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Beatles or Stones; both or neither?

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The question when you set up your profile on the Afterword site. Those of you who might have answered neither: who would you choose instead? The mighty Who? The Kinks? Principal Edward’s Magic Theatre?
I choose Yardbirds…

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  1. Alongside the Beetles and the Velvets, one of the most influential groups. More so in the US than the UK, but it’s arguable that the mid-sixties wave of garage bands, the Nuggets bands, got their inspiration from these guys. Alum guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page. Maybe calling their should-have-been breakthrough album nothing (not even Roger The Engineer) didn’t help.

  2. Apropos of nothing here related, but seeing as Americana is so big these days, let’s hear it for the Fraternity of Man, who invented country rock which begat etc etc. None of your International Submarine Band, this lot, yes, the DBMHMs from the Easy Rider soundtrack, were pedal steeling all over the place in 1968.
    I learnt this truth yesterday, coming across their LP in the depths of the inter web.

    • More famous for having Mothers/Little Feat connections than country rock leanings, which aren’t much in evidence on this album. They made a second, Get It On, which jettisoned the great psych touches on this for a blues-n’-boogie approach, with Lowell George guesting.

  3. For those of a (only slightly) younger bent if the question is designed to get at your deepest formative tribal musical allegiance then it has to be: Pistols, Clash or Jam?
    Me: Jam.

      • In this timeframe, it would be –
        Me: Wire

        I don’t know who came up with the Beatles/Stones question on the profile page, but originally it didn’t give you the “both or neither” options – so you were left with the perennial ’60s yin and yang. Maybe reflected the age profile of the Massive at the time (or still?)….I guess 99% were in one camp or the other, with the wilful outsiders picking, eg the Who, Kinks, Yardbirds….

    • 1. Jam
      2. Clash
      3. Pistols

      In that order.

      Of course, there are those of us who are too young to have experienced Punk as it was going on. Some of us are even too young to have needed to form opinions about Oasis, Blur or Suede.

    • Dunno about that. I missed the sixties. The late seventies was my formative music time but the music I listened to was as much from the past as from the present. I still had a view on Stones/Beatles in other words. The Stones were the band that meant most to me probably. As for Jam, Clash, Pistols, I’d say none of the above. More likely Talking Heads out of contemporary bands. Those supposed punk bands were all a bit meat and potatoes musically. Now though I have developed a greater appreciation of the more dance music/reggae orientated Clash output, Radio Clash for example. I think I want that funkiness to be present. It’s wholly absent from Pistols/Jam. It’s there with the Heads and even the Stones.

  8. I think I said both and if I could add to them I may have put Arbouretum, Byrds, JJ Cale, Dylan,
    Endless Boogie, Funkadelic, Gilberto Gil, Ben Harper, If, Bert Jansch, King Crimson, Love, Moody Blues, Bill Nelson, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Pretty Things (don`t like nobody begining with Q so I`m having 2 `Ps`, Chris Robinson, Shack, Trees, John Trudell, (U same as U), Velve….nah they`re shite), Vanilla Fudge, Scott Walker (up to the mid-`70`s), XTC, Neil Young, Warren Zevon.

  9. I only really like two albums from the 60s: The Velvet Underground & Nico and David Bowie/Space Oddity. I didn’t actually hear them until sometime in the 80s, but I can see them now as the chronological beginnings of an arty, fey, maverick thread that has been constant in my musical tastes throughout my adult life.

    A variation of Stones or Beatles question: Sinatra or Bennett? For me, the latter.

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