A Quote by William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music.
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Musical talent is maybe something, but there are no unmusical people. You're moved by music. It's total rubbish to say, "Oh, I'm unmusical." It doesn't exist; it's ridiculous.
I never went to the Beatles' concerts to scream. I never screamed at anybody's show. I was on my feet with the entire, all of the crowned heads of Motown, and we were shrieking our guts out.
There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as “the art”. I believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic is art and that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form is literally magic.
If The Beatles represent the most successful version you can be of a thing, then by that definition The Rolling Stones are The Beatles of music, not counting The Beatles. John Lennon is The Beatles of The Beatles.
The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.
It just annoyed me that people got so into the Beatles. "Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." It's not that I don't like talking about them. I've never stopped talking about them. It's "Beatles this, Beatles that, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." Then in the end, it's like "Oh, sod off with the Beatles," you know?
Musical recording history is full of multi-racial collaborations and it is this cross-pollination that has created the magic of Ellington, Sinatra and the Beatles. I am merely a part of that tradition.
I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.
When I was just getting started making my own music, my dad said, "You should think about art, but also anti-art and non-art."
Over the years, my marks on paper have landed me in all sorts of courts and controversies - I have been comprehensively labelled; anti-this and anti-that, anti-social, anti-football, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-Semitic, anti-science, anti-republican, anti-American, anti-Australian - to recall just an armful of the antis.
I grew up with The Beatles, Bob Marley and Talking Heads. I like the melody-with-rhythm aspect of music - there's so much to discover still.
Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic.
So to compare the Beatles, obviously the Beatles are the Beatles, but in hip-hop terms, Tribe is the Beatles. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are the Beatles. Big Daddy Kane is Jimi Hendrix. It means that much to people that grew up with it.
Some writers are curiously unmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them. For me, music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well. Writing and music are two different mediums, but musical phrases can give you sentences that you didn't think you ever had.
It's nearly redundant to enumerate the reasons The Beatles are important. There are probably different reasons why The Beatles are important to a musician like myself and to the millions of Beatles fans who just enjoy listening to the music.
My own education has been entirely controversial: that is why I know what I am writing about; and appear eccentric to dogmatically educated Old School Ties whose heads are stuffed with obsolete shibboleths.
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