Some Thoughts on The Beatles

Let me first state that I would classify The Beatles as, historically and dimensionally, the greatest and most groundbreaking rock band of all time. I don’t know how one could not, though it is easy to find efforts in print. The question is, if not them, who else? [Beach Boys, Stones, etc. = WRONG!!!]

However, I would split the Beatles body of work into four chronological parts or phases. 

Beatles 1 – up to 1964 through the album Beatles for Sale. This is the most musically simplistic Beatles phase. While they were no doubt a very tight and somewhat unique ensemble employing excellent melodies and hit-making formulas, their music over this period strikes me as a hard-driving, souped up Everly Brothers: they are clearly beholden to predecessor acts. There is a basic vibe during this period in the music and lyrics (Love From Me To You is a good illustration – again, think Everly Brothers), though they delivered it as well if not better than anyone else at the time. Still, really nothing groundbreaking yet. “Can do no wrong” purists who came of age in this period will likely want none of my tepid interpretation, but I find this phase musically unspectacular, somewhat generic and culturally akin to other pop music crazes. Bubble gum music, with maybe a few passing motifs that point to future and better things.

Beatles 2 – covering the albums Help and Rubber Soul. The music is clearly becoming more complex and interesting (at least for musical listeners). It introduces rhythmic complexity and more lyrical sophistication, incorporating world music with the sitar, and accomplishing unprecedented feats in the recording studio (thanks George Martin – I totally get the “fifth Beatle” thing). Yet, there is still a healthy blend of simplicity in, and easy access to, these songs.

Beatles 3 – the Revolver through Abbey Road phase. This, to me, is the pinnacle of their (or anyone’s) musical contribution, maybe save the cutesy Yellow Submarine album. Specifically, Tomorrow Never Knows, from Revolver, is perhaps the most groundbreaking of all of their songs, especially if you consider when it was released, well before progressive, psychedelic, and other experimental rock efforts. They beat EVERYONE else to the punch on this – rock music that defies categorization, way ahead of its time. Any vestiges of the simplistic Beatles 1 phase are extinct. I don’t need to reiterate the special, much celebrated and particular greatness of Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road (whoops, too late). While I can’t quite articulate why, a few cuts on the White Album suggest that they may be getting a bit bored or too comfortable with themselves.

Beatles 4 – the Let It Be album. I will likely dissent from most listeners here, but I interpret this album as a retreat into more simplistic honky tonk and a clear sign that the band’s greatness was expiring or burnt out. McCartney and Lennon, themselves, have slighted some of the album’s cuts in harsh tones. The band members were practically ready to kill each other by this time, and Harrison actually quit during this period. I consider the album a huge disappointment after what came before. The Long and Winding Road can be viewed as a segue into McCartney’s solo and Wings career days. Cuts like Get Back (despite Billy Preston’s strong Rhodes keyboard contribution) and Ballad of John and Yoko might be classified as backwards when placed alongside most phase 3 compositions.

I’ve spent probably hours over the decades pondering what the peak, complex studio session Beatles might have been in later times, had they reunited, released new work, and had John Lennon not been senselessly killed way back in 1980. Would they have simplified their output as they did with Let It Be? Or might they have achieved – could anyone possibly have achieved – a higher level of musical elevation and complexity than phase 3 of their run? Progressive rock bands like Yes can certainly hang their hats on a mantle way up high in terms of what I’d call the Interesting Music Barometer. The band XTC, after their own more simplistic initial punk/ska albums, has probably best captured what some of this latter-day Beatle ideal might have been, and I thank them for it. In terms of achievement, coming from a musician who bores immediately with the majority of popular and rock music, the sophistication, newness, and excellence of rock music peaked with The Beatles mid- to late- 1960’s. Over 60 years on, if we think of advanced listening, there has been no complete answer since.