The Beatles

 

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make"

Genres: Pop rock, rock & roll, art rock, lush pop, psychedelic rock, folk rock
Recording years: 1960s

Classic Lineup
John Lennon - guitar, vocals
Paul McCartney - bass, vocals
George Harrison - guitar, vocals
Ringo Starr - drums, vocals

Favorite album: Abbey Road
Quintessential album: Rubber Soul

First of all, let me acknowledge that there is nothing I can write here that has not been said a million times over.  We're talking about the most famous and renowned band of all time, the subject of countless books and documentaries and whatever else- so what can I realistically hope to add?  Well...nothing, really, although to go on with even an amateur review blog without mentioning The Beatles is even worse, so the trolley problem forces my hand.

I remember reading a joke that they should actually be called The Fetals, because everyone is born with an inherent knowledge of their entire discography.  Given the Fabs' immense cultural weight and the dozens of #1 hits behind them, that actually has a large grain of truth in it, but it's a bit reductive and cart-before-the-horse.  Let me explain.

See, I can't help but think that the Beatles are not inherently known to everyone because they have any sort of greatness that came to them from a vacuum - it's actually the other way around.  They are known to everyone because every subsequent artist copied their approach to musicmaking - or at least, every successful subsequent artist did.  But did the Beatles succeed because they were playing music that satisfied the innate musical desires of the human psyche?  Or do we retroactively consider their music the best because The Beatles were so successful?  Again, I don't know, and at this point I start to conclude that it doesn't matter.  There are mountains of debates over what would have happened if any other historical event had gone differently, and none of those draw my interest for long.  The question of the origin of pop and rock music as we know it is little different.  The music is here, the "rules" of popular music are written, and if reviewing The Beatles' catalog is akin to measuring the length of a yardstick by its own markings, then so be it.  

Then there's the other issue of how The Beatles should supposedly be despised as conformists, pillars of the establishment - or, even worse, plagiarists - because their music appropriated and eclipsed the more subversive musical happenings  of the time.  I admit I don't know enough to comment on the truth of that statement, but I feel I do know enough about my fellow sheltered white suburbanites to argue that there's no way the Leave It to Beaver-esque record-buying public would have even given a passing glance to said subversion, were it not cloaked in the middle-of-the-road acceptability that first aired on the Ed Sullivan Show that night.  Regardless of political leanings, one must agree that the public was nowhere near ready to accept "true" artistic statements against the Man (and isn't even ready today, let alone 60 years go); so the generic, political-sounding-but-not-really-political message of "peace and love" is probably the best we were ever going to get.  Sure, the flower power movement was as big a failure as any other toothlessly polite request for real justice, but I guarantee that if people had started blaring the MC5 on every street corner instead, all that would've happened is that totalitarianism would've returned even sooner.

Thing is, spitting on the Beatles for diluting the "real" underground revolution into golden-middle accessibility is like spitting on Neil deGrasse Tyson for making quantum physics more accessible to the masses today.  The average person just doesn't have the capacity to pick apart eigenfunctions the way an MIT grad student does.  Sure, the main result of Tyson's pop-science approach was a flood of dumb Schrodinger's Cat memes for a year or two, but if he hadn't been there, it's not like people would have dug deeper to read academic papers.  They'd have just flipped back to the Kardashians.  

Well, that's one more incoherent rant in the books.  Anyway, what do I think about The Beatles?  What do they mean to me?  

I still remember seeing all those ads for the "1" compilation as a kid, and although I recognized a lot of the songs played on the commercial, my history of hearing the actual tracks start-to-finish was actually very limited, so The Beatles remained a nebulous specter in  the back of my awareness until I started college.  Then, one warm spring day, I bought Abbey Road, and I instantly knew what the hype was all about.  It was like listening to the very sound of sunshine and every joyful thing I'd known, and I must have played that thing nonstop for at least a week or two.  I got Help! next, and of course it wasn't long before I had all the albums.  It was like being catapulted into a world that I soon realized I already knew like the back of my hand, and like I was talking to four guys I'd known my entire short life.  It was the feeling of stepping into something greater, and that's the sort of oceanic experience that only the best can achieve.

All I can say is, be cool and recognize that The Kinks were already playing chaotic noisy rock like "You Really Got Me" when The Beatles were still singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand".  Don't overstate The Beatles as the inventors of everything out there.  They weren't, and I bet if you asked Paul or Ringo today, they'd say the same.  Treat them instead like a "gateway drug" to the other, louder, grittier, more subversive artists of their time...but don't forget to appreciate just how damned fresh and satisfying an album like Revolver is even today.  That's the secret.

So, long story short:

Once upon a time, four guys from Liverpool got together with an excellent manager (Brian Epstein) and a fantastic producer (George Martin), nailed the requisite sound and image to win the hearts of horny teenagers, stodgy parents, and pretentious critics alike, and subsequently evolved into a cultural monolith the likes of which the world will never know again.  Sure, they never invented even half the things they're claimed to have invented, but they did implement the revolutionary ideas of their lesser-known contemporaries and present those ideas in ways that just about everyone can access and enjoy.  Go on and accuse me of overvaluing optics like some lazy, conciliatory centrist if you must-- I don't care.  I'm just going to go put on Abbey Road for the millionth time and enjoy the hell out of it once again.

Albums:

Please Please Me
With the Beatles
A Hard Day's Night
Beatles for Sale
Help!
Rubber Soul
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles
Yellow Submarine
Abbey Road
Let It Be