Well, I get tired of hearing all this old nonsense about how so many Mods don’t like The Beatles.
I’ve been a Mod for the last 30 years or so and I love The Beatles as much as I love the Small Faces. I don’t say that everyone has to like The Beatles but I don’t believe liking The Beatles is somehow incompatible with being a Mod.
How many artists/groups do we Mods like who weren’t actually Mods themselves – Georgie Fame, The Yardbirds etc., and we don’t hold it against them like some people hold it against the Beatles and the Stones. George Harrison was as much into soul and R&B as any Mod and got every banging R&B/soul tunes sent to him on import throughout the sixties. Isn’t Taxman a Mod song? George heard “Get out of my life Woman,” by Lee Dorsey and thought I’m having that for Taxman – nice one Georgie boy. All The Beatles were big fans of Booker T and the MG’s, too.
Having grown up in the Punk years, there was a lot of this anti-Beatles thing going on in that scene too. Nowadays, a number of people I know under the age of 30 also have a pop at The Beatles and, sadly, The Clash/Buzzcocks/Pistols who ain’t Punk enough apparently. Well, I suppose they could play their instruments properly, like The Beatles could.
Over the years, the Stones have also got stick from Mods cos they were stinky mockers -partly true – but they were bang into R&B, Arthur Alexander, Benny Spellman, Lee Dorsey, Tamla, Chess etc just like us Mods and, sometimes, they had decent threads too.
I would consider Brian Jones to be hip enough to be a Mod, along with Andrew Loog Oldham…Keith Richards sometimes too. If you’re a Mod and you don’t dig the Stones well, fair enough, but Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane dug them and The Beatles so that’s good enough for me.
Mod is a broad church, between us all we manage to love so many different styles of music so why can’t there be room for The Beatles and, going off topic, The Clash too who also attract sniffy comments from a number of Mods?
When I was a very young Mod kid I used to dislike the Kinks cos they weren’t Mods, sported crap haircuts and wore shit clothes – like The Beatles – but then I grew up a bit and realised what a great, great group they are.
by DesX
