Beatles Vs. The Rolling Stones Although Both Term Paper

Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones

Although both were seminal musical bands during the 1960's, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones formed, and continue to mark distinct cultural styles and trends in the history of 1960's and 1970's music. The Beatles have the advantage over the Rolling Stones, in some sense, in securing their place in musical history because they no longer are a band and had a far briefer history. Two of the Beatles founding fathers are dead, one by assassination, the other because of cancer. Thus, the Beatles status and place in musical history remains enshrined, unlike that of the Rolling Stones, which is still, to some extent, evolving in its image, yet remaining musically static all at once.

The Beatles are still largely viewed as the 'nicer' or the more cerebral of the two bands. Even though the Beatles like the Rolling Stones, came from a grungy, pseudo-American style during the early days of Brit Pop, the Beatles adopted a less rebellious image from their onset. The Beatles, after leaving the early black-suited days of "I Wanna Hold your Hand," eventually created a musical aesthetic that was not nice and conventional, nor purely teenage or rebellious in style, but incorporated other aspects of dominant intellectual movements of the time, such as the interest in Eastern mysticism and the pacifist movement.These interests affected the group's musical sound, undoubtedly, and sense of musical aesthetics. As early as the strains of "Hey Jude," one can hear an Indian guitar playing along side of elements of the Eastern tonal scale. "Revolution" by John Lennon incorporates a contradictory attitude and disdains as well as embraces the simple, anti-establishment, anti-everything attitude that was common during the late 1960's. A more loving and holistic form of pacificism was to emerge in Lennon's independent works as a musician, as well as Paul McCartney's later band Wings.

The Rolling Stones, in contrast, were all about rebellion and little of the mind -- and everything having to do with rock n' roll in performance, that is the 'body' of rock. Although equally prolific, if not more so, than the Beatles,….....