John
I always thought Ringo to be one of the good guys. A great drummer and he didn't have his ego hitting others in the face.
George was also a good guy. John and Paul not so much.
As to the Beatles having more influence than Beethoven that is a very incorrect statement. If anything Beethoven had influence over them and not the other way around. He is responsible for the the romantic movement in music. One would be hard pressed to say the Beatles changed music to the the degree Beethoven did.
Heck a lot of the Beatles music can be traced back to Beethoven. Structure, themes and chords are in many ways traceable to their use in the Beatles work directly to Beethoven.
Beethoven never gets the respect he deserves from rock and roll musicians. LOL
Anyone that made that statement hasn't listened to Beethoven enough.
I agree that almost all music up to about 1980 has its roots in Beethoven, in fact if you have listened to enough music going back to the Baroque period you will find links and sign posts that connect our great western classical tradition together. So it sort of maps like this:
First there is Vivaldi, this leads into Bach, Mozart refines these two compositional ideas and techniques and then expands them. Beethoven takes all three of these ideas, and the two styles: Baroque and Classical and expands them again into the romantic era. This is why Beethoven could be considered the greatest composer up to Lennon/McCartney and G.Martin (don't forget that it's Martin that takes the rough edges of The Beatles and combines it with Beethoven).
After Beethoven music fractures into the eastern European composers, Tchaikovsky, Musorky but the difference between Beethoven and the eastern European composers whilst they do expand their compositional technique, they don't do so as much as Beethoven ie: Beethoven takes three musical ideas and builds a forth of his own. So Beethoven still remains number 1.
Just after the eastern European composers, comes the songwriters ie Debussy who this time combines the sounds of the industrial revolution into a more compact musical form, the song! of course he still wrote classical music but you could hear the changes in his music to Beethoven. But Beethoven is still no1.
Then comes Wagner and the Neo Classical movement but Wagner is really a Beethoven wanabe and didn't really add anything to the great western classical tradition.
At this point music fractures into many different styles and the song over the sonata becomes the dominant musical form.
Now my point is The Beatles/George Martin are perhaps the most important composers since Beethoven because they take three or 4 different musical forms and styles and meld them into one: The Beatles.
The other point to remember and this is another reason why you can't say Beethoven is better than The Beatles is both were products of the cultural landscape that they inhabited. Beethoven was apart of the great revolutions of Europe which was The Romantic era and it was Beethoven's music that was the sound track to that era. And again The Beatles were the soundtrack to an equally turbulent era. Which we understand to be the birth of the modern world.
Now here is where it gets tricky and perhaps this is where you are getting the idea that Beethoven is superior to The Beatles. In 1980 the world changed, musically. We moved away from a melodic based musical form and structure to beat based, most music today triumphs beat over melody. So The Beatles today have less of an impact and lasted less time than Beethoven's musical impact. This may not have been the case, though had Lennon lived because whilst McCartney was the more talented, it was Lennon that drove Beatles ie: he was the creative brains, Mc was the creative heart.
As for Ringo I always maintained he was great drummer, proof listen to Strawberry Fields and Ticket to Ride. Superlative!!
Ben