Pop music falls into two categories: Pre-Beatles, and Post Beatles. Oh sure, a few deep thinkers might inadvertently create a handful of sub-categories such as punk, post punk, ur-metal, death metal, shoegazer, grunge pop, emo, reggae, alt-country, jangle pop, sunshine pop, psychedelic, soft rock (may it rot in HELL,) prog-rock, synth-rock, ripple funk, crunk, Tex-Mex and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
The basic parameters had been in existence since Tin Pan Alley. Pop was short, catchy bursts of melody with at least three chords, a hook, and vocals that respect the melody. Doesn’t sound so difficult. Yet we live in an age when the Billboard Top 100 and Variety’s darlings purvey two-dimensional rhythmic exercises as songs.
What is a song? Is it simply the application of melody, no matter how simple? Music consists of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Until the Beatles Revolution, cozy, time-worn material dominated radio. Artists such as Peggy Lee, Bing Crosby, even Elvis have their roots in Tin Pan Alley. Those guys knew how to write songs. Irving Berlin knew how to write a hook. What was missing was energy.
Rock is about energy as much as anything. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the grandmother of rock and roll, the first to roll out that electric guitar and wang. She brought rhythm and blues energy to the music. Chuck Berry took Sister Tharpe’s style and ran with it—or rather duck-walked it across the stage. There’s an amazing movie called American Hot Wax starring Tim McIntyre as DJ Alan Freed, about the first big rock and roll concert. Released in 1978, it’s only available on VHS if you’re lucky enough to find a copy. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube, and you should. It features Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis among others.
One need only examine the acoustic strata of pop music as it approaches the present. Bill Haley and the Comets introduced the concept of high-energy rock. Jerry Lee Lewis infused it with greater intensity. Rockabilly was a progenitor to today’s punk, post-punk, and ur-punk, each with a successively greater claim to raw energy until you arrive at the Sex Pistols.
The Beatles, like Plato’s republic, held energy, innovation, and song craft in perfect balance. They changed song craft forever with their innovations. Prior to the Beatles even the best bands hewed to the tried and true: theme/theme/bridge/hook/theme. As most of our pop music is based on the blues, the three chords were most often the first, fourth, and the fifth. You hear it today in eighty per cent of pop music, and one hundred per cent of the blues.
The Beatles worked those three chords every which way and then they blew them up. Early songs like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” use first, fourth, and fifth chords to perfection but they were already exploring new song structure with “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” inspired by a Disney tune, Snow White’s “Wanna Know a Secret?” The chords are fresh. Think “Norwegian Wood.” They shook the Chuck Berry/Bill Haley influence in search of new sounds.
After all this time what is there to say about the Beatles? Plenty. Like all great artists they will never stopped generating ideas. Their ubiquity has created a mental universe of Beatle musings. A person’s reaction to the Beatles tells us much about that person. And one can’t help but react.
I grew up in South Dakota. One can’t get much further from Liverpool, culturally speaking. I remember that seismic day when the class rebel wore the first pair of bell bottom trousers to school. The shockwaves rumbled to the hinterlands causing cows to squirt chocolate milk. The Beatles spawned personality cults that still spark fire, years after John’s death.
The bell bottoms were the first sign. No boy had worn anything other than Levis since the last time the Corn Palace burned down. They were purple corduroy, around the ass of one Jonathan Kropenski, Junior. Kropenski had a reputation as a fighter and troublemaker, else he would have been pounded into jelly on the spot. But since it was Jonathan, it carried a certain imprimatur. It was 1964. The Beatles invasion had crossed the Great Plains and collided with the Beach Boys rolling east.
The Beatles blasted from every open car window and every house. The Beach Boys didn’t stand much of a chance, really. South Dakotans knew little of the surf. Following Kropenski’s bell bottoms, Maryanne Schaefer showed one day in a leather Cockney hat, the kind John wore. Soon half the student body at Mitchell Senior High looked like Carnaby Street. The principal called general assembly at which he announced in no uncertain terms that the school would no longer tolerate the riot of blinding and distracting garments. Soon thereafter Levis again appeared, but the damage had been done.
My first concert was Eric Burdon and the Animals, Herman’s Hermits, and Freddy & the Dreamers. We drove seventy miles to Sioux Falls to watch. We were blown away. Some of us have still not recovered. It wasn’t until college that I started writing about music. I had a friend who edited a far left weekly newspaper. Takeover. One day I was at Mark’s tract house by the railroad tracks and saw hundreds of new LPs leaning against the wall, most still sealed in plastic.
“Hey Mark! Where’d you get all the records?” “The record companies send them to me. You want some? Take ‘em. Just write something about them.” So I did. And I’ve been writing about music ever since, for the free records. Today I wrote for Steve Lauden’s substack column, “Remember the Lightning.”
The record pictured, Hidden Symphonies, is a mind-blowing take on Sgt. Pepper. It sounds Beatlesque, but it’s also unique and by the time you’re a song in, you’re hooked.