Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, Beatles 1
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Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, Beatles 1 [Music Playing on Piano] [Brian Ward]: We’ve had a lot of build-up to this point. We talked about early rock n’ roll and we’ve talked about rhythm and blues this sort of dark period where Buddy Holly died in the plane crash. Rock n’ roll kind sort of had a dark period there. It was kind of kept alive by various doo wop soul groups, girl groups, Phil Spector, pop bands. But there wasn’t really much happening. People thought that rock n’ roll was sort of a fad that had kind of faded away at least in its early form in the 1950s. Well in 1964 along comes this group that really revolutionized rock n’ roll. In 1964 The Beatles hit the United States. The Beatles really changed a lot. They changed a lot in terms of fashion. They changed a lot in terms of social behavior. Definitely they changed the music. They also were really able to change music history. This timing was really important. In early 1964, America and American music was really starving for direction. We have in the pop charts a lot of easy listening, instrumental hits, bubblegum pop, teen idols and so we really were starved for this. So when The Beatles hit the scene, America really was I wouldn’t exactly say ready for it, but very soon after they took over and people fell in love with them in a big way. One thing is really interesting about this, what they call the British invasion. The British invasion is really ironic. Because the British rock musicians that came over here, The Beatles included, they were resurrecting our music. They were resurrecting music from Chicago, delta blues. That was their favorite music, rockabilly, music of Eddie Cochran, and so you know they didn’t really understand why Americans were going bonkers over this British form of rock n’ roll. Because the whole time in America we had this music and we just really didn’t appreciate it in the way that we went bonkers for the British invasion bands. Let’s talk about The Beatles music and the British invasion in general. Now this form of rock n’ roll was still very “rockish”. It’s got the driving beat. We have the solidified line-up following in the steps of Buddy Holly and The Crickets. But this music was a little bit more sophisticated and the songwriting was a little more slick. It continued to grow in that direction as the years went on. Especially with The Beatles. Another thing that happened in England in the 1960s is the same thing that happened in the United States in the 1950s. The teenage culture sort of broke away from society and created their own way of dressing and they fell in love with their own type of music. This same thing that happened in the United States in the 1950s in our teenage culture happened in England in the 1960s with their teenage culture. In fact, there is this certain style that comes along in England that’s very unique. It’s called the Teddy Boy style of dressing. These were viewed as young punks at the time by the older generation. They had their hair slicked back. They wore kind of skin tight suits with real skinny ties. It’s a very unique look. This Teddy Boy image took over. These Teddy Boy young teenagers would go see a movie like Blackboard Jungle and they’d riot and they would tear the movie theater apart. This was a whole form of a rebellion of the teenagers of England similar to what happened in the United States in the 1950s. There’s another style of music that existed in England that also influenced The Beatles a lot. This is called skiffle music. Now skiffle music is a music that’s sort of a combination of folk music and New Orleans Jazz. They do songs like Wabash Cannonball. It’s kind of a real upbeat folky kind of music. It has a little shuffle rhythm to it. You’ll hear that influence in The Beatles music. The king of this music at the time (skiffle music) was a man by the name of Lonnie Donegan. A lot of these British bands, they turned to Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and others. Those were the real influences going forward. So some important facts about The Beatles. Initially they started out as a bar band. They covered a lot of tunes. They ended up with this long stint in Hamburg, Germany at a bar. That was their training ground. This is where they honed their skills as classic rockers. They really developed a great stage show and became one of the best bar bands around. They had a real pop style. They did a lot of love songs. There’s always a driving beat. A lot of their songs were up tempo. There were not a lot of slow introspective songs from The Beatles in their early period. Now there’s three periods to The Beatles development. The early period recordings, their first album is Please Please Me. It was recorded in only 13 hours all in one studio session. It really represents a typical set at the bar they played in Hamburg, Germany called The Cavern. They did a wide range of covers and that was their style. So in this early period, The Beatles released four albums in the period from 1963 to 1965. The last one, Beatles for Sale kind of shows the transitioning period from the beginning into the middle. Lennon and McCartney from the very beginning were not equals in writing the songs. John Lennon and Paul McCartney would share songwriting credits. They would divide it up. Maybe John would write two thirds of the song and Paul McCartney would write one third of the song, things of that nature. It wasn’t the typical songwriting team where you have one person writing the lyrics and another person writing only the music. With Lennon and McCartney, they shared the songwriting duties, writing both lyrics and music. Another thing to note about this is because of Capitol Records and their deal with EMI, their British counterpart. The American releases were different in the beginning than the British releases. I think to sum it up to the difference, with the British releases were really full-fledged albums with twelve songs each and there were four of them, very succinct. American releases were a little different. They tried timing the songs differently for various reasons. So on the American releases of their albums, they had different names, different covers, an average of about ten songs, and there’s probably about five or six releases if you put them all together. Some of them overlap a little bit. It’s a little bit confusing, this early period. If you look at the British releases of the first four albums, that’s the definite early period of The Beatles music. .