A Case for the Beatles

A Case for the Beatles:

I was talking with some friends a couple of years ago who are, oh, 10 to 20 years younger than me. They said they didn't like the Beatles and that they didn't get why they and their music were and are so popular. I can understand not caring for their music but the Beatles were so much more than just another “pop band”. They changed pop music and influenced most of the music that followed. I guess to fully appreciate the Beatles you needed to have been coming of age in the 60's. I was almost 15 when the Beatles hit America. I first remember hearing the Beatles (I Want To Hold Your Hand) on the radio in December of 1963. Beatlemania had already hit England and was about to hit the United States. I was never a big fan of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” but I did like the “B” side “I Saw Her Standing There”. My friend Eddie as well as my younger sister, Babs, liked the Beatles from the get-go but I needed to hear a few of their songs before I jumped on board. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” reached #1 on the pop charts in January of '64. It was followed by “She Loves You”. “She Loves You” had previously been released in the US in the fall of 1963 but on a small record label, hence it didn't get any mainstream commercial radio play.

I wrote the following for these friends. I am not a Beatles expert. This is just how I view the Beatles...

In the 50's there was still a lot of pop music being done by the likes of Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Frankie Lane, Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole, Patti Page, Tony Bennett, Julie London, etc. These were what adults were listening to and buying. However, the teenagers, who now had some money (allowance) to spend, were buying Rock-N-Roll when they could find it. The most popular Rock-N-Roller's – Elvis, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly, were being produced on small record labels. By the end of the 50's the larger record labels who initially looked down on the “new, loud, and noisy” music realized there was money to be made and began to get involved and take control. They decided they needed to change a few things. First was to make the music more “white”. Second was to hire a bunch of song writers to work in NYC to write the music. This was basically the same business model they had been using in the past, the so called “Tin Pan Alley”. Tin Pan Alley referred to the group of music composers who are largely credited with writing the “American Songbook” in the first half of the 20^th century. This included composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael and even people like Scott Joplin and George M. Cohan. So using this model they put together a new group of song writers. They worked in NYC out of the Brill Building and included people like Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. These guys wrote many of the hits of the 60's, especially the early 60's. Third was a bit of luck. The leading RnR singers all went away by the end of the 50's for various reasons – Elvis – the draft and when he came back he became more of a singer of ballads rather than RnR. Buddy Holly, (along with Ritchie Valens and others) – Died in a plane crash. Little Richard – found religion. Jerry Lee Lewis – scandal, 15 year old cousin love interest. Chuck Berry – jailed for violating the Mann Act down south. Gene Vincent – Dropped out of the US music scene, leaving for Europe due to tax problems. Fourth was they did market research and found that the group that spent the most on these pop songs was in fact teenage girls.

So the result of the above was we ended up with 3 factors creating the songs dominating the market:

1 - Pop songs sung by nice looking white guys like Pat Boone, Paul Anka, Fabian, Tommy Sands, Bobby Vinton, Steve Lawrence, Ricky Nelson, and even Tab Hunter. 

2 - White artists covering R&B songs from the R&B (formally Race Music) charts doing a toned down or homogenized version. 

3 - Cutesy songs like “Running Bear”, “Alley-Oop”, The Monster Mash”, “Beep Beep”, and “Speedy Gonzales”. 

Most importantly, songs targeted teenage girls, Songs about boyfriends and love.

Before the Beatles hit (say '60 to '63) songs like “Last Kiss”, “Tell Laura I Love Her”, “It's My Party”, ”Roses Are Red”, “Soldier Boy”, “Bobby's Girl”, “Leader of the Pack”, “Teen Angel”, “Puppy Love”, “I Will Follow Him”, “Sealed With A Kiss”, “He's A Rebel”, My Boyfriend's Back” were all over the pop charts. Sure there was other stuff going on including the Blues, but little, if any, was being played on the radio pop/rock stations.

Enter the Beatles.

This was largely the environment the Beatles entered on December 26^th, 1963, the date of the release of their first single on Capitol. The Beach Boys and Stevie Wonder hit just in front of the Beatles and broke through with a couple of hits.  By late '63 the Beatles were beginning to get noticed here in the US, after being huge in England and they basically blew open the pop/rock charts in the US. The Beatles had started as a skiffle band – music popular in England with jazz/blues/beat roots. The Beatles came over with a little different sound. It was referred to at the time as the “Mersey Beat” or just plain “beat” music. This was a little bit different from the standard RNR beat. The Beatles had a very pop sense to them. They were not just doing the 12 bar RnR songs, although they did that too. They had a bit of a different sound, but they put life back into the pop music scene – provided a new option to the status-quo. The British invasion led by the Beatles changed everything – it brought in the Rock Era, brought Blues to mainstream (white) America. The Beatles led the way to Rock and subsequently to sub-genres such as folk-rock, blues-rock, country-rock, rock-jazz fusion, progressive rock, alternative, and psychedelic or acid-rock.

The Beatles began exploring and experimenting with new ways to produce their music – like vocal over-dubs, using orchestras, using a sitar, chopping up different pieces of music and putting them together. They started doing things like using multiple time changes, phasing, and flanging. At the time they were doing this they only had 4 track technology. With the technology today there's not really a limit anymore. From the beginning they decided to include all good/decent songs on their albums, not just filler as was the norm at that juncture, and this became the new standard. They were the first to put the words of the songs on the album. Before that you had to buy the sheet music to get the words. They started putting out albums that were more a work of art than just a collection of songs, starting with their Rubber Soul album, which was more folk-rock like but also more complex and contained more thoughtful songs such as “In My Life” and “Norwegian Wood”. Norwegian Wood is about an affair but turned around (for the times). The traditional affair always had the guy getting the night of pleasure and taking off leaving the woman to herself. Norwegian Wood reverses that putting the woman in the traditional guy role. Not much today but at the time this was significant. At that time it would be largely considered scandalous for a woman to be so cavalier and free about sex. Heck, Carole King's “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” was looked on as a bit provocative with a woman having a night of sex and then lamenting whether it's just a night of pleasure or more than that. In the 50's and 60's only men were allowed to have casual sex. Women who did this were considered damaged.

Back to the Beatles. After Rubber Soul they did the Revolver album with even more sophisticated song-writing and experimentation fusing some classical music arrangements and including songs like “Tomorrow Never Knows” that lead to psychedelic rock, Good Day Sunshine, and Love You To . This is all before their most notable “Sargent Pepper's” album. There are college courses on this album alone. Their later albums like “White Album”, “Abbey Road” are amazing albums in their own right even if the Lennon McCartney collaboration was largely falling apart. The Beatles only lasted until 1970 – Beatlemania started in late 63. In less than 7 years they recorded something like 300 songs and put out something like 18 albums. If you appreciate vocal harmony you should give “If I Fell” a listen from the “Hard Day's Night” album. Check out this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoKjXx0zcXU. It's a excellent video about how the Beatles did the harmonies for this song.

They were a pop/rock band that changed pop music. They came on the scene with a new sound. They were innovative and they moved the needle of pop music that had become static, and they did it like no one really has since or even before.  Their song “Yesterday” is the most covered song of all time. This all from guys who had no musical training and didn't even know how to read music. Maybe to appreciate them you needed to have come of age in their era. You may not be a fan of their music but if you see them as boring perhaps you have not heard much of their stuff.

Following the Beatles to the US were Dave Clark 5, The Kinks, Herman's Hermits and then The Rolling Stones. Eventually people like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Mayall, who really brought the Blues back to America, followed. Yes, the Blues is American but it was not popular or appreciated here. It was popular and appreciated in England. To get play here, it had to emigrate to England/Europe and then re-migrate back to the US. Yes Jimi was not British, but he had to go there to get noticed, and his return was really part of the British Invasion all started by the Beatles.

So if you are in the “I don't get the Beatles” camp, here is a list of Beatles songs I would recommend you might want to try. These should give you a decent sense of what they were doing with their music as well as a sense of how it evolved. You may still not like them but hopefully you will gain a little appreciation - Oh, just to make it interesting listen to songs like Hey Paula, Sugar Shack, Blue Velvet, I Will Follow Him, and It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To first as these were the songs that were topping the charts in 1963, just before the Beatles. Then Listen to some of the early Beatles songs such as " I Saw Her Standing There" or “Please Please Me” To get a sense of how much they progressed, listen to their first hit (England) “Love Me Do from 1962” and then listen to “Tomorrow Never Knows” from the Revolver album done just 4 years later. They did this while writing their own material, continually performing on the road, making two movies and putting out 18 albums.

Beatles Songs: Give some of these a try. They are somewhat in chronological order. These are my picks not a list from music critics.
Hard Days Night – If I Fell - I Feel Fine - Norwegian Wood - In My Life - Yesterday - Tomorrow Never Knows - Across The Universe – Good Day Sunshine - Strawberry Fields - A Day In The Life - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - Helter Skelter - Blackbird - Revolution - Back in The USSR - Get Back - Come Together - Because - Let It Be - Lastly the Abby Road Medley (on side 2), starting with "You Never Give Me Your Money" till the end of the Album.