The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics, instead, are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. In a sense, the Beatles are emblematic of the status of rock criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena and too little to the merits of real musicians. If somebody composes the most divine music but no major label picks him up and sells him around the world, most rock critics will ignore him. If a major label picks up a musician who is as stereotyped as can be but launches her or him worldwide, your average critic will waste rivers of ink on her or him. This is the sad status of rock criticism: rock critics are basically publicists working for major labels, distributors and record stores. They simply highlight what product the music business wants to make money from. Hopefully, one not-too-distant day, there will be a clear demarcation between a great musician like Tim Buckley, who never sold much, and commercial products like the Beatles. At such a time, rock critics will study their rock history and understand which artists accomplished which musical feat, and which simply exploited it commercially. Beatles' "Aryan" music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll. It replaced syncopated African rhythm with linear Western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles. Contemporary musicians never spoke highly of the Beatles, and for good reason. They could never figure out why the Beatles' songs should be regarded more highly than their own. They knew that the Beatles were simply lucky to become a folk phenomenon (thanks to "Beatlemania", which had nothing to do with their musical merits). That phenomenon kept alive interest in their (mediocre) musical endeavours to this day. Nothing else grants the Beatles more attention than, say, the Kinks or the Rolling Stones. There was nothing intrinsically better in the Beatles' music. Ray Davies of the Kinks was certainly a far better songwriter than Lennon & McCartney. The Stones were certainly much more skilled musicians than the 'Fab Four'. And Pete Townshend was a far more accomplished composer, capable of entire operas such as "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia"; not to mention the far greater British musicians who followed them in subsequent decades or the US musicians themselves who initially spearheaded what the Beatles merely later repackaged to the masses. The Beatles sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented "Beatlemania" in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time reading these pages about such a trivial band. Extended note from 2010. The Beatles were not a terribly interesting band, but their fans were and still are an interesting phenomenon. I can only name religious fundamentalists as annoying (and as threatening) as Beatles fans, and as persevering in sabotaging anyone who dares express an alternate opinion of their faith. They have turned me into some kind of Internet celebrity not because of the 6,000 bios that i have written, not because of the 800-page book that i published, not because of the 30 years of cultural events that i organized, but simply because i downplayed the artistic merits of the Beatles, an action that they consider as disgraceful as the 2001 terrorist attacks. Jakub Krawczynski sent me this supportive comment in 2010: I find it quite amusing that almost all of the Beatles songs have their own entries on Wikipedia (nothing wrong with that in itself, actually), even if they are not singles, and each of them is meticulously dissected as if there were transcendental suites exceeding human comprehension, yet bands like Faust or Red Krayola, etc. have biographies even shorter than just one article about any random Beatles song. Needless to say, none of their songs have any articles on them, yet I'm sure there would be a lot more to talk about. Moreover, if you had put any bad review of their album on the site with the intention to show the broader scope of opinions, you'd risk your "life" there, since such fanatics don't accept any single sign of trying to be objective. You are seen as public enemy number 1 to them. It is like your article is one giant cognitive dissonance to them and vandalizing your bio was the only way to reduce this dissonance. (Italian text translated by Ornella C. Grannis and proof-edited by Daniel Vogel ) The Beatles most certainly belong to the history of the 60s, but their musical merits are at best dubious. The Beatles came at the height of the reaction against rock and roll, when the innocuous "teen idols", rigorously white, were replacing the wild black rockers who had shocked the radio stations and the conscience of half of America. Their arrival represented a lifesaver for a white middle class terrorized by the idea that within rock and roll lay a true revolution of customs. The Beatles tranquilized that vast section of the population and conquered the hearts of all those (first and foremost the females) who wanted to rebel, without violating the social status quo. The contorted and lascivious faces of the black rock and rollers were substituted by the innocent smiles of the Beatles; the unleashed rhythms of the first were substituted by the catchy tunes of the latter. Rock and roll could finally be included in the pop charts. The Beatles represented the quintessential reaction to a musical revolution in the making, and for a few years they managed to run its enthusiasm into the ground. Furthermore, the Beatles represented the reaction against a social and political revolution. They arrived at the time of the student protests, of Bob Dylan, of the Hippies, and they replaced the image of angry kids, fists in the air, with their cordial faces and amiable declarations. They came to replace the accusatory words of militant musicians with overindulgent nursery rhymes. Thus the Beatles served as middle-class tranquilizers, as if to prove the new generation was not made up exclusively of rebels, misfits and sex maniacs. For most of their career, the Beatles were four mediocre musicians who sang melodic three-minute tunes at a time when rock music was trying to push itself beyond that format, one originally confined by the technical limitations of the 78 rpm record. They were the quintessence of "mainstream" (assimilating the innovations proposed by rock music) within the format of the melodic song. The Beatles belonged, like the Beach Boys (whom they emulated throughout most of their career), to the era of the vocal band. In such a band the technique of the instrument was not as important as that of the chorus. Undoubtedly skilled at composing choruses, they availed themselves of producer George Martin (head of Parlophone since 1956), to embellish those choruses with arrangements more and more eccentric. Thanks to a careful marketing campaign, they became the most celebrated entertainers of the era, and are still the darlings of magazines and tabloids, much like Princess Grace of Monaco and Lady Di. The convergence between Western polyphony (melody, several parts of vocal harmony and instrumental arrangements) and African percussion - the leitmotif of US music from its inception - was legitimized in Europe by the huge success of the Merseybeat, in particular by its best sellers, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Beatles, both produced by George Martin and managed by Brian Epstein. To the bands of the Merseybeat goes the credit of having validated rock music for a vast, virtually endless, audience. They were able to interpret the spirit and technique of rock and roll, while separating it from its social circumstances, thus defusing potential explosions. In such a fashion, they rendered it accessible not only to the young rebels, but to all. Mediocre musicians, and even more mediocre intellectuals, bands like the Beatles had the intuition of the circus performer who knows how to amuse the peasants after a hard day's work, an intuition applied to the era of mass distribution of consumer goods. Every one of their songs and every one of their albums followed much more striking songs and albums by others, but instead of simply imitating them, the Beatles adapted them to a bourgeois, conformist and orthodox dimension. The same process was applied to the philosophy of the time, from the protests on college campuses to Dylan's pacifism, psychedelic drugs, or Eastern religion. Their vehicle was melody, a universal code of sorts, that declared their music innocuous. Naturally others performed the same operation, and many (from the Kinks to the Hollies, from the Beach Boys to the Mamas and Papas) produced melodies even more memorable, yet the Beatles arrived at the right moment and theirs would remain the trademark of the melodic song of the second half of the twentieth century. Their ascent was branded as "Beatlemania", a phenomenon of mass hysteria launched in 1963 that marked the height of the "teen idol" of the late 1950s, an extension of the myths of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. From that moment on, no matter what they put together, the Beatles remained the center of the media's attention. Musically, for what it is worth, the Beatles were the product of an era that had been prepared by vocal groups such as the Everly Brothers and by rockers such as Buddy Holly; an era that also expressed itself through the girl-groups, the Tamla bands and surf music. What the Beatles have in common with them, aside from almost identical melodies, is a general concept of song based on an exuberant, optimistic and cadenced melody. The Beatles were the quintessence of instrumental mediocrity. George Harrison was a pathetic guitarist, compared with the London guitarists of those days (Townshend of the Who, Richards of the Rolling Stones, Davies of the Kinks, Clapton, Beck and Page of the Yardbirds, and many others who were less famous but more original). The Beatles had completely missed the revolution of rock music (founded on a prominent use of the guitar) and were still trapped in the stereotypes of the easy-listening orchestras. Paul McCartney was a singer from the 1950s, who could not have possibly sounded more conventional. As a bassist, he was not worth the last of the rhythm and blues bassists (even though within the world of Merseybeat his style was indeed revolutionary). Ringo Starr played drums the way any kid of that time played it in his garage (even though he may ultimately be the only one of the four who had a bit of technical competence). Overall, the technique of the "Fab Four" was the same as that of many other easy-listening groups: sub-standard. Theirs were records of traditional songs crafted as they had been crafted for centuries, yet they served an immense audience, far greater than the audience of those who wanted to change the world, the hippies, freaks and protesters. Their fans ignored or abhorred the many rockers of the time who were experimenting with the suite format, who were composing long free-form tracks, who were using dissonance, who were radically changing the concept of the musical piece. The Beatles' fans thought, and some still think, that using trumpets in a rock song was a revolutionary event, that using background noises (although barely noticeable) was an even more revolutionary event, and that only great musical geniuses could vary so many styles in one album, precisely what many rock musicians were doing all over the world, employing much more sophisticated stylistic excursions. While the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, the Doors, Pink Floyd and many others were composing long and daring suites worthy of avantgarde music, thus elevating rock music to art, the Beatles continued to yield three-minute songs built around a chorus. Beatlemania and its myth notwithstanding, Beatles fans went crazy for twenty seconds of trumpet, while the Velvet Underground were composing suites of chaos twenty minutes long. Actually, between noise and a trumpet, between twenty seconds and twenty minutes, there was an artistic difference of several degrees of magnitude. They were, musically, sociologically, politically, artistically, and ideologically, on different planets. Beatlemania created a comical temporal distortion. Many Beatles fans were convinced that rock and roll was born around the early 1960s, that psychedelic rock and the hippies were a 1967 phenomenon, that student protests began in 1969, that peace marches erupted at the end of the 60s, and so on. Beatles fans believed that the Beatles were first in everything, while in reality they were last in almost everything. The case of the Beatles is a textbook example of how myths can distort history. The Beatles had the historical function to delay the impact of the innovations of the 1960s . Between 1966 and 1969, while suites, jams, and long free form tracks (which the Beatles also tried but only toward the end of their career) became the fashion, while the world was full of guitarists, bassist, singers and drummers who played solos and experimented with counterpoint, the Beatles limited themselves to keeping the tempo and following the melody. Their historical function was also to prepare the more conservative audience for those innovations. Their strength was perhaps in being the epitome of mediocrity, never a flash of genius, never a revolutionary thought, never a step away from what was standard, accepting innovations only after they had been by the establishment. And maybe it was that chronic mediocrity that made their fortune: whereas other bands tried to surpass their audiences, to keep two steps ahead of the myopia of their fans, traveling the hard and rocky road, the Beatles took their fans by the hand and walked them along a straight path devoid of curves and slopes. Beatles fans can change the meaning of the word "artistic" to suit themselves, but the truth is that the artistic value of the Beatles work is very low. The Beatles made only songs, often unpretentious songs, with melodies no more catchy than those of many other pop singers. The artistic value of those songs is the artistic value of one song: however well done (and one can argue over the number of songs well done vs. the number of overly publicized songs by the band of the moment), it remains a song, precisely as toothpaste remains toothpaste. It does not become a work of art just because it has been overly publicized. The Beatles are justly judged for the beautiful melodies they have written. But those melodies were "beautiful" only when compared to the melodies of those who were not trying to write melodies; in other words to the musicians who were trying to rewrite the concept of popular music by implementing suites, jams and noise. Many contemporaries of Beethoven wrote better minuets than Beethoven ever wrote, but only because Beethoven was writing something else. In fact, he was trying to write music that went beyond the banality of minuets. The melodies of the Beatles were perhaps inferior to many composers of pop music who still compete with the Beatles with regard to quality, those who were less famous and thus less played. The songs of the Beatles were equipped with fairly vapid lyrics at a time when hordes of singer songwriters and bands were trying to say something intelligent. The Beatles' lyrics were tied to the tradition of pop music, while rock music found space, rightly or wrongly, for psychological narration, anti-establishment satire, political denunciation, drugs, sex and death. The most artistic and innovative aspect of the Beatles' music, in the end, proved to be George Martin's arrangements. Perhaps aware of the band's limitations, Martin used the studio and studio musicians in a creative fashion, at times venturing beyond the demands of tradition to embellish the songs. Moreover, Martin undoubtedly had a taste for unusual sounds. At the beginning of his career he had produced Rolf Harris' Tie Me Kangaroo with the didjeridoo. At the time nobody knew what it was. Between 1959 and 1962 Martin had produced several tracks of British humor with heavy experimentation, inspired by the Californian Stan Freiberg, the first to use the recording studio as an instrument. As popular icons, as celebrities, the Beatles certainly influenced their times, although much less than their fans suppose. Even Richard Nixon, the US president of the Vietnam War and Watergate influenced his times and the generations that followed, but that does not make him a great musician. Today Beatles songs are played mostly in supermarkets. But their myth, like that of Rudolph Valentino and Frank Sinatra before them, will live as long as the fans who believed in it will be alive. Through the years their fame has been artificially kept alive by marketing, a colossal advertising effort, a campaign without equal in the history of entertainment. Their history begins at the end of the 1950s. Buddy Holly's Crickets had invented the modern concept of the rock band. Indirectly they had also started the fashion of naming a band with a plural noun, like the doo-wop ensembles before them, but a noun that was funny instead of serious. Almost immediately bands like "the Crickets" began to pop up everywhere, most of them bearing plural nouns. Insects were fashionable. The Beatles were the most famous. Assembled to bring to Europe the free spirit, the simple melodies, and the vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys (the novelty of the moment) more than for any specific reason, the Beatles became, despite their limitations, the most successful recording artists of their time. While acknowledging that neither the Beatles nor the Beach Boys were music greats, it must be noted that both were influential in conferring commercial credibility to rock music, and both inspired thousands of youngsters around the world to form rock bands. The same had happened with Elvis Presley. Although far from being a great musician, he too had inspired thousands of white kids, among them both the Beatles and the Beach Boys, to become rockers. The "swinging London" of the 1960s was a mix of renewal, mediocrity, conformity, non-commitment, cultural rebirth, tourist attraction and excitement, a locus of rebellion drowned in shining billboards, of young men with long hair and girls in mini-skirts, of wealth and hypocrisy about wealth, a city of indifference. La dolce vita, English style. The Beatles were the best selling product of that London, a city full of ambiguity and contradictions. The Beatles' birthplace was Liverpool. John Lennon was a rhythm guitar player with a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, founded in 1955, before forming the Beatles in 1960 with Paul McCartney. George Harrison, hired when he was still a minor, played lead guitar, with a formidable style inspired by the rockabilly of James Burton and Carl Perkins. They rose through the ranks playing rock and roll covers in Hamburg, Germany, then made their debut at The Cavern, in Liverpool, on February 21, 1961. Shortly after, Ringo Starr was called to replace the drummer Pete Best, and McCartney switched to the bass. In 1962 two phenomena exploded in America: the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons. Both truly sang, in vocal harmony derived from 1950s doo-wop, which they introduced to white audiences, with arrangements imitating the Crickets. That was the year the Beatles began the transition from covers to original, melodic, vocal harmonies. One of the first recordings of the Beach Boys had been a revision of one of Chuck Berry's songs, one of the first recordings of the Beatles had to be a revision of one of Chuck Berry's songs. Brian Wilson played the bass for the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney would play bass for the Beatles. Brian Epstein was the man who scouted them and secured their contract with EMI in November 1961, and also the man who created their image,their clothes, their hairdos (similar to television comedian Ish Kabibble's). George Martin was the man who created their sound. 1962 was the year of Bob Dylan, of peace demonstrations, of songs of protest. Precisely in 1962, far removed, diametrically opposed really, to the events that dominated US society, the Beatles debuted with a 45, Love Me Do, recorded in September 1962, a jovial rhythm and blues led by the harmonica in the style of Delbert McClinton. By the end of the year the song had made the charts. In February 1963, the band reached #2 with Please Please Me. In the space of few months, a diligent marketing strategy, ingeniously managed by Brian Epstein, unleashed mass hysteria. Records sold out before the recording sessions actually began, mass-media detailed step by step chronicles of the four heroes, the world of fashion imposed a new hairdo. Epstein had created "Beatlemania"... The overflow of fanaticism around them demanded refinement of their style. They began to utilize new instruments. The more they dissociated themselves from their rhythm and blues roots, the faster their style became more melodious. Through From Me To You, the rowdy She Loves You (accessorized with the first "yeah-yeah-yeahs"), and I Want To Hold Your Hand (a heavier rhythm enhanced by clapping, basically a blend of the Everly Brothers and twist), all "number ones" on the charts of 1963, they fused centuries of vocal styles - sacred hymn, Elizabethan song, music hall, folk ballad, gospel and voodoo - in a harmonious and crystal-clear format for a happy chorus. A variant of the same process had been adopted in the United States by the Shirelles. For the most part it was Buddy Holly's jovial, childish, catchy style that was copied, speeding the tempo to accommodate the demands of the "twist". The twist was the dance craze of the moment: fast beat, suggestive moves and catchy tunes. The Beatles sensed that it was the right formula. In the USA nobody had caught on yet, and only mangled versions of Please Please Me (March 1963) and With The Beatles (November 1963) had been released. In January 1964 EMI decided to invest significantly and I Want To Hold Your Hand reached the top of the charts together with the Beatles' first US album Meet The Beatles (Capitol, 1964). In the States, cleansed at last of the perverted and amoral rock and roll scum of the 1950s, the charming and polite Merseybeat of the Beatles delighted the media. After their first tour in February 1964, and their appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show", their 45s were solidly on top of the US charts. In April 1964 they occupied the first five positions. After all, their sound was drenched in US music: their vocal style was either that of the hard rockers like Little Richard, or the gentler call-and-response of the Drifters (echoing one another, stretching a word for several beats, screaming coarse "yeah-yeah", shrieking in falsetto), the choruses were Buddy Holly's, the harmonies were the Beach Boys' and the instrumental parts were remakes of twist combos. The secret of the Beatles' success, in the USA as in the UK, was the simplicity of their arrangements. Whereas the idols of the time were backed by complex, almost classical arrangements, at times even by studio effects, the Beatles employed the elementary technique of surf music, completely devoid of orchestral support and surreal effects. At a time when singers had become studio subordinates, the Beatles managed to reestablish the supremacy of the singer. The youths of the USA recognized themselves in a style that was much more direct than the manufactured one of their "teen idols", and by default recognized themselves in the Beatles, precisely as they had recognized themselves in Elvis Presley after having become accustomed to the artificiality of pop music in the 1950s. The Mersey sound was designed to tone down rock and roll. Under the direction of producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein, the sound of the Beatles also became softer. The captivating style of the Beatles had already been pioneered by Gerry & The Pacemakers (formed in 1959, also managed by Epstein). They reached the charts with their first three 45s (How Do You Do It, March 1963, I Like It, May 1963, You`ll Never Walk Alone, October 1963): very melodic versions of rock and roll with sugar-coated versions of rock's rebel text. Practically speaking, the Pacemakers' formula brought rock and roll into pop music. They replaced the rough and crude beat of the blues with the light and tidy rhythms of European pop songs; they exchanged the slanted melodies of the blues with the catchy tunes of the British operetta; they substituted the provocative lyrics of Chuck Berry with the romantic rhymes of the "teen idols." Epstein and Martin simply continued that format with the Beatles. The only difference was in the authorship of practically their entire cache. All the Beatles songs were signed Lennon-McCartney. (This was only for contractual reasons. In reality they were not necessarily co-written.) The first student protests took place in Berkeley, California in 1964. Young people were protesting against the establishment in general, and against the war in Vietnam in particular. The rebellion that had been seething through the 50s had finally found its intellectual vehicle. The Beatles knew nothing of this when they recorded Can't Buy Me Love, a swinging rockabilly a la Bill Haley, the first to reach #1 simultaneously in the States and in Britain, A Hard Day's Night and I Feel Fine, using the feedback that had been pioneered in the 1950s by guitarists such as Johnny Watson and used in Britain by the Yardbirds. All three are exuberant songs carrying ever so catchy refrains, reaching the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. With these songs and with their public behavior the Beatles showed a whimsical and provoking way to be young. The Beatles were still a brand new phenomenon when A Hard Day's Night - the first surreal documentary about their daily lives was released, and their two first biographies were published. In the USA the marketing was intense: EMI was inundated by contracts to solicit the sales of Beatles wigs, Beatles attire, Beatles dolls, cartoons inspired by the Beatles. America was saturated with images of four smiling boys, the creation of a brand new myth that served to exorcise the demons of Vietnam, of the peace marches, of the civil disorders, of the student protests, of the racial disturbances, of the murder of JFK, of Bob Dylan, of rock and roll, of all the tragedies, real or presumed, that troubled the "American Dream". In the end, it might have all been a form of shock therapy. Sure enough, hidden behind those smiling faces were four mediocre musicians, and also four multimillionaire snobs in the proudest British tradition. Far from being symbols of rebellion, they were reactionism personified. The Beatles, optimistic and effervescent, represented an escape from reality. People, kids in particular, had a desperate need to believe in something that had nothing to do with bombs and upheaval. The Beatles put to music the enthusiasm of the masses and in return, in a cycle that bordered on perpetual motion, were enthusiastically acclaimed by the same masses. The best of their cliches is summarized in a famous anecdote. Interviewed during their US tour, Lennon answered the question "How did you find America?" with "We turned left at Greenland!" Beneath this naive sense of humor, anarchic and surreal, lays the greatest merit of the band. From 1965 the LP, in the preceding years not as important as the 45, became the new unit of measure of their work. The US releases had 12 cuts including the hits, the British versions had 14 cuts and generally none of the hits. A Hard Day's Night (1964) was the first release to contain material exclusively co-written by Lennon and McCartney. For Sale, released immediately after, contained six covers (but also Eight Days A Week, and the melancholic I Don't Want To Spoil The Party). Help (August 1965), with The Night Before and Ticket To Ride, marked the transition from the Merseybeat sound to one oriented more toward folk and country, though some of the songs bring Buddy Holly to mind. The Beatles of these days showed a formidable talent for the melancholic ballad, such as You've Got To Hide Your Love Away, and most of all Yesterday, the slow song par excellence written by Paul McCartney, to which Martin added a string quartet (a song vaguely reminiscent of 1933's Yesterdays by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach). However, their best work is to be found in more aggressive songs, such as Help, a gospel full of life adapted to their surreal style. Rubber Soul (December 1965) completed the transition from the 45 to the 33, and also from Merseybeat to folk-rock. Following their U.S. tour, the influence of the Byrds is very strong. The rock and roll beat in Drive My Car and Run For Your Life, the exotic mood of Norwegian Wood (a David Crosby-ian litany accompanied by sitar, an instrument already utilized by the Yardbirds, possibly based on what the Kinks had done a few months earlier with See My Friends) and the timid psychedelia of Nowhere Man cover a vast repertoire of harmonies for their standards. In spite of the fact that the Beatles sought success within rock and roll, it was evident that their best work was expressed through melodic songs. The tender ballads Girl and Michelle (a classic for acoustic guitar, melodic bass and chorus, in the style of 1950s vocal groups) are truly excellent songs in their genre, but because they lack both rhythm and volume, they were considered "minor" at the time. In 1965 the Beatles recorded another melodic masterpiece, We Can Work It Out, ground out on barrel organ and accordion, inspired by French folk music. They pursued the mirage of the "rave-up" with the hard riff of Day Tripper (borrowed from Watch Your Step of bluesman Bobby Parker), a pathetic response to Satisfaction by the Stones and You Really Got Me by the Kinks. Both songs, hard rockers, had shocked the charts that same year. The Beatles finally freed themselves from the obsession of emulating others in 1966, with Revolver, an album entirely dedicated to sophisticated songs. The album, extremely polished, seems the lighter version of Rubber Soul. The psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows (sitar, backward guitar, organ drones), the vaguely oriental Love You To, the classic Eleanor Rigby, the Vaudevillian operetta Good Day Sunshine, the rhythm and blues of Got To Get You Into My Life and Dr. Robert, as well as Rain, recorded in the same sessions (with backward vocals, inspired by the Byrds' Eight Miles High, that had charted just weeks before), are all mitigated by an ever more languid and romantic attitude. The few jolts of rhythm are kept at bay by a tender effusion in I'm Only Sleeping (with a timid solo of backward guitar), There And Everywhere and For No One. With this album the Beatles left behind rock and roll to get closer to pop music, the pop music of the Brill Building, that is, a genre of pop that sees Revolver as its masterpiece. (At the time melodic songs all over the world were inspired by the Brill Building). Of course Revolver was a thousand years late. That same year Dylan had released Blonde On Blonde, a double album with compositions fifteen minutes long, and Frank Zappa had released Freak Out, also a double album, in collage format. Rock music was experimenting with free form jams as in Virgin Forest by the Fugs, Up In Her Room by the Seeds, Going Home by the Rolling Stones. The songs of the Beatles truly belonged to another century. The formal perfection of their melodies reached the sublime in 1967 with two 45s: the baroque/electronic Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, released in February, an absolute masterpiece that never reached the top of the charts, the hard rocking Paperback Writer, and the childish Yellow Submarine, a mosaic full of sound gags and barroom choruses. Penny Lane represents the apex of the Manneristic style: Vaudevillian rhythm, hypnotic melody, Renaissance trumpets, folkloristic flutes and triangles. Strawberry Fields Forever is a densely-arranged psychedelic experiment (backward vocals, mellotron, harp, timpani, bongos, trumpet, cello). Perhaps, the experiments could have continued in a more serious direction, as the intriguing idea of the 14-minute Carnival of Light leads one to believe, a piece recorded at the beginning of 1967 and never completed nor released. 1967 was the year that FM radio began to play long instrumentals. In Great Britain, it was the year of psychedelia, of the Technicolor Dream, of the UFO Club. The psychedelic singles of Pink Floyd were generating an uproar. Inevitably, the Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This quasi-concept album was released while the Monterey Festival was consecrating the sanctifiable, the big names of the times. Unlike most of the revolutionary records of those days, often recorded in haste and with a low budget, Sgt. Pepper cost a fortune and took four months to put together. The Beatles soar in the ethereal refrain of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, utilizing the sitar, distorted keyboard sounds and Indian inspired vocals; they indulge in Vaudevillian tunes such as Lovely Rita and When I'm Sixty Four (a vintage ragtime worthy of the Bonzo Band), and they showcase their odd melodic sense in With A Little Help From My Friends. They scatter studio effects here and there, pretending to be avantgarde musicians, in Fixing A Hole and Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, but in reality these are tunes inspired by the music halls, the circuses and small town bands. A Day In The Life is the culmination of the relationship between technique and philosophy. It represents the happy marriage between Martin's sense of harmony, employing a 40-piece orchestra in which everybody plays every note, and Lennon's hippie existentialism, that dissects the alienation of the bourgeoisie. Everything was running smoothly in the name of quality music, now entrusted to high fidelity arrangements and adventurous variations of style, from folk ballads to sidewalk Vaudeville, from soul to marching bands, from the Orient to swing, from chamber music to psychedelia, from tap dance to little bands in the park. Everything had been fused into a steady flow of variety show skits. Rather than an album of psychedelic music (compared to which it actually sounds retro), Sgt. Pepper was the Beatles' answer to the sophistication of Pet Sounds, the masterpiece by their rivals, the Beach Boys, released a year and three months before. The Beatles had always been obsessed by the Beach Boys. They had copied their multi-part harmonies, their melodic style and their carefree attitude. Throughout their entire career, from 1963 to 1968, the Beatles actually followed the Beach Boys within a year or two, including the formation of Apple Records, which came almost exactly one year after the birth of Brother Records. Pet Sounds had caused an uproar because it delivered the simple melodies of surf music through the artistic sophistication of the studio. So, following the example of Pet Sounds, the Beatles recorded, from February to May 1967, Sgt. Pepper, disregarding two important factors: first that Pet Sounds had been arranged, mixed and produced by Brian Wilson and not by an external producer like George Martin, and second that, as always, they were late. They began assembling Sgt. Pepper a year after Pet Sounds had hit the charts, and after dozens of records had already been influenced by it. Legend has it that it took 700 hours of studio recording to finish the album. One can only imagine what many other less fortunate bands could have accomplished in a recording studio with 700 hours at their disposal. Although Sgt. Pepper was assembled with the intent to create a revolutionary work of art, if one dares take away the hundreds of hours spent refining the product, not much remains that cannot be heard on Revolver: Oriental touches here and there, some psychedelic extravaganzas, a couple of arrangements in classical style. Were one to skim off a few layers of studio production, only pop melodies would remain, melodies not much different from those that had climbed the charts ten years before. Yet it was the first Beatles album to be released in long playing version all over the world. None of its songs were released as singles. The truth is that although it was declared an "experimental" work, even Sgt. Pepper managed to remain a pop album. The Beatles of 1967 were still producing three-minute ditties, while Red Crayolas and Pink Floyd, to name two psychedelic bands of the era, were playing long free form suites - at times cacophonous, often strictly instrumental - that bordered on avantgarde. In 1967, the band that had never recorded a song that had not been built around a refrain began to feel outdated. They tried to keep up, but they never pushed themselves beyond the jingles, most likely because they could not, just as Marilyn Monroe could not have recited Shakespeare. Sgt. Pepper is the album of a band that sensed change in the making, and was adapting its style to the taste of the hippies. It came in last (in June), after Velvet Underground & Nico (January), The Doors (also January), the Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday (february), and the Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow (February) to signal the end of an era, after others had forever changed the history of rock music. (Several technical "innovations" on Sgt Pepper were copied from Younger Than Yesterday, whose tapes the Beatles had heard from David Crosby at the end of 1966). The uproar generated by Sgt. Pepper transferred those innovations from the US underground to the living rooms and the supermarkets of half the world. With Sgt. Pepper, the sociology course in melodic rock and roll that Lennon and McCartney had introduced in 1963 came to an end. The music of the Beatles was an antidote to the uneasiness of those times, to the troubling events that scared and perplexed people. The course had the virtue of deflecting the impact of those events, the causes of political upheaval and moral revolution. The Beatles reassured the middle class at a time when almost nothing could reassure the middle class. Every arrangement of that period - the harpsichords and the flutes, the prerecorded tracks and the electronic effects - was the result of George Martin's careful production. Martin was a lay musician, a former member of a marching band that occasionally had played in St. James Park. He knew that avantgarde musicians made music by manipulating tracks, that instruments with unusual timbre existed, that rock bands were dissecting classical harmonies. His background, not to mention his intellectual ability, was of the circus, the carnival, the operetta, the marching band, London's second-rate theaters. He took all he could from that folkloristic patrimony, every unorthodox technique. The results might not have been particularly impressive - after all he was neither Beethoven nor Von Karajan - but they were most certainly interesting. He was the true genius behind the music of the Beatles. Martin transformed their snobbish disposition, their childish insolence, their fleeting enthusiasm, into musical ideas. He converted their second hand melodies into monumental arrangements. He even played some of the instruments that helped those songs make history. From Rubber Soul on, Martin's involvement got progressively more evident. Especially with Sgt. Pepper, Martin demonstrated his knowledge and his intuition. The idea to connect all the songs in a continuous flow, however, is McCartney's. It is the operetta syndrome, the everlasting obsession of British musicians of the music halls. The Beatles filled newspapers and magazines with their declarations about drugs and Indian mysticism, and how they converted those elements into music, but it was Martin who was doing the conversion, who was transforming their fanciful artistic ambitions into music. Around the time of Sgt. Pepper's release, Brian Epstein died. (His death was attributed to drugs and alcohol.) He was the man who had given fame to the Beatles, the fundamental presence in their development, the man who had invented their myth. The Beatles were four immature kids who for years had played the involuntary leading roles in an immensely successful soap opera, a part that paid them with imprisonment. For years they did not dare step outside their hotel rooms or their limousines. As Epstein's control began to lessen they began to look around, to take notice of the drugs, the social disorder, the ideals of peace, the student protests, the Oriental philosophies. It was a world completely unknown to them, full of issues they had never mentioned in their songs. The revelation was traumatic. Epstein's absence generated chaos, exposing problems with revenue, representation and public relations that eventually caused the demise of the group, but it also gave them the chance to grow up. Sgt Pepper represents a breaking point in their career on several levels. It is a very autobiographical conceptual take on self-awareness. It is a concept album about the discovery of being able to put together a concept album. Two projects realized with unusual wit also belong to the same period, a period that bridged two eras: the television movie Magical Mystery Tour and the cartoon Yellow Submarine. In both works can be found some of the most ingenious ideas of the quartet. The grotesque schizoid nightmare I Am The Walrus and the kaleidoscopic trip It's All Too Much are exercises of surrealism and psychedelia applied to the Merseybeat. Magical Mystery Tour also includes the bucolic ballad The Fool On The Hill, the psychedelic Blue Jay Way, and the mantra Baby You`re A Rich Man. Meanwhile the shower of hits influenced by the experimental climate continued: Magical Mystery Tour, the movie soundtrack, with trumpets, jazz piano, changes in tempo, and a circus huckster-style presentation, Your Mother Should Know, another vaudeville classic, the anthem All You Need Is Love, Hello Goodbye, a catchy melody distorted by psychedelic effects, Lady Madonna, the boogie inspired by Fats Domino. But the Beatles still belonged to the era of pop music: unlike Cream they did not pull off solos, unlike Hendrix they strummed their guitars without real know-how, unlike Pink Floyd they did not dare dissect harmony. They were not just retro, they simply belonged elsewhere. Hey Jude (august 1968), a long (for the Beatles) jam of psychedelic blues-rock, in reality another historic slow song by McCartney, came out after Traffic's Dear Mr. Fantasy and also after Cream's lengthy live jams had reached peak popularity. Paradoxically, Hey Jude established a new sales record; it was #1 on the charts for nine weeks and sold six million copies. Having established the melodic standard of the decade, the quartet implemented it in every harmonic recipe that arose from time to time. By applying the industrial law of constant revision, they Beatles managed to keep themselves on top. So much variety of arrangements resulted in mere mannerism, meticulous attention to detail and ornament. The albums of the third period fluctuate in fact between collages of miniatures and melodic fantasies, but always skillfully keeping a harmonic cohesion between one song and the other, in the step with - consciously or unconsciously - the structure of the operetta. By the time of their next LP release they were leading separate lives, each indifferent to the ideas of the others, and their album reflected the situation. It was clear that this new batch of recorded songs was not the effort of a band, but the work of four artists profoundly different from one another. The double album The Beatles (November 1968), very similar in spirit to the Byrds' Notorious Byrd Brothers (June 1968), is a disorganized heap of incongruous ideas. No other Beatles album had ever been so varied and eclectic. Their new "progressive" libido found an outlet in blues-rock (Rocky Raccoon, Why Don't We Do It In The Road), and especially the giddy hyper-boogies (Birthday and Helter Skelter). As a consequence of this fragmented inspiration, the record includes a cornucopia of genres: classical (Piggies, a rare moment of genius from Harrison, a baroque sonata performed with the sarcastic humour of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, with a melody borrowed from Stephane Grappelli's Eveline), acoustic folk (Blackbird), the campfire sing-a-long (Bungalow Bill), ballads (Cry Baby Cry - one of their best piano progressions), the usual vaudeville-style parade (Don't Pass Me By, Martha My Dear, Obladi Oblada), and melodic rock (While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the jewel of their tunefulness). The album wraps up with a long jam, more or less avantgarde, (Revolution No. 9, co-written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono) two years after everybody else, and three years after the eleven minutes of Goin' Home, by the Stones. The so called White Album sampled the mood change of rock music toward a simpler and more traditional way to make music. It was released three months after Sweetheart Of The Rodeo by the Byrds, which in turn had followed Dylan's John Wesley Harding. It is also an album that reflects the passing of Brian Epstein. In 1968 Great Britain became infected by the concept album/rock opera bug, mostly realized by Beatles contemporaries: Tommy by the Who, The Village Green Preservation Society by the Kinks, Ogden's Nut Gone Flake by the Small Faces, Odyssey and Oracle by the Zombies, etc (albums that in turn owed something to the loosely-connected song cycles of pop albums such as Frank Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours (1955), the Byrds' Fifth Dimension, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt Pepper). So, with the usual delay, a year later the Beatles gave it a try. Abbey Road (1969), is a vaudeville-style operetta that combines every genre in a steady stream of melodies and structurally perfect arrangements. It is the summa encyclopaedica of their career. It is a series of self-mocking vignettes, mimicking now the circus worker (Maxwell's Silver Hammer), now the crooner (Oh Darling, a parody a la Bonzo Band), now the baby-sitter (Octopus's Garden, in the silly vein of Yellow Submarine), culminating in the overwhelming suite of side B. Starting with the primitive exuberance of You Never Give Me Your Money (a mini rock opera worthy of early Zappa) and Mean Mr Mustard, the suite comes in thick and fast with Polytheme Pam and She Came In Thru The Bathroom Window, and dies melancholically with yet another goliardic chorus, Carry That Weight (that reprises the motifs of Money and I Want You). It is the apotheosis of the belated music hall entertainer in Paul McCartney. And it is, above all, a masterpiece of production, of sound, of sonic puzzles. As was the case with their contemporaries - Who, Kinks, Small Faces and Zombies - this late album/thesis runs the risks going down in history as the Beatles' masterpiece. Obviously it does not even come close to the creative standards of the time (1969), but it scores well. The result is formally impeccable melodic songwriting, although it must be noted that the best songs, both written by George Harrison, are also the most modest. Abbey Road is their last studio album, again produced by George Martin. All efforts at cohesion notwithstanding, their personalities truly became too divergent. The modest hippie George Harrison became attracted to Oriental spiritualism. (Something and Here Comes The Sun are his melancholy ballads). Paul McCartney, the smiling bourgeois, became progressively more involved with pop music (every nursery-rhyme, Get Back and Let It Be included, are his). John Lennon, the thoughtful intellectual became absorbed in self-examination and political involvement. His was a much harder and/or psychedelic sound (Revolution, Come Together, the dreamy and Indian-like Across The Universe). They were songs ever more meaningless and anonymous. After all, the break-up had begun with Revolver (Lennon wrote Tomorrow Never Knows, Harrison Love You To, McCartney Eleanor Rigby), and had been camouflaged in successive records by Martin's painstakingly arrangements. The Beatles adapted their music to suit the styles in fashion: doo-wop, garage-rock, psychedelia, country-rock. Very few bands changed style so drastically from year to year. Perhaps they began to feel obsolete listening to Cream. Cream concerts were the first musical phenomenon in Great Britain to rival Beatlemania. Cream did all they could to make the Merseybeat sound terribly old, precisely what the Beatles had done to the sound of Elvis Presley. In 1969, Led Zeppelin changed completely the importance of radio and charts. [Led Zeppelin is the first enormously successful band whose album did not get any air play on AM radio (only FM) and whose songs did not make the singles charts. The change they brought about was significant because it shifted the importance of the charts from singles to albums. -Translator's Note] Since they used melody as a lever, the Beatles had a relatively easy time in following every shift in fashion (psychedelia included), until hard-rock - the antithesis of Beatlemania - came about. Suddenly the idol was no longer the singer but the instrument, the excitement was generated by the riff and not by the refrain, concerts were attended by multitudes of long-haired men on drugs who gathered on the street, not by hysterical teenage girls who assembled in theaters. Hard-rock negated their simple melodies. It is not by coincidence that the arrival of hard-rock marked the end of the Beatles. In 1970 the Beatles broke up and every member began a solo career. John Lennon (murdered in December 1980 by a deranged fan) did not do much worthy of the great singer songwriters of the time. Had it not been for his personal and political involvement, and his past as a Beatle, he would not have made it by his music alone. His solo career fluctuated ambiguously between hard-rock and ballads, the utopia of peace and love and domestic romanticism. His solo career actually began with Two Virgins (Apple, 1968), an album he made when he was still a Beatle, in collaboration with his famous second wife. Yoko Ono was the heiress to a dynasty of Japanese bankers, held a degree in philosophy, had been a United States resident since 1953, was a member of the avantgarde movement Fluxus, and was a world-renowned performance artist throughout the 60s. The album was followed by the more experimental Life With The Lions (Apple, 1969) and Wedding Album (Apple, 1969), and also a live album with Give Peace A Chance (a street chorus a la David Peel). Perhaps the best of Lennon can be found in the autobiographical album John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band (Capitol, 1970), with a vibrant production by Phil Spector. The imprint of Spector's sound can also be heard in the single Instant Karma. Lennon found much more commercial success with the album that followed, Imagine (1971), which contains Imagine, his most famous song, besides Power to The People and Happy Christmas. Peace activism and involvement in humanitarian causes gave the couple more prominence than music ever did. Lennon scored a #1 hit with the duet with Elton John, Whatever Gets You Thru The Night (1974). An embarrassing string of mediocre albums ended with Double Fantasy (Geffen, 1980), released a couple of months before his death. It contains the hits Starting Over and Woman. (it also contains the famous sentence "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" but that was plagiarized from "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans" by Allen Saunders, who originated the saying 23 years earlier). McCartney managed a few albums worthy of the Beatles (as chance would have it produced by George Martin), except they were not called "The Beatles". As a testament to rock consumerism and all the worst the genre embodies, McCartney's songs (solo or in the company of Wings ) regularly bounced to the top of the charts. Between boring lullabies (Maybe I'm Amazed, 1970, Another Day, 1971, Uncle Albert, 1971, My Love, 1973, Band On The Run, 1973, Listen To What The Man Said, 1975, Silly Love Songs, 1976, With A Little Luck, 1978; Coming Up, 1980, No More Lonely Nights, 1984, Spies Like Us, 1985), and duets with other singers (Say Say Say, 1983, with Michael Jackson, Ebony And Ivory, 1982, with Stevie Wonder), McCartney holds the record for the most #1 songs on the Billboard charts. Band On The Run (Capitol, 1973) is perhaps least mediocre of his albums. Mull of Kintyre, (1977) is the first British single that sold more than two million copies. Very few pop singers have been able to release songs so predictable. Each "return to form" album of the 1980s and 1990s was worse than the previous one until Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Capitol, 2005), produced by Nigel Godrich but mostly played by McCartney himself on all instruments. On the day of its release, Memory Almost Full (2007) was played all day in all Starbucks of the world, widely viewed a divine punishment for its customers. New (2013) went mostly unnoticed but you have to give him credit that his 17th album, Egypt Station (2018) reached again the top of the US charts, 36 years after Tug of War. While a trivial guitarist and vocalist, George Harrison (who died of cancer in November 2001) was perhaps the only one who made songs worthy of notice. First the experimental Wonderwall (Zapple, 1968) and Electronic Sounds (Zapple, 1969), with help from Bernie Krause (No Time Or Space, recorded and released by Harrison without Krause's knowledge nor permission), then the three-record box set All Things Must Pass (Apple, 1970), produced by Phil Spector, a reprise of the raga-psychedelic theme. Set in a bucolic-folk context, the album continues the discourse that Donovan had began in 1967 (What Is Life, Isn't It A Pity, Let It Down, Apple Scruffs, Art Of Dying, My Sweet Lord). This record has nothing in common with the music of the Beatles. A dedicated follower of Hare Krishna, among other platitudes of the 60s, Harrison organized the first grand concert to benefit a nation, Bangladesh, in 1972. In 1973 he recorded Living In The Material World with Give Me Love. Dark Horse (1974) and You (1975) were also hits. After a series of unfortunate albums, Harrison hit the charts in 1987, with I've Got My Mind Set On You, an old soul song by Rudy Clark. The following year he joined Dylan, Petty and Orbison to become one of the Traveling Wilburys. Throughout the 90s McCartney and a few discographers desperately tried to keep the Beatles myth alive by launching new commercial enterprises geared toward nostalgia. These ventures were followed with interest by the same tabloids that followed Lady Di and Princess Grace of Monaco. If you want to find out why some critics think that Beatlemania was the biggest swindle of all times, Love (2006) is the album to start with. "Remixed" by George Martin in person, these songs include tunes that most singer-songwriters would be ashamed to use, sitting next to old hits that were as trivial as the worst fluff of the Sixties. The new generations will be relieved to learn that they did not miss much. The old generations will be disappointed to see that the music press has not changed much from the days when the majors told them what to write. After the breakup, the role of George Martin became evident. We will never know what the Beatles would have been had they not encountered Martin, but we do know who Martin was before he met the Beatles. Even without the Beatles, George Martin would have been himself, a successful producer who reached the top of the charts with a collection of catchy tunes. And we also know what the Beatles were without Martin:four mediocre singer-songwriters. Their solo records tell us how good they were without Martin. Martin died in 2016. The Beatles made history for their melodies and their arrangements. Beatlemania was created, justifiably, in response to the exuberant rock and roll they played in 1963 with electrical instruments and drums, that managed to revitalize a genre drowned in sugar coated orchestrations supporting teen idols. Revolver must definitely be credited with having created a new sophisticated living room pop art. However, Sgt. Pepper, their most famous album, is nothing more than a hypocritically commercial album, a collection of traditional pop songs masked as psychedelic avant garde music. It nevertheless served as a prelude to the baroque suite Abbey Road, the apex of their formality. Similar parallels can be found in almost every band of those times, but few listeners know the records of those bands. Even at their best the Beatles did not represent the spirit of their generation. When they tried they were late, or even against the mainstream. At best they expressed the values of the generation that preceded theirs, the 40s. Those values were moral, musical, of the social order, and respect, the very values attacked in the 50s by rock and roll. Thus the fact that the songs of the Beatles were similar in lyrics, music and arrangements to those of Tin Pan Alley should not surprise anyone. Some of those songs will forever be listed in the annals of melodic music: Love Me Do, Hard Day's Night, I Feel Fine, We Can Work It Out, Penny Lane, Hello Goodbye, A Little Help From My Friends, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. For what it is worth, the everlasting refrains of those songs took rock and roll all the way down to a level of silliness and childish humor, separating it from its violent rebellious roots. With out a shadow of a doubt, the Beatles were great melodicists, but at a time when melody was considered a reductive factor. As a matter of fact their melodies marked a regression to the 50s, to the type of singer the recording industry was desperately trying to push on the audience and against whom rock sought to rebel. The Beatles tried every fashion exported by the US: Chuck Berry's rock and roll, the vocal harmonies of the Beach Boys, the romantic melody of Tin Pan Alley, the baroque sound of Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), the rock opera Absolutely Free (Frank Zappa), the psychedelic arrangements of the Electric Prunes and the like, the hard riffs of the blues-rock jams (Cream), the synthesis of folk-rock (launched by Dylan and the Grateful Dead). Yet the audience credited these innovations - brought about by others - to the Beatles. All things considered, their success is one of the greatest paradoxes of the century. The Beatles understood virtually nothing of what was happening around them, but the success of anything they copied was guaranteed. By buying their records, one bought a shortcut to the music of those times. The enormous influence of the Beatles was not musical. Music, especially in those days, was something else: experimental, instrumental, improvised, political. The Beatles played pop ditties until the end. The most creative rock musicians of the time played everything but pop ditties, because rock was conceived as an alternative to ditties. FM radio was created to play rock music, not pop ditties. Alternative music magazines were born to review rock music, not pop songs. Evidently, to the kids who listened to the Beatles (mostly girls attracted by their looks), rock music had nothing to say that they were willing to listen to. They were influential, yes, but on the customs - in the strictest sense of the word. Their influence, for better or for worse, on the great phenomena of the 60s does not amount to much. Unlike Bob Dylan, they did not stir social revolts; unlike the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead they did not foster the hippie movement; unlike Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix they did not further the myth of LSD; unlike Jagger and Zappa they had no impact on the sexual revolution. Indeed the Beatles were icons of the customs that embodied the opposite: the desire to contain all that was happening. In their songs there is no Vietnam, there is no politics, there are no kids rioting in the streets, there is no sexual promiscuity, there are no drugs, there is no violence. In the world of the Beatles the social order of the 1940s and the 1950s still reigns. At best they were influential on the secret dreams of young girls, and on the haircuts of young nerdy boys. The Beatles had the historical function to serve as champions of the reaction. Their smiles and their choruses hid the revolution: they concealed the restlessness of an underground movement ready to explode, for a bourgeoisie who wanted to hear nothing about it. They had nothing to say and that is why they never said it.

(Lettere dei lettori) I Beatles appartengono certamente alla storia del costume degli anni '60, ma i loro meriti musicali sono quantomeno dubbi. I Beatles vennero alla luce all'apice della reazione nei confronti del rock and roll, quando innocui "teen idols" (rigorosamente bianchi) prendevano il posto dei selvaggi rocker neri che avevano scosso le radio e le coscienze di mezza America. L'arrivo dei Beatles rappresento` il salvagente per la middle-class bianca, terrorizzata all'idea che il rock and roll rappresentasse una vera rivoluzione di costume. I Beatles tranquillizzarono quella vasta fascia di pubblico e conquistarono i cuori di tutti coloro (soprattutto al femminile) che volevano essere ribelli ma senza violare i codici imperanti. Ai volti contorti e lascivi dei neri del rock and roll si sostituiro i sorrisi innocenti dei Beatles; ai ritmi scatenati dei primi si sostituirono le cadenze orecchiabili dei secondi. Il rock and roll poteva finalmente essere accettato nelle classifiche del "pop". I Beatles rappresentarono la quintessenza della reazione a una rivoluzione musicale che non era finita, e per qualche anno riuscirono ad arenarne l'impeto. I Beatles rappresentarono anche la reazione a una rivoluzione sociale e politica. I Beatles vennero alla luce negli anni dei disordini studenteschi, di Bob Dylan e degli hippies. I Beatles sostituirono le immagini di quei giovani arrabbiati col pugno chiuso con i loro visi simpatici e le loro dichiarazioni amabili. I Beatles sostituirono le parole d'accusa di quei musicisti militanti con filastrocche corrive. Anche in questo i Beatles servirono a tranquillizzare la middle-class, che la nuova generazione non era composta soltanto da ribelli, sbandati e maniaci sessuali. Per il resto della loro carriera i Beatles furono quattro musicisti mediocri che cantavano ancora canzoni melodiche di tre minuti (le stesse che si facevano da decenni) in un'era in cui la musica rock tentava di spingersi al di la` di quel formato (un formato originariamente dovuto alle limitazioni tecniche del 78 giri). I Beatles furono la quintessenza del "mainstream", assimilando nel formato della canzone melodica le innovazioni che venivano man mano proposte dalla musica rock. I Beatles appartenevano ancora, come i Beach Boys (di cui emularono gran parte della carriera), all'era dei complessi vocali, nei quali la tecnica allo strumento non era importante: cio` che contava era il ritornello. Indubbiamente dotati nel comporre ritornelli, si avvalsero del produttore George Martin (capo della Parlophone fin dal 1956) per abbellire quei ritornelli con arrangiamenti via via piu` eccentrici. Grazie a un'accorta campagna pubblicitaria, divennero forse gli entertainer piu` celebri della seconda meta` del secolo, e sono rimasti beniamini dei rotocalchi mondani e dei tabloid, cosi` come le principesse di Monaco e Lady Di. La convergenza fra polifonia occidentale (la melodia, le armonie vocali in piu` parti, gli arrangiamenti) e percussivita` africana, che era stata il leitmotiv della musica popolare americana fin dagli albori, venne legittimata in Europa dal successo strepitoso del Merseybeat, e in particolare dei suoi esponenti piu` venduti, i Gerry and the Pacemakers e i Beatles, entrambi gruppi pilotati dal produttore George Martin e dal manager Brian Epstein. I complessi del Merseybeat ebbero il grande merito di legittimare il rock presso un pubblico molto piu` ampio, virtualmente senza confini. Seppero interpretare lo spirito e le tecniche del rock and roll in un modo largamente emancipato dalle sue istanze sociali e in tal modo (disinnescandone il potenziale esplosivo) lo resero accessibile a tutti, e non soltanto ai giovani ribelli. Mediocri musicisti e ancor piu` mediocri intellettuali, complessi come i Beatles avevano pero` l'intuito del saltimbanco che sa come divertire i contadini dopo una dura giornata di lavoro, un intuito trasferito nell'era della distribuzione di massa dei beni di consumo. Ogni loro canzone e ogni loro album faceva seguito a canzoni e album altrui ben piu` salienti, ma, lungi dal semplice copiarli, le canzoni dei Beatles li riconducevano anche a una dimensione piu` borghese, ortodossa, conformista. Cosi` anche per le idee del tempo, dalla "contestazione" dei campus universitari al pacifismo di Dylan, dalla droga all'Oriente. Il loro veicolo era la melodia, una sorta di codice universale che dichiarava innocua la loro musica. Naturalmente altri complessi compirono la stessa operazione, e molti (dai Kinks agli Hollies, dai Beach Boys ai Mamas & Papas) produssero melodie forse piu` memorabili, ma i Beatles arrivarono al momento giusto e loro sarebbe rimasto il marchio di fabbrica sulla canzone melodica della seconda meta` del Novecento. La loro ascesa venne contrassegnata dalla "Beatlemania", un fenomeno di isteria di massa (lanciato nel 1963) che rappresento` l'apice della parabola del "teen idol", una figura che si era venuta delineando attraverso i miti di Frank Sinatra ed Elvis Presley. Da quel momento in avanti, qualunque musica componessero, i Beatles rimasero al centro dell'attenzione dei media. Musicalmente, per quello che conta, i Beatles furono il prodotto di un'era che era stata preparata da gruppi vocali come gli Everly Brothers e da cantanti rock melodici come Buddy Holly; un'era che si espresse anche attraverso i girl-group, i complessi della Tamla e i complessi di musica surf. I Beatles hanno in comune con tutti questi (oltre a melodie quasi identiche) un concetto generale della canzone come melodia esuberante, cadenzata, ottimista. I Beatles erano la quintessenza della mediocrita` strumentale. George Harrison era un chitarrista patetico al confronto degli altri in circolazione a Londra in quegli anni (Townshend degli Who, Richards dei Rolling Stones, Davies dei Kinks, Clapton e Beck e Page degli Yardbirds, e tanti altri meno famosi ma molto piu` originali). I Beatles si erano completamente persi la rivoluzione della musica rock (che era fondata sull'uso vistoso della chitarra) ed erano rimasti al modulo delle orchestrine di musica leggera. Paul McCartney era un cantante anni '50, che non avrebbe potuto cantare in maniera piu` scontata. Come bassista non valeva l'ultimo dei bassisti rhythm and blues (anche se nel mondo del Merseybeat il suo stile era effettivamente rivoluzionario). Ringo Starr suonava la batteria come qualsiasi ragazzo dell'epoca (in realta` era forse l'unico dei quattro ad avere un minimo di competenza tecnica). Complessivamente la tecnica dei quattro era la stessa di tanti altri complessi di easy-listening: sub-standard. I loro erano dischi di canzoni tradizionali, canzoni come si facevano da secoli, ma servivano un pubblico immenso, ben piu` numeroso di quello (hippies e contestatori) che voleva cambiare il mondo. I fans dei Beatles ignoravano o aborrivano i tanti musicisti rock che in quegli anni stavano sperimentando con il formato della suite, che stavano componendo lunghi brani free-form, che stavano usando la dissonanza, che stavano cambiando radicalmente il concetto di brano musicale. I fans dei Beatles pensavano (e molti lo pensano ancora oggi) che usare le trombe in una canzone rock fosse un fatto rivoluzionario, che usare qualche rumore di sottofondo (peraltro appena udibile) fosse un fatto ancor piu` rivoluzionario e che soltanto grandi geni musicali potessero svariare in cosi` tanti stili nell'arco di uno stesso album (proprio cio` che tanti musicisti rock stavano facendo in giro per il mondo, e con ben altre escursioni stilistiche). Mentre i Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, i Doors, i Pink Floyd, e tanti altri componevano lunghe e ardite suite degne della musica d'avanguardia, ed elevavano la musica rock ad arte maggiore, i Beatles continuarono fino alla fine a sfornare canzoni di tre minuti impostate sul ritornello. Cio` non toglie che la Beatlemania trasformasse tutto in mito. I fans dei Beatles si esaltavano per venti secondi di tromba, anche se i Velvet Underground componevano suite di rumore di venti minuti. C'erano in realta` ordini e ordini di grandezza di differenza fra una tromba e il rumore, e fra venti secondi e venti minuti. Erano (musicalmente, sociologicamente, politicamente, artisticamente, ideologicamente) due pianeti diversi. La Beatlemania provoco` una comica distorsione temporale. Molti fans dei Beatles rimasero convinti che il rock and roll fosse nato intorno ai primi anni '60, che il rock psichedelico e gli hippies fossero stati un fenomeno del 1967, che i disordini studenteschi fossero iniziati nel 1969, che le proteste pacifiste fossero esplore alla fine degli anni '60, e cosi` via. Molti fans dei Beatles rimasero convinti che i Beatles fossero stati i primi in tutto, mentre furono gli ultimi quasi in tutto. Il caso dei Beatles e` un esempio canonico di come il mito possa deformare la storia. I Beatles ebbero la funzione storica di ritardare l'impatto delle innovazioni degli anni '60. Mentre fra il 1966 e il 1969 andava di modo la suite, la jam, il brano lungo dallo svolgimento piu` o meno libero (a cui i Beatles arrivarono soltanto alla fine della loro carriera), mentre il mondo era pieno di chitarristi, pianisti, bassisti, cantanti e batteristi che suonavano assoli e sperimentavano sul contrappunto, i Beatles si limitavano a battere il tempo e ad accompagnare la melodia. Ma la loro funzione storica fu anche quella di far accettare alcune di quelle innovazioni (la musica rock stessa) al pubblico piu` conservatore.

La loro forza fu forse proprio quella di essere l'epitome della mediocrita`: mai un volo di genio, mai un'idea rivoluzionaria, mai discostarsi dallo standard; accettare le novita` soltanto quando sono state accettate dall'establishment. Ma forse proprio quella cronica mediocrita` fece la loro fortuna: laddove gli altri complessi cercavano di superare il proprio pubblico, di stare sempre due passi avanti alla miopia dei loro fans, di aprire strade sempre piu` tortuose e territori sempre piu` avventurosi, i Beatles furono sempre attenti a condurre i propri fans per mano lungo un rettilineo senza curve e, soprattutto, senza salite. I fans dei Beatles possono cambiare a piacimento il significato del termine "artistico", ma la verita` e` che il valore artistico dell'intera opera dei Beatles e` bassissimo. I Beatles fecero soltanto canzoni, e spesso canzoni senza pretese, con melodie tanto orecchiabili quanto quelle di tanti altri cantanti di musica leggera. Il valore artistico di quelle canzoni e` il valore artistico di una canzone: per quanto ben fatta (ed e` persino discutibile quante delle loro canzoni fossero davvero superiori alla media e quante fossero semplicemente le canzoni del gruppo piu` pubblicizzato del momento), rimane una canzone. Esattamente come un dentifricio rimane un dentifricio, e non diventa un quadro d'arte soltanto perche' e` molto pubblicizzato. I Beatles vengono giustamente giudicati per le belle melodie che scrissero. Ma quelle melodie erano "belle" soltanto paragonate alle melodie di quelli che "non" cercavano di scrivere melodie, ai musicisti che stavano rivoluzionando il concetto di musica popolare con suite, jam, rumori, etc. Molti contemporanei di Beethoven scrissero minuetti che Beethoven non scrisse mai: ma forse perche' Beethoven stava cercando di scrivere altro, anzi stava proprio cercando di creare una musica che non fosse fatta di banali minuetti. Le melodie dei Beatles erano invece forse inferiori alle melodie di chi cercava di scrivere melodie, ai tanti compositori di musica leggera che rappresentano tuttora la vera concorrenza per la musica dei Beatles (ma che erano meno famosi e pertanto meno ascoltati). Le canzoni dei Beatles erano corredate da testi discretamente sciocchi per quell'epoca, un'epoca in cui innumerevoli cantautori e complessi tentavano di dire qualcosa di intelligente. I testi dei Beatles erano ancora legati alla tradizione della canzone leggera, mentre nella musica rock dilagavano narrazioni fortemente psicologiche, satire anti-establishment, arringhe politiche, droga, sesso e morte (giusto o sbagliato che fosse). Il fatto piu` artistico e innovativo alla fin fine erano gli arrangiamenti di George Martin, che, forse conscio dei limiti musicali dei Beatles, uso` i sessionmen e lo studio di registrazione in maniera creativa, spingendosi forse oltre quanto avevano tradizionalmente fatto i produttori di musica leggera (che da sempre si appoggiano alle orchestrine e allo studio di registrazione per abbellire le canzoni). In piu` Martin aveva indubbiamente la passione per i suoni insoliti. Agli inizi della sua carriera, aveva prodotto Rolf Harris' Tie Me Kangaroo, che usava il didjeridoo in un'epoca in cui quasi nessuno sapeva cosa fosse. Fra il 1959 e il 1962 Martin aveva prodotto diversi dischi di comici britannici, nei quali aveva sperimentato a dirotto ispirandosi al comico californiano Stan Freberg, forse il primo ad aver usato lo studio di registrazione come uno strumento. In quanto icone popolari, personaggi celeberrimi, etc, i Beatles furono certamente influenti sul loro tempo (benche' molto meno di quanto i loro fans suppongano). Anche Richard Nixon, il presidente USA della guerra del Vietnam e del Watergate, fu influente sul suo tempo e sulle generazioni successive: cio` non ne fa un grande musicista. Oggi le loro canzoni sono suonate per lo piu` nei supermercati. Ma il loro mito, come quello di Rodolfo Valentino e Frank Sinatra, vivra` finche' vivranno i fans che ci hanno creduto. Negli anni la loro fama verra` sostenuta artificialmente da campagne pubblicitarie colossali, che non hanno eguali nella storia dello spettacolo. La loro storia ebbe inizio alla fine degli anni '50. I Crickets di Buddy Holly ("grilli") avevano di fatto inventato il concetto moderno di complesso rock. Indirettamente avevano anche lanciato la moda di battezzare un complesso rock con una parola plurale (come i complessi doo-wop prima di loro) ma una parola comica invece che seria. In breve spuntarono complessi come i Crickets dappertutto e quasi tutti con nomi di una parola plurale. A dilagare furono gli insetti. I piu` famosi furono i Beatles. Costruiti piu` che altro per portare in Europa lo spirito spensierato, le melodie semplici e le armonie vocali dei Beach Boys (la novita` americana di turno), i Beatles finirono per diventare loro malgrado il massimo successo discografico del loro tempo. Detto che ne' i Beatles ne' i Beach Boys appartengono alla storia maggiore della musica, entrambi furono pero` influenti nel conferire credibilita` commerciale alla musica rock e nell'incoraggiare migliaia di ragazzi in giro per il mondo a formare complessi rock; un po' come il successo di Elvis Presley, anche lui lungi dall'essere un grande musicista, aveva incoraggiato migliaia di ragazzi bianchi (fra cui Beach Boys e Beatles) a diventare rockers. La "swinging London" degli anni '60 era un misto di rinnovamento, mediocrita` qualunquista, disimpegno, rinascita della cultura, attrazione turistica, frenesia di vivere, di istanze di ribellione sommerse dalle insegne luminose, di ragazzi capelloni e di ragazze in minigonne, di benessere e ipocrisia del benessere, di qualunquismo e dolce vita, e molte altre cose; i Beatles furono il prodotto piu` venduto di quella Londra ambigua e contraddittoria. I Beatles erano originari di Liverpool. John Lennon, che aveva suonato per anni in un gruppo di skiffle (i Quarrymen, fondati nel 1955) prima di formare i Beatles nel 1960 con McCartney, suonava la chitarra ritmica. George Harrison, assunto quando era ancora minorenne, era il chitarrista principe (con uno stile essenziale che si ispirava alle chitarre rockabilly di James Burton e Carl Perkins). Dopo aver fatto gavetta ad Amburgo in Germania (suonando i classici del rock and roll), debuttarono al Cavern di Liverpool il 21 febbraio 1961. In seguito Ringo Starr rilevo` il batterista e Paul McCartney passo` al basso. A differenza degli altri gruppi del Merseybeat, che fin dal 1960 si erano evoluti verso uno stile sempre piu` guidato dalla chitarra, i Beatles continuarono a far leva sulle armonie vocali, come si faceva negli anni '40 e '50. Nel 1962 era esploso il fenomeno di Beach Boys e Four Seasons, due complessi che in realta` eseguivano musica melodica vocale ma che imitavano i Crickets nell'assetto. Furono comunque Beach Boys e Four Seasons a imporre le armonie vocali a piu` parti nella musica leggera bianca (un derivato del doo-wop dei gruppi neri, che era stato popolare per tutti gli anni '50). Quell'anno i Beatles cominciarono la transizione da gruppo di cover (come tanti altri in Europa) a gruppo melodico vocale. Uno dei primi brani dei Beach Boys era stato la revisione di un brano di Chuck Berry. Uno dei primi brani dei Beatles sara` la revisione di un brano di Chuck Berry. Paul McCartney suonava il basso come Brian Wilson nei Beach Boys. Brian Epstein fu l'uomo che li scoperse (nel novembre del 1961) e fu l'uomo che ne creo` l'immagine (fu lui a inventare il loro abbigliamento e la loro capigliatura a caschetto (copiata dal comico televisivo Ish Kabibble), nonche' a trovare il contratto con la EMI). George Martin fu l'uomo che ne creo` il sound. Il 1962 fu l'anno di Dylan, delle dimostrazioni pacifiste, delle canzoni di protesta. Proprio nel 1962, quasi agli antipodi di cio` che stava accadendo in USA, i Beatles esordirono con un 45 giri, Love Me Do (registrata nel settembre 1962), che era un gioviale rhythm and blues condotto dall'armonica nello stile di Delbert McClinton. Il brano entro` in classifica alla fine dell'anno. Nel febbraio del 1963 il complesso raggiunse la seconda posizione delle vendite con Please Please Me. Un'accorta campagna pubblicitaria, gestita genialmente da Epstein, scateno` nel giro di pochi mesi l'isteria di massa: dischi che si esaurivano prima ancora di essere stampati, mass-media che seguivano passo-passo le avventure dei quattro eroi, moda che ne imitiva le pettinature a caschetto. Epstein aveva creato la "Beatlemania". Di pari passo con il crescere del fanatismo procedeva anche il raffinamento del loro stile, che assimilava continuamente nuovi elementi e diventava sempre piu` melodico, rinnegando progressivamente le radici rhythm and blues da cui era partito. Attraverso From Me To You, la scalmanata She Loves You (con i primi selvaggi "yeah-yeah") e I Want To Hold Your Hand (con clapping e un ritmo piu` pesante, in pratica una fusione di Everly Brothers e twist), tutti al primo posto delle classifiche del 1963, si affermava una tecnica che fondeva secoli di stili vocali (innodia sacra, song elisabettiana, music-hall, ballata folk, gospel e doo-wop) in una forma armoniosa e cristallina di ritornello ottimista, una variante dell'operazione appena compiuta negli USA dalle Shirelles. Nei casi migliori era lo stile giovale/infantile/orecchiabile di Buddy Holly a essere copiato, ma accelerandone il ritmo secondo la moda del "twist". Il twist era il successo straordinario di quegli anni: ritmo veloce, atteggiamento provocante e ritornelli orecchiabili. I Beatles intuirono che quella era la formula giusta. In USA non se n'era ancora accorto nessuno, e degli album Please Please Me (marzo 1963) e With The Beatles (novembre 1963) erano apparse soltanto versioni menomate con titoli diversi, ma nel gennaio 1964 la EMI decise di investire massicciamente e puntualmente I Want To Hold Your Hand arrivo` al primo posto delle classifiche USA, e cosi` fece il primo album USA, Meet The Beatles (Capitol, 1964). Negli USA, ripuliti dalla feccia del rock and roll perverso e amorale degli anni '50, il loro Merseybeat educato e orecchiabile venne visto di buon occhio dai media. Dopo la prima tournee` del febbraio 1964 e la loro apparizione all'"Ed Sullivan Show", i loro 45 giri capeggiavano saldamente anche le classifiche americane (nell'aprile del 1964 occupavano i primi cinque posti). D'altronde il loro sound era saturo di musiche americane: lo stile vocale era mutuato ora dagli hard-rocker come Little Richard e ora dai call-and-response soffici dei Drifters (l'echeggiarsi l'un l'altro, il protendere una parola per diverse battute, l'urlare "yeah" in modo scomposto ed emettere gridolini in falsetto), oltre che dai ritornelli di Holly e dalle armonie dei Beach Boys, mentre lo stile strumentale si rifaceva ancora ai combo di twist.

Il segreto del successo dei Beatles (in USA come in UK) fu la semplicita` degli arrangiamenti: laddove gli idoli dell'epoca erano spalleggiati da arrangiamenti complessi e quasi classici, e talvolta anche da effetti di studio, i Beatles usavano la tecnica elementare dei complessi surf senza alcun supporto dell'orchestra e senza effetti surreali. I Beatles riaffermarono il primato del cantante in un'epoca in cui il cantante era sempre piu` subalterno allo studio di registrazione. I giovani degli USA si riconobbero nel loro stile immediato rispetto a quello artificiale dei "teen idols" degli anni '50 cosi` come si erano riconosciuti nei primi dischi di Presley rispetto a quelli artificiali della musica leggera degli anni '50. In parallelo il sound dei Beatles si stava ammorbidendo, seguendo il resto del Mersey sound. Martin era anche il produttore dei gruppo Gerry & The Pacemakers (formati nel 1959 e anch'essi gestiti da Epstein), i cui primi tre 45 giri erano arrivati al primo posto delle classifiche di vendita. Lo stile orecchiabile dei Beatles era, in effetti, stato sperimentato con i Pacemakers, i cui primi tre 45 giri (How Do You Do It, marzo 1963, I Like It, maggio 1963, You`ll Never Walk Alone, ottobre 1963) coniarono di fatto lo stile: una versione molto melodica del rock and roll e una versione molto edulcorata dei suoi testi ribelli. In pratica i Pacemakers (o chi per loro) avevano trasferito il rock and roll nella musica leggera, sostituendo ai ritmi forti e "sporchi" del rhythm and blues quelli leggeri e ordinati della canzone europea, sostituendo alle melodie oblique del blues quelle orecchiabili dell'operetta britannica e sostituendo ai testi adolescenziali conturbanti di Chuck Berry i testi adolescenziali romantici dei "teen idols". Con i Beatles il duo di Epstein e Martin continuo` semplicemente quell'idea. La differenza e` che adesso gli autori di quasi tutto il repertorio erano John Lennon e Paul McCartney (non necessariamente in coppia, anche se tutte le canzoni portano la firma di entrambi per ragioni contrattuali). Nel 1964 a Berkeley, in California, scoppiano i primi disordini studenteschi. I ragazzi protestano contro la guerra del Vietnam, ma in generale protestano contro l'establishment. La ribellione che covava dagli anni '50 trova un veicolo intellettuale. I Beatles non ne sanno nulla e quell'anno registrano Can't Buy Me Love (un rockabilly swingante e melodico alla Bill Haley, il primo ad arrivare al primo posto sia in UK sia in USA), A Hard Day's Night e I Feel Fine (su cui, nel novembre 1964, Lennon usava il feedback, inventato negli anni '50 da chitarristi blues come Johnny Watson e Willie Johnson e gia` usato da Clapton negli Yardbirds), canzoni sempre piu` esuberanti con ritornelli sempre piu` memorabili, tutte ai primi posti su entrambi i lati dell'Atlantico. Con queste canzoni e con i loro atteggiamenti pubblici, i Beatles impongono uno stile di essere giovani piu` fantasioso e provocatorio. I Beatles sono appena nati eppure girano gia` il primo dei documentari surreali dedicati alla loro vita quotidiana, A Hard Day's Night e vengono pubblicate le prime due biografie del gruppo. Ma in USA l'investimento e` sempre piu` massiccio: la EMI firma contratti a valanga per favorire il mercato di parrucche alla Beatles, di abiti alla Beatles, di cartoni animati ispirati ai Beatles, persino di bambole Beatles. L'America e` invasa dall'immagine di quei quattro ragazzi sorridenti, con la creazione del mito di "teen idols". che sembrano esorcizzare la guerra del Vietnam, i disordini studenteschi, le marce della pace, l'assassinio di John Kennedy, i disordini razziali, Bob Dylan, il rock and roll e tutte le altre tragedie (presunte o reali) che affliggono l'"American Dream". In fondo, e` una forma di terapia d'urto. Naturalmente dietro quei quattro volti sorridenti si celano semplicemente quattro mediocri musicisti (e quattro miliardari snob nella piu` fiera tradizione britannica). Non sono il simbolo di una ribellione, ma, al contrario, il braccio armato della reazione. I Beatles ottimisti ed effervescenti rappresentano soprattutto il bisogno di "evadere" dalla realta`. In particolare i giovani aveva un bisogno disperato di qualcosa in cui credere, qualcosa che non fosse soltanto bombe e teppismo. I Beatles trasferirono in musica l'entusiasmo delle masse e, di ritorno, vennero acclamati con entusiasmo dalle stesse masse, in un ciclo che rasentava il moto perpetuo. Il meglio del loro cliche' e` riassunto da un celebre aneddoto: intervistato durante la tournee americana, alla domanda "come avete trovato l'America?" Lennon rispose "abbiamo preso a sinistra in Groenlandia!" In quest'humour anarchico e surreale e` racchiuso il merito piu` grande del quartetto. Dal 1965 il long-playing, che nei due anni precedenti era stato in secondo piano rispetto ai 45 giri (le versioni USA degli LP comprendevano gli hit, quelle Britanniche in genere no e avevano 14 canzoni contro le 12 delle versioni USA), diventa invece la nuova unita` di misura del loro lavoro. A Hard Day's Night (1964) era stato il primo album contenente soltanto materiale di Lennon e McCartney, anche se seguito da For Sale che aveva sei cover (ma anche Eight Days A Week e la malinconica I Don't Want To Spoil The Party). Help (Agosto 1965) aveva segnato la transizione dal Merseybeat a un sound piu` folk e country (in molte canzoni sembra di ascoltare Buddy Holly), svariando da The Night Before a Ticket To Ride. I Beatles di questo periodo sfoderano soprattutto un talento formidabile per la ballata malinconica, come dimostrano You've Got To Hide Your Love Away e soprattutto Yesterday, il "lento" per eccellenza di Paul McCartney a cui Martin aggiunse un quartetto d'archi (la canzone assomiglia un po' a Yesterdays, scritta nel 1933 da Jerome Kern e Otto Harbach), anche se forse il meglio si trova ancora nei brani piu` aggressivi, come Help, un gospel adattato al loro stile surreale e pieno di vita.

Rubber Soul (dicembre 1965) completo` la transizione dal 45 giri all'album e dal Mersey sound al folk-rock. L'influenza dei Byrds e` fortissima. (If I Needed Someone e` un omaggio esplitico, che usa anche un riff di Jim McGuinn). I rock and roll di Drive My Car e Run For Your Life, il piglio esotico di Norwegian Wood (una litania alla David Crosby accompagnata dal sitar, gia` usato dagli Yardbirds, e forse a imitazione di cio` che avevano fatto pochi mesi prima i Kinks con See My Friends), e la pallida psichedelia di Nowhere Man spazzolano un repertorio armonico relativamente ampio per i loro standard. Per quanto i Beatles cercassero il successo nel mondo del rock and roll, era evidente che riuscivano meglio nel vecchio mondo della canzone melodica. Le tenere Girl e, soprattutto, Michelle (uno dei loro classici "lenti" d'atmosfera, per sola chitarra ritmica, coro e basso melodico, nello stile dei gruppi vocali degli anni '50) erano davvero eccellenti nel loro genere, anche se ai tempi vennero considerate "minori" in virtu` del fatto che non vantavano ritmo e volume.

Nel 1965 i Beatles, fermi all'era delle canzoni "soffici", registrano We Can Work It Out, uno dei loro capolavori melodici, d'atmosfera francese (organetto da strada, fisarmonica). Continuano anche a inseguire il miraggio del "rave-up" con Day Tripper, che sfodera il loro riff piu` duro dell'epoca (rubato a Watch Your Step del bluesman Bobby Parker) ma suona piu` che altro come una patetica risposta a Satisfaction dei Rolling Stones e a You Really Got Me dei Kinks, i due brani "duri" che avevano scosso le classifiche di quell'anno (uscite rispettivamente a gennaio e l'anno prima). I Beatles si liberarono definitivamente di quell'ossessione con il long playing dell'agosto 1966, Revolver, che e` interamente dedicato alla canzone sofisticata. L'album, estremamente curato, e` una versione ancor piu` "leggera" del precedente. Un altro brano psichedelico, Tomorrow Never Knows (sitar, backward guitar, droni d'organo), un altro brano orientaleggiante, Love You To, uno persino classicheggiante, Eleanor Rigby, un'aria da operetta-vaudeville, Goodday Sunshine, i rhythm and blues di Got To Get You Into My Life e Dr. Robert, nonche' Rain, registrata nelle stesse sessions (con backward vocals, ma ispirata a Eight Miles High, che era entrata in classifica qualche mese prima), sono mitigati da un atteggiamento sempre piu` languido e romantico. I pochi sussulti di ritmo vengono subito rintuzzati dalle tenere effusioni di I'm Only Sleeping (con assolo di backward guitar), Here There And Everywhere e For No One,

Con questo album i Beatles si allontanarono ancor piu` dalla musica rock e si avvicinarono alle orchestrine di musica leggera e in particolare al pop del Brill Building, del quale genere infatti questo album rimane paradossalmente un capolavoro. (Erano gli anni in cui la canzone melodica di tutto il mondo era influenzata dal Brill Building). Naturalmente Revolver era in ritardo di mille anni sulla musica rock: quell'anno Dylan aveva pubblicato Blonde On Blonde, un doppio album con composizioni di undici minuti, e Frank Zappa pubblicava Freak Out, un altro doppio album per di piu` in forma di collage. La musica rock stava sperimentando le lunghe jam in formato libero: Virgin Forest dei Fugs, Up In Her Room dei Seeds, Going Home dei Rolling Stones. Le canzoni dei Beatles provenivano davvero da un altro secolo. La perfezione formale del loro melodismo si sublima invece nei 45 giri del 1967: quello barocco/elettronico di Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever che esce a febbraio (il primo a non raggiungere la cima delle classifiche e uno dei loro massimi capolavori), quello quasi hard-rock di Paperback Writer, e quello bambinesco di Yellow Submarine, mosaico di gag sonore e di cori da pub. Penny Lane rappresenta l'apice manieristico dell'arrangiamento: ritmo vaudeville, melodia ipnotica, trombe rinascimentali, flauti folk, triangoli. Strawberry Fields Forever e` un altro esperimento psichedelico forte di un arrangiamento denso e caleidoscopico (backward vocals, mellotron, arpa, timpani, bongos, tromba, violoncello). Gli esperimenti sarebbero forse continuati in direzione piu` seria, come lascia pensare l'ottima idea di Carnival of Light di 14 minuti, registrata al principio del 1967 ma mai completata e mai pubblicata. Il 1967 fu l'anno delle radio FM che cominciavano a trasmettere lunghi brani strumentali. In Gran Bretagna fu anche l'anno della moda psichedelica: in Aprile si tenne il Technicolor Dream, che segno` l'apice del fervore psichedelico a Londra, facendo seguito a vari eventi dell'UFO Club, e i Pink Floyd destarono scalpore con i loro singoli psichedelici. Puntualmente i Beatles registrano Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), l'album quasi-concept che usci` proprio nei giorni in cui il festival di Monterey consacrava i nomi sacri di quegli anni. A differenza dei dischi rivoluzionari di quegli anni, registrati con mezzi umili e in fretta e furia, l'album dei Beatles era costato un'enormita` e aveva richiesto quattro mesi di lavoro.

I Beatles si librano nel ritornello etereo di Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (le cui iniziali dicono "LSD"), con sitar, organi scordati e acuti indianeggianti, indulgono in canzoncine da vaudeville come Lovely Rita e When I'm Sixty Four (un ragtime d'epoca degno della Bonzo Band), sfoderano il melodismo stralunato di With A Little Help, e disseminano effetti di studio qua e la` per darsi l'aria di avanguardisti (Fixing A Hole e soprattutto Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite), in realta` tutti spunti mediati dal music-hall, dal circo e dalle bande di paese.

A Day In The Life rappresenta l'apice di questo matrimonio di tecnica e di filosofia, di questo felice connubio fra la fantasia armonica di Martin (persino un'orchestra di quaranta elementi, in cui ogni strumento suona dalla nota piu` bassa a quella piu` alta) e l'esistenzialismo hippie di Lennon (che viviseziona l'alienazione borghese).

Tutto fluisce senza intoppi all'insegna di un melodismo di prima qualita`, ora potenziato da arrangiamenti d'alta fedelta`, e svariando con la solita disinvoltura dalla ballata folk al vaudeville di periferia, dal soul alle marce da fiera, dall'Oriente allo swing, dalla musica da camera alla psichedelia, dal tip-tap alle orchestrine del parco. Il tutto fuso in un flusso continuo che ricorda il susseguersi di sketch di uno spettacolo di varieta`. Piu` che un album di musica psichedelica (rispetto alla quale sembra davvero un disco di retroguardia), Sgt Pepper fu la loro risposta ai sofisticati arrangiamenti pop di Pet Sounds, il capolavoro dei loro rivali Beach Boys, uscito un anno e tre mesi prima. I Beatles erano sempre stati ossessionati dai Beach Boys, dei quali avevano copiato le armonie vocali a piu` parti, lo stile melodico e l'atteggiamento di pazzerelli (tutta la carriera dei Beatles dal 1963 al 1968 ricalca praticamente quella dei Beach Boys, con un anno o due di ritardo, fino alla formazione della Apple Records esattamente un anno dopo la formazione della Brother Records). Pet Sounds aveva fatto scalpore, in quanto trasportava in una sofisticata arte di studio il melodismo naif della musica surf. I Beatles registrarono Sgt Pepper (dal febbraio al maggio 1967) sulla falsariga di Pet Sounds. Le differenze sono principalmente due: Pet Sounds venne arrangiato, orchestrato e prodotto da Brian Wilson in persona, non da un produttore esterno come George Martin; e i Beatles erano, come al solito, in ritardo sui tempi (non solo Pet Sounds era gia` uscito da un anno quando i Beatles cominciarono a registrare Sgt Pepper, ma erano gia` decine i dischi influenzati da Pet Sounds).

Il mito racconta che ci vollero ben 700 ore di registrazione per finire l'album. (Uno si domanda cosa avrebbero potuto fare tanti altri complessi meno fortunati con 700 ore di registrazione). Se uno prova a togliere qualche centinaia di ore di raffinamento, non rimane molto piu` di cio` che era gia` presente su Revolver: qualche tocco orientaleggiante, qualche bizzarria psichedelica, qualche arrangiamento classicheggiante. Togliendo ancora un po' di strati di produzione rimangono soltanto delle melodie pop, non molto diverse da quelle che scalavano le classifiche dieci anni prima.

La differenza e` che Sgt Pepper venne congegnato per far pensare all'opera rivoluzionaria. Fu anche il primo album dei Beatles di cui usci` una sola versione in tutto il mondo e quella versione era stata pensata per essere un album (nessuna delle sue canzoni usci` su singolo).

La verita` e` che, Per quanto dichiaratamente "sperimentale", anche Sgt Pepper rimaneva ancora un disco di musica leggera. I Beatles del 1967 facevano ancora canzoncine di tre minuti, mentre i Red Crayola e i Pink Floyd (per citare due gruppi psichedelici di quell'epoca) suonavano lunghe suite in formato libero, talvolta persino cacofoniche, spesso puramente strumentali, al limite della musica d'avanguardia. I Beatles non avevano mai registrato una canzone che non fosse imperniata su un ritornello. Il gruppo nel 1967 cominciava a sentirsi superato dai tempi e tento` di aggiornarsi alla moda. Ma non riuscirono a spingersi oltre la forma della canzonetta (probabilmente per il semplice fatto che non ne erano capaci, cosi` come Marilyn Monroe non sarebbe stata capace di recitare Shakespeare).

Sgt Pepper e` il disco di un complesso di musica leggera che aveva fiutato il cambiamento nell'aria e aveva adeguato il proprio stile agli hippies. E, arrivando buon ultimo, fini` per sancire la fine di un'epoca. Sgt Pepper usci` nel giugno 1967 dopo che Velvet Underground & Nico (gennaio), The Doors (gennaio), Younger Than Yesterday (febbraio) dei Byrds, Surrealistic Pillow dei Jefferson Airplane (febbraio) avevano cambiato per sempre la storia della musica rock. (Gran parte delle "innovazioni" tecniche di Sgt Pepper sono prese di sana pianta da Younger Than Yesterday di cui i Beatles avevano ascoltato i nastri alla fine del 1966). Il successo strepitoso di Sgt Pepper trasferi` quelle innovazioni dall'underground americano ai salotti e ai supermercati di mezzo mondo. Con Sgt Pepper culmino` comunque il programma sociologico di Lennon e McCartney iniziato con il rock and roll melodico del 1963. La musica dei Beatles rendeva gli eventi (musicali e non) del tempo filtrati attraverso gli occhi della media borghesia che non ne era protagonista ma solo spettatrice (perplessa e un po' spaventata). Quel programma aveva avuto il pregio di sdrammatizzare e di conferire un tono leggero e naif ad eventi che stavano causando disordini politici e una rivoluzione morale. I Beatles ebbero il merito di rassicurare la media borghesia in un'era in cui c'era poco altro di rassicurante per la middle-class. Gli arrangiamenti di questo periodo (i clavicembali e i flauti, i nastri pre-registrati e gli effetti elettronici) furono dovuti n gran parte all'accorto lavoro di produzione di Martin, ex membro dilettante di una banda marciante domenicale di St. James Park. Martin sapeva che i musicisti d'avanguardia facevano musica manipolando nastri, che esistevano strumenti esotici dalle timbriche insolite, che i complessi rock stavano dilaniando l'armonia classica. Il suo retroterra (nonche' il suo livello culturale) rimaneva quello del circo, del carnevale, dell'avanspettacolo, dell'operetta, delle bande marcianti, quello, insomma, dei teatrini di Londra. Martin non fece che applicare le tecniche eterodosse che aveva scoperto a quel patrimonio folkloristico. Il risultato non fu particolarmente geniale (Martin non era Beethoven e neppure Karajan), ma certamente curioso.

E' lui, in questo periodo, il vero genio musicale dei Beatles, capace di trasformare le loro pose snob, le 