Billy Bob Thornton names the one band who “started every fucking thing” in modern music
Anyone who knows anything about Billy Bob Thornton is aware that he takes his music very seriously, so when he says there’s one band and one band only that can be called the genesis point for the all-encompassing and indefinable term that is ‘modern music’, he means it.
Of course, there’s a bit of bias in play, since he was talking about one of his all-time favourite groups. On the other hand, there’s plenty of merit to his musings, because at the very least, they can’t be regarded as anything other than one of the most important and influential musical units ever assembled.
The Academy Award-winning screenwriter and two-time Golden Globe-winning actor has dedicated as much of his life to performing onstage and in the recording booth as he has in front of the camera, but music has always been his first love. If he’d made it in that arena first, then there’s a high probability that he wouldn’t have bothered his arse with thespianism to begin with.
One of the many perks that come with being rich and famous is that he gets to do both, with Thornton’s recent realisation that television is no longer the death knell for a career that it used to be allowing him to spend months on the set of shows like Fargo, Goliath, and Landman, which affords him enough leeway to write, record, and tour with the Boxmasters.
He can’t talk about anything without bringing up his influences, but when he was talking about them with a member of the younger generation, he was almost affronted that they didn’t seem to have any idea what the fuck he was talking about, and you can forgive him for that when it’s almost a cardinal sin for anyone, no matter how old or young they are, being oblivious to the music of The Beatles.
“I worked with a 35-year-old costumer, and I said, we were doing a photo shoot at the time, we had four guys who made the records, who were in the band,” he raged. “And I said, ‘There’s four of us here doing the photoshoot, which one of us would be Ringo?’ And this girl, she’s 35 years old, and this is not long ago, and I said, ‘Ringo?’ She goes, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘The Beatles’.
“She goes, ‘Oh, I’ve heard of The Beatles,'” Thornton’s rant continued. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s like hearing of George Washington’. Anyway, I said, ‘Can you name any of The Beatles?’ And she goes, ‘No, but weren’t they some kind of…’ And I said, ‘They were a band who started every fucking thing we do nowadays.'”
People in their mid-30s remaining unable to name a single member of the Fab Four is bizarre, even if you like their music or not. It’s the Beatles, for fuck sake, less of a band than an all-conquering cultural monolith who’ve endured for six decades as quite possibly the single most influential and revolutionary act in the history of mainstream music, pioneering many things that have become commonplace.
You can see why Thornton was so bemused, especially when the blank-eyed stare he was getting concerned John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the quartet he called the guys who “made me want to do everything I’ve done since.” You don’t have to be a fan, but come on, how can anyone of that age not even know who they are?
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