A Uni Assignment on The Beatles

Here's an essay I did for my music gen ed paper at uni. I was pretty pleased with it so I thought I'd post it here. The topic was 'How were the Beatles a turning point in Western music'.

During the early days of the 1960s the rock n roll craze of the previous decade was in rapid decline. After the loss of many of its biggest stars and the rise in popularity of the Motown label many people believed that the days of guitar based bands and fast paced, high intensity shows were numbered. However, a four piece rock band from Liverpool would soon change all this. This band, which came to be known as The Beatles, rose to fame by combining rock n roll with other genres of popular music, sharing the lead vocals to add more variety to their music, and performing almost exclusively songs they had written themselves. While these characteristics of their music would eventually cause a great change in popular music they began developing them as amateur musicians staying in Germany.

The formation of The Beatles’ trademark style occurred during residences at various clubs around the St. Pauli district of Hamburg in 1960. Due to the individual members’ different tastes they would listen to songs from many different genres including blues, Motown, and show tunes many of which would be taken, given a harder, faster feel, and used in the Beatles’ sets. Throughout their stints in Hamburg the Beatles’ technical and song writing abilities increased significantly through the usage of musical ideas gleaned from the wide variety of music they were listening to so that by the time they released their first album Please Please Me they sounded very different from other bands of that time. Throughout the album their many influences are often quite obvious. For example the first track, I Saw Her Standing There, is a rock n roll song very similar in style to an Elvis Presley or Gene Vincent track but John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison often harmonise in a Motown style during the chorus and on the flipside Love Me Do has a drum and bass beat inspired by country music with McCartney playing the bass note on the first beat and an octave higher on the third beat while drummer Ringo Starr makes good use of a tambourine.

Most bands of that time tended to present themselves as the backing group for a singer, who was the main draw card, for example Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, or Diana Ross and the Supremes. However, the Beatles had no lead singer since they were all vocally proficient. They would all share the job of lead vocals which was something unheard of then – Holly, Richard and Ross, for example, always sang the lead vocals for their respective groups. This allowed songs of different styles to be sung by the member whose voice was best suited to that style and gave more variety to their music. For example, Lennon and Harrison’s voices suit the cover of “You Really Got A Hold On Me” on the album With The Beatles but Starr’s deeper, huskier voice is much better suited to the next track “I Wanna Be Your Man” and McCartney’s softer voice is well fits well with the softer “P. S. I Love You” on Please Please Me.

Finally, perhaps the most significant difference in The Beatles was that they almost exclusively performed songs they had written themselves, rather than a mix of covers and original songs provided by their record label, which allowed them to showcase their style and individual members’ abilities. The wide range of music they had listened to in Hamburg had enabled them to pick up many musical techniques which made these songs popular and Lennon and McCartney had begun writing music together using these ideas even during that time. Even so the record companies they auditioned for were less than impressed with the quality of the music but after George Martin agreed to produce them he helped them polish the rough edges out of their original compositions and honed the Beatles’ skills as song writers. From their first album original songs are prolific. Please Please Me contained 6 covers, a fairly ordinary number then, but the band themselves wrote all the remaining 8 tracks which was very unusual and 2 years later, with the release of Rubber Soul they were exclusively recording their own material. 

These revolutionary ideas which The Beatles developed during their formative years in Hamburg and their early recording days at Abbey Road quickly began to influence other groups throughout England and America. Bands such as The Beach Boys, The Animals, and The Monkees were heavily influenced by the Beatles’ style and began writing their own songs as well. They were also a major influence on American folk band The Byrds who were increasingly drawn to rock n roll after seeing The Beatles perform. Later The Beatles would again change popular music again when they began creating more experimental albums such as Revolver and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band but their earlier impact would arguably be greater. Today many bands write their own music and it is normal pop groups to share the lead vocals just like the Beatles began doing 50 years ago.