Do you prefer Beatles originals or covers? | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I'm not sure what to respond to in this thread. You can't sue someone for a bass line, look at Drive My Car which George admitted was lifted from Otis Redding's respect. Whether George actually played bass in that song is debatable, but I digress. I do think it's funny that Chuck Berry sues people so much though, he really should be suing himself for using the same intro on Johnny B. Goode on a bunch of different songs, and pretty much the same solo.

As for the original question, I like some covers, but like M3 said, there are some pretty awful ones, especially sung by George and Ringo (Matchbox , ugh). I'd definitely take originals, and I'm so so on covers as a whole.

I don't know, at the end of the day, I can see why they had lots of covers on their earlier albums: not enough original songs they thought were good enough, maybe songs they were played back at the Cavern or in Hamburg as some sort of throwback tribute, I don't know.

At the end of the day, I much prefer their originals to covers because while I'm sure they put a bit of their own stamp on the originals they were covering, it doesn't mean much in terms of their own songwriting/arranging/playing development. It's fun to play Rock Band and be good at it, but no one's going to know what I'm trying to express lyrically or musically unless I show off something only I have created.

And with that being said, sure Twist And Shout and Til There Was You and Boys were great songs, never mind covers, but you're only a bar band if that's what you play. I don't think anyone is going to take a band seriously until they stick their neck out and say “This is my take on the world I am living in.”

It's just a personal thing for me, hearing bar bands night after night do other people's music, I started to wonder if they ever got tired of it and would they ever say hey guys, we've been working on this.

Carole King decided to go on her own after awhile.

Well sure, they did but they would eventually work on their own songs. And I'm sure Carole King said at one point that if the songs she was writing were becoming big hits, maybe she should step away from her typewriter and get behind that microphone herself.

A cover band doesn't really go anywhere further than a wedding or a bar most of the time. Most pop acts these days are the ones who have outside writers write their songs and while they do well, I personally don't take them so seriously. Some of the covers were good, some were awful but I don't know how to judge most of them fully because I've never heard the original to say, Mr. Moonlight. 

Well Mr. Sun King is right when he says look at the “time perspective” because no one else was writing their own stuff when the Beatles first started. But also make no mistake that when the Beatles really started writing their own music is really when they took off musically, so even if some of those early originals weren't too spectacular, they paved the way for what was to come starting on Help and progressing forward. It's like when George says that when he started he had to work his way up because John and Paul had written most of their bad songs and he had to start when they had already achieved a considerable level of fame, so there's a clear jump from Don't Bother Me to his later stuff, just like there is a clear jump for John and Paul from some of the silly early stuff to Hide Your Love Away and Yesterday and so on.

It's pretty easy to write a song, all you really need are three chords and away you go, but practice is the key to anything, and so it was because of the early practice that enabled the Beatles songwriting to progress in the way that it did.

mr. Sun king coming together said:

You needed to sound snappish to make me realize My idiocity. Sorry to StarWisher.

That's quite all right, Mr. Sun King (Mixer) Coming Together.