Under The Influence: Kurt Cobain

I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney.
Rolling Stone

I loved Paul McCartney … He meant more to me than my own parents.
Sandford: McCartney*

The Beatles were a early and formative influence on Cobain. A video survives of him singing Hey Jude at the age of two and he remembers walking around the neighbourhood singing Beatles songs while playing a toy bass drum. He wrote he was "forever grateful" to his Aunt Mari for giving him three Beatles albums and heartbroken when he learned in 1976 that the band had split up years before.

In high-school Kurt wrote a 2000 word essay on Give My Regards To Broad Street after he spent much of the winter of 1984-5 listening to the soundtrack*.

About a Girl was written after Kurt spent three hours listening to Meet The Beatles on repeat to get in the mood and the In Bloom video is a parody of the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

In my Life was played at his funeral.


Here are a few quotes.

I don’t value music much. I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. I like Led Zeppelin, but I hate Robert Plant. I like the Who, but I hate Roger Daltrey.

John Lennon was definitely my favourite Beatle, hands down. I don’t know who wrote what parts of what Beatles songs, but Paul McCartney embarrasses me. Lennon was obviously disturbed [laughs]. So I could relate to that. And from the books I’ve read - and I’m so sceptical of anything I read, especially in rock books - I just felt really sorry for him. To be locked up in that apartment. Although he was totally in love with Yoko and his child, his life was a prison.

John Lennon has been my idol all my life but he’s dead wrong about revolution… find a representative of gluttony or oppression and blow the motherf***er's head off.
Flavorwire

Even in Nirvana — the Beatles [were] such a huge influence. Kurt loved The Beatles because it was just so simple. Well, it seemed simple… they sound easy to play, but you know what? They’re f**cking hard!
Dave Grohl: Access Online

Everyone talks about Kurt's love affair with ... the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together the more obvious their influence on his songwriting became.
Butch Vig: NME

Here is Cobain covering McCartney twice (without embarrassment!) And I Love Her (extra links here and here) ...

And Hey Jude (aged 2).

Sources

*I loved Paul McCartney … He meant more to me than my own parents.
Christopher Sandford: McCartney (p.297) - I can find no sources for Sandford's quotes, which seem to be at odds with other quotes. If you can confirm or deny let me know!
Rolling Stone 
Flavorwire 
Access Online 
NME interview 2004
Charles R. Cross: Heavier Than Heaven

LINKS

Dave Grohl on the Beatles

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Under The Influence: Elliott Smith

At what age did you realise you wanted to become a musician?
Probably five, as soon as I heard The White Album. It was pretty much my inspiration, that and AC/DC.

Elliott Smith: NME (2000)

My friends and I were just starting to teach ourselves guitar in 1980. I was 11 and really into Beatles songs like Julia and Sexy Sadie— cool, kaleidoscopic chord changes. I was totally immersed in trying to figure it all out, and it was slowly happening when some madman gunned down the guide. At first, kids at school acted like it was a hoax. It didn’t seem real at the time, and to be honest, I rarely think of John Lennon as dead. There’s too much life in his music to think of him as gone. For some reason when I think of him now, I usually picture him the way he looked and sounded during the 'hairy and scary' phase, around the time of Abbey Road. Definitely on his own trip. It’s neat when you’re a kid to see people who aren’t scared to change.

My folks were Beatles fans and supposedly played Sgt. Pepper’s for me before I was born. In junior high I thought that A Day in the Life was probably my favourite song ever. Of course, now I have many, many favourite songs, but a lot of them are still Lennon songs. For example:

I’m Only Sleeping

Most songs that bring up wanting to be left alone in some way or another don’t do it as gracefully as this one. It’s cool to express and defend your own interior space without getting all hostile about it; this song makes it seem easy. I also like the way it feels as if it’s pulling itself along with its own momentum instead of being pushed forward heavily with the kick drum.

Tomorrow Never Knows

The first line kinda says it all, really. Again, it’s like he’s describing a solid internal state you can maintain without doing battle with the outside world. Sometimes the most amazing thing to me about Lennon is that he kept a positive identity despite such a cracked upbringing and crazy fame.

Cold Turkey and Jealous Guy

Being this honest can be risky, which, of course, is an excellent idea. It’ll either be sappy or brave. Or both. He chanced it and won. Other people have to write this way all the time. Lennon had access to all floors. Didn’t he also write:

I Am the Walrus

It’s dark, complicated, funny, and popular; it rocks; and it contains the phrase “goo goo g’joob.” Lyrics all over the place. I like songs like this because they activate my imagination. Coherence is fine and all, but it’s not the measure of interesting lyrics. Sonically, this song seems to be coming from a person who just busted out of incarceration somewhere.

Across the Universe

This song is fluid and musical in a way that, to me, overarches all the cultural and political commentary that surrounds his life. A really cool song can sometimes make a dream and reality trade places, maybe for the better.

Elliott Smith: SPIN (Jan 2001)

Five Beatles Cover Version by Elliott Smith

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Under The Influence: Daniel Johnson

When I learned how to play I was always trying to write with Queen … but I could never quite get a song. And then I started listening to the Beatles and got more into the knack of songwriting. And then, finally, my dad bought me a book called Complete Beatles, and ... I played every song in that book again and again, and I did develop a rapport with the Beatles songs. I began to re-work because of what Ringo said in an interview. He said, "We took other people's songs and rearranged their chord structures to write songs," and I go, "Wow!" and I started doing that with their songs. And it was like magic, rearranging the chords. It was like a mathematical situation.

It was just a phenomenal theory for me. Of course, if the Beatles heard about this today they'd roll over in their graves, but you know, that's what I did and it was revolutionary to me and that went on forever. This book was like a bible to me and I knew all their songs and I played them, and then I kept … writing with the Beatles theory over and over again. Millions of songs.

Pitchfork: Do you have a favourite Beatles song?

Well, I wouldn't know what to say. From Yesterday to I Am the Walrus to... Yer Blues ... so many. I wouldn't do without any of them. I love the Beatles, they are my favourite band.

Pitchfork: The first time I heard a tape of yours it reminded me of Rocky Raccoon.

Well, when John Lennon wrote [Rocky Raccoon]*, he had a book called Enter in the Words**, where he would play around with words and everything was hilarious, and that really was a big influence on me. I had a song called Never Relax, and I was playing around a lot with words that way. And it took a long while for John. I mean, in the early days, he was writing songs-- love songs-- and those were great songs, and at the same time he was writing really hilarious poetry. But it took him until Revolver to take that hilarious poetry and work it into his songs.

But that was an influence on me, in writing lyrics. You know because John was hilarious with his lyrics, and you know, we miss him. But I believe the Beatles are still alive, and with me, because I can put on any record at any time and there they are. And so the Beatles mean a lot to me, and I listen to them a lot. They're my main influence. And I just acquire anything I can get a hold of, from bootlegs to solo albums to whatever.

Pitchfork magazine

The Beatles – Daniel Johnson (from the album Yip)

When I was born in '61***
They already had a hit
They worked so hard and they made it too
They really were very good
They deserved all their success
They earned it, yes they did, they didn't buy their respect
And everybody wanted to be like them
Everybody wanted to be the Beatles
And I really wanted to be like him but he died
A legendary rock group
Like history now to read
Like a magical fairy tale that's hard to believe
But it really did happen
Four lads who shook the world
God bless them for what they done
God bless them for what they done

*Paul McCartney wrote Rocky Racoon
**There's no book with this title. Perhaps Daniel means In His Own Write, or Spaniard In The Works.
***Their first hit was in 1962

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Under The Influence

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Under The Influence: Buddy Holly

John Lennon

I only saw [Buddy Holly] on the London Palladium [TV show] … He was great. It was the first time I saw a Fender guitar being played. While the singer sang! (Also the 'secret' of the drumming on Peggy Sue was revealed - live).

The name BEATLES was directly inspired by CRICKETS. I think the greatest effect was on the songwriting (especially mine and Paul's). We [performed] practically everything he put out, what he did with three chords made a songwriter out of me. He was the first guy I ever saw with a capo, he made it OK to wear glasses. I was Buddy Holly.

John Lennon answering a Sept 1974 questionnaire by Jim Dawson The Elvis Forum. I've edit some of Lennon's punctuation for clarity and my own sanity!

Lennon quoted/paraphrased Holly's song (written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant) in Dear Prudence

Dear Prudence: “The sun is up, the sky is blue/It's beautiful and so are you”
Raining In My Heart: “The sun is out, the sky is blue/There's not a cloud to spoil the view”

George Harrison

One of the greatest people for me was Buddy Holly, because first of all he sang, wrote his own tunes and was a guitar player, and he was very good. Buddy Holly was the first time I heard A to F#m. Fantastic—he was opening up new worlds there. And then A to F, A, D, E, F and F#m. He was sensational. I no longer had the fear of changing from A to F.

Quoted in Mark Lewisohn: The Beatles - All These Years: Volume One: Tune In (p.150)

Paul McCartney

Buddy Holly/The Crickets songs covered by The Beatles

Words of Love - Beatles for Sale
Crying, Waiting, Hoping - Live at the BBC
That'll Be the Day - Anthology 1

More Under The Influence posts
Further Reading: Aaron Krerowicz: Influence of Buddy Holly on The Beatles

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Under The Influence: Bob Dylan (again!)

We were driving through Colorado [and] we had the radio on and eight of the Top Ten songs were Beatles songs. In Colorado! 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones.

They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid… But I kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go… in my head, The Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking about it but it was so far out I couldn’t deal with it - eight in the Top Ten.

It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn. This was something that never happened before.

Bob Dylan

Quoted in In My Life: Encounters With The Beatles ed. by Robert Cording, Shelli Jankowski-Smith and E.J. Miller Laino (p 12)

More from Bob on the Beatles here and here

More from the Beatles on Bob here and here

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The Night That Changed American Music: The Beatles On Ed Sullivan

We gathered round to hear the sound comin’ on the little screen
The grief had passed, the old men laughed, and all the girls screamed
’Cause four guys from England took us all by the hand
It was time to laugh, time to sing, time to join the band.

I Saw It on T.V. by John Fogerty


CBS called it 'the Night That Changed America' as 73 million Americans tuned in to watch the Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. Among those impacted were children and young adults who would go on to define music throughout the rest of the 60s, 70s and 80s. From working musicians like David Crosby, gleaning tips on 'how to hold an electric guitar' to five year old Richie Sambora receiving his life's calling.

Session ace Will Lee who wound up working four nights a week in the same studio the Beatles appeared in as part of his 'day job' on Late Night With Letterman thought

maybe music is gonna be my life from now on

For Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick) and Robert Cray it was the most potent guitar advert possible

[It] was the beginning. That got me to learn how to play the guitar. 

The girls were screaming at The Beatles, as an 11/12 year old kid, by the time I got the guitar, I wanted that, too.

Worship songwriter Mark Altrogge says

It was electrifying - like watching fireworks for the first time - I'd never seen or heard anything like them.

Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh

I took one look and it was, ‘F**k school. I memorized every Beatles song and went to Shea Stadium and screamed right along with all those chicks

What Greg Kihn calls “the single most important moment in Rock history” had a visceral effect

When it ended the sudden void sucked the air out of my parent’s living room

Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) says

I remember exactly where I was sitting. It was amazing. It was like the axis shifted ... It was kind of like an alien invasion.

For Joe Perry (Aerosmith) the experience was

... akin to a national holiday … I wasn’t prepared by how powerful and totally mesmerizing they were to watch. It changed me completely. I knew something was different in the world that night. Next day at school, the Beatles were all anybody could talk about.

Nancy Wilson (Heart) 'heard the call' to become musician

The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me the first time we saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. … it was a huge event, like the lunar landing: that was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians … we didn’t want to marry them … we wanted to be them.

As did 14 year old Billy Joel

the single biggest moment that I can remember being galvanized into wanting to be a musician for life ... all of a sudden there’s this band, and they played their own instruments and they wrote their own songs, they looked like working class kids and I said, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to be like those guys.’ That one performance changed my life. Up to that moment I'd never considered playing rock as a career. 

And Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi)

One of my earliest memories was sitting cross-legged on the floor … and watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was five years old and I remember thinking, 'Wow! That's what I want to do.' I always knew I wanted to be a rock star, and The Beatles set that in motion. 

They were the most incredible thing I ever saw. I couldn't put it into any kind of historical context at the time … but I knew, even at that young age … that I was witnessing something truly life-changing. And not just for me, but for everybody as well.

For Tom Petty it represented escape

The minute I saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show – and it's true of thousands of guys - there was the way out. There was the way to do it. You get your friends and you're a self-contained unit. And you make the music. … I really saw in The Beatles that here's something I could do.

Bruce Springsteen says

It shifted the lay of the land ... Rock 'n' roll came to my house where there seemed to be no way out … and opened up a whole world of possibilities.

And for 13 year old Steven Van Zandt (The E Street Band) it was a glimmer of hope

February 9th, 1964, it all began for me. Suddenly, maybe there's hope for my life. Because I didn't fit in anywhere. And I was starting to get concerned! I didn't know that I could actually try and make a living out of doing this, make a career out of it.

This was the main event of my life. It was certainly the major event for many others, whether or not they knew it at the time. For me, it was no less dramatic than aliens landing on the planet.

Steven also points to the instant effect it had

On the day before The Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show, there wasn't a single rock and roll band in America. And February 10th, everyone had one.

Greg Kihn recalls

In a single weekend everything had changed. … Every kid in school went through the same metamorphosis. … Brylcreem lost a whole generation in a single hour. The direction of our lives shifted as radically as the direction of our hair. It was magic.

Tom Petty remembers

Within weeks, you could drive through literally any neighbourhood in Gainesville and you would hear the strains of garage bands playing ... I mean everywhere. And I'd say by a year from that time, Gainesville probably had 50 bands.

Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd) simply states

Like everybody else in our generation [we] freaked out and wanted to start a rock ’n’ roll band.

Gene Simmons (Kiss) acknowledges the debt of many

There is no way I’d be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for the Beatles … It blew me away that these four boys [from] the middle of nowhere could make that music.

SOURCES

CBS News here and here
Greg Kihn 
Rock Cellar Magazine
Ultimate Classic Rock
Music Radar
Austin Chronicle 
Beatles Songwriting Academy 

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Under The Influence: Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

This incredible music [A Day In The Life] just overwhelmed us. When it came to the middle of the song, where the orchestra rises, it sounded like a plane taking off in the room. It just killed us. And when it ended with that incredible chord, we all sat there stunned.

For me [While My Guitar Gently Weeps] was the song of the century. This may sound naïve now, but the Beatles were like gods to me as a kid. Not literally, of course, but it was like they were more than human in some way. This was the point where they embraced heavy blues-based guitar, which made musicians realise you could write modern songs with cool chords that weren't necessarily blues-based and still stick some heavy guitar in them. There were no credits on this album, so I didn't even know it was Clapton for a few weeks, and Eric literally makes his guitar weep at the end. Every guitar player loves this song – because every guitar player has a tear-stained guitar.

Gary Rossington: 'The Hour Of Music That Rocks My World' Guitar World Magazine

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Under The Influence: Douglas Adams

I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.

Author Douglas Adams referenced the Beatles through out his writing career from the essay on religious poetry that got him into St John's College, Cambridge to the first Dirk Gently novel in 1987.

As a guest on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs he picked Drive My Car because his favourite Beatles song was “too obvious” and his favourite album was Plastic Ono Band - “for my money the greatest album ever made by anybody under any circumstances”. Throughout his life Douglas listened to at least one Beatles album at least once a week. His top 20 songs, in order of preference -

1. Hey Jude
2. A Day In The Life
3. Drive My Car
4. Don't Let Me Down
5. I Will
6. If I Fell
7. Hello Goodbye
8. Rain
9. Martha My Dear
10. Strawberry Fields
11. We Can Work It Out
12. This Boy
13. Ticket To Ride
14. Can't Buy Me Love
15. All You Need Is Love
16. I'm Fixing A Hole
17. And Your Bird Can Sing
18. She's A Woman
19 You Can't Do That
20 Here, There & Everywhere

Here is a tribute he wrote on Paul McCartney's 50th birthday

I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.

When “Can’t Buy Me Love” came out, I was twelve. I sneaked out of school during morning milk break, bought the record, and broke into matron’s room because she had a record player. Then I played it, not loud enough to get caught, but just loud enough to hear with my ear pressed up against the speaker. Then I played it again for the other ear. Then I turned the record over and did the same for “You Can’t Do That.” That was when the housemaster found me and put me into detention, which is what I had expected. It seemed a small price to pay for what I now realize was art.

I didn’t know it was art then, of course. I only knew that the Beatles were the most exciting thing in the universe. It wasn’t always an easy view to live with. First you had to fight the Stones fans, which was tricky because they fought dirty and had their knuckles nearer the ground. Then you had to fight the grownups, parents and teachers who said that you were wasting your time and pocket money on rubbish that you would have forgotten by next week.

I found it hard to understand why they were telling me this. I sang in the school choir and knew how to listen for harmony and counterpoint, and it was clear to me that the Beatles were something extraordinarily clever. It bewildered me that no one else could hear it: impossible harmonies and part playing you had never heard in pop songs before. The Beatles were obviously just putting all this stuff in for some secret fun of their own, and it seemed exciting to me that people could have fun in that way.

The next exciting thing was that they kept on losing me. They would bring out a new album and for a few listenings it would leave me cold and confused. Then gradually it would begin to unravel itself in my mind. I would realize that the reason I was confused was that I was listening to Something that was simply unlike anything that anybody had done before. “Another Girl,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and the extraordinary “Drive My Car.” These tracks are so familiar now that it takes a special effort of will to remember how alien they seemed at first to me. The Beatles were now not just writing songs, they were inventing the very medium in which they were working.

I never got to see them. Difficult to believe, I know. I was alive at the time the Beatles were performing and never got to see them. I tend to go on about this rather a lot. Do not go to San Francisco with me, or I will insist on pointing out Candlestick Park to you and bleating on about the fact that in 1966 the Beatles played their last concert there, just shortly before I’d woken up to the fact that rock concerts were things you could actually go to, even if you lived in Brentwood.

A friend of mine at school once had some studio tickets to see David Frost’s show being recorded, but we ended up not going. I watched the show that night, and the Beatles were on it playing “Hey Jude.” I was ill for about a year. Another day that I happened not to go to London after all was the day they played their rooftop concert in Savile Row. I can’t—ever—speak about that.

Well, the years passed. The Beatles passed. But Paul McCartney has gone on and on. A few months ago the guitarist Robbie McIntosh phoned me and said, “We’re playing at the Mean Fiddler in a few days, do you want to come along?”

Now this is one of the daftest questions I’ve ever been asked, and I think it took me a few moments even to work out what he meant. The Mean Fiddler, for those who don’t know, is a pub in an unlovely part of northwest London with a room at the back where bands play. You can probably get about two hundred people in.

It was the word we that temporarily confused me, because I knew that the band that Robbie was currently playing in was Paul McCartney’s, and I didn’t think that Paul McCartney played in pubs. If Paul McCartney did play in pubs, then it would be daft to think that I would not saw my own leg off in order to go. I went.

In front of two hundred people in a pub, Paul McCartney stood up and played songs he’d never, I think played in public before. “Here, There and Everywhere” and “Blackbird,” to name but two. I’ve played “Blackbird” in pubs, for heaven’s sake. I spent weeks learning the guitar part when I was supposed to be revising for A-levels. I almost wondered if I was hallucinating.

There were two moments of complete astonishment. One was the last encore, which was an immaculate, thunderous performance of, believe it or not, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” (Remember, this was in a pub.) And the other was one of the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll songs, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which I had first heard crouching with my ear cupped to the Dansette record player in the school matron’s room.

There is a game people like to play that goes, “When would you most like to have lived and why?” The Italian Renaissance? Mozart’s Vienna? Shakespeare’s England? Personally, I would like to have been around Bach. But I have a real difficulty with the game, which is that living at any other period of history would have meant missing the Beatles, and I honestly don’t think I could do that. Mozart and Bach and Shakespeare are always with us, but I grew up with the Beatles and I’m not sure what else has affected me as much as that.

So Paul McCartney is fifty tomorrow. Happy birthday, Paul. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.


Source: Wish You Were Here by Nick Webb
The [London] Sunday Times, June 17, 1992 Quoted in The Salmon Of Doubt.

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Under The Influence: Bob Dylan (Again)

America should put up statues to the Beatles. They helped give this country's pride back to it.

Bob Dylan Q: Howard Sounes: Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan (p.203)

Lest we go too overboard here's a counterbalance

[Sgt. Pepper was] a very indulgent album...though the songs on it were real good. I didn't think all that production was necessary

Bob Dylan Q: Howard Sounes: Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan (p.270)

Here's Dylan singing Yesterday in 1970

To find out what Dylan thinks of Paul McCartney check this out and read more about Dylan's influence on the Beatles here and here

More artists who love the Beatles here

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Under The Influence: John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

The Beatles showed us that four people could be one, as perfectly balanced as the four elements. The macrocosm and the microcosm. All things as one.

John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers) Beatles Story, Liverpool

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Under The Influence: Joe Elliott (Def Leppard)

The Beatles gave us something we wouldn't have otherwise had because they spent so long in the studio with Lennon and McCartney no doubt saying, 'What does that machine do? What happens if we turn it upside down?'. When Leppard were in the studio with Mutt Lange we said, 'we wouldn't have been able to do this if The Beatles hadn't done it first'. They showed everybody the way. Our production techniques were influenced by what they were doing on Sgt. Pepper, the White Album... That influenced us more than us trying to rip off their chord structures.

Joe Elliott (Def Leppard) in Classic Rock Magazine

This is a guest post by Martin Quibell

RIP Robin Williams

Robin dueted with Bobby McFerrin for George Martin's album In My Life

 

Under The Influence: Angus Young (AC/DC)

Even a great band like the Beatles goes off on a detour and does a bit of cabaret for awhile. But you’ll find that the truly great ones always come back to playing real rock and roll, I thought [Abbey Road] got a bit glossed over at the time it was released. But those bluesy fills and huge riffs [in I Want You (She’s So Heavy)] showed they were still terrific rockers right to the end 

Angus Young in Guitar World Magazine

Under The Influence: Eddie Van Halen

That whole [Abbey Road] album takes you for a ride. And I Want You (She’s So Heavy) takes you for a ride within that ride. Those monster riffs seem to go on forever and then suddenly drop you off a cliff. Lennon’s vocals are just so passionate. He hated his voice, as Hendrix hated his. I think the fact that they weren’t typical singers made them even more expressive. A lot of trained singers have less impact than someone who’s just flying by the seat of his or her pants. 

Eddie Van Halen in Lava Magazine

Hear Van Halen covering Twist And Shout here

Under The Influence: George Thorogood

[I'm Down] absolutely terrifies me. It's as good as anything Little Richard ever did. This is what they probably sounded like in Hamburg before they got into writing their own material. It's almost as if they were saying, “See, we're the greatest rock and roll band as performers too, not just the greatest songwriters”

Guitar World July 1997

Funnily enough, I got into [Elmore James] because of The Beatles. Remember that moment in the song For You Blue where George Harrison goes, 'Elmore James got nothin' on this baby!'? That made me say, 'Wow, so there's somebody The Beatles think is as heavy as The Beatles, huh? OK, I'll check him out.'

Music Radar

The Beatles represented freedom to me, they had all the freedom in the world...they were young, they were good-looking, they were talented, they were rich, they were famous...they had it all.

Blues About

Under The Influence: Joe Satriani

[Across The Universe is] such a beautiful song, and it captures the naiveté of the time. Lennon was so talented in that he could be the funniest, the snidest, and yet ultimately the most poignant guy in the band. Often you find that when the joker in the crowd finally says something serious, it’s far more profound than what the so-called "serious" guys come up with. 

Lava Magazine

John Lennon's fuzzed out guitar playing on the Revolution single is one of my favourite guitar performances. He had a raw and muscular way of playing with distortion that I always found to be unique. David Bowie's Fame features John playing in that way, and it makes the track swing for me. 

His rhythm guitar playing was always spot on, with lots of feel and groove. His knowledge of chords and how to use harmony creatively was evident throughout both The Beatles catalogue and his own. These days ‘Lennonesque’ is a term one could use to describe how using diminished and augmented chords to bring a chord sequence to a higher level. All in all, John Lennon was really a superb player.

Music Radar

Joe started playing drums aged nine after seeing The Beatles on TV. In Sep 1970 he switched to guitar on the day Jimi Hendrix died.

Under The Influence: Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains)

I always considered John Lennon the 'dark' Beatle, and I guess I always dig the dark horse guys. But there was always a lot of heart in his songs. [A Day In The Life] is a really magical one about how there are beautiful things in life, though it’s a journey through some heavy stuff. 

 Jerry Cantrell in Lava Magazine

Under The Influence: Jim Carrey

The Beatles r the greatest antidepressant every created. Right now, I'm listening to Rubber Soul and bathing in serotonin. They r love! {8^• 

 Jim Carrey - Twitter

 

“Hey, look, the Monkees. They were a huge influence on the Beatles.” 

Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey): Dumb and Dumber (1994)

Under The Influence: David Bazan (Revisited)

People that claim to value music but won't actually spend money on music are liars. If I had to pay a thousand dollars for The White Album now, having heard it and knowing what it's like, I would save up the money and buy it because it's a very, very important record. 

David Bazan

Episode 121: The Nick and Josh Podcast 

More from David here and here

Under The Influence: Dave Mustaine (Megadeth)

My oldest sister's name is Michelle, so I was curious about [the song Michelle]. And as soon as they started singing in French I was hooked. Plus the arrangement of the french horn part at the end is so passionate. 

But what I learned from the Beatles was how to move the root a half or full step while keeping the rest of the chord suspended, which is really cool. We do that quite a lot. They also used a lot of 7th chords, whether they were major, minor or augmented, and I found that fascinating. 

Listen to the White Album, songs like Cry Baby Cry, Rocky Raccoon and Dear Prudence, and you'll hear them hold the chord while moving the root.

Dave Mustaine suffers from French Horn based hallucinations while compiling his ideal mix tape in Guitar World Dec 1997.