“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 antimusic.” - William F. Buckley, Jr.

“Theirs is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism… In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulgent amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivaled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. (Strawberry Fields suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.)” - Glenn Gould

Discuss.

Buckley sounds like he's spent the afternoon in a frustrating discussion with someone that was insisting the Beatles are better than Bach. It's like listening to someone argue that Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel prize for mastery of the English language. Eventually one runs out of patience and says something over the top.

Gould's evaluation doesn't seem too unfair coming from where he was at (to him, the Beatles probably sounded like the Shaggs). But he told Rolling Stone that his biggest complaint against the Beatles was that they buried the vocals, and that because of the Beatles, it became standard practice to bury the vocals in pop music, and Gould liked the vocals out front.

Wasn't it the Pulitzer that Dylan got - and Glenn Gould didn't?

Very interesting comment on Gould. One of the more interesting figures of the 20th Century. And it seems logical in some way that he hated the Beatles but loved Petulia Clark. Check out this passage from Jonathan Cott's book-length conversation with him: http://books.google.com/books?id=dKCdsOq3X4sC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=glenn+gould+beatles&source=bl&ots=H1OgIRXl14&sig=jcPXzZ6cI4og4ReZsUx-fGR-DVk&hl=en&ei=UanESpjrDczalAfcqKWSAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6#v=onepage&q=glenn%20gould%20beatles&f=false

His "three chord" comment shows that there's a good deal he never listened to, which is understandable if he couldn't stand what he had already heard.

It's fun watching Cott try and keep up.

Check out the chapter called "The George Szell Caper."

Glenn Gould to Cleveland Orchestra Asst. Conductor Louis Lane following the
rehearsal clash with George Szell:

"So, Louis, shall we join Dr. Szell in his usual luncheon of gall and bitter wormwood?"