The Beatles

It all started with a Mad Men episode.  It was the episode in Season 5 where a client wants a Beatles song for their ad, and Don explains that The Beatles would be too expensive, but that they’d find something similar, assuring the client he knew what The Beatles sounded like.  Of course a theme of the episode is the speed at which everything in the world is changing, and so it ends with Megan playing Don a song off of The Beatles new album, which is vastly different than the music Don is familiar with.  That album was Revolver (quickly identified by Mrs. – we’ll get to this in a bit), and the track was "Tomorrow Never Knows".  Don’s reaction to hearing this song (that to him sounds nothing like The Beatles he knows) is to turn off the album and go to bed.  I had a different reaction.  I kind of liked the song and was suddenly intrigued.

I should confess something at this point – I never really liked The Beatles.  To the age-old question of The Beatles or The Stones, I went with the latter.  And it wasn't that I was a fan of The Rolling Stones (I like a handful of songs, but nothing more), but more my opinion that The Beatles were an overrated pop act.  Greatest band ever?  Really?  I mean, I understood why people liked their music.  It was easy to sing along to and it had the historical influence and well, it was vanilla and accessible, which is what I think most people want.  And there were even a couple of Beatles songs I really liked ("In My Life" comes to mind).  And I even briefly had a thing for John Lennon’s music.  But not the "Fab Four" in their suits on The Ed Sullivan Show.  That wasn’t for me.  I was cooler than that.  But what I realize now is that what I considered to be The Beatles really amounted to just their first 4 albums (I’ll call it their pop stage).  I identified them with songs like "Love Me Do", "I Want To Hold Your Hand", "Twist And Shout", and "Can’t Buy Me Love".  Perfectly fine songs, but nothing special for me.  Certainly nothing to make me want to listen to more.  But then I found myself listening to the opening of "Tomorrow Never Knows".    

So back to that Mad Men episode.  As Don was turning off the record and the credits were rolling, I realized I wanted to hear more of that song.  So with the power of i-Tunes I not only listened to that song (again and again), but quickly previewed all of the songs off Revolver (it turned out Mrs. actually owned this album, so I could then listen to it in it's entirety).  And I came to a realization – I might actually like this.  And then I realized something much worse.  I might be wrong about The Beatles.  They might be pretty good.  In fact, perhaps great.  Because I’m me and when I obsess I obsess completely, over the next several weeks I worked my way through listening to sections of all of their albums (again thanks to i-Tunes) and devouring information on The Beatles.  I was ensnared in the web.  Now Mrs., who calls me a music snob, wondered why I never just listened to all of their music many years ago.  But without the magic of i-Tunes or access to any of their albums as a teen, there was really no way for me to do this.  Again, I considered them a pop act and I was a grunge loving high-schooler.  I had dismissed them and was stubborn about changing that view (hence the music snob moniker).     

I’ll pause here to say that Mrs. doesn’t really have a love of music.  I mean, sure she likes music, but she doesn’t have any real obsession for bands like I do (all healthy obsessions of course).  She uses music as more of a distraction in the car or during work around the house (like painting), or of course Christmas music during the holiday season.  But The Beatles were one of the bands she claimed as a favorite.  So now that I found myself slowly coming to appreciate the musical genius of the band, I figured she’d appreciate that we’d finally have some musical interest in common (our interests here diverge much like with regards to movies and books).  So what happens when I unveil my newfound love of The Beatles to her?  Well of course she got mad.  Maybe mad is the wrong word, but she did accuse me of listening to them just because I didn’t want her to have musical knowledge that I didn’t possess.  The Beatles were her thing not mine.  Now this is not why I started listening to The Beatles.  I’ll fully admit Mrs. is a bigger Beatles fan than me.  Hey, she was the one who pointed out to me that the song on Mad Men was from Revolver (mentioned above), so clearly she knew her stuff.  She sings along to the songs (and even gets some of the lyrics right), and knows the difference between the early albums and the later albums.  And none of that bothers me.  I think she should just be happy that we can now listen to The Beatles in the car on long drives and both finally agree on the music.  But I digress.

So back to The Beatles.  I’m not going to pretend they're suddenly my favorite band, because they’re not.  I’d still skip most of their earlier “pop” albums.  But I do appreciate that even those first albums were influential in music history and planted the seeds for what came later.  Kind of like an author’s first book (assuming said author isn’t Harper Lee).  An artist needs to find his/her/their voice.  What I find incredible though is the complete turnaround my view of the band has undergone.  They may not be my favorite, but the more I listen, the more I enjoy what they produced.  And the more I realize how much more diverse and innovative their music was from my earlier opinion.  And I’m certainly not going to argue with someone who says they’re the greatest band ever.  Because they just might be.  A few examples of what I find amazing about the band: 

They were a band for such a short time relatively speaking.  Their 12 studio albums were all released between 1963-1970.  The Rolling Stones by way of comparison released 29 albums between 1964-2005 and are still touring (or whatever the geriatric equivalent is).  Heck, U2 has been releasing albums and touring since 1980 (over 30 years!) and even Pearl Jam has been rocking since 1991 (god I’m old).  The Beatles were a flash in the pan comparatively.

Despite their short run they produced more classic songs than any other band ever.  I mean even a non-Beatles fan like I was could list, and even sing along to, dozens of songs.  They did all of this in 8 years!  The released multiple albums in a single year 4 separate times.  They never went a year between albums during their whole existence.  That’s beyond prolific.

After the early pop phase, they changed up their music and experimented with so many different sounds and styles that all of their albums are distinct.  This is the key thing that I was missing.  I thought of them as that pop act and couldn’t get past it.  But they were so much more, for lack of a better word, alternative, which is exactly the type of music I love.  And it’s these more experimental albums that caught my attention.  And not to keep repeating myself, but they evolved as musicians year after year after year.  Song bands work on albums for years and still end up sounding the same as the previous album.  Not so with Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.

    

So let’s end with the album Revolver.  After listening to almost everything the band produced, I can say without question that Revolver is their best album.  I would probably rank the top 3 (and you know I love ranking) as Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Magical Mystery Tour.  But Revolver is far and away my favorite.  I’d go as far as saying it’s a top ten album for me (maybe a ranking for a different time).  So it might have taken me too long to come around on The Beatles, but better late than never when it comes to appreciating them as artists and adding their music to my rotation.  In this instance I admit I was wrong.  There’s a first time for everything.