Everyone loves the Beatles, right? Well … not every musician! From a
windmill-strumming guitar virtuoso to a TV-hosting jazz pianist,
these professional music-makers haven't held back on their distaste for the Fab Four.
In 1970, Elvis Presley wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon expressing
worry about the direction the U.S. was heading. Presley was
particularly concerned with the rising popularity and influences of drugs,
hippies, and the Black Panther Party. In his letter to Nixon, Presley wrote:
"Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help The Country out. I
can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large and I
will help out by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages."
That correspondence gave way to a 1970 Oval Office meeting, as well as a lasting friendship between
Nixon and Presley. According to a summary prepared by Nixon's associate Bud Krogh, which was recorded
in the National Archives, the duo discussed the concerns raised in the letter. Presley then cited
the Beatles as one of the chief negative influences on America's youth. Krogh noted:
"[H]e thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit.
He said that the Beatles came to this country, made their money,
and then returned to England where they promoted an anti-American theme."
"If you want to see Elvis, you've got to see me first."
While British Invasion rock
bands hit the charts, young virtuoso musicians across England embraced American-style blues
and combined this style with rock elements to create something new. One of the loudest,
heaviest, and most popular of those blues rock bands was Cream. Cream was a supergroup,
consisting of guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker.
In a 2015 interview with Forbes,
Baker expressed disdain for professional musicians who can't read or write musical
notation such as heavy metal performers and a certain Beatle. Baker told the outlet:
"Even Paul McCartney needs someone to write it down for him. And he thinks
that's good. There was an article where he said that if he learned to read music,
he might not be able to write as well."
Four years later, Baker offered up some backhanded compliments
for the Beatles. The drummer told Classic Rock:
"John Lennon was the best musician in the Beatles by a country mile. [...] But
[the band's producer] George Martin was the Beatles. Without him they'd have been nowhere."
Championed by modern art icon Andy Warhol and fronted by singer-songwriter Lou Reed,
the Velvet Underground presented a stark contrast to the music of the Beatles. In
the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Velvet Underground's music offered deliberately
unconventional soundscapes about drug users and others living on the fringe of society.
"Where do you spend your money?"
"On drugs."
Presaging the rise of punk and indie rock, the Velvet Underground didn't
sound much like any other rock band that came before it or its contemporaries,
and that was probably by design. Reed didn't like the music being made by other '60s rock bands.
Speaking to record executive Joe Smith's Blank on Blank series in 1987, Reed had this to say:
"I just thought the other stuff couldn't even come
up to our ankles. They were just painfully stupid and pretentious."
In the same interview, Reed reserved some special vitriol for the Beatles, admitting,
"I never liked the Beatles. I thought they were garbage. If you said,
'Who did you like?' I liked nobody."
Like the Beatles, the Who came out of the British rock scene of the mid-1960s. Unlike the Beatles,
the Who were loud, heavy, and aggressive, giving voice to the agitated youth of the
era. Pete Townshend wrote the majority of the band's early work and played lead
guitar. Townshend was also known for his distinctive "windmill" strumming technique.
On a 1966 episode of the youth-centric BBC talk show "A Whole Scene Going," Townshend
lamented what he saw as a general lack of quality in popular music at the time. He
specifically called out the Beatles for their lack of greatness, particularly as it pertained
to their manipulation of recording technology. Townshend discussed how he and Who bassist John
Entwistle had just been listening to a Beatles LP in the stereo format. Townshend explained:
"The voices come out one side and the backing track comes out of the other."
That allowed Townshend to isolate the vocals as well as the instrumentals,
and neither did much for him. He went on to add:
"And when you're actually hearing the backing tracks of the Beatles
without their voices they're flipping lousy."
"I wasn't crazy impressed with the Beatles the first time I heard them."
Often working on the cutting edge and just outside of the mainstream, Todd Rundgren made layered,
dreamy, and experimental pop-rock music. He's probably best known for his '70s radio hits
like "I Saw the Light," "Hello, It's Me," and "Bang on the Drum All Day."
In a 1974 interview with British music magazine Melody Maker, Rundgren veered off topic to discuss
the solo career of John Lennon. Lennon had scored some hits with progressive and socially conscious
singles like "Imagine," "Power to the People," and "Give Peace a Chance," none of which moved,
charmed, or convinced Rundgren. In the interview with Melody Maker, Rundgren proclaimed:
"John Lennon ain't no revolutionary. He's a f---ing idiot, man. Shouting
about revolution and acting like an ass. It just makes people feel
comfortable. All he really wants to do is get attention for himself,
and if revolution gets him that attention, he'll get attention through revolution."
Two decades after the Beatles launched the British Invasion in the '60s, R.E.M. gave
rise to alternative rock, or "college rock," as it was known at the time. Emerging from the
university city of Athens, Georgia, R.E.M. combined jangly guitars with poetic lyrics
sung passionately. The latter was the work of frontman and lead singer Michael Stipe,
who'd head up R.E.M. for 30 years, making smash hits and radio staples out of "Stand,"
"Everybody Hurts," and "Losing My Religion." It's not as if Stipe outright hated the
Beatles — they merely left him feeling nothing. He told Rolling Stone in 1992:
"The Beatles were elevator music in my lifetime."
About three decades later, Stipe clarified his remarks but doubled
down on his ambivalence toward the Fab Four, telling Pitchfork in 2021:
"I'm not really a Beatles fan, though. I acknowledge their genius,
but I'm just not the generation that grew up with them. It's not something I'm personally drawn to,
and that's gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past."
The son of a New Orleans politician, Harry Connick Jr. grew up surrounded by jazz and
was a piano-playing wunderkind before he found mainstream success as an adult. Later an actor
and talk show host, Connick broke out big with a collection of standards that served
as the soundtrack for the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. Connick overwhelmingly
favored pre-rock sounds, espousing the virtues of old-fashioned crooners like Frank Sinatra.
"I met Frank Sinatra a couple of times."
He also criticized bands like the Beatles who didn't do what
Sinatra and other singers did. Connick told USA Weekend in 1990:
"I just want to touch him. I just want to say, 'Mr. Sinatra, you're the king.'"
As for the Beatles, Connick said,
"That music is for second-graders."
The Philadelphia-based band the Dovells were American contemporaries of the Beatles. In the
mid-1960s, they landed several songs near the top of the pop chart, including "You Can't Sit
Down" and "The Bristol Stomp." The Dovells were as much of a soul act as they were a rock band,
owing to the distinctive vocals of lead singer Len Barry. Barry also went on
to launch a solo career, taking the song "1-2-3" to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1966, Barry declared to Hit Parader that he was done associating with and performing
alongside long-haired rock 'n' roll bands. In the same interview, Barry also had some choice
words for the Beatles, who he thought had a bad work ethic and bad attitude. He told Hit Parader:
"I enjoy their records but I think that they're probably one of the worst
in-person acts I've ever seen. They make a joke out of the kids who love them. They
ridicule the very people who took them out of the gutter and made them stars."
As a trumpet player, producer, arranger,
and composer, Quincy Jones has been working behind the scenes in the recording industry since the
1950s. He'd already well established himself by the time the Beatles broke in the U.S. in the
mid-1960s. And when Beatlemania hit and captivated millions of new fans, Jones wasn't among them.
Referring to what he thought was the band's poor musicianship, Jones said to Vulture in 2018:
"They were the worst musicians in the world. [...] Paul was the
worst bass player I ever heard. And Ringo? Don't even talk about it."
Jones recalled one time sitting in on a studio session with Ringo Starr, and being irritated
that the drummer couldn't get a small portion of music correct after three hours of trying.
He and producer George Martin dismissed Starr and brought in jazz drummer Ronnie Verrell,
who knocked out the tricky part in 15 minutes. About the only classic rock band Jones would
admit to enjoying was Eric Clapton's late '60s supergroup Cream. Jones told Vulture:
"Yeah, they could play."
As the frontman and only continuous member of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor has used
his band to explore the dark side of humanity. Nine Inch Nails have sold millions of copies
of albums full of sinister industrial alternative metal like "Down In It,"
"March of the Pigs," and "Closer." In 1994, Reznor told Plazm that he'd been
listening to a lot of older music at the time such as Bowie's '70s output.
"He's always kept himself interesting and took chances."
It made him realize that contemporary music paled in comparison to that stuff,
as did the music that Bowie followed. Reznor told the outlet:
"I hate to think in a retro mindset. You know,
'the Beatles were the best thing.' F--- the Beatles, I hated people who were always going
on about the [...] Beatles. They're dead. They're ugly now. Get them out of my sight."
Reznor's harsh opinion softened over time. In 2011, Rolling Stone asked the musician,
who'd just won an Academy Award for scoring The Social Network, who he thought could
be labeled a genius. Reznor replied,
"It's so obvious, but the Beatles. When I
was growing up, the people who liked the Beatles, I didn't like, so I didn't pay attention to them."
He explained that around the time of the release of the Nine Inch Nails album The
Downward Spiral, he started to listen to a lot of latter-day Beatles records. Reznor added:
"They were so far ahead of the game, it's just not fair."
After the Beatles made it big in the U.S. in 1964,
a variety of bands from England rode that success to international fame and fortune of their own.
Among those other "British Invasion" acts that helped define '60s rock were the Rolling Stones,
the Who, and last but not least, the Kinks. Brothers Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks
drove the band's musical direction. The Kinks would go on to record timeless, gritty pop-rock
hits with "You Really Got Me," "Picture Book," and "All Day and All of the Night."
Just before the 1966 release of Revolver, one of the most critically celebrated Beatles
albums of all time, music magazine Disc and Music Echo gave Kinks frontman Ray Davies
an advance copy. The magazine then asked him to write a track-by-track review. Davies was
left decidedly underwhelmed by the classic in the making. He likened "Taxman" to a mixture
of the sound of the Who and the theme song to the '60s Batman TV series. He also found
"And Your Bird Can Sing" to be "predictable," and said "I Want to Tell You" was, quote,
"not up to the Beatles' standard." But Davies hated "Yellow Submarine," writing,
"This is a load of rubbish, really. [...] I think they know it's not that good."