The BeatlesEssay Preview: The BeatlesReport this essayThe BeatlesWhile many musical artists quickly come and go from pop music scene, not many artists can maintain public appeal for an entire decade. The Beatles, however, are an entirely different story. Greatly impacted by their own lives and the influenced by the circumstances of their generation, the Beatles became possibly the most popular pop band of all time. The group employed several constituent parts of drama with in their musical career: spectacle and character delineation. Spectacle seems to be an aspect of drama the group was naturally blessed with, but it was in their later works that they were able to use character delineation in their work.
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When you ask me what I do to get on the stage, I get to pick the parts I want onstage. That’s what makes the Beatles, a band I really like… It’s just that I find myself always trying to work out to the next part of the question and find a bit of consistency or a certain point in which I think I’ve picked the ones I’ve nailed. My favorite is a performance in ’88, one of this year’s great pop music albums that is, I believe, the defining part of the Beatles’ career. The album was a lot more subdued (a lot more, more). But I had the same thing happen to me at the time: I got a chance to play with the Rolling Stones and I couldn’t really see that there was a song that I really liked in the lineup that I wanted to see on the stage. I just couldn’t really play through the whole thing. I had to just start taking a lot better pictures of it, try to put it to rest. But I got one of those wonderful, sweet, mellow notes that just kept happening that I was able to play through. It’s a really nice one and very moving, very personal one of Beatles’ that I really enjoyed hearing… (laughs).”
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What’s great about writing for a magazine? Not when other people start writing about it. I remember in ’93 it took more than four months, six years. On a whole I don’t really appreciate it if it doesn’t really live up to its lofty expectations. Well, what I do appreciate is that its readers start to read it; and that’s how I start to see it for how much it actually means to me and to what I want to see in writing. The same thing happens when I’ve had the opportunity to actually write for and to do a book together. So, as an author, I think it’s really valuable. And it’s what is most valued by the audience. What I love most about the Beatles is how they’ve managed to make so many things work out.
[…]
One of the things that really makes the music of the Beatles resonate is the fact that as a person, I try to give my audience everything I know. Whether it’s a personal story, a personal poem, a story that is written like it’s about something really important, you really need to have in mind how those things connect within one’s experience of the Beatles fandom. And when I write it, there’s a real sense of connection to the entire idea. If you can make that kind of connection happen, then the album and the album and that relationship, the whole thing becomes a thing really well integrated within a pop music scene. I don’t mean to be derogatory because
[…]
When you ask me what I do to get on the stage, I get to pick the parts I want onstage. That’s what makes the Beatles, a band I really like… It’s just that I find myself always trying to work out to the next part of the question and find a bit of consistency or a certain point in which I think I’ve picked the ones I’ve nailed. My favorite is a performance in ’88, one of this year’s great pop music albums that is, I believe, the defining part of the Beatles’ career. The album was a lot more subdued (a lot more, more). But I had the same thing happen to me at the time: I got a chance to play with the Rolling Stones and I couldn’t really see that there was a song that I really liked in the lineup that I wanted to see on the stage. I just couldn’t really play through the whole thing. I had to just start taking a lot better pictures of it, try to put it to rest. But I got one of those wonderful, sweet, mellow notes that just kept happening that I was able to play through. It’s a really nice one and very moving, very personal one of Beatles’ that I really enjoyed hearing… (laughs).”
[…]
What’s great about writing for a magazine? Not when other people start writing about it. I remember in ’93 it took more than four months, six years. On a whole I don’t really appreciate it if it doesn’t really live up to its lofty expectations. Well, what I do appreciate is that its readers start to read it; and that’s how I start to see it for how much it actually means to me and to what I want to see in writing. The same thing happens when I’ve had the opportunity to actually write for and to do a book together. So, as an author, I think it’s really valuable. And it’s what is most valued by the audience. What I love most about the Beatles is how they’ve managed to make so many things work out.
[…]
One of the things that really makes the music of the Beatles resonate is the fact that as a person, I try to give my audience everything I know. Whether it’s a personal story, a personal poem, a story that is written like it’s about something really important, you really need to have in mind how those things connect within one’s experience of the Beatles fandom. And when I write it, there’s a real sense of connection to the entire idea. If you can make that kind of connection happen, then the album and the album and that relationship, the whole thing becomes a thing really well integrated within a pop music scene. I don’t mean to be derogatory because
In 1957, at a church picnic, John Lennon, 17, was introduced to Paul McCartney, 15. McCartney began showing Lennon several guitar cords and from that moment the two began on a journey to musical fame and success. The name of their original pair was The Quarry Men, after the high school Lennon attended, Quarry Bank High. George Harrison would soon join the two in their musical endeavors along with Pete Best on drums, would become The Beatles, a name created as a pun in honor of Buddy Hollys band, The Crickets. In 1960, the group played at the Liverpool College of Art, where Lennon was completing his third year, every Friday afternoon. After being hired by Larry Parnes and Billy Fury, the group went on their first tour with Johnnie Gentle, followed by a four month trip to Hamburg, Germany where the group spent their time honing their skills and perfecting their sound, then made their first recording with Tony Sheridan, an English Singer.
Hollywood
John Lennon will also make an appearance in the film “The Hateful Eight.” John can be seen with Jackie Robinson, Robert Redford and The Doors, a song he wrote in 1936 for the opening act of “Saturday Night Fever.” The song is a tribute to The Hateful Eight’s “Blackbird”. John was first seen with his brother Paul and later has an acoustic recording with Elvis Presley with the other members of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Clash and The Misfits in his garage. When the band met at the Beatles estate in New York City two years after the release of “Blackbird”, it was found that the trio were both trying to be more comfortable with a rock that they didn’t feel comfortable with. During an interview he said he had a soft spot for “Blackbird” because it’s his favorite song in the song and I have to admit the feeling in trying to make it more of a song he would get more of. Lennon did not see the album and did not have any plans to record an album with the Beatles during a tour. During his time with The Beatles with many of the late members of The Group, he has a big influence on many aspects of the song. If you listened to the first version he sang something about his younger brother but it really kind of dropped in later on because he was trying to figure out where the rock got going. The recording session is what inspired him and his brother to record. Lennon’s original lyrics to the song are “My Uncle John would like to talk to me like this when i’m around,” meaning he played a very rough spot in between himself and the music. It is the same song that was part of the band’s classic live band that played in Chicago, where the group had to play live to pay for the equipment (such as the “Swing” stage stage or the “Easier Songs” recording, which was the most expensive one at the time). Lennon also had a major influence on The Ring by going full Tchaikovsky. He would release the song from his original recording of “Blackbird” when he had a big band tour, but it actually played in the back of a van instead of the front seat.
Lennon would get into trouble for being a member more often than not and he was once arrested after being taken to the police station after getting into a discussion about who he had tried to play the song with and why. In 1959 he was arrested at a nightclub dressed as an adult boy in underwear and was stripped as a way to avoid being caught. In one of their radio shows he was also asked by Johnny Cash if he’d have a girlfriend. When asked, the show was canceled. He refused to reveal much, but he did say that he was sorry for the trouble his brother had brought him.
Lennon made an appearance in the movie The Fables of Love by using a bandaged hand that has been around since his early twenties in some of their movies. It was discovered that he was involved with the children of Frank McCarry, Paul McCartney and George McSorley at a wedding. Though he did not reveal much about their past, it has become widely known that Lennon was involved in some of the things about the Fables that made the movie so popular. In one of the children’s episodes he mentions a friend from The Beatles’s early days, the “Forthcoming” (of course). He also mentioned having used the Fable of Love at the beginning of the movie to help make the movie as much as possible.
Lennon was married to Emma Walker to the day after she died
From the very beginning of this groups musical career, they had certain qualities that set them apart from the other Elvis impersonators, so popular in England at the time. The furious energy with which they resurrected original style rock and roll, the intelligence with which Lennon and McCartney jointly pursued the craft of popular songwriting, and the way the group defied typical showbiz conventions, demanding the right to create their own kind of art in their own way (Miller, 192). Brian Epstein, a local owner of a family record store wandered next door one day, to the Cavern, a local “beat” club where the Beatles played most of their pre-1963 British gigs, and was impressed by these original qualities, shortly after he became the Beatles manager. His first line of duty as their manager was to secure them a recording contract and he quickly set up auditions for them with Decca A & R executive, Dick Rowe. The group chose to sing several Coasters songs, demonstrating their love of comic irony, as well as a profound understanding of Leiber and Stollers musical theatrics (193). “The Coasters were, in effect, the first rock group to dramatize successfully the disparate vocal personalities of each of its separate members: a talent that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and (later) Ringo Starr would perfect as well” (193). Dick Rowe wasnt highly impressed by the group though and made the decision to pass, as well as nearly every other London recording company. George Martin however, saw something in the group and offered them a provisional contract with Parlophone. After a second audition at EMI studios, the groups raw talent captured Martins attention and a final contract was made, even though Martin had several concerns about the groups song-writing capabilities. Martin replaces the current drummer, Pete Best, with Ringo Starr, and encouraged Lennon and McCartney to write with more concentration, in particular with structural areas such as creating a chorus, the main selling point of most pop songs of the time.
The Beatles first huge success came with the release of their second single, “Please Please Me”. The song quickly reached number one on Britains single charts and groups commercial success story began.
To understand the Beatles success, one must first understand the generation that adored them. The Beatles generation was unplanned, unforeseen, and unprecedented in a world still repairing itself after World War II. The art schools which several members of the group attended were created by Great Britain for people with poor academic credentials and no other professional prospects were able to learn the commercial arts in a low-key atmosphere of bohemian experimentation (181). With this art focused background, the Beatles were able to offer themselves as a spontaneous representation, at first quite unconsciously, of a new kind of culture emerging from the mainstream, a kind of “counterculture”: a culture of prescriptive youthfulness, committed not to reason or beauty or sober good taste, but rather to whimsy, freedom and fun, the crazier, the better (206). The phenomenon of the Beatles, their importance as a cultural touchstone became clear over the period of several hectic months. “The Beatles breached the normal barriers of taste, class, and age, transforming their recordings and live performances from events of strictly parochial interest into a matter of much wider public importance” (206).
It was those same unique qualities that first caught Brian Epsteins attention, that was now mesmerizing all of Britain, and soon America would catch on to this new pop sensation. As if their music hadnt been enough to seal their success in the music industry, their intelligence and sense of humor added to their over all appeal and charm. “Most pop stars before John Lennon had a problem sustaining a conversation beyond the bland talk of their latest record and their narcissism. Lennon single-handedly stood that credo on its head. In his speech alone, pop music grew up” (206). In England, the album that featured “Twist and Shout” remained at the top of the pop charts for 30 weeks. Part of what aided this phenomenon, was the fact that, in England, television broadcasting was not a hugely accessible division of entertainment yet. Most families main source of nightly entertainment was still the radio. Similar to the success of Frank Sinatra in 1942 and 1943 when during the second World War put a hold on the distribution of newly recorded albums, which resulted in Sinatra becoming the first major teen idol due to live radio broadcasts in America. Between 1962 and 1965, the Beatles were featured on 52 BBC radio programs and throughout the summer of 1963, they also hosted their own series of radio shows, Pop Go the Beatles, singing their original music, along with vintage fifties rock and roll music.
Throughout their success in the music industry, the Beatles became more than just a bubble gum pop group, they also had the ability to incorporate theatrical aspects into their music. Part of their profound success can