Entertainment & Arts

The peak era of The Beatles

FunkyMonkee
My fave Beatles era.
My fave Beatles era.

I like pretty much all of The Beatles' music, but my fave era was the mid `60's and psych stuff! That was THEE MOST creative music anyone ever made!! That entire era was FILLED with the most incredible music you'd ever want to hear!! But, what kinda saddens me is how quickly it goes from fantastic music to drab, semi-boring, dark and depressing music.

Just as far as The Beatles are concerned, they made their most stellar music of all between late `65 and late `67!! Then, all of a sudden, 1968 happened and their music got very dark and not quite as good as it had been the previous year, or the previous MONTH!!

They started out being just another pop band that, for some reason, suddenly made it VERY big!! They had everything going for them! It was the right time, the right look, the right music, the right producer, the right manager, etc.. After an album or two and a few singles, they conquered the WORLD!!! EVERYTHING revolved around them!! Everybody either wanted to be around them or they just wanted to BE them!!! A lot of people made fun of them, mostly their hair, which was kinda stupid because, just a decade or two before, those very same people had or were surrounded by lots of other guys that had longer hair than that!! (I think back to The Bowery Boys where a number of the guys in the gang had longer hair than The Beatles did until about 1968.) There were TONS of novelty records making fun of The Beatles or praising them, or even individual members of the group! Even Cher made one under a false name about how much she loved Ringo! There were about a dozen break-in records about The Beatles in `64 and `65, "Ringo's Doctor" by Rex Miler, "My Son, The Bed Bug" by The Editors, "The Beatle Flying Saucer" by Ed Solomon, "The Invasion" by Buchanan & Greenfield, "Beatlemania" by Professor Bug, "Liverpool Landing" by Col. Whitehedge & Marmaduke Druid, "Flying Beatles" by Gasses For The Masses (made in Australia), "The Beatles Is Back" by Lenore King & Tommy Anderson, "Ringo's Lost Love" by Dave Schmidt, "Interview With The Fab Four" by Harv Moore and a few others. Then, in the `70's when it was rumoured they were getting back together, another slew of Beatle break-ins and novelty records were made! They weren't even a group anymore and they were STILL influencing our lives as if they were!!

By `64, they were a world phenomena!! To most people, they could do no wrong! If they recorded a collage of themselves farting and burping, everyone would buy a copy!!

By late `65 they were getting tired of playing for people that couldn't even hear them. Also there were some of the goofy things people were doing at their concerts which they didn't like because it was getting people hurt! They got to the point where they just didn't WANT to play concerts anymore BECAUSE some people were getting hurt and it was pointless for THEM because they couldn't even hear themselves play anymore! They felt they couldn't improve if they didn't even care if they were playing well anymore! At least one night, they just stood on stage with all their gear shut off and PRETENDED to play! Nobody noticed the difference because they couldn't hear them over the screams no matter how loudly they played!! The screams were so loud it was like standing at the exhaust end of a jet engine!!

So, they gave up on touring and concentrated on staying in the studio making better records, which is exactly what we got from them! At least, for a while. Part of the concept for Sgt. Pepper was to just send the album out on tour! That's why they started it to sound like a live recording.

By this time, they had 4-track recording gear and could do so much more with that and made full use of it (and then some!) on their next few recordings! No longer was it JUST the 4 of them playing songs with an occasional added guitar or vocal part here & there. The studio and recording gear, itself, became like another musical instrument they could learn to play and experiment with and they used a LOT of new (to them) instruments and recording gizmos to add to their sound. Sitar, tabla, tamboura, mellotron, harmonium, full orchestras, phase shifters, flangers, backwards tapes, sped up tapes, slowed down tapes, tape loops, inventive tape editing or mixing. The sky was the limit!! Whatever they wanted, they got!! And, nearly everyone else in the world of rock music followed suit!!

Now, I don't know for sure what it was that caused their "downfall" in the kind of music they were making, either they got burned out with it or it was the death of Brian Epstein, or drugs were being too much of a downer for them or maybe even Yoko was having an influence on them, or the supposed failure of "Magical Mystery Tour" had something to do with it, or any combination of the above. After Sgt. Pepper, the way they recorded was different! No longer was the sound very clean, clear and shiny but rather dull, drab, dry and dirty sounding. Almost like it was recorded in their basement on a cassette recorder.

Also gone was a lot of the experimentation and the use of outside instruments and performers. It was back to being just the 4 of them, for the most part. People of that era realized that, although this new psychedelic music was incredible, it couldn't be performed live anywhere so, they began to opt to go back to making simple music and, basically, went right back to the beginning and suddenly, everything became acoustic and folksy again! This would quickly make people like John Denver a huge hit!

With the onset of the late `60's and early `70's upon us, and things in the world in general because of very dark and dire things like the Kennedy and King murders, Manson, violence in the streets, the Vietnam war still raging, people still hurt over the murder of JFK a few years before, the outcry against pollution hurting the planet, Kent State, Chicago, Watts riots, Nixon, STILL dealing with racism and hatred of ANYONE that was different, etc., the music reflected this and also got dark and bleak, sad and somewhat depressing. And, for some reason, the sound even got dry and dirty. I've even asked a few musicians and recording people of that era why that was and they can't even tell me how it happened. It just DID! Sadly, that dirty sound kinda took the music with it and made most of the music from `68 to the mid `70's pretty drab and dry.

By `68's, The Beatles were working, not only on "the white album" but a number of solo albums! George put out "Wonderwall Music", John & Yoko had "Two Virgins" and "Life With The Lions", I think "The Wedding Album" was in `69. Paul had already done a solo project a few years before, a movie soundtrack for, "The Family Way". And, by `68, the cracks were starting to form within the group and the music was starting to suffer for it. At one point, Ringo even quit!

By `69 Yoko's influence weighed HEAVILY on John who began to dislike being a Beatle. They put out two more "solo" albums and a couple singles and were married. Paul started working on his next solo album and so did George. The band also decided to try playing another concert on a ship with only a few hundred people on board to see/hear it. But, Ringo refused to do it because he gets sea sick and couldn't swim. They started rehearing for the concert and a new album and had the rehearsals filmed and then regretted it saying, it was like watching a band break up! During these month-long sessions in Jan. `69, George got fed up and quit! After a few days, he came back and they got on with making the new album and playing their last concert, the one on the roof top. Far from being on a ship in the south seas, but, better than nothing, I guess.

Not wanting to go out with that last dying grasp for life, they opted to make another album and not release Let It Be...just yet. George Martin begged them to let him produce it the way he did in the old days, so they let him and thus we have, "Abbey Road", the last real Beatles album. No longer was the sound dirty, dry and drab, it was a bit closer to what Sgt. Pepper sounded like.

By this time, no one knew what was in their future and the entire band went on making solo albums from then on until today or, their death. As it happened, except for "Let It Be", which they finally DID release in 1070 and which no one knew was going to be the last Beatles album, there never WAS another Beatle record except for the two songs they did on the "Anthology" albums in the `90's where they used demos that John recorded and the others just added their own parts to each song as if John went off on holiday and let them deal with finishing the songs.

The past few months, I've been reading a large book called, "Beatles Chronology", by Mark Lewisohn, which is basically a diary of every working day the Beatles put in from the day they started in July 10th 1957 (a week I was hatched) up to the day they broke up. So far, I'm just about to finish 1966 and go into their best and most creative period, 1967!!

Although I LOVE reading about that period and, in diary-form, can't WAIT to get to that point in these kinds of books, it's kind of a drag to realize that it's only going to last about a year or so and after `67, everything's going to go to shit! It's kinda like when dad would watch, "Young Man With A Horn". He LOVED watching that movie but would always shut it off shortly after Rick met his future wife because it was she that'd cause him to go into a musical and life-changing, sad, depressing tailspin. I can't really bring myself to shut off The Beatles after 1967 or stop reading about them after that period but, it IS kinda depressing. When they started out, they were great and, partly, if not completely, because of them, life was great and a LOT of fun!! I'm SOOO GLAD I grew up when I did!! It WAS THEE best time in history!!! The most creative, the most interesting!! Then, they got REALLY interesting with their music, as did everyone else and it looked like even greater things were on the horizon....until....things started to turn to shit in 1968 and, looking toward that period in their history, you just don't WANT to go there! It's like starting a new year and thinking, Spring will be here soon and things will get wonderful again!! Then we get SUMMER!! WOOHOO!!! But, then, a few weeks later, summer turns into fall and things get cold and drab again, then we have to freeze our asses off for a few months of Winter! When you look forward to see or know what's coming, you just don't want what you have at the present to end, even though you KNOW it's going to, VERY soon!!

In this book, I'm just about to hit their peak year of 1967 and, although it's probably the longest chapter in the book, it's still gonna end too soon. And, looking ahead into what's coming right after that kinda makes me NOT want to go into 1968!

The peak era of The Beatles
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