The Beatles just changed everything right across the board. They just had that right combination of clean-cut good looks - a cute band - but under that they had a real rock n roll thing going on.
The really pop country stuff can sound a little bland because they put in strings and horns and all of that.
A lot of people don't listen to the albums. They just listen to the singles.
The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers' fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.
You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.
It's probably listening to country music that got me to start playing a lot cleaner, not as distorted.
