The Beatles: The Final Chapter

Wednesday marks the thirtieth anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, so I'm going to take this opportunity to put the final touches on my reflections on his former band the Beatles.  In that first post back in October I referred to the myth that had built up around Lennon, and that I had stopped believing it a long time ago.  I stand by those words, but my purpose is not to criticize him in particular, or at all, really.  There is a mythology that has been constructed around the 1960's in general that I have grown weary of.  But we can only evaluate John Lennon's legacy fully if it is seen in the context of the Beatles.  If we do that we see a highly talented man who contributed to an extraordinary musical force, but not an individual genius who forged his own unique vision.

The Beatles were, as I wrote earlier, a band whose cultural and musical impact simply can't be over estimated.  But their success was very much a team effort, and that team included producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein.  If Martin was the musical translator who took their innovative concepts and put them in conventional musical language, it was Epstein who kept the egos in line and the more easily distracted members of the outfit focused.  Lennon would say later that it was Epstein's death in 1967 that was the real beginning of the end of the Beatles.  Once it was over none of the individual members had anything like the creative or commercial triumphs they did as a functioning unit.

It's in this light that I assess the legacy of not only John Lennon, but of his other three band mates as well.  Together, with the proper guidance, no one could touch them.  But apart their efforts suffered by comparison.  Even their one attempt to self produce, the sessions that would eventually become the album Let It Be, was a messy, acrimonious affair that took over a year put into it's final shape, and this only after the mad genius Phil Spector was given run of the master tapes.  Individually each had solid solo careers, to be sure, but it all pales in comparison to what they accomplished in their time as the Beatles.

And so, when I'm asked if I think John Lennon was a genius, I have to say no.  He was a talented song writer, to be sure, but it's hard to argue that his solo work did much to push Rock music ahead.  I could say the same thing about Paul McCartney, and for Sir Paul I think this is a far more damning indictment.  Of all the Beatles McCartney was the natural showman who reveled in the lime light.  He wanted to be a star, and grabbed at it with both hands.  He also paid the most attention in the studio, playing a big role in making their final album, Abby Road, the artistic success it was.  But for all his clever studio work and world tours during the 1970's, his work was very good at best, but never genius.  John Lennon and George Harrison both knew, way before the Beatles broke up, that there was more to life than the fame and fortune that came with being international Rock stars.  Harrison was more up front about it, but if you look at how Lennon conducted his post-Beatle years, you can see he felt the same way.

After a few productive years his output sputtered, punctuated by his legendary "lost weekend" of excessive living.  Once he settled down, the last five years of his life were spent in relative anonymity in New York City.  The nature of these years is debated, some holding to the official narrative that he was a house husband quietly raising his child at the Dakota Apartments, others claim that he was under the evil spell of his wife Yoko Ono who jealously sabotaged his career.  What ever the truth is, when he emerged in 1980 to resume his music career he comes off as a man comfortable being himself (maybe for the first time in his life), content with or without fame, as expressed in his song "Watching the Wheels."  I don't think it's a crime or an insult to say that John Lennon wasn't a genius.  His accomplishments are great, and was a part of something unique; a musical and cultural phenomenon that still makes news after more than 40 years.

In the end what we can say for certain is that John Lennon was a man searching for meaning in his life.  The bed-ins, the war protests, the primal scream therapy, the passive aggressive struggles to get out of the Beatles and the confusion and disillusionment that followed were all a part of a journey to find out what his place in the world really was.  While he was publicly critical of Bob Dylan's famous Born Again phase in the late 70's, I've read articles that speculate that he had his own private flirtation with Christian Fundamentalism during those last Dakota Years, as ironic as that may sound.  As I wrote, I do believe Lennon reached a certain peace before he was killed, but how much I'm not sure we can really say.  The tragedy of John Lennon's murder was more than that we lost a great artist.  It is that a son lost a father and a wife lost her husband, and a man's journey to find himself was cut short.

Why the 60's?

Last time I wrote about the importance of the Beatles in the history of popular music, and really I could have written much more.  I didn’t get into the fact that they were one of  the first popular music acts that actually wrote their own material as opposed to relying on professional song writers.  I could have talked about the haircuts, the clothing styles and outrageous comments in the press and, yes, the drugs (which shouldn’t be ignored), and this all could explain their social impact in the 1960’s, but I’m not sure that would explain why are they still so popular.   

When I was a teenager in the 1980's, none of my classmates listened to Jimmy Dorsey, or at least none that I knew of.  No one had a poster of the Andrews Sisters over their bed or went to school wearing a Xavier Cugat t-shirt.  In 1985 no one under the age of 50 was listening to the music of the 1940's and early (aka pre-Rock and Roll) 1950's.  Today the kids are listening to Lady Gaga (God help them), Kanye West and Katy Perry, but you'd be surprised how many tell me that they like the Allman Brothers Band.  At a Sunday Mass a few weeks ago a little girl, she couldn't have been more than 11 or 12, had a Let It Be t-shirt on.  It's an album released 40 years ago,  probably before her parents were born.  This could've been a fluke; maybe the shirt was on sale and it could have just as easily said Heinz 57 on it.  But the teenager who plays guitar at the 10:30 Mass has a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon pin on his guitar strap.  There was a teen age girl who used to come to religious ed. in Chicago who wore a shirt with a different Beatles album cover on it each week.  One Sunday it was Revolver, the next it would be Abby Road, and so on.  I'd make a comment and she'd be shocked the I knew who the Beatles were.  The gap between the 60's and now is actually greater than the time that had passed between the 1940's and 1980's, yet people, really young people, are still listening to the music of Beatles and their era unlike previous generations did with their antecedents.

So I’m left with the question, why the 60’s? I think some of it has to do with what I wrote about in an earlier post on the topic: that there is a romanticism attached to the age that has endured.   There is an image of freedom, liberation from oppressive social norms and a utopian belief in a better world to come that has endured.  As I also wrote, the impression in the immediate aftermath of the 1960’s was that the hippies had failed.  But the long term belief is that the 60’s generation did succeed in changing the world, especially in ending the Vietnam War (historically this is highly debatable).  Either way it is undeniable that the sixties, and one year in particular, 1968, changed the course of social history in the West, and the US in particular.   More on that pivotal year later.

My next post will be a total change of gears.  I turn my attention to Mexico, and the great suffering being experienced there right now.  Until then, I’m praying for you.  Please pray for the people of Mexico

The Beatles 2

I’m up here at the Marian Shrine, at our Provincial Chapter, and to not bore you too much, the internet connection here is worse than dial up speed.  They’re working on it, but in the mean time I’ve had to do some fancy footwork to get the blog out this week.  And mainly because of the time restraints put on me by the Chapter, and now the terrible internet,  I’m continuing with my look at John Lennon and the Beatles.  I’d begun to work on these next couple of posts already, so it seems like a good thing to finish at least one theme that I’ve started (remember the whole Theology of  the Body/Phenomenology tangent I was on for a while?)  As a reminder, I was prompted to write on this because of the upcoming 30^th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder in December.

As we continue this little appreciation of the Beatles, it is important to remember how unique they are, not only in the context of their time, but in the entire history of pop music over the last 50 years.  They represented a quantum leap forward in how Rock and Roll was produced and marketed, and in many ways you could argue that they saved the musical form itself.  Between 1958 and 1962 many of the first pioneers of Rock and Roll were either in the Army (Elvis), in jail (Chuck Berry), dead (Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, The Big Bopper, Richie Valens), had careers derailed by scandal (Jerry Lee Louis) or were in self imposed exile (Little Richard).  The sounds were smooth and mellow, with a smattering R&B to make things danceable.  The Beatles were famously rejected by Decca Records in part because in 1962 guitar bands were out of fashion and the suits thought they wouldn't be back in any time soon.  They were eventually signed by Parlophone, a minor imprint of EMI, and the rest as they say, is history.

But this signing to Parlophone is no small detail because it was actually more fortuitous for the “Boys” than if they had been signed to the more mainstream label.  On first blush it seems like a strange pairing.  Parlophone was a small outfit that specialized in classical recordings.  The producer assigned to them, George Martin, had his background in the classics and Jazz.  The Beatles two main song writers, John and Paul, were rockers with no formal musical training and couldn’t read music.  But as they grew in their song craft and ambition as recording artists it was the classically trained Martin who translated Lennon and McCartney’s sometimes cryptic requests into musical magic (Lennon famously asked that the piano break of  In My Life “sound like Bach,” to which Martin manipulated the recording to resemble a harpsichord).  The process of recording harmony and backing vocals was tedious and boring because each vocal had to be recorded separately. At the band’s request Martin and his engineers devised a way of recording a single vocal track several times at once, saving time and energy, a practice that became standard in the industry.   Martin always insisted that all the music and the main ideas came from the band, and that he simply translated the inspirations into concrete musical expressions.  However you look at it, It’s hard to see the Beatles breaking through artistically the way they did without a little help from their friend George Martin.

And break through they did.  By 1966 it was the Beatles, Bob Dylan, with what would later be known as The Band as his backing group, and the Beach Boys, and everyone else was pretty much trying to catch up.  Dylan was the self proclaimed murderer of Tin Pan Alley, melding pop songwriting, traditional folk forms with modernist and beat poetry.  His concerts with the Band helped revolutionize the rock and roll stage show.  Listen to his "Albert Hall" concert, and then "Got Live If You Want It!" by the Rolling Stones from the same year and tell me if they belong in the same universe with each other, let alone the same stage.   Meanwhile the Beatles and Beach Boys were dueling to see who could create the greatest sonic masterpieces.  Each were influencing the other, as well competing against each other.

After Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys creative leader, imploded and Bob Dylan's famous motorcycle accident The Beatles were left alone as the masters of the studio, as well as becoming the main voice the "kids" were listening to (the purposefully nonsensical  I Am the Walrus was written by Lennon to confuse those trying to find the deeper meaning of their music). Under the often under-appreciated guidance of producer and arranger George Martin, they created recordings that other artist couldn't even begin to touch.  Nothing in 1966 sounded like "Revolver," nor did anything in '67 sound like "Sgt.  Pepper's" and even the more stripped down "White Album" in '68 defies comparison.  While 1969's "Abby Road" was arguably less revolutionary than their earlier efforts, it's still mentioned among the greatest rock and roll records of all time.  That they produced something so cohesive, and yes innovative, is amazing considering the fact that they were hardly a functioning band in the summer of '69 when it was recorded.

But this only begins to scratch the surface.  More on the Fab Four and their cultural impact next time.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Spirit of the 1960's

In my last post on the legacy of  the Beatles I wrote about how they were true revolutionaries in a more profound way than many of their contemporaries, and one contemporary in particular.  The Rolling Stones are usually held up as the "bad boys" of Rock, contrasted with the Beatles as our lovable Mop Tops. The Stones' reputation wasn't unearned, to be sure, but the wrap on them is that this was an image carefully engineered by their first manager Andrew Loog Oldham.  Bill Wyman, their former bassist and diarist who kept a detailed journal of the band's exploits for decades, has contested that their image was real, but exploited by their handlers in a way the group itself didn't necessarily like.

Though this proposed dualism between the two bands has become a cliche, it doesn't change the fact that there is truth contained in it.  In a bigger sense The Beatles and Stones can be seen as both ends of a struggle to find the true meaning of the late Sixties.  The pop music of the day reflects the dualism embodied by the two groups.  There is Utopian optimism in songs like "The Age of Aquarius/ Let the Sun Shine In" by The 5th Dimension and Friend and Lover's "Reach Out in the Darkness," but also discontent reflected in Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," and just about anything by The Doors.  Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" represents a strange hybrid of hippie idealism in its lyrics but an ominous, spooky quality to it's arrangement that points to something darker just beneath the surface (the song was used to masterful effect in David Fincher's movie "Zodiac" a few years ago).

There is a romanticism associated with the age that endures that wasn't lost on the people living through it.  Jim Morrison predicted that in decades to follow the late 60's would be seen in the same romantic light as the French Revolution period.  What has indeed endured in the popular mind is the idealized image of flowers in your hair, free love and anti-war protests.  But read Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," written in 1971, and we can see that there is already a sense that the 60's generation failed. What struck me reading the book was that Thompson, who from our vantage point almost 40 years later is right in the middle of it all, seems to write of the period as if it was some long gone era.  The Who's LP "Who's Next" from the same year also points to a lost idealism in the two anthemic numbers that bookend the album.  David Bowie's "All the Young Dudes," made famous by Mott the Hoople in 1972, states:

And my brother's back at home
With his Beatles and his Stones
We never got it off on that revolution stuff 
What a drag, too many snags

Why the pessimism? The spirit of the youth movement of the late 60's was rebellion, in the sense of reexamining the values and mores that held sway and setting about to change them.  We can look at the Civil Rights Movement as effecting a positive change in that era, but the rebellion extended to every aspect of life.  Mixed up with all this is the Sexual Revolution and the rise of a drug culture that thought it could bring spiritual enlightenment through chemical means.  All this was part of a rebellion against the status quo.  But who is the master of rebellion?  It is Lucifer, of course.

I'm not suggesting that all revolution is the product of the Evil One, but its undeniable that there was a flirtation with the dark side, if you will, especially by the Rolling Stones, during this era.  I am not one who believes that Mick Jagger sold his soul for Rock and Roll.  Like I wrote above, the Stone's image was carefully crafted, and I have no problem believing that it was all a part of the act.  But when we play with these forces, even cynically, bad things happen.  It is often pointed out by those who try to deny the satanic connection with the Stones that when Meredith Hunter, an 18 year old concert goer, was murdered at the infamous Altamont free concert the song being played was "Under My Thumb," not "Sympathy for the Devil," as legend has it. This is true but it misses the point (not that I think "Under My Thumb" has such great karma attached to it either).  As Stephen Davis' bio of the band states, 1969 was a "witchy time," with tarot readings and seances being in vogue.  How deep the Stones or anyone in the counter culture were involved in such occult activities is open to debate.  But once that door is opened, even a little, it becomes hard to close.  What ever positive changes were being fought for were undermined by the presence of the "smoke of Satan," to borrow a phrase form Paul VI.  It was this connection with the forces of darkness that ultimately undid the 60's dream.

As a footnote, the only major musical artist of that time who never seemed to buy into the Utopianism was Bob Dylan.  He never put out a psychedelic album, as did so may of his contemporaries, and always maintained an ambivalence, some would say pessimism, about the world and it's future.  After 1966 he retreated, still putting out albums, but not touring or making public appearances.  In a way you could say he sat out the revolution that he helped start.  In the end, he was probably the wisest one of them all.

Scattered Thoughts on The Beatles 1

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Beatles lately, what with the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's murder coming up in December, coupled with the passing of what would have been his 70th birthday back on October 9.  I have been preparing a longer essay on Lennon and the myth that has built up around him over the years, a myth I long ago stopped believing.  But I will keep on refining and rewriting and have that up before the remembrance of his untimely and tragic death.

But for now, my attention turns to the band that made him a household name, the Beatles (as if I need to write the word).  There is so much that could be written, but most of it already has.  If a mythology has build up around Lennon than a veritable Homeric epic has been constructed around the Beatles.  While I was skeptical at one point in my life about their significance, the more I listen and the more I read the more I believe that they are one of the few pop culture icons worthy of the hype.  It's more than the number of units sold or number one hits they had;  they were truly innovative in their approach to recording and stretched the limits of what could be done in the studio, and what a pop-rock and roll band could achieve artistically on an LP.


So yes, I'm afraid I'm just as guilty of the Beatle idolatry as anyone.  But upon listening afresh to their recordings I'm left with an impression I first had in youth, but could never put words on.  The common perception is that the Beatles were the good guys and the Rolling Stones were the bad boys.  The old cliche coined by Tom Wolfe was that the Beatles want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn your town.  This notion is not without some merit, but it's still a bit of a simplification.  Listening to "Sgt. Pepper's" reveals dark undercurrents in both lyrics and sound.  Yes, Lennon was responsible for much of the edge, even adding this infamous line to McCartney's "Getting Better": I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved. The otherwise sunny "Lovely Rita" exits with sinister grunts and groans.  The non-album single "Strawberry Fields" adds a jumbled, frightening coda of noisy sirens and backward tape loops. The entire "White Album" is a mishmash of clashing styles reflecting the increasing disunity within the band.  As the double album progresses the tone gets darker, with McCartney trying to hope, Lennon totally disgusted and Harrison's offerings swerving between cynicism and lament.  Even Paul eventually succumbs to the discontent with the angry, aggressive "Helter Skelter."  Only Ringo seems to lighten the mood in spots. 

Then we have the mess that is "Revolution 9." This eight minute sound collage represents well the the disintegration of the Beatles as a unit, and without sounding too high minded, reflected the turbulence and increased fracturing of both European and American society in 1968.  John Lennon always contended that it wasn't the Beatles that influenced society, but rather that things going on in the culture were being reflected in their work.  I think it went both ways.  In this instance "Revolution 9" was a cracked mirror being held up to a revolutionary age.

The Rolling Stones were obvious in their rebellion, especially in their attacking of sexual mores.  This was something more calculated than anyone wanted to admit.  I'm not saying they didn't believe in what they were doing, but for them rebellion was as much of a marketing strategy as it was a philosophy of life.  But the Beatles were much more subtle.  They had the skills as song writers that the Stones didn't, and the guidance of a competent producer and arranger in George Martin to make their vision come to life.  The Stones had to rely on shock to make it (that is until they found their voice with the "Beggars Banquet" album, aided by a competent producer in Jimmy Miller who focused them), but the Beatles could do it on talent. They knew how to put on the veneer of love and flowers, while underneath was a wealth of  subversive angst.