5005

This is another part of the 5,000th post I was going to write and post, something that has been rattling in my head for some years, now to put it down, if not on paper, but in these posts.

Journalist and writer, David Hepworth, in his collected volume on short essays, "Nothing is Real: The Beatles Were Underrated And Other Sweeping Statements About Pop", as you can tell he postulates that the Beatles were underrated.

I think he is right. Maybe he even unserstates the fact.

Before the Beatles, hardly any musical act wrote their own songs. It is likely that the only UK artist to have done so was one Ronald Wycherley, aka Billy Fury, whose first record, The Sound of Fury, four of the ten tracks were written by Fury himself. Otherwise, singers, groups, pretty much were told either by their managers or record labels what to record. And those, like Fury, with a manager-cum-impresario like Larry Parnes, saw a music career in pop or rocka and roll as a way into light entertainment and the film business, where the real money would be made.

No one saw pop music as anything else other than a short-lived way to further riches, and not something that was ever going to last.

To understand the Beatles, you have to realise that they did not emerge as a result of American rock and roll, not entirely, the ability to play a guitar or understand rythm from the craze that was skiffle.

Skiffle was a DIY music that came out of traditional jazz, it was lighter music, based on traditional blues and work songs from mostly the Deep South, that jazz bands used to play in breaks from playsing Dixieland Jazz. Dixieland, or traditional, or trad, jazz was hugely popular in the 1950s in the UK. You can read about this in Billy Bragg's tome on the subject, "Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World".

This is litarally a book that rewrites the history of popular music in the UK, and detailed how a UK musician was able to export a traditional song, Rock Island Line, back to the US, so well that Johnny Cash himself recorded Lonnie Donegan's arrangement of it.

Skiffle was simple, primitive, and a group would usually have a guitar, a bass instrument (like a tea chest) and a percussion, something like a washing board played it with thumbles. It is easy to laugh at Skiffle, but it was huegely popular, and sales of guitars increased a hundred fold in a few years. What it meant for those who learned to play the guitar was the ability to play chords. Once you do that, you could do anything.

The Beatles started out as a Skiffle band, The Quarrymen. On the 6th July 1957, John Lennon met Paul McCartney at the St. Peter's, Woolton's Parish Church fete in Liverpool. The rest is musical history.

They played Skiffle, and in time they travelled to Hamburg to play in bars in the bars around the red light district, where they would play multiple sets a day, and got bored with playing the same songs over and over, so they started to write their own.

So, during their time in Hamburg, the band, now called The Beatles, turned into a tight R&B band, writing and playing their own tunes.

Upon their return to the UK, they tried to get sign, famously being turned down by Decca Records because, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.". But EMI's George Martin signed them, and was to be their producer.

Again, the rest is history,

For me, The Beatles were something very much of the past. A friend had a Beatles compliation, The Beatles Ballads, which is when I heard Norwegian Wood for the first time. I thought it was OK.

The Beatles were played on the radio, but only during things like "Golden Hour", music of the past. I was aware of Wings and the solo stuff Paul did, John Lennon had been quite since the mid-70s and Imagine, so not sure, like Pete Paphides who was shocked when he found out that Paul and John played in the same back in the 1960s.

The first song I ever sung as a child was, apparently, "Hello, Goodbye" which I must have heard on the radio when it came out, which was November 1967, amking me just over two years old. Even if I could only sing the title over and over again.

I think through most of popular music, many of us have been looking for the next "big thing", so that looking back to see what had lead to where music currently was, was overlookied. IN the 21st century, that has only got more ingrained, with Radio 1 only playing new music, ignoring whatever what was the inspiration. That is me too.

John Lennon's murder at the end of 1980 mmeant we were exposed to a lot of his solo work, his then current album, and his work with The Beatles. This increased firther when in 1982, EMI started to reissue the Beatles singles on the 20th anniversary of their original release. So I can remember Love Me Do being reissued in 1982, next year will see the 40th anniversary of that reissue.

Years later I bought the CD "1", and played it from the start, and in those 27 tracks, detailed the rise and rise of the greatest band in recorded popular music. I don't say that lightly.

‘Love Me Do’
‘From Me To You’
‘She Loves You’
‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’
‘Can’t Buy Me Love’
‘A Hard Day’s Night’
‘I Feel Fine’
‘Eight Days A Week’
‘Ticket To Ride’
‘Help!’
‘Yesterday’
‘Day Tripper’
‘We Can Work It Out’
‘Paperback Writer’
‘Yellow Submarine’
‘Eleanor Rigby’
‘Penny Lane’
‘All You Need Is Love’
‘Hello, Goodbye’
‘Lady Madonna’
‘Hey Jude’
‘Get Back’
‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’
‘Something’
‘Come Together’
‘Let It Be’
‘The Long And Winding Road’

Back at The Harris Middle School some time in 1977 or 78, we had to study a couple of pop sngs and their lyrics. One was The Sloop John B by the Beach Boys, which I still hate to this day. I mean I really have to turn the radio off on the rare occasions it is played. I like most of their other stuff, but maybe it was the weeks spent discussing the lyric, and what they meant. Or what Brian Wilson meant, I don't know.

The other song was Penny Lane.

I liked Penny Pane. I love it more than ever now.

Penny Lane tells a stroy of a walk down a street in Liverpool telling the stories of the people we meet. In a little over three minutes. For me, it is the greatest record of all time. It was released in February 1967, and was a double A side with Strawberry Fields Foever. I can only imagine what it must have sounded like to head it for the first time, even now its a remarkable song:

In Penny Lane, there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
And little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac in the pouring rain
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Wet beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit and meanwhile back in

Penny Lane, there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

Penny Lane, is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

Penny Lane, the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then, the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies


Penny Lane

There is even a video:

The Beatles were more than a band too. They were a gang you wanted to be a part of. They were friends. Best friends. Funny. Had their own fashion, jokes.