The Beatles: Yesterday and Today and Most Likely Tomorrow, Part 2

A 3-part series about the Beatles’ influence on everything and everyone that followed…

Because I clearly don’t have enough to do (or the things I should actually be doing are boring) I’m writing about the Beatles and the things they did that everyone has been copying ever since and today we’ll start with…

Music videos

Other musicians made recordings of themselves performing songs before A Hard Day’s Night came out in 1964, but director Richard Lester has been given credit for creating the music video when he combined images with songs and showed non-performers in the videos and musicians doing something other than performing.

A Hard Day’s Night and Help! can accurately be described as a series of music videos thinly connected by plots.

Here’s I Should Have Known Better which might be considered the very first music video if you don’t count the opening sequence of A Hard Day’s Night (and I do) but couldn’t find a really good YouTube video of it:

When Richard Lester was told he was the “Father of the Music Video” he said he wanted a paternity test.

(BTW: The Blond Teenager standing in the door and watching the Beatles play is Pattie Boyd, George Harrison’s future wife.)

Because everybody was trying to cash in on their popularity, the Beatles were over-scheduled so they started making music videos to send to TV shows so they wouldn’t have to show up themselves and, according to the internet, the first “dedicated music video” was for “Paperback Writer/Rain” in 1966 and assuming I got the right video, here it is:

MTV started in 1981, so they were copying something the Beatles had done 17 years earlier.

Band attire 

The Beatles were working class kids from Liverpool and in class-conscious England their manager Brian Epstein wanted them to appeal to everybody so he cleaned them up and put them in suits, a look The Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, had the Stones copy.

But then Oldham changed his mind and decided the Stones needed to be different than the Beatles and had his band wear unmatched clothing, longer hair and look as if they wouldn’t recognize a bar of soap because in Oldham’s words, he wanted to make the Stones:

“A raunchy, gamy, unpredictable bunch of undesirables” and “establish that the Stones were threatening, uncouth and animalistic.”

So the working-class Beatles were cleaned up and presented as someone you wouldn’t mind having over for dinner (even though, while growing up in Liverpool, John Lennon was well-known for getting in fist fights) and the Rolling Stones were dirtied up and got the Badass Image which is pretty ironic because Mick Jagger studied finance and accounting at the London School of Economics, Brian Jones studied physics and chemistry and Keith Richards attended Sidcup Art College while the supposedly squeaky-clean Beatles studied getting laid in Hamburg.

The Beatles influenced bands that decided to copy them and wear suits and look presentable, but also influenced bands that decided to go the other way and try to look like Gypsies with a heroin addiction.

The above picture is Herman’s Hermits – who went the suit and tie route – and I included that photo because in high school a lot of girls (assuming three is a lot) told me I looked like Herman, but it really didn’t do me all that much good so I really hope Peter Noone was having more sex than I was and unfortunately, that wasn’t a high bar to clear.

Stadium concerts and more powerful amplifiers

Before the Beatles, bands played auditoriums, theaters and amphitheaters, but the Beatles were so popular Brian Epstein booked them into Shea Stadium which was considered a ridiculous overreach – 57,333 seats – until the show sold out within hours.

Unfortunately for ticket buyers, the stadium PA system was used to amplify the Beatles music and it sounded awful which led to more powerful amplifiers so bands could be heard when playing in over-sized venues like stadiums.  

Singer/songwriters

According to the internet, Elvis Presley never wrote a song even though he was given co-writer credits on some of them, which sounds like Colonel Parker strong-arming some poor song writer into giving Elvis a song-writing credit.

In any case, before the Beatles, (and Bob Dylan) singers and songwriters were usually two different professions.

Performing musicians would visit places like the Brill Building to hear what professional songwriters like Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond had to offer and at some point it occurred to Carole, Neil and Neil (which sounds like a folk group that would appear in a Greenwich Village nightclub right after Llewyn Davis and a poetry reading) that they could and should be performing their own stuff.

The idea that a performer would write and perform songs based on his or her own experiences was made popular by the Beatles (and once again Bob Dylan) and more and more performers started writing their own songs.

Beginnings, bridges and endings

Before the Beatles, pop songs were mostly: Verse, chorus/verse, chorus/ instrumental solo/verse, chorus.

But the Beatles went to the trouble to write different music for the beginning of a song, a bridge in the middle and an ending and here’s a great example of all three, I Want To Hold Your Hand:

Ask a songwriter and he might tell you bridges are where songwriting gets tricky because you have to leave the main melody and get back into it smoothly, so it’s pretty much like making a musical pit stop at the Daytona 500 and getting back on the track without causing a 10-car pileup.

The Beatles thought ending a song on a fade-out was too easy (although they occasionally used them and I’m guessing time pressure and overscheduling had something to do with that) and apparently Kurt Cobain insisted Nirvana avoid fade-out endings because the Beatle didn’t like them.

Being a smartass 

In A Hard Day’s Night there’s a scene on a train in which the Beatles have a confrontation with a stuffy old man who insists on closing the compartment window while the Beatles want it open (it’s based on a real incident) and they point out that there are four of them and just one of him, but he replies that he rides the train “regularly” so what he wants matters more and adds that:

“We fought the war for people like you.”

To which Ringo responds:

“I bet you’re sorry you won.”

People throughout history disrespected authority before the Beatles got around to it, but a lot of those Before-Their-Time Smartasses got their heads chopped off or burned at the stake for getting off a good one-liner about the King.

Fortunately, the Beatles had the wit and charm to pull it off.

Here in America we were used to smartasses like Groucho Marx, but in class-conscious England, working-class kids from a dump like Liverpool were expected to be properly respectful of the Royal Family and if they ever got invited over for tea, maybe offer to trim the Buckingham Palace shrubbery or shine the Prince of Wales wingtips.

So when the Beatles played The Royal Variety Show in front of Queen Elizabeth and John said the people in the cheaper seats should clap their hands, but the rich people should “rattle their jewelry” it was considered incredibly irreverent because he was making a wisecrack about royalty and wealth and you can tell John was nervous, but he got away with it and made everybody laugh:

I just watched this version of their performance again and before they performed Till There Was You Paul said they were going to do a song by their favorite American group…Sophie Tucker.

Sophie was not a small woman.

While there were exceptions, generally speaking, celebrities of the early 1960s were told to be nice to the press and act modest and respectful and thank their fans, agents and possibly God for their success, but the Beatles demonstrated you didn’t have to kiss ass and if some reporter asked you a dumb question like are you a “mod” or a “rocker” you could – if you were clever enough – give a smartass answer, like Ringo when he replied he was more of a “mocker.”

(That exchange with a reporter actually happened, so they recreated it for A Hard Day’s Night.)

After their first trip to the United States John was asked how he found America and he replied: “Turn left at Greenland.”

And after the Beatles auditioned for Parlaphone’s George Martin he explained what he thought they were doing wrong and when he got done, asked if there was anything they didn’t like and George said: “Well, for a start, I don’t like your tie.”

Fortunately, Martin thought the wisecrack was funny and once the ice was broken, the Beatles cut loose and by the time they left the audition, the Parlaphone team was crying with laughter and according to Ian McDonald’s Revolution in the Head, the fact that they were funny and charming may have been the main reason Martin signed them.

If you gotta work with somebody, why not work with people that make you laugh?

The Beatles were smartasses and made being smartasses popular which encouraged generations of people like me to follow in their footsteps and be a smartass, so thanks a lot John, Paul, George and Ringo, couldn’t have done it without you.

Tomorrow: Concept albums, FM radio, printed lyrics and changing the way music is recorded.