Through
The Span Of Generations The Beatles Songs Still
Live
Remember The Beatles
Songs?
As an avid Beatles fan, I
love everything about them. I think that there were
three main ingredients, which led to their amazing
success: the quality of the song writing, the
strong vocals and the musical experimentation.
Their development was
fascinating to observe. Beatles songs began as
catchy tunes with a few soulful ballads. It was
almost unheard of in the early 1960s for pop groups
to write their own compositions.
Lennon and McCartney were
unusual in that regard and wrote songs for other
people too, such as the Rolling Stones.
Who Influenced The Beatles
Songs?
The lyrics started to go
beyond the conventional boy meets girl scenario.
The group were fans of Bob Dylan and were
influenced by his lyrics that were full of imagery
and metaphor. John Lennon said later that he
thought that pop songs and poetry had to be two
separate things until Dylan showed that they could
be combined.
The Beatles And
Drugs
Hallucinogenic drugs also
became an influence in Beatles songs, although some
words were cited as drug references when that
wasn't the case. Equally, some drug references got
through unnoticed. In the heady days of 1967, Lucy
in the Sky with Diamonds from Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band was said to be about a drug
experience.
In fact, the title was taken
from a school painting that John's young son had
done and the lyrics were inspired by Alice in
Wonderland, which John reread every
year.
The fab 4 evolved musically
too and this was aided by the creative partnership
with their record producer, George Martin. Martin
was a classically trained musician and he was able
to interpret the ideas that the group had and the
sounds that they wanted.
Beatles songs were the first
mainstream songs to use tape loops, backward tapes
and alternating the speed of tapes. They recorded
in the Abbey Road studios belonging to EMI, where
many orchestras made their records. This was
significant as there would be instruments lying
around that weren't usually used for pop music. The
Beatles and Martin made clever use of
them.
The Moog Synthesizer And
Beatles Songs
Striving for an unusual sound
was always important to the Beatles. The haunting
opening bars of Strawberry Fields Forever is played
on a theramin. The invention of the moog
synthesizer also made a contribution, able to
electronically simulate virtually any sound e.g.
the barrel organ on
For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.
George Harrison introduced pop music to the
wonderful Indian sitar on Norwegian Wood and Within
You, Without You. Beatles songs led the way and
proved that critical and commercial success could
be combined.
A Personal Story About
Beatles Songs
Last weekend my son came home
for a visit from college. He asked if I would help
him with a project for one of his classes.
For one of his general
education courses he needed to take a class in
music appreciation. Each person in the class was to
bring a collection of songs from a group or artist
that was popular in their parent’s era. He
signed up to bring a collection of Beatles songs.
I made him promise that he
would point out to the class that his father is
much older than I am and that the collections of
Beatles songs were from his music library. Having
set these parameters we began looking through the
old albums that my husband and I still
keep.
The "Old" Parents And
Their Beatles Music
My son had never paid too
much attention to our music selection. I think he
assumed that his parents would not have anything
that he would want to listen to. He was very
surprised at the number of albums that we still
have and that we still have a turntable to play
them on.
We pulled out a number of
Beatles songs that dated back to the early
60’s all the way to the Anthology album. I
explained that I had purchased the Anthology Album
at the Mall of America when it was first released.
They still have a number of new releases on vinyl
for the British that come to shop there.
We selected several Beatles
songs to play and sat around eating popcorn and
going through the rest of our music selections.
When my husband arrived home he joined us and
started playing some of the less known Beatles
songs for my son.
My son really enjoyed some of
these off beat Beatles songs. One of my son’s
friends called to see if my son wanted to go to a
party with him. My son asked him to come over to
listen to music at our house instead.
I ordered pizzas and we all
stayed up late going through the music selections
and talking about things that my son and his friend
had done as they were growing up. It was a very
enjoyable evening.
The Generation Gap
Narrows
When we went to bed that
evening I told my husband that I think we had
started a new stage in our relationship with our
son. We had spent the evening relating as friends
rather than parents and child.
I was grateful to the
professor that had assigned the lesson of
collecting Beatles songs. Music has always been a
big part of my husband’s life, yet he and our
son had never shared an evening of music together.
I have a feeling that music will play a greater
role in their future relationship.
Final Thought About The
Beatles Songs
If you haven't listened to
songs by the Beatles before or, if your collection
is in the attic gathering dust, I suggest you
discover or rediscover this 1960s pop music. You
might just find a whole new attitude toward this
classic sound.
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