What If the Beatles' Breakup Was
Actually Rock's Greatest Ending?
Inside Hook,
by
Evan Bleier
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
8/18/2020 3:44:31 PM
All good things, it’s been said, must come to an end. Even the Beatles.
Though John Lennon had informed his bandmates months earlier that he was leaving the group, the breakup of the Beatles did not become official until April 10, 1970, when Paul McCartney issued a press release stating he was no longer working with the fabulous foursome.
That release came after a whirlwind year in 1969 that saw McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr record Abbey Road, which contains the final occasion all four members recorded together with its closing song, “The End,” and also Let It Be, the band’s final record, while also being filmed during rehearsals
Reply 1 - Posted by:
OhioNick 8/18/2020 4:29:02 PM (No. 513952)
The Beatles gave us some of the best music of the 20th century. But they also brought recreational drugs into the mainstream, and millions of American youth followed them down that path. Most people overlook that fact.
16 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Catherine 8/18/2020 4:35:02 PM (No. 513956)
Music was ruined in this country when Clinton was president. Before he took over, musicians/singers could go to radio stations themselves and try to get their music played. Clinton passed a law saying only music representatives could do that. Not the individual. PBS ran a special on music in America and this is where I heard about this. I knew something had changed.
8 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Quigley 8/18/2020 4:44:15 PM (No. 513968)
I hear you number 1 and that’s an issue. Of course they were just a wave in a tsunami in that regard.
I am often shocked by how much their music still effects me (I was in early high school when i first cared about them - Sgt Pepper’s). It truly stuns me. Am I an idiot? Or did they just happen to have the ingredients to touch the idiot in lots of us.
I watched a video where some poet laureate scored a coup and got Paul McCartney to come talk to his lit. Class (2015 maybe?). At the end McCartney performed Blackbird solo. I could see a wonderment and befuddlement on the poet laureate’s face: here he was this acclaimed poet and yet he had never written anything that had so much poignancy as this guitar player. Stunned he was.
11 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
chumley 8/18/2020 4:45:40 PM (No. 513970)
Historical significance aside, I used to like The Beatles when I was younger. One of my favorite Christmas presents of all time was the two album set of their best stuff. But now I am tired of them. Just like with Elvis and Fleetwood Mac, when they come on my satellite radio I change the station. A lifetime of listening to that junk is just too much.
Nowadays I prefer The Zombies, The Supremes, Led Zeppelin or new age stuff.
3 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
jalo1951 8/18/2020 4:45:59 PM (No. 513971)
I grew up with the Beatles, the best music ever. I am now one year shy of 70 and I still love to listen to them as a group and as individuals. Sang all the songs, knew all the words, have never drank have never done drugs. Thought Woodstock was stupid as being drunk, strung out on drugs and sitting naked in a mud puddle was not my idea of a good time. Yes, booze and drugs have always been with us and the Beatles did their share of spreading it around. But if you decide to follow in that type of folly the issue is on you and no one else. They made excellent music unlike today.
14 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
markhooton 8/18/2020 4:50:44 PM (No. 513976)
Chumley, I am just the opposite. Since we got Sirius 2 years ago, I can't enough of the Beatles channel. I am always learning something new from the DJ's, the special guests, the weekly shows they have. I have been a fan since high school in the late 70's and now my fandom is even stronger.
7 people like this.
"But, at the end of the day, they still managed to create two pretty damn good albums.”
It's called going out on top. Will never tire of Abbey Road. Successful bands have chemistry, and these guys had it - in spades.
A memorable ending but not on par with the implosive break-up of the Sex Pistols in '78.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
NYbob 8/18/2020 5:29:44 PM (No. 514011)
Perfect timing for my life. Like the Moon landing, if you weren't there before it happened, you can't begin to understand how societies and cultural changed, worldwide. They were lucky to find George Martin, the perfect guide for them. After a lifetime of their music, for me it is a case of when they are good, they are amazing, inventive, inspiring. When they are bad, it is the worst of old English music halls. If there was a way to purge my brain of 'Honey Pie' and some other McCartney tunes, I'd do it, but not if I lost 'Hey, Bulldog.'
5 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Sceptic 8/18/2020 5:31:20 PM (No. 514014)
Their music has been re-done in a children's show on Netflix, called Beat Bugs, now on You Tube. Really cute and do enjoy watching it with the grandkids.
3 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
erod111 8/18/2020 5:34:51 PM (No. 514017)
In only seven short years the Beatles musical journey re-invented popular music multiple times. Consider the growth curve from She Was Just Standing There to If I Fell to Michelle to all that is Revolver and Sgt Pepper to The End. Most other groups do the same type of material over and over and over again becoming parodies of themselves or are unable to take the next musical step. Today's popular music is mostly over produced guttural and feral expletive ridden pap heavy on the bass. The Beatles, as a group which included guidance from their producer George Martin, were a phenomenon much like Mozart and Beethoven that we are unlikely to ever live to see again. Truly, The Beatles story and music will live forever.
7 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Sceptic 8/18/2020 5:34:56 PM (No. 514018)
Correction. Sampling on Youtube.
0 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
udanja99 8/18/2020 5:48:52 PM (No. 514030)
I had just turned 11 when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and it was love at first sight. I still love the music but the actual members, not so much. I always thought that John simply went insane - the nude album with Yoko, the published drawings of them having oral sex, etc - way too over the top for the early 70’s. Now Paul has turned into a leftwing arse. Ringo is OK but he never could sing.
5 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
OhioNick 8/18/2020 6:01:06 PM (No. 514040)
It's a shame that George Harrison's group, the Traveling Wilburys, recorded only two albums. I just finished reading a very good biography of the group.
5 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Urgent Fury 8/18/2020 6:11:03 PM (No. 514045)
I always said their best stuff was when they first started out and then when they discovered LSD.
1 person likes this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Newtsche 8/18/2020 6:13:14 PM (No. 514049)
The Beatles were never more fun than in Richard Lester's "A Hard Days Night", 1964. What a time to be them! Everything that followed made them the touchstone of a generation and changed popular music forever but yeah, that film caught lightning in a bottle.
That said, this article is inconsequential.
2 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Vaquero45 8/18/2020 6:16:28 PM (No. 514051)
I never liked them, or their music. The worst of them all was their “white Album”, which Charles Manson thought was their message to him to start a race war. A guy in my hooch in Vietnam had a portable stereo, and that was the ONLY album he played, day and night. I got so sick of it I used to wish the NVA would hit us with a rocket attack that would hit his corner of the hooch while we were in a nearby bunker, and blow that album and his stereo to kingdom come.
8 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
worried 8/18/2020 6:24:53 PM (No. 514056)
When you get right down to it, I have needed a doctor. I have needed a teacher. I have needed a plumber, a policeman, the trash hauler and many others. But I have never NEEDED the Beatles or any other celebrity or entertainer. I have never needed any pro athlete or movie star. And I have lived all these years without worrying about the latest album of anyone. I know what music I like, and that is what I choose to listen to. If one of them passes on, so be it. My life won't be changed, at least what's left of it.
My point being, what is the big deal? Unless you make your living off them.
1 person likes this.
The Beatles were a pop band not a rock band.
2 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
ZeldaFitzg 8/18/2020 7:28:25 PM (No. 514102)
I saw the Beatles in Dallas during their first trip to the U.S. in 1964. I had all their albums through Rubber Soul, but then about the time of the release of Sgt. Pepper I parted company with them. The Detroit soul sound became all the rage, and I went in that direction. HOWEVER, to this day I cannot drive safely while the old time Beatles music is playing. A few years ago I got the multi-CD set of all the Beatles music, and those early songs (and the memories tied to them as a high school girl) are absolutely sublime. We had such great music of all kinds in the 60s. And we used to dance like crazy.
6 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
davew 8/18/2020 8:32:47 PM (No. 514136)
Its hard for kids today to grasp the cultural and economic impact that the Beatles phenomenon had on society when they hit in the 60s. The music business, movie business, television, and almost all live entertainment and media sources were controlled by a very small number of large corporations. RCA, Decca, Columbia (CBS), and Capitol had a virtual monopoly on popular music. It was safe, clean, professionally polished, and generally boring. Studio musicians would wear a suit and tie into the studio to record the latest prefabricated hit by Doris Day or Tony Martin. The real musicians were devoted to jazz masters like Miles and Trane but they never sold a lot of product. A lot of great blues and R&B was being produced by "black" labels but this music was largely banned from major radio stations. And then something emerged that was a "fun" but "edgy" amalgam of the forbidden black music with the musical ingenuity of two English baby boomers that had absorbed the unique mix of folk, pop, and modal melodies of post war Liverpool.
The Beatles were the approved answer to the sexuality of Elvis and their astonishing financial success and power eventually broke up the recording monopolies. This was their real contribution to music. It made possible the rise of self publishing and self recording bands that revolutionized the industry. I made the decision to become a musician the day I heard "I Saw Her Standing There" on a 45 rpm single and although I branched beyond pop to classical and jazz the Beatles were the spark for me. I'm not alone. No less than David Foster also credited hearing the Beatles as the reason he pursued a life in music.
I still love playing along on guitar to the early music even though I lost interest with the later studio pieces. They never were a great performance band partly because of the primitive stadium technology that existed in their heyday. I think they got out with their integrity intact and their legacy is that they literally changed the commercial music world.
4 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
acesfull 8/18/2020 9:55:46 PM (No. 514176)
As one of the biggest Beatles fans on earth since 1964 I humbly offer this quote as a very British summation of the Fab Four. George Martin their studio producer and the unofficial 5th Beatle was asked if he could sum up the Beatles effect on the world. He simply said, ‘don’t forget, they were very good.’
2 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
whyyeseyec 8/18/2020 10:25:58 PM (No. 514188)
This story has been written hundreds of times by hundreds of Beatle know-it-all's. There's nothing new here.
1 person likes this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 8/18/2020 11:22:40 PM (No. 514225)
Their melodies were quite good, but the songs became horribly crippled by John's psycho-babble lyrics.
3 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
MickTurn 8/19/2020 8:46:10 AM (No. 514420)
What broke up the Beatles was their egos.
0 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
doctorfixit 8/20/2020 11:53:25 AM (No. 515640)
There are few if any musical collaborations that compare, and few if any talents that have ever complemented each other so beautifully. Artistic talent brings complications along with it, and like so many celebrities, they had heaped upon them layers and layers of froth and flotsam that buried their humble humanity. So many artists have been destroyed by fame that wasn't a fraction of what the Beatles experienced. There is an inner strength there that persevered and took what came with astonishing grace. Their music endures as joyful celebrations and thoughtful insights into humanity, always with optimism, kindness, and love at the forefront. I am so very grateful to have had them and their music in my life.
1 person likes this.
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