5 Musicians Who Hated The Beatles: ‘They Were Garbage’

Since 1963, The Beatles have been celebrated musicians and have remained one of the biggest bands of all time. Over five decades after their break up, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr still field questions about the group in interviews. New generations of listeners continue to fall in love with the band. They can’t win everyone over, though. Many people dislike the band, including a number of other musicians. 

Elvis

The Beatles idolized Elvis when they were growing up, so the musician’s treatment of them likely stung. The band met Elvis in 1965, and he was friendly, though he hadn’t initially wanted to meet them. Five years later, though, Elvis was singing a different tune.

In a 1970 meeting with Richard Nixon, Elvis said that The Beatles were profoundly, dangerously un-American. Notably, the band had already announced their break up at this point.

“The Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit,” he told the president, via Vox. “[They] came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England where they promoted an anti-American theme.”

In 1971, Elvis met with J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI offices and told him that “the Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music.”

Pete Townshend

The Who’s Pete Townshend has, in recent years, expressed his love for The Beatles, but he didn’t always feel that way. In a 1966 interview, Townshend rolled his eyes at the band. 

“Actually, this afternoon, John [Entwistle] and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles — in which the voices come out of the one side, and the backing track comes out of the other,” he said. “When you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they’re flippin’ lousy.“

In 1982, Townshend told Rolling Stone that he liked the former Beatles as people, but he couldn’t fully get behind them as musicians.

“I’ve always said that I’ve never been a big fan of the Beatles: to me rock was the Stones, and before that Chuck Berry, and before that, maybe a few people who lived in fields in Louisiana,” he said. “But I can’t really include the Beatles in that. The Beatles were over with Herman’s Hermits. That’s not rock & roll. I was always very confused about the American attitude of thinking that the Beatles were rock & roll. Because they were such a big pop phenomenon. I’ve always enjoyed some of their stuff as light music, with occasional masterpieces thrown in. But with a lot of their things, you can’t dig very deep.”

Quincy Jones

Though he has since apologized for his comments, Jones once admitted that The Beatles did not seem like good musicians. 

“[T]hey were the worst musicians in the world,” he told Vulture in 2018. “They were no-playing motherf***ers. Paul was the worst bass player I ever heard. And Ringo? Don’t even talk about it.”

Jones said that the only reason a song sounded good was because Starr wasn’t playing on it.

“We said, ‘Mate, why don’t you get some lager and lime, some shepherd’s pie, and take an hour-and-a-half and relax a little bit.’ So he did, and we called Ronnie Verrell, a jazz drummer. Ronnie came in for 15 minutes and tore it up,” he said. “Ringo comes back and says, ‘George, can you play it back for me one more time?’ So George did, and Ringo says, ‘That didn’t sound so bad.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, motherf***er because it ain’t you.’ Great guy, though.”

Trent Reznor

In a 1994 interview, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor bemoaned the state of the music industry.

“If you buy an album today and it has two good songs on it, it’s okay,” he told Plazm Magazine. “Before, if you bought an album and it had two bad songs on it, well… it’s still an okay album. You got your money’s worth … What really made me think about this was discovering a few records I hadn’t really listened to, like: Bowie’s Low album, or Hunky Dory, Iggy Pop stuff I had missed. You take a record like Low, or Hunky Dory where every song, to me, is awesome, different and challenging.”

Still, he resented people who lifted up “retro” musicians like The Beatles.

“I hate to think in a retro mindset,” he said. “You know, ‘the Beatles were the best thing.’ F*** the Beatles, I hated people who were always going on about the f***in’ Beatles. They’re dead. They’re ugly now. Get them out of my sight.”

Lou Reed

In a 1987 interview with Joe Smith, Reed expressed his abject disdain for The Beatles. 

“I never liked the Beatles,” he said. “I thought they were garbage. If you say, ‘Who did you like?’ I liked nobody.”

He admitted that he liked Lennon’s solo career a bit better, but even that didn’t fully please him.

“The Beatles? I never liked The Beatles, I thought they were garbage,” he told Smith. “I don’t think Lennon did anything until he went solo. But then too, he was like trying to play catch up. He was getting involved in choruses and everything. I don’t want to come off as being snide, because I’m not being snide, what I’m doing is giving you a really frank answer, I have no respect for those people at all. I don’t listen to it at all, it’s absolute s***.”