LONGVIEW, Washington ― Fifty years after their first appearance in the United States seems an adequate amount of time to assess the cultural and musical legacy of the Beatles. The 15-year-old girls from Brooklyn and Queens who shrieked and swooned at first sight of them on “The Ed Sullivan Show” were last seen cashing Social Security checks. Hey, they’re 65. When they swoon these days, concerned relatives call 911.
It’s been a while.
And it bears remembering that it’s always been presumed the Beatles would have a legacy. They were lavishly celebrated in their own time and didn’t need to wait until the end of their era to hear their sound and their lyrics praised as significant and enduring, on some level far above anything else in the realm of popular music.
Reacting to the band’s 1970 break-up, one tough-guy critic put it this way in Rolling Stone magazine:
“Like Picasso, (the Beatles) broke through the constraints of their time period. In the art form of popular music, no one will ever be more creative, more revolutionary and more distinctive.”
One contemporary, mass-market reviewer of “St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1966), felt confident in immediately dubbing it the “’Citizen Kane’ of rock albums.” There was speculation and argument over the Beatles’ legacy while the Beatles were still playing together and speaking to each other. It was always assumed they’d leave a large legacy.
And they did, even though it’s diminished by the massive legal quagmire that continues to surround their work. Officials at satellite radio provider Sirius/XM were quoted in 2012 as saying their long-desired all-Beatles channel might still be 10 years away. The Beatles’ film projects are surrounded by licensing issues and tend to go unseen. Their records were unavailable to iTunes’ worldwide customer base until 2010.
In 1964, of course, no one in the United States had ever heard anything quite like them. Here, they more or less dropped out of the sky. In Britain, however, their sound was being developed on multiple fronts, as pop music had been moving in the general directions of “big beat” 4/4 time and an electrified rock guitar sound since the late 1950s. A group called Johnny Kidd & the Pirates found the “British Invasion Sound” in 1960, hitting the U.K. top 10 with “Shakin’ All Over,” a song that gets classified and played today in the U.S. as a British Invasion hit even though it was four full years in front of the actual invasion.
The world was spared “Piratemania” by Kidd’s obvious limitations as a vocalist and his constant shuffling of the musicians behind him, which led to his inability to capitalize on “Shakin’ All Over” by touring and recording. Kidd & the Pirates fired a parting broadside in 1961 with “A Shot of Rhythm & Blues,” another sharp, mid-’60s-sounding rocker, but were soon relegated to the musical counterpart of Davy Jones’ locker.
In Britain, the Beatles were surfing in front of a large wave of developing rock bands ― many of them soon to become famous in the United States. By the end of 1965, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Searchers, the Moody Blues, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Freddie and the Dreamers, Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames, Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders, the Animals, the Tremeloes, Peter & Gordon, Chad & Jeremy, Manfred Mann, Donovan and the Dave Clark 5 would all have major American hits. Only Clark’s group was formed in response to the success of the Beatles.
The biggest American hit of 1963, portentously, was “Louie, Louie,” recorded in the spring of that year in Portland, Oregon, by both the Kingsmen ― who had the big, national hit ― and Paul Revere & the Raiders, who were destined for a more lucrative career. “Louie, Louie,” in either version, is an early Beatles “formula” hit, a non-black dance band with three or four pieces interpreting a 1950s R&B single.
“Surfin’ U.S.A.,” the Beach Boys’ rewrite of Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” is similar in those respects and also was released in the spring of 1963.
Musically, the American pop audience was primed for the Beatles, who tended to shock and appall parents and grandparents but were readily accepted by teenagers, who’d already displayed an appetite for what the Beatles would provide.
The Beatles struck many adults as long-haired, smart-mouthed English punks with rebellious attitudes, which made their music and their haircuts all the more attractive to young people. The Fab Four had a wicked sense of humor. One favorite Beatles parlor trick was taking lyrics that were threatening, violent or darkly confessional and laying them over a snappy, lightweight pop melody. This thread runs from “I’m a Loser” to “I’m Looking Through You” to “Help!” to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” with numerous stops along the way. Eventually, they abandoned saucy wit in favor of acid-tipped assaults on their original manager (Brian Epstein), money-handlers in general and each other. They were good at those, too.
Focusing on them as an embodiment of the change and turmoil associated with the 1960s probably assigns them too large a role. Think “Sixties Symbols” and the Beatles are one of many that come to mind. They often struck anti-war themes in their music and interviews, but they were hardly alone among entertainers in that respect. Their specific opposition to the Vietnam War may have been controversial in the United States, but it was a majority opinion in Britain and most of Europe. Their notably public experiments with LSD and Eastern mysticism were abandoned not long after they started.
In 1966, they literally turned their backs on their fans by abandoning live dates and becoming a studio-only act. The official rationale was that Beatles music had become so technically advanced and such a product of the studio that it could no longer be performed live.
After the break-up, however, all four ex-Beatles eventually did some touring, occasionally performing versions of the songs they once insisted didn’t belong on stage. Maybe the guys were just tired of gigging. Once a great dance band, the Beatles recorded very little danceable music after 1966.
Individually, they all left large impressions.
John Lennon gave the group its edge. Once the Beatles broke up, the most common complaint about their output as individual musicians was that it had lost its weight. Lennon, the only one of the four who showed much enthusiasm for social commentary during their days as the Beatles, supplied the anger, the growl and the gravity.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison were among the most talented popular musicians of any era ― as both players and songwriters. McCartney was always either setting trends or jumping ahead of them. His “Got to Get You Into My Life” (1963), anticipated the “horn band” sound by a full five years. Frank Sinatra called Harrison’s “Something” (1969), the greatest love song he’d ever sung. On a few Beatles recordings, McCartney plays every instrument. Harrison’s short, stunning, “just off the beat” solo on “I Call Your Name” is often mentioned as one of the building blocks for the Jamaican reggae sound.
Drummer Ringo Starr spent eight years as a Beatle and was given one solo ― on “The End” at the close of the Abbey Road medley. He produced a genre classic.
On the stage or in the studio, there wasn’t much they couldn’t do.
Lennon seemed to have a sense that there was a little less to the Beatles’ “significance” than met the eye. As much as he liked to shock and challenge any listener, Lennon usually played it straight when asked to react to the idea that many of his lyrics would be held up in the decades to come as the most notable poetry of the 1960s.
“Rock lyrics aren’t poetry,” Lennon tended to say. “Doggerel, maybe.”
And then he’d bark like a dog.
The joke was on someone, but never the Beatles.
By John Markon
John Markon is the editor of The Daily News of Longview, Washington Readers may send him email at jmarkon@tdn.com. He wrote this for The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia. ― Ed.
(The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg, Virginia))
(MCT Information Services)
