as insurance against Barrett’s volatility in ’68, but when Barrett was forced out for unreliability his “backup band” became a democratic foursome sharing writing, singing and leadership duties. As Floyd headed more deeply into experimental symphonic explorations in the sonic chill of space — about as far removed from rock ‘n’ roll’s origins in amped-up American teenage hormones as possible — the more popular they became.
“Meddle,” released in 1971, was the band’s transition album from the Barrett-influenced ’60s to the Waters-Gilmour Floyd of the 1970s, highlighted by a pillar of space rock greatness “Echoes,” over 23 minutes of confidently creative meandering, ingratiating harmony vocals from Waters and Gilmour, burbling organ from Wright, atmospheric axemanship from the incomparable Gilmour, otherworldly pings and drifting whale noises. You can hear the fertile seeds of “Dark Side of the Moon” here.
“Dark Side,” released in ’73, stayed on the album chart for an outrageous 741 weeks, a masterpiece of creative studio craft and a remarkably unified exploration of time, greed and existence — the album is an indispensable rite of passage still. “Wish You Were Here” is an exceptional, ruminative, ambient, long-form look at the disintegration of Barrett intermingled with Roger Waters’ souring view of the world, and in particular, the music industry.
That dim view of life found its ultimate expression in “The Wall,” which used its title to represent literal and metaphoric isolation. In elaborate theatrical presentations of the work, a wall was physically constructed throughout the performance, the collapse of which at the end of each show neatly presaged the group’s fate. Waters went solo in the early-’80s and the group has reunited periodically without him, but neither the group nor he have ever been the same since.
9. Bob Marley and the Wailers
The greatest singer, songwriter, and cultural figure in Jamaican history, Bob Marley brought the righteous message and “positive vibrations” of reggae music to the world, and is the only towering figure of the rock era not from America or the U.K.
Marley was born in rural St. Ann’s Parish in 1945 to a middle-aged white father and a teen-aged black mother, and left home for the tough Trench Town slum of Kingston at 14 in order to pursue a life in music. There he became friends, and formed a vocal trio, with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. They called themselves the Wailing Wailers, later shortened to the Wailers. They worked within the prevailing musical styles of the time, first the buoyant up-tempo ska, then the slower sinuous rock steady, which then gave way to reggae.
The Wailers recorded with legendary producers Coxone Dodd and Lee “Scratch” Perry in the ’60s, recording great songs like “Simmer Down,” the original version of “One Love,” “Soul Rebel,” “Small Axe” and “Duppy Conqueror,” becoming greatly popular in Jamaica. But it was when the Wailers signed with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records in 1972 that their reach became global.
The Wailers’ first albums for Island, “Catch a Fire” and “Burnin’” (both ’73), became instant classics and introduced “Stir it Up,” “I Shot the Sheriff,” and Tosh’s “Get Up Stand Up” to the world. Tosh and Wailer then both left to pursue solo careers and the Wailers became Marley’s vehicle of expression. Until his tragic death from cancer at the age of 36 in 1981, Marley generated anthem after anthem and brought hope and pride to the Third World, in addition to touching hearts and moving feet across North America and Europe.
His hits collection covering the Island years, “Legend,” with sales of over 10 million copies in the U.S. alone, is the most popular and enduring reggae album of all time. Among its delights are “No Woman No Cry,” “Three Little Birds,” “One Love,” “Buffalo Soldier,” “Waiting In Vain” and “Jamming.”
10. Sly and the Family Stone
Sly and the Family Stone made some of the most buoyant and thoughtful music of the late-’60s and early-’70s, uniting and transforming black and white music at a time of highest hope and deepest betrayal in America. Leader Sly Stone personified both extremes, as the truest of believers and a victim of his own disillusionment.
It was on the band’s second LP, “Dance To The Music” (’68) that they really caught fire. The title song was a perfect representation of the live Family sound, a vibrant amalgam of positivity, fuzz bass, doo-wop, rock guitar and horns, gathered in the context of a traditional R&B revue.
The summer of ’69 found Sly and the Family Stone rising to the heights of popularity and critical acclaim on the wings of their phenomenal album “Stand!,” which included the band’s first No. 1 hit, “Everyday People,” a song that defined the band’s social ideals in the way that “Dance” defined its musical thoughts. The charm of the nursery rhyme refrain cuts through centuries of cultural bias and reminds us of the simple truth that “we got to live together” or die separately. Also on the album was the orgasmic “I Want to Take You Higher.”
That same summer, Sly and Family Stone stormed the stage at Woodstock in rainbow get-ups, flashing of sequins and electricity and came away superstars. If the attendees weren’t high enough, when Sly cried out “I Want to Take You Higher” at the end of the band’s set, many feel the festival — and an era — reached their frenzied peak.
Unfortunately, Sly took his obsession with “highness” literally and came to confuse the easy high of drugs with the more difficult highs of music, love and the joy of existence. With the drugs came increasing paranoia and self-absorption that were expressed first and best on 1971’s “There’s A Riot Goin’ On,” where lassitude replaced spunk but Sly’s incredible talent still shined through the murk. Drummer Errico left during the production and Sly further damaged the family feel by playing most of the instruments on the album himself, isolated in a cocaine cocoon. Ironically, “Riot” was the “band’s” only No. 1 album. The dream and the reality then both fell apart, but the music remains.
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Tomás, the Topic in “General Discussion” you need to research is, ”White Album Remix- Glass Onion”
Also of interest is a book by Carrott’s former manager John Starkey, Jasper and Me (1993; Etsiketsi Books), which includes the line “He once said, ‘Ringo isn’t the best drummer in the world. He isn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles.’ ” This quote was credited to John Lennon until Mark Lewisohn discovered, in 1983, that it was Mr Carrott who said it.
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