For a while I had a meme, comparing whichever pop icon was in the news to the first pop icon I encountered, Hopalong Cassidy. But memes get old, and, judging from the worshipful coverage Prince is receiving, comparing the late guy who was formerly known as Prince to a B-movie cowpoke like Hoppy, whose name Word can’t even spell, would be both a sin and a sacrilege.
Well, excuse me for being born too soon, but from the perspective of my generation, here is the history of rock ’n roll: there were the Beatles, and then there were the Stones. And that’s the history of rock ’n roll.
All of the Stones’ work can be condensed into “Satisfaction,” the greatest single ever recorded, the epitome of rock ’roll, but the Beatles’ 13 albums—“less than 10 hours of recorded music,” as one obituary for Beatle producer George Martin put it, in elegant understatement—still stand. The Beatles were shaped by both emulation and envy—they wanted to beat out their heroes like Elvis, Little Richard, Roy Orbison and the Marvelettes, as well as their competitors, principally the Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds—and they succeeded, creating a pop culture sufficient to shape the sensibility of a planet of four billion. The recent Stones concert in Cuba is testament to their power.
Yes, the Beatles were great, but not as great as Thelonious Monk, who was, in turn, not as great as Mozart. But exact rules for precedency seem to be lacking.
