To ask who your favourite Beatle is/was?

[TwiggyTwogs]

I'm just asking as DH was watching A Hard Days Night. I'll always love Johns smile

George by a country mile, beautiful, talented, brave.

Paul ruined the entire Olympic ceremony so for that alone he can't be my favourite.

Used to like John because he was the edgy one, but in reality he was a self centred navel gazer who sadly would probably have aged badly and turned into the sort of person who goes on chat shows and retells the same stories ad infinitum.

Ringo? Indifferent.

@FOKKYFC,

John had gone off his trolley by the time he hitched his wagon to the revolutionaries.

Fame, drugs and Yoko Ono did him in and he never recovered.

Michael X was her bright idea, same as all John’s other bad decisions. She was pulling the strings at that point and he was so doped up, I doubt whether he had a coherent thought in his head.

Applying the standards of today to them is ridiculous. They were late teens transformed to worldwide phenomenon within a couple of years. All damaged in their own way. It was all over by the time they were 30. John dead by 40. He has been dead as long as alive now. It was a complete and utter whirlwind. Yet here we are discussing them and their music is as alive as it ever was. It's probably up in space somewhere too.

@viques,

Paul is 78 years old.

His two big transgressions in life that it seems no one can forgive him for are:

1. He got old
2. He lived when John died

He was 28 when the Beatles split up. 28.

So no, 50 years later, he does not look or sound the same. So what? He still brings pleasure to millions of people around all the world and across all generations, and his songs will live forever.

John died, but Paul lived. And it’s time to stop hating him for that.

@EnjoyingTheSilence

My favourite Beatle is Ray Davies of the Kinks.

Ah, well, how can you not love Waterloo Sunset ? It's a love letter to the city I was born in, grew up in, and will forever call home.

That and "London Calling" ....

Seems to me they were brilliant musicians but pretty shitty ppl. They behaved how men behaved back then and thank god time’s have changed.

I’ll get my coat 😁 @TwiggyTwogs

@carben

DGRossetti Imagine" - such an obvious Oasis ripoff I'm surprised lawyers weren't involved

Huh? Is that the same Imagine first released in 1971? Liam Gallagher wasn't even born until 1972

I guess I'm showing my age then ... there was a running joke in the 90s about who the best Beatles tribute act was ...

Ringo is the narrator for Thomas the tank engine and that’s my childhood. So he is my favourite, I can hear his voice now thinking about it haha.

My mum loves Paul McCartney!

@Waxonwaxoff0

And the comments Ringo made about Liverpool - he grew up in the slums, an incredibly deprived area so I can understand where he's coming from. I slag off the bad areas of my hometown too!

He didn't grow up in 'slums', he grew up in a deprived working class area. Certainly not 'a slum', as the people who lived there (and still do) would tell you. That he came to think it of it as that just speaks of the arrogance of man. He doesn't confine the negative comments to that area either, it's the whole city he finds distasteful and unworthy of him now x

[quote deepbluesea18]@viques,

Paul is 78 years old.

His two big transgressions in life that it seems no one can forgive him for are:

1. He got old
2. He lived when John died

He was 28 when the Beatles split up. 28.

So no, 50 years later, he does not look or sound the same. So what? He still brings pleasure to millions of people around all the world and across all generations, and his songs will live forever.

John died, but Paul lived. And it’s time to stop hating him for that.[/quote]
Lighten up. I only said I didn't like him because he ruined the Olympic ceremony!

Which he did.

And yet despite everything Paul has achieved, @viques, and all the art he has put in the world, you hate him because of one 10 minute performance where he struggled with technical problems.

Obviously you are just too cool to appreciate McCartney. Your loss.

@deepbluesea18

And yet despite everything Paul has achieved, *@viques*, and all the art he has put in the world, you hate him because of one 10 minute performance where he struggled with technical problems.

Obviously you are just too cool to appreciate McCartney. Your loss.

That's about the size of it.

Paul, especially after seeing his Carpool Karaoke when he goes to Liverpool and visits his old house. Really sweet to see the public's reaction to him

I’ve just seen that you think George was ‘beautiful, brave and talented’, @viques.

Say no more - you are obviously one of the Mumsnet many who knows nothing about the Beatles and has revised history according to what might have happened if.

George was a mediocre talent. He wrote a few songs (with a lot of help from other people). He was fortunate to be in a group with the powerhouse that was John and Paul, and he improved by being around them, as anyone would. But they were geniuses and he was not, which was a bitter pill for him to swallow.

The reality is that George was a petty, jealous and rather sour man. He was a serial philanderer, who famously played a ukulele while a prostitute gave him a blow job at a party. He was married at the time, by the way. He even slept with Ringo’s wife - that’s how much of a loyal friend he was. He was brave, I will give him that. But he was a right nasty piece of work,

Dung or Stag, both equally impressive.

Maybe I should start a thread on favourite dictators. It might be less contentious

With its sister thread Serial killers.

He Slept with ringos wife?????

Deepbluesea I agree with much of what you say except about John and Paul post Beatles. Many people who aren't that keen on Paul had already come to that conclusion long before the 2012 Olympics. Much of his output in the 70s and 80s was pretty dire tbf. I do think he was the most organised and ruthless of them when they were starting out and it was easy for John to later hold that against him despite benefiting from it at the time. But what about him wanting to change the order of Lennon/McCartney on some of the songs? Yuck.

How do you know John was completely ruined by drugs throughout the '70s? He obviously had issues in that respect but completely ruined by them? I think he made some very dodgy associations but was a good example of what happens when someone is intelligent but uneducated.

@looseddaughter,

‘Most people who aren’t keen on Paul’ have been influenced by John and Yoko’s smear campaign of the 1970s and beyond, spearheaded by Lennon fanboy and Ono bootlicker Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone.

Anyone who knows anything about music knows this is utter horseshit and that McCartney was the experimental Beatle, responsible for all their most innovative work, and that much of his post-Beatles catalogue is brilliant. Some of it isn’t - he’s too prolific for it all to be brilliant - but much of it is. McCartney will be remembered as the most important songwriter of the 20th century - a modern day Beethoven. That’s just true.

As for John, he was a basket case at the end - drug addled, half starved, completely controlled by Ono, who he had abdicated all responsibility to. I don’t believe the official story about his murder - he wanted out and he wanted to be remembered as a legend in his prime.

In order of preference, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney & the other guy last.

Seriously, the only good thing about Lennon is that someone wrote the moderately entertaining song, I'm Glad John Lennon Died.

"He'd always be on Twitter making really racist jokes
Oh, I'm glad John Lennon died."

This is all getting a bit strange.

Paul.

I have worked with him (not musically). Good bloke.