"You say you want a revolution": The Beatles as a mirror of their time
2023 marks the 60th anniversary of beatlemania. But 2023 also marks the 55th anniversary of the revolutionary year 1968 - France 68, the Prague Spring, the protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement in the USA, all over the world things were happening. But that was only the culmination of a turbulent decade. Just as culture is always an expression of its time, this period is also reflected in the music of the Beatles, or rather, the Beatles were able to become famous and develop artistically in very special circumstances.
The music industry at that time was completely different than today - but also the economic and political situation was a fundamentally different one. Against the background of the existence of the Stalinist states (which had a planned economy but with the simultaneous existence of a bureaucratic dictatorship that distorted it), there was a post-war boom after the Second World War and the emergence of a mass market for music.
Today, after three decades of neoliberalism, and in the face of technological innovations that actually already demand a different form of society than capitalism, hardly anyone spends money on music anymore. It feels like the music of the mainstream sounds completely streamlined and interchangeable. The music industry has been in a deep crisis for years - just as capitalism is now plagued by multiple crises. The Beatles seem like pillar saints of a long forgotten time here.
This article is not meant to be a biography, but a portrait of the conditions that made the Beatles’ phenomenon possible in the first place.
Originating in Liverpool
Why did this band, which was so formative for its time and for pop music as such, stem from Liverpool? It is no coincidence that a band from Liverpool was at the forefront of a profound change in the music industry.
Liverpool was a port city - one of the most important port cities in England at the time. As a port city, Liverpool also had a connection with Hamburg, which also plays an important role in the Beatles' biography. Liverpool was originally a trans-shipment center in the slave trade, and its history is rich with struggles of dockworkers and other workers. Liverpool is also the city that in the 80s, with a mass movement under the influence of the Militant, forced a progressive budget from Thatcher in a time of austerity.
Improvement of living standards in the post-war upswing
There were some conditions that allowed the Beatles to emerge as a band in the first place: Conscription was abolished in November 1960, which allowed the Beatles to go to Hamburg and tour without being torn apart. As part of a series of improvements in the post-war recovery, free access to higher education with student grants was introduced, which had been fought for by the workers' movement after the war - at the same time, there was a very different world situation than today, as the Soviet Union existed and there was pressure to make concessions in the form of social legislation. A special feature in England were art schools - not only John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliff went to one of these art schools, also several members of the Rolling Stones were art students.
The Beatles themselves were working class lads, George Harrison and Ringo Starr each did an apprenticeship before switching to music, Paul McCartney went to the Liverpool Institute but dropped out just before A levels (equivalent to our Matura) when they began touring, and John Lennon went to art school. Music was a way to escape "the treadmill". John Lennon did a few holiday jobs, including as a construction worker, which he absolutely hated. Paul Mccartney later spoke of how they had “virtually proven ‘the american dream’ that working class people could make it to the top too”. But the permeability of class boundaries was then as now an illusion for the majority of the working class. While gifted with extraordinary talent, they also found the right place and the right time to achieve a career in music - a time when the music industry was still in its infancy.
In the late 50s it was the seamen who brought rocknroll, blues and early Motown stuff. In Liverpool, therefore, there was a very lively music scene in the early '60s, because the kids always had the latest music from the U.S. just from the sailors.
Hamburg, the Cavern and apprentice strikes in Liverpool
Beatles were just one of countless bands that were exported to Hamburg. The port of Hamburg is one of the most important in Europe and is considered "the most British city in Germany" because of the connections to England through the port. The gigs in Hamburg made them extremely tight as a band, they had to play long nights, had to build up a large repertoire extremely quickly. At the same time, they met Astrid Kirchherr and Klaus Voormann at those nights, whose French existentialism had a strong influence on them (superficially reflected in their hairstyle).
Back in Liverpool they played so-called "Lunchtime Sessions" at the Cavern Club and were considered an "exciting band from Hamburg". During the lunch breaks young workers, secretaries, dockers, factory workers, apprentices etc all came to the Beatles gigs at the Cavern, where the Beatles gained a base. At the Cavern, most Liverpool based bands we know today from the time played there, but also bands from other northern cities like the Hollies from Manchester.
At the same time, there was more brewing under the surface: in 1960 there was an apprentice strike in Britain (but especially Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow) of 100,000 apprentices for wage increases and other improvements, organized more or less from the bottom up, with strike committees and activists going from factory to factory. In 1964 there was another one in Liverpool and Manchester. This was also an expression of the increased confidence of working class youth in England.
Beatlemania: Setting the youth on fire
The Beatles’ breakthrough came in '62 with Love me do, already with Ringo as their drummer.
Beatlemania spread like wildfire:
The music industry at that time (early 60s) still operated on the Brill Building model - publishers with their own songwriters dominated the industry and the artists themselves were mostly puppets (there were of course exceptions in the Motown area such as Arthur Alexander and Smokey Robinson who were adored by Lennon and wrote their own songs, as well as Chuck Berry). But Buddy Holly had died in an airplane accident, Elvis was in the army, the music had become more soft-spoken. Rocknroll itself had evolved from blues and country, which became popular because as field music they were cheaper for the radios in terms of royalties than the more expensive jazz standards of the American Songbook. The rights to these standards belonged to the Hollywood film studios which, in the crisis of the 1930s, pushed up the royalties. Blues and Country were the cheaper alternative for the radios. It was the Beatles that established the beat group or later rock band as a business model.
In contrast to the state of the music industry at that time, there was already a lot going on in the early 60s politically - capitalism had been overthrown in Cuba, there was great fear of nuclear war, the civil rights movement was developing (March on Washington, Jim Crow Laws) and had triggered a folk boom around Bob Dylan.
At the same time, with the postwar boom, the first time there was a generation of teenagers who had money to buy records. White teenagers in particular became a mass consumer market.
Beatlemania was, in a tricky way, a harbinger of the sexual revolution and the women's movement - the pill was introduced in the early '60s, though it wasn't widely used until the second half of the '60s and wasn't approved in some countries until later. But with Beatlemania, female teenagers became a subject sexually for the first time instead of mere objects of desire, and the Beatles in turn became male objects of desire. This process had already started with Elvis, but not to such an extent. The suppressed female sexuality of the 50s fuelled the hysteria of Beatlemania. Until the pill took hold, getting married because there was a child on the way - which caused a lot of unhappy marriages - was very common. John and Cynthia Lennon were an example of this.
At the same time, there was a certain homoeroticism in the phenomenon of the Beatles that perhaps resonated implicitly. In England, homosexuality was still forbidden in the early 60s (the ban stemmed from a law from 1885), as Beatles manager Brian Epstein painfully knew (only in 67 it was partially decriminalized).
So the music of the Beatles was fuelled by the suppressed sexuality and emotion of the era before, which now all burst open.
Both Acceptable and stretching the boundaries
The implications are as follows:
The Beatles virtually brought back to the U.S. its own music, that is, black rock and roll and R'n'B, in a form that was at once outrageous and innocent, acceptable because white, but transgressive because it was blurring the boundaries - in other words, just the right thing for a white teen mass consumer market.
The Beatles appeared together with Bob Dylan for the first time in great style as singersongwriters, writing their own songs and performing them at the same time - that was an enormous breakthrough, artists were now songwriters and performers at the same time, which then developed further later.
In the wake of the Beatles the British Invasion and guitar groups conquered the US, but the groups that remained successful were not so much those from Liverpool itself (which are mostly forgotten now), but those that then formed around the Rolling Stones, Pretty Things, the Who, Yardbirds and others in London (the London bands were more oriented to blues) - that was virtually the blueprint of the rock band that still exists today: two guitars, bass, drums. This was a new business model for the music industry, which literally exploded.
Artistic change and writing their own songs
From the beginning, the Beatles absorbed everything that was around them like a sponge - starting with news about the music of their colleagues, art, literature, etc. They virtually digested it and spat it out again.
Bob Dylan and the Beatles had a very strong influence on each other. While the strongest musical influence on the Beatles in 64-65 continued to be Motown, Dylan was certainly the strongest influence in terms of content. Dylan encouraged them to pay more attention to the lyrics. Lennon and later McCartney began writing more introspective lyrics in late 1964. Lennon at the time was caught up in his so-called Fat Elvis phase, during which he was struggling with depression while “sitting in his mansion with wife and child”. This was expressed in songs like Help, among others. While John Lennon wrote mostly from a first-person perspective (and later experimental Dylan-like psychedelic stuff), Paul McCartney liked to write short-story-like lyrics (best example: Eleanor Rigby), an inclination which he himself ironically described in Paperback Writer. In terms of content, this continues to deepen later.
There is also an anecdote that Lennon and McCartney had a "flow of consciousness" writing session with Bob Dylan, during which they produced a lyric called "pneumonia ceilings."
Artistic range also benefited from the fact that they actually had three songwriters and singers, which in turn functioned as potentially tearing the band aparat in the long run (especially because George Harrison had no place in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team and was marginalized)
Developments in society as background to the music
Politically 1965/66 was a further culmination politically, resistance against the Vietnam War was forming, the civil rights movement in the U.S. still going strong…
At the same time, an enormous explosion of creativity was developing on the back of those brewing movements. In 1966, the Beatles were taking part in an avant-garde art and music scene in London, listening to John Cage and Stockhausen and supporting John Dunbar's Indica Gallery, where John Lennon later met Yoko Ono. While an underground was developing in London in 1965, hippie culture was developing in Haight Ashbury in the United States. But even that is only the tip of the iceberg. In 1967 first music festivals are taking place such as Monterey, a precursor to Woodstock. Before that, there were love-ins and be-ins in the U.S. as part of hippie culture.
At the same time, in England, there is a turn to the cultures of the colonies, some of which have now become independent. In the 70s, for example, there was also a turn towards Nigeria, Ginger Baker moved there, Paul McCartney later recorded in Lagos. But an important point is that George Harrison discovers Indian music while filming Help in 1965, which then expands even more in the direction of a spiritual search for meaning. That was also an expression of the times.
Creative peak and the “beginning of the end”
The increasing political tensions and strains during the tours (due to the bad technical equipment and the screaming audiences they just couldn't hear each other anymore, it must have been very frustrating) finally led them to stop touring in 1966. In August 66 the last concert took place. Two incidents were particularly relevant, the reaction of the religious right in the U.S. to John Lennon's statement that they were "bigger than Jesus" (which he didn't mean as an evaluation, but as a statement about their popularity). And a conflict with the authoritarian regime of the Philippines in Manila, where they refused to meet Imelda Marcos, the wife of the dictator Marcos.
This does two things: they now have unlimited time and budget to record in the studio for half a year. And they don't have to arrange the songs for the stage, meaning they can orchestrate and arrange the album however they want. The outcome was Sgt. Peppers, which had enormous influence. There had been concept albums before that, but this was on a completely different level. In a way, Sgt. Pepper’s also signified a shift from singles to LPs and kicked off the age of concept albums. With Sgt. Pepper’s McCartney wanted to surpass Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, which itself had already been a response to 1966’ Revolver.
The Beatles had a classically trained arranger in George Martin, who arranged orchestras for their songs. Classical music also generally started to be woven into their music, as well as Indian music and world music (but this started back in '65 when George Harrison began learning sitar).
One of their peak albums, Revolver, was recorded before they stopped touring though. Tomorrow Never Knows was a musically revolutionary experimental piece, where they actually anticipated drum and bass and sampling in hip-hop. The technique of looping came from experimental music, where they borrowed it. The lyrics, on the other hand, are from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. They generally adopted an approach of experimenting and seeing what sticks. The White Album and Abbey Road also mark their peak phase, although the two albums were recorded after Brian Epstein's death, when conflicts had already started to spoil the party.
“The beginning of the end” of the Beatles actually starts in 1967 with the death of Brian Epstein - who fell into depression after they stopped touring because he started feeling superfluous - and without whom the Beatles were pretty much lost. His death at the end of August 1967 pretty accurately marks the end of the Summer of Love. Although the Beatles still produced masterpieces after that it is very obvious that they missed their manager painfully.
They went on to engage in directionless hippiesque adventures of self-discovering, like their trip to India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or founding Apple as a prototype indie lable, which was supposed to enable creativity and community, but which failed as a project because of the contradictions of capitalism. This led to a situation in which they basically ran out of money and entered a crisis that brought disputes about direction - and which manager they needed.
1968
1968 was politically an enormous turning point internationally. In 1968, the various movements culminated almost simultaneously: The Prague Spring which put the question of "real" democratic socialism on the agenda, the general strike in France in May 68 in which the working class entered the stage decisively - a revolutionary situation in Europe that almost gave way to a socialist revolution in Western Europe - , the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the resistance against it, student unrest, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the outcry against it, the cultural revolution in China with Maoism (in which one part of the bureaucracy stirred up a movement against other parts of the bureaucracy - but which had already started in 66), the development of the Black Panthers (also already had founded in 66) etc.
Musically, this is reflected in 1969 when the Beatles start an attempt in the direction of going "Back to the roots" in the form of the Get Back Project, a return to rock'n'roll and blues, a turn away from classical music.
But the politics also impacted the song lyrics - for example in Back in the USSR (a satirical examination of the Cold War), Lady Madonna (focusing on the situation of a single mother), Blackbird (which is about the civil rights movement) and of course Revolution, in which Lennon actually distances himself from the Maoists and those parts of the left who rely on individual terror. But he didn't actually distance himself from the idea of revolution per se, as becomes clear later in the early '70s, during which he engages in politics with Yoko Ono and is in contact with the Secretariat of the Fourth International. It is in this period that he writes Imagine, which he describes as "Virtually the communist manifesto put to music."
1968 also sees the release of the film Yellow Submarine, the story of which was not authored by the Beatles, but which is very much influenced by the events of the Prague Spring. According to Heinz Edelmann, who serves as art director for the film, the Blue Meanies were actually supposed to be Red Meanies. The film gives an indication how little acts such as listening to music came into conflict with the regime of the Blue Meanies (in other words, the Stalinist bureaucracy) and turns into a revolutionary act. The film implies that political revolution against the bureaucracy towards real socialism could have been possible, and this was discussed in many countries at the time.
Painful process of falling apart
In the film Get Back, you can see the painful process of a band falling apart. Ultimately, there were several factors:
Lennon and McCartney both got married. And, at least in the case of Yoko Ono, they married women who refused to be restricted to the role of the wife at home, like Lennon's first wife Cynthia. Ultimately, this is an expression of the increased confidence of women compared to the beginning of the decade. There is no going back to 1963. While John and Cynthia Lennon played family, had little in common, leaving enough space for the band, the relationship with Yoko Ono is quite different, more intimate, demanding both artistic and political unity. And that was no longer compatible with the Lennon-McCartney unit - and thus the band.
Even the attempt in Get Back to get back to the live format succeeds only to a limited extent - on the White Album they started to record songs apart from each other, especially Paul McCartney played multiple instruments on his own songs, and he probably tasted blood at having total artistic control over his songs. With Get Back, it's much harder to switch instruments - if McCartney plays piano, someone has to play bass. Of course, it's much easier to record the guitar part yourself the way you'd like to than to work with someone else.
Also having three songwriters instead of being an asset, increasingly created conflict and tensions. Especially George Harrison now wants more space for his own songs. Their personalities developed but that also started to isolate them from each other, growing apart, which finally led to the separation.
The career of the Beatles from 1960-1970 reflects the arc of the decade and also the post-war upswing quite accurately. (The post war upswing officially ended in 1973 with the oil crisis, but profits had already begun to fall by the end of the 1960s)
Yesterday - and today?
The themes reflected in the Beatles' music are more than relevant today, in a situation of multiple crises of capitalism.
What stands between then and now is the year 1989 and the collapse of Stalinism. This entailed an offensive of capitalism in the 90s during which we were told that only capitalism works and the generation of the 60s were dreamers who failed (the book by Ian McDonald "Revolution in the Head" for example reflects this, the book was written in 1997 and McDonald ponders why the counter culture in the 60's was not successful and implies that the reason for this was that it was inherently presumptuous - which is not true, there were concrete reasons why neoliberalism and the capitalist offensive gained the upper hand). The social democracies slid to the right, leaving the working class basically without representation. We are still feeling the aftermath of 1989 today, but that is also slowly beginning to change. Reason enough to rediscover the Beatles and their times.
The music industry today is in complete decline - that's basically an expression of the crisis that the whole society is in. Sgt. Peppers would no longer be possible in this form - the music industry needs artists that can be boxed in so that they can be marketed to the right target group. If your range covers diverse styles and genres like the Beatles did on Sgt. Peppers, this would be difficult for the industry to deal with. Today, hardly anyone spends money on recorded music anymore, except for the generation that grew up with the Beatles. There's a contradiction between music production being available cheaply to anyone - anyone can actually record - and declining profitability. CDs don't sell anymore due to streaming, consequently there was a shift to the live market, but that's also gone since the pandemic (venues have gone bust, i.e. there are fewer performance opportunities today). There is a bit of a vinyl revival but that is basically limited to a narrow layer.
Declining profitability leads to the fact that the music industry today limits itself to recycling. That's why they also try to exploit everything commercially. In contrast to this subcultures and self organisation of artists do continue to exist - even if no money can be made with them. People do not stop making music. Creativity "on the ground" still exists. But it is more than ever time to free music from its commodity character and from alienation - by means of a break with capitalism. This requires the development of new workers' parties and mass revolutionary parties.
The world today is in turmoil because of the multiple crises of capitalism. There are strike waves in Britain, Germany, France, mass movements in Israel and Sri Lanka. There are new generations that are not only discovering the Beatles in part (for example, an international community of Tiktok, which are teens and 20-somethings), but also looking for ideas because capitalism is in such a dead end. Livestreams on Tiktok of the demonstrations against Macron's pension reform have seen young people commenting on "revolution" and "mai 68." It is more than legitimate to look back to the 60s in search of answers. And to hear Imagine as it was meant by John Lennon: as a vision of a classless society.
Furher Listening:
-> “Inspire Beatles” Playlist auf Spotify
Further Reading:
Mark Lewison: The Beatles - Tune In
Peter Taaffe: Liverpool - A City that dared to fight
Ernst Hofacker: Von Edison bis Elvis. Wie die Popmusik erfunden wurde.
Barry Miles: Paul Mccartney - Many years from now
Edgar Cruz: Extraordinary Plagiarists
Ian McDonald: Revolution in the Head
2023 marks the 60th anniversary of beatlemania. But 2023 also marks the 55th anniversary of the revolutionary year 1968 - France 68, the Prague Spring, the protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement in the USA, all over the world things were happening. But that was only the culmination of a turbulent decade. Just as culture is always an expression of its time, this period is also reflected in the music of the Beatles, or rather, the Beatles were able to become famous and develop artistically in very special circumstances.
The music industry at that time was completely different than today - but also the economic and political situation was a fundamentally different one. Against the background of the existence of the Stalinist states (which had a planned economy but with the simultaneous existence of a bureaucratic dictatorship that distorted it), there was a post-war boom after the Second World War and the emergence of a mass market for music.
Today, after three decades of neoliberalism, and in the face of technological innovations that actually already demand a different form of society than capitalism, hardly anyone spends money on music anymore. It feels like the music of the mainstream sounds completely streamlined and interchangeable. The music industry has been in a deep crisis for years - just as capitalism is now plagued by multiple crises. The Beatles seem like pillar saints of a long forgotten time here.
This article is not meant to be a biography, but a portrait of the conditions that made the Beatles’ phenomenon possible in the first place.
Originating in Liverpool
Why did this band, which was so formative for its time and for pop music as such, stem from Liverpool? It is no coincidence that a band from Liverpool was at the forefront of a profound change in the music industry.
Liverpool was a port city - one of the most important port cities in England at the time. As a port city, Liverpool also had a connection with Hamburg, which also plays an important role in the Beatles' biography. Liverpool was originally a trans-shipment center in the slave trade, and its history is rich with struggles of dockworkers and other workers. Liverpool is also the city that in the 80s, with a mass movement under the influence of the Militant, forced a progressive budget from Thatcher in a time of austerity.
Improvement of living standards in the post-war upswing
There were some conditions that allowed the Beatles to emerge as a band in the first place: Conscription was abolished in November 1960, which allowed the Beatles to go to Hamburg and tour without being torn apart. As part of a series of improvements in the post-war recovery, free access to higher education with student grants was introduced, which had been fought for by the workers' movement after the war - at the same time, there was a very different world situation than today, as the Soviet Union existed and there was pressure to make concessions in the form of social legislation. A special feature in England were art schools - not only John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliff went to one of these art schools, also several members of the Rolling Stones were art students.
The Beatles themselves were working class lads, George Harrison and Ringo Starr each did an apprenticeship before switching to music, Paul McCartney went to the Liverpool Institute but dropped out just before A levels (equivalent to our Matura) when they began touring, and John Lennon went to art school. Music was a way to escape "the treadmill". John Lennon did a few holiday jobs, including as a construction worker, which he absolutely hated. Paul Mccartney later spoke of how they had “virtually proven ‘the american dream’ that working class people could make it to the top too”. But the permeability of class boundaries was then as now an illusion for the majority of the working class. While gifted with extraordinary talent, they also found the right place and the right time to achieve a career in music - a time when the music industry was still in its infancy.
In the late 50s it was the seamen who brought rocknroll, blues and early Motown stuff. In Liverpool, therefore, there was a very lively music scene in the early '60s, because the kids always had the latest music from the U.S. just from the sailors.
Hamburg, the Cavern and apprentice strikes in Liverpool
Beatles were just one of countless bands that were exported to Hamburg. The port of Hamburg is one of the most important in Europe and is considered "the most British city in Germany" because of the connections to England through the port. The gigs in Hamburg made them extremely tight as a band, they had to play long nights, had to build up a large repertoire extremely quickly. At the same time, they met Astrid Kirchherr and Klaus Voormann at those nights, whose French existentialism had a strong influence on them (superficially reflected in their hairstyle).
Back in Liverpool they played so-called "Lunchtime Sessions" at the Cavern Club and were considered an "exciting band from Hamburg". During the lunch breaks young workers, secretaries, dockers, factory workers, apprentices etc all came to the Beatles gigs at the Cavern, where the Beatles gained a base. At the Cavern, most Liverpool based bands we know today from the time played there, but also bands from other northern cities like the Hollies from Manchester.
At the same time, there was more brewing under the surface: in 1960 there was an apprentice strike in Britain (but especially Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow) of 100,000 apprentices for wage increases and other improvements, organized more or less from the bottom up, with strike committees and activists going from factory to factory. In 1964 there was another one in Liverpool and Manchester. This was also an expression of the increased confidence of working class youth in England.
Beatlemania: Setting the youth on fire
The Beatles’ breakthrough came in '62 with Love me do, already with Ringo as their drummer.
Beatlemania spread like wildfire:
The music industry at that time (early 60s) still operated on the Brill Building model - publishers with their own songwriters dominated the industry and the artists themselves were mostly puppets (there were of course exceptions in the Motown area such as Arthur Alexander and Smokey Robinson who were adored by Lennon and wrote their own songs, as well as Chuck Berry). But Buddy Holly had died in an airplane accident, Elvis was in the army, the music had become more soft-spoken. Rocknroll itself had evolved from blues and country, which became popular because as field music they were cheaper for the radios in terms of royalties than the more expensive jazz standards of the American Songbook. The rights to these standards belonged to the Hollywood film studios which, in the crisis of the 1930s, pushed up the royalties. Blues and Country were the cheaper alternative for the radios. It was the Beatles that established the beat group or later rock band as a business model.
In contrast to the state of the music industry at that time, there was already a lot going on in the early 60s politically - capitalism had been overthrown in Cuba, there was great fear of nuclear war, the civil rights movement was developing (March on Washington, Jim Crow Laws) and had triggered a folk boom around Bob Dylan.
At the same time, with the postwar boom, the first time there was a generation of teenagers who had money to buy records. White teenagers in particular became a mass consumer market.
Beatlemania was, in a tricky way, a harbinger of the sexual revolution and the women's movement - the pill was introduced in the early '60s, though it wasn't widely used until the second half of the '60s and wasn't approved in some countries until later. But with Beatlemania, female teenagers became a subject sexually for the first time instead of mere objects of desire, and the Beatles in turn became male objects of desire. This process had already started with Elvis, but not to such an extent. The suppressed female sexuality of the 50s fuelled the hysteria of Beatlemania. Until the pill took hold, getting married because there was a child on the way - which caused a lot of unhappy marriages - was very common. John and Cynthia Lennon were an example of this.
At the same time, there was a certain homoeroticism in the phenomenon of the Beatles that perhaps resonated implicitly. In England, homosexuality was still forbidden in the early 60s (the ban stemmed from a law from 1885), as Beatles manager Brian Epstein painfully knew (only in 67 it was partially decriminalized).
So the music of the Beatles was fuelled by the suppressed sexuality and emotion of the era before, which now all burst open.
Both Acceptable and stretching the boundaries
The implications are as follows:
The Beatles virtually brought back to the U.S. its own music, that is, black rock and roll and R'n'B, in a form that was at once outrageous and innocent, acceptable because white, but transgressive because it was blurring the boundaries - in other words, just the right thing for a white teen mass consumer market.
The Beatles appeared together with Bob Dylan for the first time in great style as singersongwriters, writing their own songs and performing them at the same time - that was an enormous breakthrough, artists were now songwriters and performers at the same time, which then developed further later.
In the wake of the Beatles the British Invasion and guitar groups conquered the US, but the groups that remained successful were not so much those from Liverpool itself (which are mostly forgotten now), but those that then formed around the Rolling Stones, Pretty Things, the Who, Yardbirds and others in London (the London bands were more oriented to blues) - that was virtually the blueprint of the rock band that still exists today: two guitars, bass, drums. This was a new business model for the music industry, which literally exploded.
Artistic change and writing their own songs
From the beginning, the Beatles absorbed everything that was around them like a sponge - starting with news about the music of their colleagues, art, literature, etc. They virtually digested it and spat it out again.
Bob Dylan and the Beatles had a very strong influence on each other. While the strongest musical influence on the Beatles in 64-65 continued to be Motown, Dylan was certainly the strongest influence in terms of content. Dylan encouraged them to pay more attention to the lyrics. Lennon and later McCartney began writing more introspective lyrics in late 1964. Lennon at the time was caught up in his so-called Fat Elvis phase, during which he was struggling with depression while “sitting in his mansion with wife and child”. This was expressed in songs like Help, among others. While John Lennon wrote mostly from a first-person perspective (and later experimental Dylan-like psychedelic stuff), Paul McCartney liked to write short-story-like lyrics (best example: Eleanor Rigby), an inclination which he himself ironically described in Paperback Writer. In terms of content, this continues to deepen later.
There is also an anecdote that Lennon and McCartney had a "flow of consciousness" writing session with Bob Dylan, during which they produced a lyric called "pneumonia ceilings."
Artistic range also benefited from the fact that they actually had three songwriters and singers, which in turn functioned as potentially tearing the band aparat in the long run (especially because George Harrison had no place in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team and was marginalized)
Developments in society as background to the music
Politically 1965/66 was a further culmination politically, resistance against the Vietnam War was forming, the civil rights movement in the U.S. still going strong…
At the same time, an enormous explosion of creativity was developing on the back of those brewing movements. In 1966, the Beatles were taking part in an avant-garde art and music scene in London, listening to John Cage and Stockhausen and supporting John Dunbar's Indica Gallery, where John Lennon later met Yoko Ono. While an underground was developing in London in 1965, hippie culture was developing in Haight Ashbury in the United States. But even that is only the tip of the iceberg. In 1967 first music festivals are taking place such as Monterey, a precursor to Woodstock. Before that, there were love-ins and be-ins in the U.S. as part of hippie culture.
At the same time, in England, there is a turn to the cultures of the colonies, some of which have now become independent. In the 70s, for example, there was also a turn towards Nigeria, Ginger Baker moved there, Paul McCartney later recorded in Lagos. But an important point is that George Harrison discovers Indian music while filming Help in 1965, which then expands even more in the direction of a spiritual search for meaning. That was also an expression of the times.
Creative peak and the “beginning of the end”
The increasing political tensions and strains during the tours (due to the bad technical equipment and the screaming audiences they just couldn't hear each other anymore, it must have been very frustrating) finally led them to stop touring in 1966. In August 66 the last concert took place. Two incidents were particularly relevant, the reaction of the religious right in the U.S. to John Lennon's statement that they were "bigger than Jesus" (which he didn't mean as an evaluation, but as a statement about their popularity). And a conflict with the authoritarian regime of the Philippines in Manila, where they refused to meet Imelda Marcos, the wife of the dictator Marcos.
This does two things: they now have unlimited time and budget to record in the studio for half a year. And they don't have to arrange the songs for the stage, meaning they can orchestrate and arrange the album however they want. The outcome was Sgt. Peppers, which had enormous influence. There had been concept albums before that, but this was on a completely different level. In a way, Sgt. Pepper’s also signified a shift from singles to LPs and kicked off the age of concept albums. With Sgt. Pepper’s McCartney wanted to surpass Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, which itself had already been a response to 1966’ Revolver.
The Beatles had a classically trained arranger in George Martin, who arranged orchestras for their songs. Classical music also generally started to be woven into their music, as well as Indian music and world music (but this started back in '65 when George Harrison began learning sitar).
One of their peak albums, Revolver, was recorded before they stopped touring though. Tomorrow Never Knows was a musically revolutionary experimental piece, where they actually anticipated drum and bass and sampling in hip-hop. The technique of looping came from experimental music, where they borrowed it. The lyrics, on the other hand, are from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. They generally adopted an approach of experimenting and seeing what sticks. The White Album and Abbey Road also mark their peak phase, although the two albums were recorded after Brian Epstein's death, when conflicts had already started to spoil the party.
“The beginning of the end” of the Beatles actually starts in 1967 with the death of Brian Epstein - who fell into depression after they stopped touring because he started feeling superfluous - and without whom the Beatles were pretty much lost. His death at the end of August 1967 pretty accurately marks the end of the Summer of Love. Although the Beatles still produced masterpieces after that it is very obvious that they missed their manager painfully.
They went on to engage in directionless hippiesque adventures of self-discovering, like their trip to India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or founding Apple as a prototype indie lable, which was supposed to enable creativity and community, but which failed as a project because of the contradictions of capitalism. This led to a situation in which they basically ran out of money and entered a crisis that brought disputes about direction - and which manager they needed.
1968
1968 was politically an enormous turning point internationally. In 1968, the various movements culminated almost simultaneously: The Prague Spring which put the question of "real" democratic socialism on the agenda, the general strike in France in May 68 in which the working class entered the stage decisively - a revolutionary situation in Europe that almost gave way to a socialist revolution in Western Europe - , the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the resistance against it, student unrest, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the outcry against it, the cultural revolution in China with Maoism (in which one part of the bureaucracy stirred up a movement against other parts of the bureaucracy - but which had already started in 66), the development of the Black Panthers (also already had founded in 66) etc.
Musically, this is reflected in 1969 when the Beatles start an attempt in the direction of going "Back to the roots" in the form of the Get Back Project, a return to rock'n'roll and blues, a turn away from classical music.
But the politics also impacted the song lyrics - for example in Back in the USSR (a satirical examination of the Cold War), Lady Madonna (focusing on the situation of a single mother), Blackbird (which is about the civil rights movement) and of course Revolution, in which Lennon actually distances himself from the Maoists and those parts of the left who rely on individual terror. But he didn't actually distance himself from the idea of revolution per se, as becomes clear later in the early '70s, during which he engages in politics with Yoko Ono and is in contact with the Secretariat of the Fourth International. It is in this period that he writes Imagine, which he describes as "Virtually the communist manifesto put to music."
1968 also sees the release of the film Yellow Submarine, the story of which was not authored by the Beatles, but which is very much influenced by the events of the Prague Spring. According to Heinz Edelmann, who serves as art director for the film, the Blue Meanies were actually supposed to be Red Meanies. The film gives an indication how little acts such as listening to music came into conflict with the regime of the Blue Meanies (in other words, the Stalinist bureaucracy) and turns into a revolutionary act. The film implies that political revolution against the bureaucracy towards real socialism could have been possible, and this was discussed in many countries at the time.
Painful process of falling apart
In the film Get Back, you can see the painful process of a band falling apart. Ultimately, there were several factors:
Lennon and McCartney both got married. And, at least in the case of Yoko Ono, they married women who refused to be restricted to the role of the wife at home, like Lennon's first wife Cynthia. Ultimately, this is an expression of the increased confidence of women compared to the beginning of the decade. There is no going back to 1963. While John and Cynthia Lennon played family, had little in common, leaving enough space for the band, the relationship with Yoko Ono is quite different, more intimate, demanding both artistic and political unity. And that was no longer compatible with the Lennon-McCartney unit - and thus the band.
Even the attempt in Get Back to get back to the live format succeeds only to a limited extent - on the White Album they started to record songs apart from each other, especially Paul McCartney played multiple instruments on his own songs, and he probably tasted blood at having total artistic control over his songs. With Get Back, it's much harder to switch instruments - if McCartney plays piano, someone has to play bass. Of course, it's much easier to record the guitar part yourself the way you'd like to than to work with someone else.
Also having three songwriters instead of being an asset, increasingly created conflict and tensions. Especially George Harrison now wants more space for his own songs. Their personalities developed but that also started to isolate them from each other, growing apart, which finally led to the separation.
The career of the Beatles from 1960-1970 reflects the arc of the decade and also the post-war upswing quite accurately. (The post war upswing officially ended in 1973 with the oil crisis, but profits had already begun to fall by the end of the 1960s)
Yesterday - and today?
The themes reflected in the Beatles' music are more than relevant today, in a situation of multiple crises of capitalism.
What stands between then and now is the year 1989 and the collapse of Stalinism. This entailed an offensive of capitalism in the 90s during which we were told that only capitalism works and the generation of the 60s were dreamers who failed (the book by Ian McDonald "Revolution in the Head" for example reflects this, the book was written in 1997 and McDonald ponders why the counter culture in the 60's was not successful and implies that the reason for this was that it was inherently presumptuous - which is not true, there were concrete reasons why neoliberalism and the capitalist offensive gained the upper hand). The social democracies slid to the right, leaving the working class basically without representation. We are still feeling the aftermath of 1989 today, but that is also slowly beginning to change. Reason enough to rediscover the Beatles and their times.
The music industry today is in complete decline - that's basically an expression of the crisis that the whole society is in. Sgt. Peppers would no longer be possible in this form - the music industry needs artists that can be boxed in so that they can be marketed to the right target group. If your range covers diverse styles and genres like the Beatles did on Sgt. Peppers, this would be difficult for the industry to deal with. Today, hardly anyone spends money on recorded music anymore, except for the generation that grew up with the Beatles. There's a contradiction between music production being available cheaply to anyone - anyone can actually record - and declining profitability. CDs don't sell anymore due to streaming, consequently there was a shift to the live market, but that's also gone since the pandemic (venues have gone bust, i.e. there are fewer performance opportunities today). There is a bit of a vinyl revival but that is basically limited to a narrow layer.
Declining profitability leads to the fact that the music industry today limits itself to recycling. That's why they also try to exploit everything commercially. In contrast to this subcultures and self organisation of artists do continue to exist - even if no money can be made with them. People do not stop making music. Creativity "on the ground" still exists. But it is more than ever time to free music from its commodity character and from alienation - by means of a break with capitalism. This requires the development of new workers' parties and mass revolutionary parties.
The world today is in turmoil because of the multiple crises of capitalism. There are strike waves in Britain, Germany, France, mass movements in Israel and Sri Lanka. There are new generations that are not only discovering the Beatles in part (for example, an international community of Tiktok, which are teens and 20-somethings), but also looking for ideas because capitalism is in such a dead end. Livestreams on Tiktok of the demonstrations against Macron's pension reform have seen young people commenting on "revolution" and "mai 68." It is more than legitimate to look back to the 60s in search of answers. And to hear Imagine as it was meant by John Lennon: as a vision of a classless society.
Furher Listening:
-> “Inspire Beatles” Playlist auf Spotify
Further Reading:
Mark Lewison: The Beatles - Tune In
Peter Taaffe: Liverpool - A City that dared to fight
Ernst Hofacker: Von Edison bis Elvis. Wie die Popmusik erfunden wurde.
Barry Miles: Paul Mccartney - Many years from now
Edgar Cruz: Extraordinary Plagiarists
Ian McDonald: Revolution in the Head
22.02.2017: What ive been listening to this winter
i always go through musical phases. right now, ive got a playlist with all my favourite songs on spotify and i leave them playing all night long, so when i wake up, i still got some good music to fall back asleep to. this autumn/winter ive been going through a rem phase (ha, a double meaning :D), a stephen fearing phase, an idlewild phase, and keane as well (dont diss them!). what i like about rem is the fluidity, the flow of the songs. if i had to pin it down, my favourite stephen fearing song would b "black silk gown". i just love the images this song evokes - sliding over highways at night. the one idlewild song that im listening to nonstop is "take me back to the island". i love the piano on it, and the lyrics are very poetic and close to my own imagery ("the sea answers the island"). keane in turn have a hand for dramatic climaxes (crystal ball, silenced by the night, etc).
27.6.2016: Im attempting to write stuff about my favourite albums / songs. more soon here.
Soundtrack for Summer evenings
for the roses (joni mitchell)
Joni Mitchell's album "for the roses" is still the most mature piece of music i know. its so self sufficient. she is by herself, in a reflective mood and perfectly at ease. she sounds so much older and wiser than on her previous albums. it sounds as if she has found herself, and the songs are wry observations, sometimes with regret, but full of love for herself and the world around her. she sounds as if she is standing outside of herself writing about what she sees on the inside. ive been meaning to pin down that feeling in a song, but it is simply evading me. mayb im simply not in that place yet. she says so much with that piano. it sounds like water. I'm listening to this on warm summer evenings, doing stuff in the house. and it always brings me back in touch with myself, grounds me and brings me inner peace. highlights are lesson in survival, let the wind carry me, see you sometime, electricity, blonde in the bleachers, woman of heart and mind, and of course the sublime judgement of the moon and stars.
his band and the e-street choir (van morrison)
van the man basically saved my life this winter when he put his early 70s albums on spotify early this year. it saved me from a love gone wrong and helped me learn to live alone again. i had a room to myself and shared it with van's voice. i would listened to crazy face, i'll be your lover too, virgo clowns and if i ever needed someone and he would soothe me to sleep. i know the world would still b allright if i woke up and van's voice was around. out of the early 70s albums his band and the e-street choir is my favourite, but veedon fleece is pretty much up there too, with linden arden stole the highlights, bulbs, cul de sac, and you dont pull no punches. i would both choose them over astral weeks and moondance who have both been overplayed by the public in my opinion. also, a summer evening favourite from the 90s: high summer. always makes me feel ridiculously good cos this song summarizes summer to me. you can feel the wind in your hair as ur driving through the countryside in your car, with the wheat and the cornfields up high. and it always makes me feel a little bit sad cos high summer always is just a short moment, and it will pass before it will resurface again.
5.8.: some more spotify playlists.
this here is a list for spring mornings, lots of feel good songs that make me feel happy:
-tim wheeler: feels like summer
-radau: am liebsten laut
-joni mitchell: chelsea morning
-kathrin schöter, Eki Maas: Die welt ist elefantastisch
-zombies: care of cell 44
-del amitri: out falls the past
-avett brothers: life and die
-graham nash: be yourself
-the hollies: do the best you can
-teenage fanclub: baby lee
-the la's: there she goes
-monkees: sometime in the morning
-beach boys: wouldnt it be nice
-counting crows: mrs potters lullaby
-hollies: listen to me
-del amitri: roll to me
-billy bragg: greetings to the new brunette
-clara luzia: morning light
-magnetic fields: i think i need a new heart
-gilbert of sullivan: nothing rhymed
-jackson browne: the birds of st. marks
-fountains of wayne: richie and ruben
-m. buble: havent met you yet
-zombies: this will b our year
-van morrison: brown eyed girl
-hollies: im alive
this is a list of songs that express a feeling thats hard to nail down...:
-rem: let me in
-crowded house: fall at your feet
-melissa etheridge: i will never be the same
-counting crows: anna begins
-dylan: dont think twice its alright
-franz ferdinand: the fallen
-rem: strange currencies
-bruce springsteen: spirit in the night
-neil finn: driving me mad
-jesse winchester: isnt that so
-paul brady: the island
-dion: wonder where im bound
-del amitri: nothing ever happens
-family: no mules fool
-van morrison: sweet thing
-counting crows: im not sleeping anymore
-jackson browne: looking into you
-neil finn: anytime
-dion: daddy rolling in your arms
-jackson browne: rock me on the water
-don mc lean: crossroads
-fleetwood mac: need your love so bad
18.10.2013
I got kind of lost on spotify lately. I put a couple of playlists together. one of my favourites is one that includes my favourite voices. i will just put the list here for the time being, but some time later i would like to explain a bit further why these voices mean so much to me or what it is exactly that touches me...
voices:
-oscar brown jr: oh brother where are you
-phil ochs: the highwayman
-the soul stirrers: it wont be very long
-dion: work song
-jesse winchester: nothing but a breeze
-ben e.king: stand by me
-dick gaughan: workers' song
-johnny cash: the highwayman
-steave earle: feel alright
-van morrison: high summer
-jackson browne: song for adam
-loudon wainwright III: daughter
-beatles: hey jude
-neko case: hold on, hold on
-butterfly boucher: life is short
-sandy denny: john the gun
-shockingblue: never marry a railroad man
-joan baez: railroad boy
-kate rusby: underneath the stars
-la roux: bulletproof
-the zombies: a rose for emily
-peter green's fleetwood mac: worried dream
-colosseum: the kettle
-paul butterfield blues band: born in chicago
-steve miller band: evil
-the stranglers: golden brown
-beatles: yesterday
i always go through musical phases. right now, ive got a playlist with all my favourite songs on spotify and i leave them playing all night long, so when i wake up, i still got some good music to fall back asleep to. this autumn/winter ive been going through a rem phase (ha, a double meaning :D), a stephen fearing phase, an idlewild phase, and keane as well (dont diss them!). what i like about rem is the fluidity, the flow of the songs. if i had to pin it down, my favourite stephen fearing song would b "black silk gown". i just love the images this song evokes - sliding over highways at night. the one idlewild song that im listening to nonstop is "take me back to the island". i love the piano on it, and the lyrics are very poetic and close to my own imagery ("the sea answers the island"). keane in turn have a hand for dramatic climaxes (crystal ball, silenced by the night, etc).
27.6.2016: Im attempting to write stuff about my favourite albums / songs. more soon here.
Soundtrack for Summer evenings
for the roses (joni mitchell)
Joni Mitchell's album "for the roses" is still the most mature piece of music i know. its so self sufficient. she is by herself, in a reflective mood and perfectly at ease. she sounds so much older and wiser than on her previous albums. it sounds as if she has found herself, and the songs are wry observations, sometimes with regret, but full of love for herself and the world around her. she sounds as if she is standing outside of herself writing about what she sees on the inside. ive been meaning to pin down that feeling in a song, but it is simply evading me. mayb im simply not in that place yet. she says so much with that piano. it sounds like water. I'm listening to this on warm summer evenings, doing stuff in the house. and it always brings me back in touch with myself, grounds me and brings me inner peace. highlights are lesson in survival, let the wind carry me, see you sometime, electricity, blonde in the bleachers, woman of heart and mind, and of course the sublime judgement of the moon and stars.
his band and the e-street choir (van morrison)
van the man basically saved my life this winter when he put his early 70s albums on spotify early this year. it saved me from a love gone wrong and helped me learn to live alone again. i had a room to myself and shared it with van's voice. i would listened to crazy face, i'll be your lover too, virgo clowns and if i ever needed someone and he would soothe me to sleep. i know the world would still b allright if i woke up and van's voice was around. out of the early 70s albums his band and the e-street choir is my favourite, but veedon fleece is pretty much up there too, with linden arden stole the highlights, bulbs, cul de sac, and you dont pull no punches. i would both choose them over astral weeks and moondance who have both been overplayed by the public in my opinion. also, a summer evening favourite from the 90s: high summer. always makes me feel ridiculously good cos this song summarizes summer to me. you can feel the wind in your hair as ur driving through the countryside in your car, with the wheat and the cornfields up high. and it always makes me feel a little bit sad cos high summer always is just a short moment, and it will pass before it will resurface again.
5.8.: some more spotify playlists.
this here is a list for spring mornings, lots of feel good songs that make me feel happy:
-tim wheeler: feels like summer
-radau: am liebsten laut
-joni mitchell: chelsea morning
-kathrin schöter, Eki Maas: Die welt ist elefantastisch
-zombies: care of cell 44
-del amitri: out falls the past
-avett brothers: life and die
-graham nash: be yourself
-the hollies: do the best you can
-teenage fanclub: baby lee
-the la's: there she goes
-monkees: sometime in the morning
-beach boys: wouldnt it be nice
-counting crows: mrs potters lullaby
-hollies: listen to me
-del amitri: roll to me
-billy bragg: greetings to the new brunette
-clara luzia: morning light
-magnetic fields: i think i need a new heart
-gilbert of sullivan: nothing rhymed
-jackson browne: the birds of st. marks
-fountains of wayne: richie and ruben
-m. buble: havent met you yet
-zombies: this will b our year
-van morrison: brown eyed girl
-hollies: im alive
this is a list of songs that express a feeling thats hard to nail down...:
-rem: let me in
-crowded house: fall at your feet
-melissa etheridge: i will never be the same
-counting crows: anna begins
-dylan: dont think twice its alright
-franz ferdinand: the fallen
-rem: strange currencies
-bruce springsteen: spirit in the night
-neil finn: driving me mad
-jesse winchester: isnt that so
-paul brady: the island
-dion: wonder where im bound
-del amitri: nothing ever happens
-family: no mules fool
-van morrison: sweet thing
-counting crows: im not sleeping anymore
-jackson browne: looking into you
-neil finn: anytime
-dion: daddy rolling in your arms
-jackson browne: rock me on the water
-don mc lean: crossroads
-fleetwood mac: need your love so bad
18.10.2013
I got kind of lost on spotify lately. I put a couple of playlists together. one of my favourites is one that includes my favourite voices. i will just put the list here for the time being, but some time later i would like to explain a bit further why these voices mean so much to me or what it is exactly that touches me...
voices:
-oscar brown jr: oh brother where are you
-phil ochs: the highwayman
-the soul stirrers: it wont be very long
-dion: work song
-jesse winchester: nothing but a breeze
-ben e.king: stand by me
-dick gaughan: workers' song
-johnny cash: the highwayman
-steave earle: feel alright
-van morrison: high summer
-jackson browne: song for adam
-loudon wainwright III: daughter
-beatles: hey jude
-neko case: hold on, hold on
-butterfly boucher: life is short
-sandy denny: john the gun
-shockingblue: never marry a railroad man
-joan baez: railroad boy
-kate rusby: underneath the stars
-la roux: bulletproof
-the zombies: a rose for emily
-peter green's fleetwood mac: worried dream
-colosseum: the kettle
-paul butterfield blues band: born in chicago
-steve miller band: evil
-the stranglers: golden brown
-beatles: yesterday