Not much of this story has any merit. Rock music is obviously indebted to black forms that preceded it, but these forms aren't African. The various kinds of black music that developed here are American, and were themselves influenced by other American forms. Efforts by such music writers as Gerald Early to demonstrate the indebtedness of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, and other '60s black crooners to an Italian-American model (an overtly pop model) have yet to be absorbed into this myth. There's no Romantic capital in that story. Similarly, rock is indebted to the "country" musical forms that emerged from a variety of influences, including European yodels, but there's not much Romantic capital in saying that, either.
But the real problem with this myth is its treatment of pop. Rock describes not one type of music, but a variety of styles that have influenced each other, including doo-wop harmonizing, boogie-woogie, jump forms of swing, soul music, rock- abilly, etc. Looming over the other influences, however, is none other than pop.
The pop music of the '50s that was overwhelmed by rock was the last stage of big-band music; band singers like Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney displaced the bands as headline attractions after World War II, though they continued to perform in the old-fashioned idiom of the band era. While rock swept many of these singers offstage, the younger vocalists who replaced them quickly took up the same traditional pop narrative that has been going on since the 1890s, when the first commercial hit song ("After the Ball") established it. That narrative addresses a limited number of themes involving social identity, pleasure, personal fulfillment, and, above all, issues of courtship. These themes continued to dominate the new rock charts as they had the earlier songs, even though they were sung, played, and received in new ways. The musical break in the 1950s was not one of emotional substance, as the rock establishment likes to suggest; it was one of emotional style.
The separation between these two emotional styles is not nearly so distinct as rock would like to think. While rock is never threatened by its other influences -- it is never about to become the blues, much less jump or country music -- it has repeatedly been threatened by pop.
In fact, one of the original merits of the Beatles is, supposedly, that they arrived to rescue American rock at just such a point of decay. According to this take, Elvis had been reduced to a bel-canto fraud, singing such horrors as a rewrite of "O Sole Mio" ("It's Now or Never"); acts such as Ben E. King were doing over-lush numbers like "Spanish Harlem" and "Amor"; pop figures such as Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme had been sneaking back into the Top 10; the Beach Boys were doing barbershop harmonies; the model of teen excitement was Rick Nelson, a sitcom spinoff. Rock was forgetting itself amid symphonic arrangements and a crooner revival, when suddenly the Beatles exploded on the scene with three guitars, a set of drums, a bluesy harmonica, and a "Whoa, yeah!" whoop.
This is a tendentious picture of the time; it ignores, among other matters, James Brown, early Motown, Phil Spector, and the Atlantic Records groups (such as the Drifters), and it downplays the merits of Brill Building music. But it's not an entirely false picture, either. The Beatles, along with the torrent of British Invasion groups that followed them into the American market, trimmed the Top 40's excrescences, invigorated its sound, and addressed its audience with new subjects.
This story is often interpreted in terms of rock's Romantic myth. According to this narrative, British musicians had been closer students of America's own musical heritage than Americans had been, especially regarding the lost heritage of the blues. British groups listened eagerly to recordings that most Americans didn't know existed, incorporated the rhythms and instrumentation into their own styles, and returned the vigorous result to surprised and delighted American audiences. This story is demonstrably true for many of the British (and Irish) groups that enjoyed American success; one can clearly hear the influence in the early hits of such groups as the Animals, the Yardbirds, Them, the Spencer Davis Group, and, obviously, the Rolling Stones.
This story is applicable, at least in part, to the Beatles as well. For two years after their explosion into the American market, the Beatles released a long series of singles and albums in the American style. Their own compositions and their choice of cover versions reflected their enthusiasm for the music of such U.S. artists as Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and their willing adherence to the familiar pop themes of courtship and fulfillment. This was the "early Beatles" period of making music to dance and cruise to. It seems to be the preferred Beatles period for many leading-edge boomers, perhaps because, as radio and party music that was used socially, it's evocative of their adolescence.
But this is not the music that has shaped the Beatles' later reputation. If the group's career had ended in 1965, it would probably be remembered -- with as much embarrassment as pleasure -- for the intense mania it inspired, and only secondarily for the songs. Although it's largely forgotten now, a Beatles backlash was gaining steam by the time Rubber Soul was released in 1965. The group's cherubic cheerfulness was beginning to seem flabby compared to other groups' tougher material. Yet the Beatles today occupy a uniquely transcendent position in the rock world, and a reputation for innovative genius. How did they achieve this? By turning down rock's volume.
What your mother should know
With the release of Revolver in 1966, the Beatles began to transform themselves from teen idols into storytellers. Throughout the album, they display a genuine talent for creating characters, states of mind, and dramatic situations, and for doing so by suggestion and with the use of spare images. In other words, the album invited not only a rock listening, but a literary listening. The outstanding example is "Eleanor Rigby," a Bronte novel in miniature, unrecognizable as a rock number. But songs like "For No One," "She Said, She Said," "And Your Bird Can Sing," and "Tomorrow Never Knows" are all departures from the rock idiom, offering unusual imagery, surprising allusions, and verbal riddles. Most of the cuts are heavily melodic and carefully arranged. One of the album's chart hits, the sing-song "Yellow Submarine," reaches back beyond rock for its inspiration. A children's song, it pointed in the direction the Beatles were to go: the British Music Hall.
Sgt. Pepper's (1967) may well have transformed the rock world, but it owes nothing to rock's Romantic myth. It is built largely from the music and imagery of the Victorian and Edwardian pleasure palaces of the industrial working class. (Herman's Hermits had already revived the Music Hall standard, "I'm Henry VIII, I Am," but as a 1965 novelty song.) Though the Beatles approached the material with a literary sensibility, especially irony, songs like "When I'm 64" and "Lovely Rita" are effective evocations of antique Music Hall style, while "Getting Better" and the melodramatic "She's Leaving Home" make sympathetic use of antique emotion. Indeed, the corny, melodic sentimentalism of the Music Hall repertoire was a rich vein for the group, and they were never to abandon it.
A long list of later Beatles songs is drawn, directly or indirectly, from this tradition: "Martha, My Dear," "Your Mother Should Know," "Penny Lane," "All You Need Is Love," "All Together Now," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da," "Honey Pie," "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "Magical Mystery Tour," "Good Night," and almost everything on the B side of Abbey Road, down to and including the inner-groove run-out, "Her Majesty." While the Beatles continued to write and record rock songs such as "Revolution" and "Come Together," and while they engaged in some entirely different musical experiments on the White Album, the influences that shaped their major, later output -- most of the music for which they are best known -- emerges from an antique pop style.
These two elements of the Beatles' career -- their development as narrators, and their exploitation of Music Hall content and style -- lift the group's music into a context of its own. It is these elements that are able to claim the attention of an audience that was born long after the group broke up. But what do either of these elements have to do with the mythology that the rock establishment embraces? Precious little. In the end, the rock world's head was turned by music that was sweet, corny, artificial, and intensely sentimental. Rock has yet to come to grips with this.
"Their music doesn't grow old," according to Beatles authority Bill Harry, compiler of the 720-page Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia. Actually, much of it is drawn from musical conventions that were so old that the group's American following didn't know them. Fans were free to create their own context for the music, and to create their own associations and meanings. That the music's sensibilities arrived from such sources as Paul McCartney's musician father didn't matter decades ago, and certainly doesn't matter now. "A lot of my musicality came from my dad," says McCartney in the new Beatles coffee-table book. He cherishes his boyhood memories of lying on the rug while his father played the piano and explained the "clever" parts of the old songs he once performed. According to Paul, such memories are why he is "so open about sentimentality."
The Beatles' 21st century fans are already assembling their own memories of the group, choosing among Beatles "eras," and even asserting their primacy. One of them recently told USA Today that "In some ways, we are more sincere fans in that, unlike the baby boomers who see The Beatles as a form of nostalgia, we pick The Beatles over all the music of today and make a conscious choice to experience a group of 35 years ago."
"We hope you all will sing along," sang the Beatles in Sgt. Pepper's. In fact, singing along, pint in hand, was a staple of the 19th century Music Hall experience. In a sense, everybody did sing along, and more fans than ever seem to be joining in. Many of the original boomers thought at the time that the Beatles were helping raise the roof of a new culture. If so, they did it by opening the longest lasting Music Hall performance of all time, entertaining, infectious, and dripping with sentiment down to the last note.
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