THE BEATLES

“And in the end, the love you take

is equal to the love you make.”

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  "A"

Main Decade: 60's 

Main Eras:

Rock & Roll II, Early Sixties (1960-1966)

Psychedelia (1966-1969)

Hard Rock (1968-???)

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Key Members:

John Lennon, Rythm Guitar and Vocals

Paul McCartney, Bass and Vocals

George Harrison, Lead Guitar and Vocals

Ringo Starr, Drums 

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Key Songs: 

A Day In the Life, All You Need is Love, Yesterday, Let it Be, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Eleanor Rigby, In My Life, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, She Loves You, Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End, Come Together, Helter Skelter, I'm The Walrus, Something, Ticket To Ride, And I Love Her, Strawberry Fields Forever, Hey Jude, Don't Let me Down, Penny Lane, Day Tripper, Tomorrow Never Knows, Michelle, Revolution, Drive My Car, We Can Work It Out, A Hard Day's Night, Paperback Writter, Here Comes The Sun, Help!, It's All Too Much, Oh! Darling, Dear Prudence, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, I Want You (She's So Heavy), Hey Bulldog, Get Back, Accross the Universe... 

 

The first time I heard the Beatles was on the highway heading home. It was an old but beautifully recorded cassette I'd just bought at a flea market in my mother's hometown. She was thrilled that I was interested in the music she'd listened to as a child, so she put the tape in and that magical, rhythmic, slow sound of the trumpets erupted, resembling a train moving forward at a good speed while a man's voice said, "Roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour, step right this way." I didn't quite understand what that meant, but now I find it delightful that precisely with this melody, with this phrase, I began the musical path I've gradually been following, and I'm grateful to that song for having stepped on the left side of music and not the right. Of course, it was the Magical Mystery Tour, but the cassette cover showed four long-haired men crossing a street at the pedestrian crossing; A huge mistake by the pirate who recorded the tape, but one I wouldn't realize until a little later.

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Anyway, that was the decisive moment when music captivated me, at 8 or 9 years old, already a bit older if we consider that many have their musical Kindergarten from the cradle, with their parents' records. Mine didn't know or understand anything about rock, and the closest I got to a musical lesson was when my mother hummed a slightly off-key Yellow Submarine to me when I asked her about the Beatles. She, although with very conservative tastes, couldn't help growing up with that music in my childhood. Even I, some 20 years after their split, stumbled upon the Beatles, intrigued by the power they still had on TV, in the press, and on the radio. The Beatles are still a phenomenon, a popular force… So much so that a child without any direct influence from parents, uncles, or siblings (which is already difficult to find in itself) can still discover for themselves EVERYTHING that four long-haired guys crossing a sidewalk at the crosswalk mean.

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I don't quite remember if on that first listen I liked "The Fool on the Hill" or "All You Need Is Love" more. It doesn't matter; the fact that it didn't include the much-talked-about Yellow Submarine made me search further, and at the same flea market I bought a compilation of their hits, basically what some 13 years later would become album number one. The first song was "She Loves You," and my first thought was that they'd sold me the wrong cassette. I mean, that was a different band! Although equally fantastic, catchier and more rhythmic, but a different band, damn it. The variety of sounds in that hour of music and the effect it had on me was incredible, and as I listened to the entire cassette, I realized it was the same band, incredible as it seemed. I don't know if that's the same impression everyone has when they first hear a record of songs from various Beatles eras... Shortly after, I got a friend to lend me those horrible boxes of LPs sold by Reader's Digest, eight discs with the band's chronological history and a few lines with the most basic of their biography. When I couldn't get any more out of it, considering I was about 10 or 11 years old, I jumped to the Rolling Stones, with a collection of hits from the 60s, then to the Doors, and 15 years later I'm still amazed by new (so to speak) bands I've just discovered.

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This was my revelation, my initiation into the world of music, my loss of musical virginity. I don't know if everyone has one, and certainly not everyone has one with the Beatles, but I can assure you that a good percentage of rock lovers have a similar story.

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This is just an example of what the music of the Liverpool quartet can bring about. The greatest? I don't know. According to a 2005 Billboard survey, the best rock band in history for Americans and Brits was Pink Floyd. Making this assertion about any band is very risky and subjective. Are we so musically screwed in Mexico that we have no opinions? Don't we buy enough records to be taken into account? And in Spain? And in Australia? And in Nigeria? And seven years ago? Regardless of this scatological survey, classifying a band as the greatest seems ridiculous to me. Artistically, The Beatles didn't innovate much. Nope, they didn't create Rock, or Psychedelia, or Protest... nope, not even Heavy Metal or Rock Opera. Maybe they introduced the sitar, took experimentation to such pitiful catastrophes as Revolution #9, and were the first to include song lyrics on the covers. So?

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Some will argue that Led Zeppelin was THE dream team of virtuosos on their instruments, or that Pink Floyd achieved the most perfect music on at least four albums, and that their lyrics were deeper and their music more precise. Or that Manzarek's simple genius and Morrison's personality, without underestimating the great qualities of Krieger and Densmore, lead The Doors to occupy that place with their dark, semi-improvised music of suicidal poets. And you know what? They're all right. There will even be those who claim the same about more recent bands like Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Dream Theater, or Arcade Fire. Saying the Beatles are the greatest rock band in history is as serious a mistake as saying Messi is better than Pelé or vice versa. Hey! This is off topic! Excuse me, sometimes I digress...

What I mean is that technically and artistically (form and substance) there are many, many bands that far surpass the Beatles. The aforementioned are a simple example, not to mention Jethro Tull, Blue Oyster Cult, Zappa, King Crimson, etc. No, they weren't exactly virtuosos on their instruments: George has brilliant, exquisite solos, with precision and feeling, but he will never rank alongside Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Beck, King, and the other great Guitar Heroes. Ringo was an excellent drummer in the early days, perhaps the best musician in the band, but he soon stopped creating new things and was far surpassed by Keith Moon and Ginger Baker.

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Paul was the opposite. He started out as an undistinguished bassist, content to set the rhythm, but by the late 1960s he had become the band's dominant force, leading the band on bass. While he's not the best bassist ever, the lines and structures he used to carry the songs (I Want You, Hey Bulldog, Come Together, Don't Let Me Down, to name a few) are truly outstanding. It's a shame he lost that magic when the band broke up, and he went back to being a rather average bassist. Lyrically, Lennon always looked to Bob Dylan as his mentor. Well, not always, but from 1965 onward, he did. Although he achieved beautiful melodies with his lyrics, odes to double entendres and sharp tongues, and even songs that became anthems for different generations, he could never match Bob Dylan's lyrical style.

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The Beatles aren't masters of form and substance, which is what essentially constitutes art. So why are the Beatles so damn great? Because no other band strikes a chord as deeply as they do; that is, no other band conveyed the spirit of their era so well, transforming music into a culture—pop culture, a culture of protest and activism, a hippie culture, a culture of hope—into another way of life—in short, a way of life in itself. They managed to metamorphose visually and artistically without losing their naturalness. While they weren't creators of trends, they were at least their greatest exponents, and I think they were sincere. And perhaps for this very reason, they are the most beloved band in history…

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Furthermore, no band is as diverse or has mastered so well all the genres they dared to explore, namely: rock, pop, ballads, bolero, folk, country, swing, blues, psychedelic, jazz, hard rock, heavy metal, lullabies, children's music (which isn't the same thing), experimental collage (this one unsuccessful), etc.

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No other band has managed to make their own biography an inherent and relevant part of their music. ALMOST anyone who is suddenly and completely taken with their music and is blown away by it, quickly looks up biographies, starting with Hamburg and the difficult days of Liverpool, the famous "Gentlemen have recorded their first number 1," the Ed Sullivan Show, continuing with the adventures of A Hard Day's Night and Help! With their respective films, the cancellation of tours due to exhaustion, the death of their manager, the arrival of Yoko, the transcendental experience in India, the inevitable breakup... The Beatles' lives as individuals and as a band are directly linked to their music, and although I have no doubt there are many people who have not the slightest idea about their lives and still enjoy their work, I maintain that their music is so compelling that it invites or inspires us to learn all these details, which are, moreover, much more fascinating than those of any other band.

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Finally, no other group has elevated popular music to the category of art, nor has it managed to generate so much controversy to this day about the boundary that divides popular music and art—Art with a capital A! In other words, it was they who elevated rock to the status of art, I mean ART. Easier? Well, there's still debate about whether, for example, "Yesterday" was a work inspired by classics like Schubert or if it simply emerged as a random ballad that could have been called "Scrambled Eggs" (as, in fact, it almost was). With this, the Beatles broke the rock taboo, the generational barrier that had existed since Bill Halley created the first chords of that devilish music for rebels without a cause. Rock, ladies and gentlemen, could be listened to and enjoyed by children and adults alike; it was no longer just about making the loudest music possible, it was no longer about exclusively addressing adolescent topics. It was about UNIVERSAL music. Once again, it was Dylan who beat them to the punch in this regard, but as always, they were the ones who perfected it and made it known. It's impossible to imagine Mr. Zimmerman composing Yesterday, or is it?

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Now, the main premise of the Beatles' detractors is that they were a commercial band turned into a monster by marketing. I won't deny it: Their first album reached number 17 in the UK because Brian Epstein, their manager, bought the entire edition for the record store he owned. Brian was an entrepreneur, after all, and a very good one. He turned The Beatles into the most profitable name in the history of music; he created Beatlemania; he sold stadiums; he sold dolls, masks, wigs, and prints; he created a phenomenon that got away from him and that he still sells today simply with the name, even though the product sold is qualitatively questionable. But all of this wouldn't have been possible without a dose of quality. Who remembers New Kids on the Block today? Who? Or, to put it mildly, the Spice Girls? And I assure you, much more money was invested in their campaigns.
 

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True, the Beatles received a huge marketing boost, but they themselves renounced it in '66. They stopped touring and with it, Beatlemania. They even fostered anti-Beatlemania with comments about being bigger than Jesus (in reality, Lennon said they were more famous, which is VERY different), and yet they remained at the top of their game, achieving their best work from that time on. Just take a look at the Billboard charts from 1960 to 1962 to realize that the industry was trying at all costs to kill rock with ballads and less provocative rhythms. While it wasn't their best period, the rock & roll of their early years stands out from the rest of their contemporaries and completely refreshed a genre that was in danger of dying.

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Nope, nope; the Beatles aren't children of marketing and money, at least not entirely. What I do affirm is that they are the children of chance, or rather, of a series of chances that make it impossible for a similar story to repeat itself in a very, very, very, very, very long time:

If Brian Epstein hadn't owned a record store (NEMS), he would never have been interested in finding out who that band was that teenagers were asking about so much. Secondly, if he hadn't been homosexual, he would never have been interested in becoming the group's manager when he went to see them at the club where they were playing (coincidentally, two blocks away), since more than musical or even commercial interest, he was interested in John.

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If the record industry had been interested in rock, DECCA would have immediately signed the Beatles for their first album, since they had undoubtedly become the band that best played the genre in all of England and possibly the entire world. Without this interest, EMI, their second choice, would have sent them to a good subsidiary and not Pharlophone, where comedy record producer George Martin ended up being a decisive factor in the Beatles' sound. And if you don't believe me, go to the Anthologies, where you can see the framework of the songs without Sir Martin's influence. In this regard, I can't imagine what the band would have become without this figure, the master and musical refiner, creator of the harpsichord in In My Life, the string arrangements in Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby, all the orchestral arrangements in Sergeant Peppers, Magical, and later... in short, considering the Beatles without George Martin is frankly impossible (and imagining them with Spector is worse).

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Then comes the series of coincidences: If the Beatles had arrived in the United States two or three months later for their first tour, the results might not have been the same: americans were coming off a high-flown mourning for their recently assassinated president, who had filled the radio with funeral songs, in addition to the winter season of Christmas carols. US craved anything, ANYTHING that sounded joyful, and they landed across the Atlantic with the biggest advertising campaign to date. Guess who...?

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If they hadn't met Dylan, not only would their sound have stagnated after the first four albums, but they wouldn't have tried drugs, which substantially altered their music, their lyrics, and their social role. Digging deeper, Dylan was as necessary to the Beatles as the Beatles were to Dylan, and together they brought about an unprecedented musical and social revolution, without which many of the biggest groups of that decade wouldn't have been possible.

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Without Vietnam, which already had a history of years before but exploded in '66, the musical revolution of the '60s would not have existed either. A foundation was needed to cement the revolution, a real cause toward which to direct all the pent-up anger, an excuse for drug use, the rebellion in dress, behavior, and lifestyle that ultimately created hippie culture, the anti-culture that in '67 reached unimaginable heights and managed to convince the world, at least for a time and through the best works ever created, and through the most musically creative year in history, that such change was possible (convincing everyone, except the true masters of destiny).
  

Continuing on, without the suffocation of Beatlemania and the frustration of their concerts, where they could barely hear themselves, they would have hardly stopped touring. They were the first, and to this day, few bands can survive without the publicity and power of live performances. However, without this situation, they would have hardly been able to release albums as impeccable, as precise, as carefully crafted as those from '67 onward. And likewise, without the lack of touring, Epstein would not have felt so useless as to fall into the depression that led to his death from a fatal combination of barbiturates and amphetamines, and whose death was the beautiful beginning of the end.

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Without this orphanhood, perhaps they would not have embarked for India, where the most diverse album of all time, the White Album (The Beatles, anyway, better known as the White Album), was released. Then there are many factors: Yoko, Linda McCartney, and her family, John's natural bias toward more political music and Paul's tendency toward more saccharine and commercial sides, the fights over the new manager...

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Fortunately, the Beatles ended up where they were supposed to (perhaps), and fortunately, what ifs doesn't exist, so all the hypotheses about what would have happened without these coincidences are dust in the wind. I can't imagine the Beatles causing grief these days, like, er, the Stones? Creedence? The Who? No, no, no! The Beatles ended at the top of their game, and that's another factor that makes them the most beloved, if not the greatest, group of all time. John, George, and Ringo decided not to continue after Paul's stubbornness, although history shows he was right. It wasn't like it was with the Stones and Brian Jones, or the Doors and Morrison, with a replacement or a void, respectively. The Beatles knew how to die even when they had to, and if they reunited beyond the grave in the mid-90s, it was because John apologized worldwide with "Real Love," an apology that not even Yoko dared to stop, and which contains in its lyrics the embrace that two brothers and two musical geniuses like Lennon and McCartney could never have shared. Behind them, we have a sublime legacy as solo artists, but one can never know what would have happened if the symbiosis had continued, and this also makes the legend even greater.

 

Needless to say, if I had to go to a desert island with only one discography, I would choose them. Why? Because throughout all their albums, they make it seem like doing good music is easy, when in reality, good albums, not to mention good songs within good albums, come in dribs and drabs. It also goes without saying that the oversaturation I've had listening to them so much doesn't mean I stop liking them in the slightest, nor that the more music I discover, the more I appreciate them. However, none of this means I won't critique them as objectively as possible.

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Lineup: (if you don't know the lineup, I don't know what you're doing on this page, fuuuuu shuuuuuuu, get outta here!) John Lennon - Lead vocals, backing vocals, rhythm guitar, occasionally keyboards and 6 string bass. Paul McCartney - Lead vocals, backing vocals, bass, occasionally keyboards, and even trumpet and drums. George Harrison - Requinto guitar, backing vocals (masterful third voice), sitar, and even bass occasionally. Ringo Starr - drums, rhythms, very occasionally lead vocals. All composers and wizards. Also, George Martin: On production and arrangements. Billy Preston on keyboards on the latest albums. And why not? Eric Clapton, playing the r&b, was also a Beatle, at least for one song.

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About their history, I may not add many details in this post, but you can check the individual entries of their solo careers, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison y Ringo Starr, where the whole history of ther quartet is presented un more detail from the point of view of each one.

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By Corvan 

Aug/25/2007  

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