THE BEAT: Even Fabber

I didn’t know how good they really were.

I mean, I knew they were great—heck, beyond great. They were essential, innovative, transformative, simply the greatest ever. I knew that it went without saying that all music that came after them was unthinkable without their influence, that nothing was left untouched by their musical legacy, reaching far beyond the confines of rock and pop to include even the most avant-garde new classical music by the likes of Bang on a Can. Their influence was so widespread and widely felt that it was rarely worth noting; it would be like saying Western religion is influenced by the Bible or modern physics by Albert Einstein. The Beatles created and defined modern pop and rock as we know it.

Nevertheless, since the day I got my hands on the newly reissued and remastered Beatles catalog—available as single CDs or in a box set of their complete works—I’ve hardly listened to anything else, and I’ve been surprised daily by new discoveries and new ways of hearing and appreciating the amazing accomplishments of the four lads from Liverpool.

They were only together for a relatively short time compared to peers who are still at it forty years later (the Rolling Stones, the Who), and their output, which included a few soundtrack albums in addition to carefully crafted studio creations, is not large by current measure—especially given that in the vinyl era when they recorded, there were only about thirty to forty minutes of music per album, about half the length of today’s average CD. The box set reissues a baker’s dozen albums as per the original British programming (the American releases were often patchworked together out of the English versions), plus a disk of alternate versions and non-album cuts. Still, nearly every Beatles track is a gem of some sort (nearly every one, not every one, as some of my more maniacal friends insist—I mean, is there really a reason for “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” to exist? Other than to annoy me every time I hear it?).

Much to the chagrin of my friend Harold, a longtime Beatles fanatic and my personal guide to the Fab Four, I immediately ripped the entire collection to iTunes and have been listening to it almost exclusively on shuffle mode. (Harold insists that I must sit down and listen to the entire Beatles catalog at some point in order to appreciate fully the group’s musical evolution. I’ve told Harold this is on my bucket list for things to do when I’m retired.) What my random method of listening has provided, rather, is a means of making serendipitous discoveries. To you, they may be obvious, but to me, due to the enhanced sound of these reissues and focused listening, I am hearing the Beatles today with new ears and coming to new realizations about just what made them the greatest musical act of all time.

(I listened to the stereo versions, not the mono mixes, which are available in a separate box set for serious collectors, and I’m not going to get into the merits of one versus the other here—suffice to say that stereo was an advancement in sound engineering, and that these new stereo CDs sound fantastic: crisp and clean, with lots of space between the musicians and voices, with inordinate clarity in the vocals and in the subtleties of Ringo Starr’s colorful percussion. Every day I hear something on at least one track that I’d never heard before, often after I assume it’s my cellphone chirping.)

While it may seem like restating the obvious, some of what I’ve learned through my recent Beatles immersion is undoubtedly worth reiterating:

1 The Beatles were first and foremost a vocal group. With very few exceptions, most occurring near the end of their decade together, the Beatles wrote their songs primarily to be sung. And while none of the Beatles had a great voice, they did put heroic effort into their individual vocals and group arrangements. They made the most of what they had to work with, and the end results were brilliant and surprising harmonies, diverse and vibrant emotional textures, and an all-group sound that buried their individuality while at the same time gaining strength from the subtle distinctions of the four singers. That group vocal approach seems to have been lost somewhere along the way—it was followed upon early by ensembles such as the Byrds and the Eagles, but somewhere along the line, the Bob Dylan model of the idiosyncratic solo vocalist won out, perhaps to the detriment of us listeners. There is, after all, only one Bob Dylan.

2 The Beatles were at once a minimalist combo and a rock ’n’ roll orchestra. When we think of the Beatles, we often think of them primarily as making groundbreaking music, big productions that took advantage of technology and embraced sounds of chamber and symphony orchestras as well as tape loops, found sounds, and world-music influences (most notably Indian sitar). But in actuality, the vast majority of Beatles tunes are small-combo arrangements featuring just the Fab Four using technology of the time that looks quaint compared to today’s recording methods. Most songs rely simply on guitar, bass, and drums, and even most of those rely largely on the trio of George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr for the music, John Lennon’s contributions as a guitarist being limited as they were. Nevertheless, those spare, minimalist tracks overflow with more musicality than just about anything we’ve heard since—even by bands double their size.

3 The unsung instrumental hero of the group was George Harrison. It takes nothing away from Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr—whose bass and drums, respectively, played an inordinately musical role in Beatles arrangements far beyond the typical “rhythm section” assignments those instruments usually play—to say that George Harrison was practically a one-man orchestra. There was seemingly nothing Harrison couldn’t play on guitar, no style he couldn’t easily slip into, from the Carl Perkins honky-tonk of “Honey Don’t” to the Brazilian stylings of “And I Love Her” to the jazz chording of “This Boy” to the Santana-like Latin-flavored leads of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” Harrison plays almost all of the most memorable riffs of Beatles songs, and over the course of the group’s evolution he developed his distinctive style that as much as any single element colored the Beatles sound (and went on to define his own as a solo artist). More than any other member of the group, it was Harrison who did the heavy instrumental lifting, which, unfortunately, often made him resentful, feeling merely like a hired hand, with a lesser status than that afforded to Lennon and McCartney.

4 Producer George Martin was right: the “White Album” would have made a great single album. “Cry Baby Cry”? “Wild Honey Pie”? “Don’t Pass Me By”? “Long, Long, Long”? “Savoy Truffle”? The aforementioned “Bungalow Bill”? Don’t remember any of those tunes? That’s because they’re utterly forgettable filler from The Beatles, a double-album often called the “White Album,” which could have used some serious editing. But that’s the beauty of iTunes—you can unclick those numbers and never have to hear them again.

5 The Beatles were not John Lennon’s group. While it’s a fact that Lennon put the group together, and in his inimitable, passive-aggressive fashion, broke the group apart, the Beatles were, perhaps more than any other band before or since, an organic entity of four equal parts, the sum of which was much greater than any individual element. If there’s one single thing anyone with ears can hear by listening to the amazing body of work produced by the Fab Four, it’s that this was a musical collective of co-equals. Which is precisely the reason that, unlike the case with so many other groups of its era (including the Stones and the Who), the Beatles couldn’t survive the loss of a single member or a personnel change, a factor contributing to their relatively short-lived existence. And in the perfectly accidental coming together of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, a timeless musical legacy was born. [NOV/DEC 2009]

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and cultural critic. His book, BOB DYLAN: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, is being published by Scribner on November 24. Read more of his music reviews on www.berkshireliving.com.