No band has been celebrated throughout rock history as much as The Beatles. For all of the phenomenal sonic detours they took their audience down throughout their careers, it was never at the expense of the song, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney always coming up with fantastic material to fill out every single body of work. Although the band were happy to address criticism of their work, Ringo Starr had the perfect response when another rock legend thought they couldn’t play.
As The Beatles were turning their sound inside out during the ‘Summer of Love’ era, another drastic change was going on in the world of American music. Storming out of the seedy side of New York City, The Velvet Underground provided the dark side of flower power, putting together songs that were about life on the streets, from the bondage fantasies of ‘Venus in Furs’ to the drug dealing going down in the song ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’.
While The Velvet Underground may have been able to knock down doors that most artists would have never considered, frontman Lou Reed didn’t see the appeal in The Beatles’ music when he first heard them. When talking about their appeal, Reed thought that the Fab Four didn’t have much to say behind their songs, saying, “I never liked The Beatles. I thought they were garbage”.
Despite Reed’s assessment, the band would become a rock and roll institution for the rest of the 1960s before eventually falling out over business decisions. Although the band usually took any of their detractors with a grain of salt, Starr eventually provided a diplomatic response to Reed’s criticism.
When discussing the band’s legacy, Starr thought it was everyone’s right not to like some of what they did, saying, “Everybody has their choice. That’s OK. Everyone didn’t like us, you know? Some of them couldn’t understand it. Some of them thought we were worthless. But thank God the majority didn’t think like that”.
Then again, Reed didn’t have anything bad to say about any of The Beatles from a personal standpoint. Throughout his career, the frontman was more interested in going down a more artistic direction with his music, eventually making unique character portraits on albums like Berlin with the help of David Bowie.
As the band splintered off into their solo careers, though, Reed would have high praise for John Lennon when releasing Plastic Ono Band. After spending time tearing his old band through the mud, Reed could appreciate the different sonic directions that Lennon gave his fans, offering them a glimpse into his state of mind when undergoing primal therapy in songs like ‘God’ and ‘Mother’.
Despite Reed’s musical differences with The Beatles, the Fab Four and The Velvet Underground represented two different factions of what the 1960s represented. While The Beatles were looking to get everyone to believe in the power of love, Reed wanted to give the rock audience a healthy dose of reality whenever he turned in one of his odes to self-destruction.
