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Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, United Kingdom
Broadcaster, musician, song writer, tea drinker and curry lover.

Friday, May 30, 2008

The Beatles Anthology


Some people may, I suppose, still not "get" The Beatles, but love them or hate them, you have to concede that they irrevocably shaped modern pop music for good. I've just been watching the ten dvd "Beatles Anthology" set for the first time, and a number of thoughts struck me as I watched this beautifully made series.

It is interesting to note that from the start, The Beatles were a rock and roll band, brought up on a diet of pre-Elvis and Chuck Berry standards, which were the first songs they learned to play. These songs also formed the backbone of their formidable Hamburg era sets, along - strangely - with a few Motown standards, most notably "Please Mr Postman" but also including love songs such as "You've Really Got A Hold On Me". When the band returned to the UK to blitz the pop charts, the self-penned pop they were dealing in was a lot tamer than the rock and roll they were playing out in Germany, a fact backed up by the necessity to cut their hair and invest in suits. All this was at the behest of manager Brian Epstein, and it strikes me that they must have trusted him a lot, to dilute their sound and their look the way they had to, which must have been frustrating in a way.

Another thing that emerges from the documentary is the absolute rightness of the decision to stop touring. It's easy to forget that back in the early to mid 60s, large scale concerts were an innovation, and as such, adequate provision for the band to be able to hear themselves was non-existent. Monitoring had not been invented at that point, and when you think that the guitarists were operating out of 30 watt amps, which were their only source of monitoring (stadium concerts utilized the stadium sound system, which back then was woeful), and poor Ringo had no way of hearing himself over the screams, the decision to come off the road not only made complete sense, but was totally understandable. After all, as Ringo himself says, he needed to look at the guitarists backs and body movements most of the time to figure out how to keep time, and as a result of not being able to hear what they were doing, the playing of all band members suffered, not to mention the frustration that audiences were coming to SEE the band, and not LISTEN to them. Artistically very unsatisfying.

Coming off the road allowed the band to really flourish in the studio and just a cursory listen to the period from "Rubber Soul" onwards (my favorite period) shows a wealth of arranging styles and the sympathetic and masterful production of George Martin.

One final - and sadly, hypothetical - question came to me as I watched the break-up of the band. I wonder how much longer they would have gone on if manager Brian Epstein had not committed suicide when he did, because it seems to me that the band lost a lot of its business direction when Epstein died, and a lot of energy had to be diverted away from the creative process into thinking about and dealing with that, and as a result came the disastrous Apple Boutique venture. Would Epstein have allowed that? Would the band have been less likely to squabble if their energies and attention were solely on the music, as it would undoubtedly have been had Epstein been there?

I guess we'll never know, but at least we have a legacy of wonderful songs to enjoy for ever.

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