The Beatles Impact On My Life

Arielle Gutierrez
London Music Scene
Justin Lorentzen
December 9, 2014
In My Life: The Beatles For as long as I can remember, The Beatles have always had a presence in my life. For instance, my father practically raised me on Beatles’ music and to this day I can distinctly remember driving to my grandma’s house on Sunday mornings and in the car listening to 95.5 KLOS Breakfast with The Beatles. I can remember having debates with other kids in my class about who knew more Beatles music (we were 9 years old). I can remember crying at my high school graduation because our senior song was “In My Life” (my favorite Beatles song). While I would like to think that these experiences are unique, the reality is that millions of people have probably
shared similar experiences when it comes to Beatles’ music. Is this a coincidence? No. There is a reason why The Beatles is still, to this day, a household name. There is a reason why their music is listened to and talked about 50 years after they first emerged as artists. There is a reason why they have been labeled the “greatest artists of all time” (The Rolling Stone). The Beatles’ music, as well as their activities outside music, clearly has had an immense impact on culture and music both in and outside Britain. Whether it was because of the exceptional songwriting partnership of Lennon and McCartney, their bold and open experimentation with psychedelic drugs, or because of their influential success in the USA, the Beatles became a musical and cultural phenomenon all around the world. What makes The Beatles’ impact on music so special?
Why have they had and continue to have an influence on artists of various genres all over the world from the sixties until now? Why have they had an immense influence on both culture and popular ideology? The answer is their music. The Beatles achieved their success and status through their music, but the key to their music was the greatness that is the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. In the beginning, The Beatles were primarily influenced by black music. According to Ian MacDonald, “the influence on them of black singers, instrumentalist, songwriters, and producers was, as they never failed to admit in their interviews, fundamental to their early career” (MacDonald, 8) In addition to black influences, notable rock and roll musicians like Chuck Berry, Little Richie, Isley Brothers, and the Elvis Presley also influenced The Beatles. According to MacDonald, “while their early lyrics were simplistic by the standards of Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, Eddie Cochran, Leiber and Stoller […] The Beatles far outstripped their rivals in melodic and harmonic invention, baffling seasoned professionals with their surprising chord sequences” (MacDonald, 9). Despite Lennon and McCartney having no formal training, Lennon and McCartney created music in a way that was practically unheard of. According to
MacDonald:
Writing, to begin with, mainly on guitars, they brought unpredictable twists to their tunes by shifting chord positions in unusual and often random ways, and pushing their lines in unexpected directions by harmonizing as they went along in fourths and fifths rather than in conventional thirds. In short, they had no preconceptions about the next chord, an openness which the consciously exploited and which played a major role in some of their most commercially successful songs [e.g. I Want to Hold Your Hand]. (10)
This lack of structure that Lennon and McCartney had while writing was exactly what made their impact on music so unique and their partnership so dynamic. Additionally, the fact both Lennon and McCartney wrote, played, and sang their own music was astonishing. During the 1960s it was almost unheard of for an artist to write and play their own music. In this this sense The Beatles were pioneers that led the way for other talented musicians to follow. It is also interesting to have a look at what inspired Lennon and McCartney’s lyrical writing. In the first period, the writing was pretty simple. The lyrics either focused on personal experience or they were rock-and-roll clichés about love, sadness, girls, holding hands or holding each other. The second period is much more varied. While there are still songs about love, many of their songs began to draw from a different influence: drugs.
The sixties witnessed a large increase in drug use and, subsequently, abuse among the younger generation. Musicians and artists alike started to use drugs to discover new worlds and to be more creative with their work. The Beatles were no exception to this cultural phenomenon. According to Ian McDonald in his chapter The People’s Music:
While they didn't invent the counterculture, The Beatles were certainly the first pop/rock band to allow the influence of LSD, the movement’s main sacrament, a central part in their output, thereby to a large extent inventing the psychedelic style in music […] The Beatles were the first to use the panoply of the psychedelic recording studio: Indian drones and scales, backwards tapes, phasing and similar ideas. (89)
After first becoming “seasoned pot-heads”, The Beatles “didn’t begin to allow mind-expanding drugs to explicitly affect their work until after they (specifically, Lennon and Harrison) had encountered LSD in spring 1965” (McDonald, 86).
This moment marks the shift to the second part of The Beatles career. From this point on in their career The Beatles began to use the psychedelic influence and reflect it in their music, recording techniques and lyrics. A majority of The Beatles lyrics of the second period were written under the influence of drugs or describe what the Beatles experienced when they were high. According to MacDonald, LSD influenced songs such as: “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “A Day in the Life,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and “Rain”. However, one song in particular is most famous for its LSD influence: John Lennon’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The song is characterized by crazy and confused lyrics: “Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain/
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies”. Also, it has been rumored that if you take the capital letters from the title, you get LSD. By openly using drugs to influence their music, The Beatles changed popular culture. They simply took a counterculture, allowed it to change and evolve them as artist simultaneously reflecting this change in their popular music; thus turning a counterculture, into a popular
culture.
The Beatles arrival in the US undoubtedly changed attitudes toward popular music in the US. According to Ian MacDonald, “arriving there in 1964, The Beatles were amazed to discover how ‘unhip’ young white Americans were. A generation raised on crew-cuts, teeth-braces, hot rods, and Coca-Cola knew nothing of blues or R&B and had forgotten the rock-and-roll which had excited their elder brothers and sisters only five years earlier” (MacDonald, 8). At the time The Beatles arrived to the US, American popular music was characterized by that of straight edge Memphis tunes. This surprised The Beatles given that they derived most of their musical influences from American R&B and rock-and-roll artists. However their arrival and success in the US triggered and established a sudden popularity for not only The Beatles but also other British bands.
According to MacDonald, “spear-headed by The Beatles, the two-year ‘British Invasion’ of the American top ten established the UK as the center of the pop world with a flowering of talent matched nowhere else before or since” (MacDonald, 12). This also had an affect on the musical style of American bands, as they tried to emulate what The Beatles were doing. Again, The Beatles have taken a counterculture of the US, turned it into a popular culture in the UK, then took it back to the US, which then spread it to the rest of the world. Without even their intent or knowledge of doing so, The Beatles became a global influence.
The reason The Beatles were so popular back then and are still relevant today is because they developed and they grew. Had they remained the same, they would have become boring and their fans would have found another popular band to adore. The Beatles, however, changed almost everything about themselves: their music, their lyrics, their appearance, their ideas and thus were still interesting for their fans. In this sense The Beatles are like pop music. Pop music changes and it grows. It adapts to the time and its current culture. It encompasses many styles and is no one genre. It is unconventional, yet familiar.

Works Cited
MacDonald, Ian. "Fabled Foursome." Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. New York: H. Holt, 1994. N. pag. Print.
MacDonald, Ian. "The Psychedelic Beatles: Love and Drugs." The People's Music. London: Pimlico, 2003. N. pag. Print