Music

The Beatles

I thought I’d start out with a pinnacle band in our culture, because whatever your opinion on The Beatles, you cannot deny that they shaped our culture.

If you’re like me, if someone asks you what was the first Beatles song you ever heard or when did you first listen to them, you can’t answer. When’s the first time you really listen to The Beatles? Honestly. They’re just so firmly apart of the world’s consciousness, no matter what type of music you listen to.

In my case, I actually do know which Beatles song I first heard, though I don’t remember it. My mom sang Hey Jude to me as a lullaby as a baby.

I was raised on The Beatles – from my mom – and Led Zeppelin – from my dad. I’ve been pretty lucky for the music that I was exposed to growing up; the radio was always cemented on Classic Rock 101.

Of course that doesn’t mean I didn’t have shameful moments concerning music when growing up. My sister dragged me into listening to boy bands like N*Sync or the Backstreet Boys when I was still young enough to think the sun rose and set on her so any music she listened to had to be incredible since she was the person I looked up to then. Oh, and don’t forget The Spice Girls, I had the Baby Spice Barbie.

What was she doing in the noughties, honestly? She could have been listening to The Strokes in that time or anything else, really.

Then of course there’s the dreaded period of our family listening to country music. Not that I hate ALL country music, but the mainstream stuff is just awful and soulless and blah.

But it always came back to the roots, and especially The Beatles.

A lot of people that were in my year in high school swore that they’d never heard of the band, but while they might not know who they were, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’d heard a song. I don’t think you can grow up without hearing a Beatles song.

Then there’s my friend who doesn’t like The Beatles, and I try to respect her opinions, but she also think she has amazing taste in music and knows more than I do. She doesn’t believe that they were a good band – wrong – and that some band like Lincoln Park is much more creative and incredible – cue vomiting.

My favourite albums from them are a three way tie between Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Rubber Soul and Revolver.

It is hard to choose your favourite Beatles album, because they’re just all so brilliant. I mean, they’ve influenced almost everything through their music. Most people choose their later albums as they’re most artistic, and it’s true. But there’s something so wonderful about the early albums, especially the rollicking drums. I will never say that Ringo is a brilliant drummer, but he does have such a style for himself that faded away into uselessness by the end albums as they got more produced.

Whenever I listen to a song, I’m always floored about how great they actually were.

The Lennon-McCartney writing partnership will never be rivalled, they just worked so well as a writing pair together no matter how twisted their relationship became in the end. The fact that they worked so much harder than any band today and released so much more music in a much shorter period of time, and I cannot fathom how great each of their songs were. I have no doubt that they did love and respect each other, no matter what came to be with Yoko and I do not believe that she was the one that broke up the band. The Beatles were always doomed to break up, because they had four huge musical personalities together in one band, one band would never be able to hold them together. I think Yoko just was the breaking point.

Then there’s the fact that John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were just stunning vocalists, though George didn’t get the chance show his singing and writing capabilities as much as the other two, and Ringo definitely didn’t. There was this mixture of R&B aggression that John and Paul created in the songs that they sang in together.

They also pioneered recording techniques that artists take for granted now. The imagination of the band will never be rivalled.

No one in the Beatles, not John not Paul ever could make something that could beat what they did in that band. Just the hysteria that surrounded them and their music can never happen again in music, the way they just were mixed into youth culture is something that very few bands have ever done in history.

I can also understand why they stopped touring, because if you watch some of their last tours of a band, it’s almost a war between the crowd and them to be heard. They’re songs were no longer theirs anymore, they’d become a part of the people that loved and listened to them and that’s what I believe music should be, something that can be shared and become something different for anyone that hears it

They continue define not only their generation, but ours even forty years later.

Their albums are still talked about, and that’s the biggest accomplishment you can ever say for a band. And the music can still stand up against anything you play today; it hasn’t been dated for one moment.

They belonged to everybody in the end, and they still do.

“It’s an obsession. It’s an ideal for living. I don’t even know how to justify it to myself. With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles.” – Noel Gallagher.

“The Beatles showed us that four people could be one, as a perfectly balanced as the four elements. The macrocosm and the microcosm. All things as one.” – John Frusciante

“The song writing on “Rubber Soul” is unbelievable. “In My Life” is pure genius.” – Jack White

“You can’t touch the Beatles.” – Paul Weller

“John Lennon and Johnny Rotten are the only two that mattered in rock n’ roll.” – Liam Gallagher

“They were a real rock and roll band and they can play like fuck.” – Bobby Gillespie

 I could go on forever, talking about my trip to Liverpool with Julia, but right now I have to go out and do physical labour. I'll think about the next thing I'll write about then. The picture on the side is from Liverpool at The Cavern where I was dragged to dance with the old guy, I still smile thinking about that, it was wonderful. I had to run away from him to get away though, but then hot Brazillian guy and I danced for the rest the night.