(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
In music terms, we often view things in two chapters—not AD and BC but rather BTB and ATB, “Before The Beatles and After The Beatles.” For someone in my age bracket, with my music tastes, it’s frankly hard to imagine the former at times because the influence of the Fab Four is so indelibly linked to everything I like that I can’t fathom a world where they didn’t exist.
They were a gateway band in the course of history, grabbing the framework of the decades that preceded them and taking them through a vortex to a more modern future, where the foundations of pop and rock as we know them now would be built.
But the fact is, the Beatles’ initial blueprint was built on the shoulders of giants who came before them. Elvis famously made the bank weak at the knees, while Little Richard quietly showed the music world how to pack charisma into a live performance. Both of these artists had their identities injected into The Beatles’ model, but it was two separate musicians who elevated their project to the next level.
When the stage lights dimmed and the crowd dissipated, The Beatles needed a way to exercise their genius, and it was Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry who showed them the way.
“What we noticed about them that was different, was they sang their own songs, they wrote their songs,” McCartney said when explaining their influence. “And they played to accompany themselves and that was what we wanted to do. We had guitars, we wanted to sing and then there was this final thing, ‘ooh, we’ll write too’”.
From then on, the Fab Four elevated themselves above the sea of pastiche that swarmed British nightclubs in the early 1960s. Stepping away from hits like ‘Long Tall Sally’ and leaning into their own classics like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, they made their first ripple in a tidal wave of cultural greatness.
But it wasn’t necessarily a knee-jerk reaction to hearing Berry and Holly for the first time. These sensibilities were firmly rooted in the artistic infancy of Lennon and McCartney. In fact, Macca remembered the first time he met Lennon and how it was an instant twist of fate, that informed him his talents didn’t exist alone.
“What would happen is when I would talk to people, they’d sort of say, ‘What are your hobbies? What do you like to do?’” McCartney recalled. “And then inevitably, I’d say, ‘Well, I’ve written a couple of songs.’ And they’d go, ‘Oh.’ And we’d pass that pie, and we’d carry on a conversation. But I met John, (and) we were just chatting, and ‘Well, I’ve written a couple of songs.’ And he said, ‘Well, so have I’.”
“So that was like a full stop,” he added. “So then it was like, ‘Let me hear what you’ve done, and I’ll show you what I’ve done.’ So that started us getting together. I think I was possibly the first person he’d met who’d said that to him. So that was the start of our relationship”.
Divine genius, a sprinkling of influence from the forefathers of rock and roll and what came next was the most influential band in cultural history. Not only did The Beatles write their own songs, they moulded the template of what an original song could be and opened up the floodgates of influence that would teach generations to come.
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