Free HandStill Fab after 50 years: The Beatles' enduring legacy |
Tired of ranting about the world's woes? Let's toast the most lovable rock band.
The clouds of economic gloom and political scandals developed a silver lining last week (symbolically on 09-09-09) with the international rerelease of The Beatles' back catalogue of studio albums. Each jubilant work, from 1963's Please Please Me to 1970's "canned in 1968" Let It Be, has been superbly remastered and repackaged. The results are re-energising.
The revered Fab Four are back with a big backbeat, jiving guitars, boogie-woogie pianos and heart-warming choruses, rocking on radio and television. They are alive and well, digitally, again sharing their unbridled joy and passion when the world's morose mood needs uplifting. Music shops are radiating with colourful songs like "Lucy in the Sky in Diamonds". Fans are again debating whether "Penny Lane", "Strawberry Field Forever" or "A Day in the Life" is the band's best song.
In a world of fickle and frivolous fads, the melodies of The Beatles are timeless. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr - four working-class lads from Liverpool - shook the world in 1960s and helped to create a vibrant industry for rock music. Sir Paul (now a sprightly 67 year old) is ample proof of the value of making superlative music with his estimated worth of £850m.
The profound legacy and influence of The Beatles cannot be underestimated. Between them, they not only helped to inspire and define the Sound of the Sixties, but also redirect the structures, tones, arrangements and topics of popular songwriting. With deft support from their producer, George Martin, and longest-serving engineer, Geoff Emerick, the Fab Four innovated recording techniques and embraced both exotic and classical instruments before these were en vogue with rock bands.
While drawing on Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and American rock ‘n' roll, a dash of 12-bar blues and hints of country ‘n' western, The Beatles retained a distinctly English sound with their love of skiffle and older vernacular idioms such as vaudeville, music-hall and marching band music. Not only did they influence their contemporaries like The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, but also serious jazz and classical musicians, among them the late Leonard Bernstein.
Cleverly structured masterpieces
At their zenith between 1965 and 1969, Lennon (the rebellious one with the vision, intellect, angst and eccentricity) and McCartney (the meticulous one with heart, versatility, deep musicality and a love of tradition) were virtually unrivalled with their richly melodious and cleverly structured masterpieces. Barring a few rough diamonds from lead guitarist Harrison (the spiritual one), Lennon and McCartney were credited jointly for writing the group's songs.
Serious fans and scholars, however, know that from around the time of 1965's watershed Rubber Soul album, most of the songs attributed to the Lennon-McCartney partnership were written solely or predominantly by one or the other. This is an indispensable criterion for understanding the lustre and diversity of The Beatles' music.
Lennon, whether dejected or carefree, penned "In My Life" and "Come Together", while McCartney wrote "Yesterday" and "Oh, Darling". Lennon's poetic, otherworldly muse created unforgettable songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "A Day in the Life", "Julia" and "Revolution". McCartney, on the other hand, was moved to complement his older partner with gems like "Eleanor Rigby", "For No One", "She's Leaving Home", "Blackbird" and "Hey Jude".
While Lennon was abstract, outspoken, cynical, wounded, lazy and provocative, McCartney was diplomatic, romantic, enthusiastic, diligent, accommodating and adventurous. Combined, their musical synergy was immense.
As a collective with rock-steady drummer Starr (the funny and endearing one), The Beatles brought their crisp Liverpudlian humour from Merseyside to New York, Johannesburg, Sydney and the world. They were Scouser sharp, spontaneous and sanguine. Shape-shifting at lightning pace compared with today's tepid fashions, they evolved from pill-popping teddy boys in black leathers thrashing out rock ‘n' roll standards in seedy, all-night Hamburg clubs in 1960-1961 to the cute Mop Tops in austere, collarless suits of 1963-1964 crisscrossing Britain in buses, helicopters and planes.
Then, in the counterculture parlance of the day, they "turned on" in 1965-1967, grew their hair and beards, and became more fiercely individualistic in their world views and approaches to songwriting.
Pioneering new practices
Beyond the adulation of screaming teenagers, who inspired a Daily Mirror reporter to coin the word "Beatlemania", and their post-1966 retirement from concerts to devote their energies to making landmark records under the expert tutelage of George Martin, The Beatles pioneered many other musical standards and practices we now take for granted. Besides their feature films of A Hard Day's Night, Help! and Magical Mystery Tour, they led the way with an animated film, Yellow Submarine.
Collaborating with the British Broadcasting Corporation and independent television (TV) stations, they co-produced scores of dedicated Beatles shows. With their euphoric Summer of Love anthem, "All You Need Is Love", they were the subject of the first international TV broadcast by satellite. Lennon published two amusing books and exhibited satirical drawings. McCartney wrote songs and produced recording sessions for other musicians, while helping to elevate the finer art of the album cover.
Harrison studied meditation, yogic philosophy, the sitar and other Indian instruments, and helped to change the tonality and structures of rock music. In the late ‘60s, they commissioned Hunter Davies to write their authorised biography, The Beatles. Then, in their final bid for complete artistic freedom and commercial fabdom, they created their mad, counterculture, egalitarian enterprise, Apple.
It is amazing to realise that The Beatles' magnificent swansong album (the last one to be recorded), Abbey Road, was released 40 years ago (September 26 1969). Listening to this adventurous album today, it still sounds so fresh and young, as if the Fab Four were destined for rock ‘n' roll immortality.
The Beatles contributed so much to so many people's lives. To the amusement of the American counterculture leaders, including Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, 1967's Sgt Pepper unwittingly bridged the generation gap at the height of the psychedelic movement by wowing counterculturists and touching the hearts of the Establishment.
Their lyrics engaged the Left and the Right. Kindergarten kids loved to sing "Yellow Submarine", while grannies tapped their toes and hummed along to the retro-styled "When I'm Sixty-Four". Even today, The Beatles are spanning generations and appealing to kids and grandparents alike.
Since the 1980s, music enthusiasts have bemoaned the lacklustre look and sound of The Beatles' albums in compact-disc (CD) format. Besides the cover art looking jaded and the booklet printing cheap, the music was begging for the sparkle and nuances of the original analogue recordings. For years, fans have been insisting that the works of The Beatles (as with the Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin masterpieces) be remastered and repackaged.
Holistic, multidimensional sound
Now, The Beatles are Fab again, with their classic albums sounding sprightly and emancipated. The wide and radical remastering approach, executed in London's famed Abbey Road Studios, has created a warmer, clearer and more holistic, multidimensional sound. The vocals are more engaging, the guitars keener and the cymbals sexier, while McCartney's melodic bass is raunchier.
The evocative strings (as on "Eleanor Rigby") and horns (as on "A Day in the Life") are more expressive and liberated. One cannot appreciate the full intricacy of Ringo Starr's imaginative drumming until one hears the new mixes of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Strawberry Fields Forever".
The same meticulous attention to detail extends to the redesigned and formatted sleeves, now without cheap ‘n' nasty plastic jewel cases. The booklets, all finely printed and featuring retouched photographic images with captions, include fascinating historical notes and insightful recording notes. As a bonus, the initial limited-edition CDs each host a mini-documentary on the relevant album.
Two limited-edition box sets are available for the connoisseur. The stereo one features all 13 studio albums (from Please Please Me to Let It Be) and the two-disc, 33-song Past Masters compilation. The mono set features the first 11 albums (without Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road and Let It Be) and Past Masters.
Forty years after the saddening implosion of the Fab Four, should we get so excited about all the hype surrounding The Beatles '09 repackaged and remastered albums? The answer is a resounding "yeah, yeah, yeah". In what has been a long and winding road from Liverpool to London and beyond, The Beatles again "are guaranteed to raise a smile".
Note: John Lennon's Liverpudlian high-school band, The Quarry Men (aka Johnny and the Moondogs), was renamed The Silver Beetles in May 1960 and then The Beetles (first spelt with two Es) in September 1960, hence the liberal reference in the headline to "50 years".
*Freelance writer and music critic Michael Waddacor is an avid Beatles collector and commentator.
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