Who wrote the book of rock? No. 1 — The Beatles

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/08/2012 (5116 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this 10-part series, we pay tribute to the rock ‘n’ roll-era visionaries who came up with the musical vocabulary we’re still hearing today – the ones without whom the language of rock ‘n’ roll would not sound the same. For the other nine picks, check “Related Stories.”

MONTREAL — Consider the odds of two colossal songwriting talents like John Lennon and Paul McCartney living in the same city. Then think about the chances of them ending up in the same group. After that, ponder the probability of George Harrison and Ringo Starr bringing not only the precisely right musical touch but the exact personalities needed to make all four witty and interesting.

And then they conquer the world.

If the Beatles story has been lovingly parodied by everyone from the Rutles to the Simpsons, it’s because it has always seemed improbable enough to be fiction.

The Fab Four alone in rock history captured the hearts of everyone from kids to seniors, a love affair that still transcends generations and burns as brightly a half-century after they released their first single. University students still wear T-shirts with their image, young indie musicians can’t seem to get through an interview without reverently evoking them at some point, and 20-somethings hug and cry at McCartney concerts, feeling like they have touched a bit of it.

This ongoing fascination with a band that was in the public eye for only eight years and broke up 42 years ago has no equivalent among their predecessors, peers or progeny.

For one generation of North American kids, the arrival of the moptops in the United States in February 1964 and their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show is when everything changed. The youngsters watched on black-and-white TV sets, but the world had suddenly become impossibly bright and colourful. Guitar shops opened the next day to find lineups.

After that, the group’s tale gets told in well-worn headlines: the movies, the MBEs, Shea Stadium, bigger than Jesus, the Maharishi, LSD, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Apple, Yoko, the acrimonious breakup. After almost 50 years, people of all ages still devour every new book or video about the group for the one anecdote they might have missed.

On a strictly musical level, the Beatles also stand alone, in that almost every album and single they released was a significant step forward from the previous one. No one else had the restless experimentation and the melodic genius in such perfect proportions.

But most of all, they kept expanding rock’s possibilities in leaps and bounds. Virtually every one of their contemporaries tried to keep up, but few came anywhere near the elegance and taste that rarely seemed to fail the Beatles.

Their perfect touch might be that they called it quits before the music was compromised in any way, resisting all attempts to get them back together, before and after Lennon’s death in 1980. No other artists at their level can make the same claim.

It’s just about impossible to imagine the language we know as rock ‘n’ roll without the Beatles. Contemporary artists still joke about making their Sgt. Pepper’s, by which they mean they want to strive for a masterpiece. That kind of ambition is one of many wonderful gifts they got from the Beatles.

They changed everything, which is why the boomers who were there and so many of those who missed the phenomenon seem to want to go back and live their brief story forever.

Stuart McLean on the Beatles, in verse:

All I did was hear a new group sing. And I remember it perfectly

We heard about them before we heard from them.

At school.

There’s this group from England.

I wasn’t sure what that meant.

We didn’t know about groups back then.

Even they weren’t sure.

On the cover of their first album they quaintly called themselves… a combo.

Meet The Beatles!

England’s phenomenal pop combo.

To begin with they were just a concept.

Like the first time you heard about Zorro. Or blogging.

Over a few days the idea of them came into focus.

They played guitars.

They sang.

Then we heard they were going to be on the radio.

That night.

Back then they only played pop music at night.

CFCF.

The Dave Boxer show.

I was alone in my room.

Doing my homework.

Ha!

Waiting, is what I was doing.

I think they played: All My Loving, Roll Over Beethoven and I Want to Hold Your Hand.

What was it like?

Well. It was almost fifty years ago and all I did was hear a new group sing.

And I remember it perfectly.

That’s what it was like.

It was like an electric jolt.

— Stuart McLean is the host of CBC Radio’s The Vinyl Café

KEY TRACKS:

1. A Hard Day’s Night

2. Eleanor Rigby

3. Strawberry Fields Forever

4. A Day in the Life

5. Hey Jude