A prophecy re. the Beatles comes true

The Beatles cartoon

"Can't Buy Me Love" was the opening theme music for the Beatles cartoon series of the 1960s. The animated Beatles! It was really a pretty solid work. It's a gem from the group's history. 

What place will the Beatles have in our culture, as older generations give way to the youth? The boomers were of course entranced by the Beatles. We grew up when pop culture was erupting with so much neat stuff. The expansion and improvement of television of course played a big role, an essential role. We watched "Hullabaloo!" And BTW what happened to the art of "go-go" dancing?

TV pushed football to the national forefront. 

We heard talk when I was young about how maybe someday our nation's kids would be instructed about the Beatles in the same way that we had been instructed about Mozart, Beethoven et al. We were told that classical music was such "serious" music. Our teachers would smile about the thought that the current pop would ever be taken as seriously. "Unheard of," they'd chortle. 

Well wouldn't you know, the Beatles today seem to be inspiring just the type of serious fascination that was once just a whimsical thought. The Beatles replacing the classical guys for serious study? Well of course they are. 

 

Refined craft 

You think it's easy writing the kind of songs that filled KDWB Radio in the 1960s? Try doing it yourself. Try writing some lyrics like Hal David would. The pop lyrics seem so simple on the surface. I guess this reflects the old notion "the great ones make it look easy." 

Consider Tom T. Hall's very folksy and rustic stuff. Elementary for composing? The "pros' in the music business know the truth of course. If they really tried telling us how difficult it was, many of us would not believe it. 

The simple truth is that the artistry of so much pop music of the '60s was deep and demanding. I cite the song "Can't Buy Me love." A thoughtful student of music would note that a distinguishing feature of this song is that it starts out with the refrain! There are structural things about a lot of these songs that reflect a real devotion to the craft. The Jimmy Webb song "MacArthur Park" is as deep as anything that any classical composer ever did. 

Classical composers had to write for full orchestras composed of so many people, only because electronic amplification was not available. Their creations are no more sophisticated on an intrinsic level. When the '70s pop group "Yes" did a live performance for video with a real symphony orchestra, you get a look at the sheet music the instrumentalists were playing from: it looked every bit as complicated and demanding as any piece from Beethoven times. 

I know that our education establishment in the 1960s had a music element that wanted to scoff at the "popular" music. I had a teacher myself who talked about "legitimate" music as being set apart from the stuff on KDWB. What a stuffed-shirt attitude. Teachers had just developed their own little insulated culture. What? Teachers? Well I really do think teachers today are more fair-minded, realistic. Here I go with my negative biases about teachers from when I was young. When boomers were young.

  

The less they know. . . 

And many of us would not want to confide to our grandchildren just how ridiculous so much of our lives became. The college years. And if you weren't in college, your behavior might have been worse. We know full well. We don't even want to confide to ourselves about it. We have these "revisionist" thoughts about when we were young. We tell stories that smooth over the rough edges. 

We certainly steer our own descendants that way. Meanwhile our own memories of frivolity get stored in our minds, in the recesses of our memories. We'd shriek if our grandchildren could pierce through that pretense and see the real antics we committed. 

While we were doing all that, the musicians who created our favored pop music were really just laser-focused and serious. They showed "frivolity" only as a way to posture to us. Look at Ian Anderson ("Jethro Tull") wild-eyed and hopping around like he's some sort of nut - do you think his real nature reflected any of that? 

The Beatles cartoon opened with "Can't Buy Me Love" as we saw the cartoon image of the four guys running down a fire escape. Image is indelibly in my mind. I'm sure many of my peers would say likewise. 

 

Bequeathed 

Soon our culture will be grasping the Beatles from a lens outside of the "boomers." We will have passed from the scene. So then we'll see if an adjusted perspective will take over: Beatles music taken seriously "in the classroom." I think it was totally worthy of that. Don't you think that is the direction? 

Mozart, Beethoven et al. were all trying to write music that was "popular." Electronic amplification just changed the delivery, the logistics. A small group was all that was needed. And the Beatles came along to prove so decisively that a mere four lads could captivate the world! 

And music teachers had better take that to heart. I think they already are.

And don't let boomers fool you on how they spent ages 18-22.

Let's not overlook the very essential role of producer George Martin with the Beatles. 

Addendum: I remember the KDWB deejay "Tac" Hammer! When kids could start carrying around their own little battery-operated radios, they could make music choices independent of parental judgment. 

The animated "Fab 4." I watched when the series was current. I smile as I remember how many of the lyrics were interpreted literally! "Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door" (from "Eleanor Rigby"). Charming. The faces were drawn as quite accurate caricatures. The creative people were obviously reverential toward the Beatles.

  

 - Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com