The Beatles Were the First Punk Rock Band

According to Wikipedia, punk rock bands “created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, embracing a DIY (do it yourself) ethic”.

This sounds familiar to me. It sounds like the greatest band of all time circa 1963 knocking out their first masterpiece in a marathon single day session. The Beatles had more edge than the Sex Pistols, rocked harder than the Clash, and had a revolutionary attitude that would make Black Flag blush. Simply put, the Beatles embodied all of the major punk rock ideals a decade and a half prior to the invention of the genre. Paul McCartney’s “1, 2, 3, 4” was not only the count in to the first punk rock song, but also the count in to the greatest revolutionary force of the 20th century. Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong eat your heart out.

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the Beatles…