h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Becuase this was my first attempt to inspire conversation I'm going to pitch in, despite it probably breaking certain etiquette!
To put it in a nutshell, I love the Beatles. They were a key part of my childhood (yes, I'm that old). My mum once told me that at the age of two I first sang along to 'She Loves You'.
I remember the morning that the BBC first played 'All You Need Is Love'. I remember the announcement of their split.
So, naturally, I'll never really tire of the hoo ha.
But reading an editorial in Saturday's Guardian reminded me that a vast quantity of the people who now keep Apple Corps rolling in lucre don't remember the moptops and were nowhere near existing during their short career.
This is, to me, the most interesting aspect of the whole phenomenon. A vast swathe of people who either are bowled over by music which, as we can all agree, is a subjective matter. After all, why NOT hate the Beatles. Or, do these people love the Liverpudlians because peer pressure, marketing and received wisdom dictate it?
I'm still pondering that one.
GJ

I remember before the Beatles (1950's) when I listened to Frank Sinatra and Doris Day on a wind up seventy eight, then came the Shadows and I fell in love with the guitar, after that nothing much seemed to happen until the Beatles and when I heard "I saw her standing there" it struck a chord. It had rhythm, blues, melody and harmony delivered in such a way that all four parts contributed to the greater whole. Not only that but there was a huge number of musical influences which came through in their writing meaning that they never seemed to stick to one fundamental formula or style. This was something unique then and remained so during their career.

I was 13 when they split up. People were playing the Beatles all around me from 1963, I sort of remember. It was easy music to listen to, kids' stuff really. Even the 'difficult' stuff that came later was pretty easy.

There's an enduring reputation of the Beatles as rebellious and somehow shocking. OK, they had long hair in a straight-laced time, and there was the notorious 'bigger than Jesus', but all of that blood pressure must have been packed into about 2 years tops of social tectonics. By the time they were taking us down to Strawberry Fields, it had all got respectable, and it would probably have become mainstream without the assiduously-manufactured eccentricity and developments in parallel media. Then they left the scene at just the right time to create yearning. They're even contriving to die off in a suitably wistful order.

I think the Beatles' appeal ultimately has a lot to do with how undemanding their music is. The Stones were raucous and too similar to what had gone before, an extrapolation of older sibs' music from the end of the 50s. The Who and the Kinks had more edge somehow. I was fed that other music by wayward uncles and by schoolmates' big sisters, and it had a subversive appeal. The Beatles by then were so-so safe, and boring people approved of them. True, there was a sort of defiance about Lennon (by such a margin the best of them), but it didn't feed through to me at the time. Looking back, even that seems like surly and passive indignance. Not very Rock'n'Roll at all.

Listening now, I can appreciate the Beatles without venerating them. Others built on their novelty and maybe it was those others who secured the legacy. On the downside, they fuelled the self-opinion of a city that would surely have been nicer today if it had stayed repressed.

The catchier the melodies, the more it seems they soak up myth. It was all the beginning of something, and their musicianship was significant, but I know few people who count the Beatles as their own musical zenith. We all found something more personal and deeper, didn't we? The Beatles are our common denominator, that's all.

>We all found something more personal and deeper, didn't we? The Beatles are our common denominator, that's all.<

Nicely put. Everyone needs to find their own reference points. Though I still marvel at the way the band encapsulated a time frame.
Having said that both me and Sam had a lunchtime conversation where we came to the conclusion that when Sir Paul shuffles off this mortal coil, there should be some kind of state funeral.
As Alan Partridge said: 'Wings,;the band the Beatles could have been'
GJ

Ah Wings. I never tire of listening to Time to Hide (yes, I know it's a Denny Laine one)

The thing about The Beatles, as well as other music of the time, is that it is just so toe-tappingly sing-alongingly familiar from the opening note.

I remember later Beatles songs from the time - The Fool on the Hill in particular for no apparent reason. But i'm definitely a fan - and since I only have the LPs on Vinyl (and one on cassette) I have been slowly (very slowly) collecting them on CD. Very happy with the one I bought last weekend because it's one of the re-issued ones with lovely pictures in it.