|
I first heard of the Beatles when I was nine years old. I spent most of
my holidays on Merseyside then, and a local girl gave me a bad
publicity shot of them with their names scrawled on the back. This was
1962 or '63, before they came to America. The photo was badly lit, and
they didn't quite have their look down; Ringo had his hair slightly
swept back, as if he wasn't quite sold on the Beatles haircut yet. I
didn't care about that; they were the band for me. The funny thing is
that parents and all their friends from Liverpool were also curious and
proud about this local group. Prior to that, the people in show
business from the north of England had all been comedians. Come to
think of it, the Beatles recorded for Parlophone, which was a comedy
label.
I was exactly the right age to be hit by them full on. My experience --
seizing on every picture, saving money for singles and EPs, catching
them on a local news show -- was repeated over and over again around
the world. It was the first time anything like this had happened on
this scale. But it wasn't just about the numbers; Michael Jackson can
sell records until the end of time, but he'll never matter to people as
much as the Beatles did.
Every record was a shock when it came out. Compared to rabid R&B
evangelists like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived sounding like
nothing else. They had already absorbed Buddy Holly, the Everly
Brothers and Chuck Berry, but they were also writing their own songs.
They made writing your own material expected, rather than exceptional.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were exceptional songwriters; McCartney
was, and is, a truly virtuoso musician; George Harrison wasn't the kind
of guitar player who tore off wild, unpredictable solos, but you can
sing the melodies of nearly all of his breaks. Most important, they
always fit right into the arrangement. Ringo Starr played the drums
with an incredibly unique feel that nobody can really copy, although
many fine drummers have tried and failed. Most of all, John and Paul
were fantastic singers.
Lennon, McCartney and Harrison had stunningly high standards as
writers. Imagine releasing a song like "Ask Me Why" or "Things We Said
Today" as a B side. They made such fantastic records as "Paperback Writer" b/w "Rain" or "Penny Lane" b/w "Strawberry Fields Forever" and
only put them out as singles. These records were events, and not just
advance notice of an album release.
Then they started to really grow up. Simple love lyrics to adult
stories like "Norwegian Wood," which spoke of the sour side of love,
and on to bigger ideas than you would expect to find in catchy pop
lyrics.
They were pretty much the first group to mess with the aural
perspective of their recordings and have it be more than just a
gimmick. Brilliant engineers at Abbey Road Studios like Geoff Emerick
invented techniques that we now take for granted in response to the
group's imagination. Before the Beatles, you had guys in lab coats
doing recording experiments in the Fifties, but you didn't have rockers
deliberately putting things out of balance, like a quiet vocal in front
of a loud track on "Strawberry Fields Forever." You can't exaggerate
the license that this gave to everyone from Motown to Jimi Hendrix.
My absolute favorite albums are Rubber Soul and Revolver. On both
records you can hear references to other music -- R&B, Dylan,
psychedelia -- but it's not done in a way that is obvious or dates the
records. When you picked up Revolver , you knew it was something
different. Heck, they are wearing sunglasses indoors in the picture on
the back of the cover and not even looking at the camera . . . and the
music was so strange and yet so vivid. If I had to pick a favorite song
from those albums, it would be "And Your Bird Can Sing" . . . no,
"Girl" . . . no, "For No One" . . . and so on, and so on. . . .
Their breakup album, Let It Be , contains songs both gorgeous and
jagged. I suppose ambition and human frailty creep into every group,
but they managed to deliver some incredible performances. I remember
going to Leicester Square and seeing the film of Let It Be in 1970. I
left with a melancholy feeling.
The word Beatlesque has been in the dictionary for a while now. I can
hear them in the Prince album Around the World in a Day ; in Ron
Sexsmith's tunes; in Harry Nilsson's melodies. You can hear that Kurt
Cobain listened to the Beatles and mixed them in with punk and metal in
some of his songs. You probably wouldn't be listening to the ambition
of the latest OutKast record if the Beatles hadn't made the White Album
into a double LP!
I've co-written some songs with Paul McCartney and performed with him
in concert on two occasions. In 1999, a little time after Linda
McCartney's death, Paul did the Concert for Linda, organized by
Chrissie Hynde. During the rehearsal, I was singing harmony on a Ricky
Nelson song, and Paul called out the next tune: "All My Loving." I
said, "Do you want me to take the harmony line the second time round?"
And he said, "Yeah, give it a try." I'd only had thirty-five years to
learn the part. It was a very poignant performance, witnessed only by
the crew and other artists on the bill.
At the show, it was very different. The second he sang the opening
lines -- "Close your eyes, and I'll kiss you" -- the crowd's reaction
was so intense that it all but drowned the song out. It was very
thrilling but also rather disconcerting. Perhaps I understood in that
moment one of the reasons why the Beatles had to stop performing. The
songs weren't theirs anymore. They were everybody's.
| 
