Fun_People Archive
15 May
Garage Band Chronicles

Date: Mon, 15 May 95 23:05:05 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Garage Band Chronicles


Forwarded-by: <ScotNygd@aol.com>

[Does this sound familiar?  It might help explain the course of post-sixties
popular music.  -Scott]
[Only sort of.  I don't agree with this review, but then I don't often agree
with music critics, especially rock critics in the new New Yorker... -psl]

From: the New Yorker May 1, 1995

Adam Gopnik reviewing two new books about the Beatles:
    They (the Beatles) were literally inimitable. If in those years
you played rhythm guitar in a pickup rock band (a rhythm guitarist
was someone without rhythm but in possession of a guitar), you knew that
to become Led Zeppelin you needed one guy who could actually play the
guitar, one guy who could sort of play it and one guy who could shout
hoarsely, all of which was easy.  To become the Stones, you needed one
guy who could actually play the guitar and one guy who could sort of
sing while looking cool, which was hard but conceivable.  But to become
the Beatles you need three guys who could actually sing and one guy who
could actually play the guitar and everybody had to look cool.  That
was why those of us who loved "Penny Lane" ended up playing "Whole Lotta
Love" instead, over and over and over.

© 1995 Peter Langston