Xref: menudo.uh.edu alt.music.alternative:39932 rec.music.beatles:17759
In article
Heavens. It appears that someone needs to sit down and watch "Sullivan's
Travels". The fight between proponents of popular art vs. fine art is at
least as old as Preston Sturges' 1941 film...if not millennia older. :-)
Mr. Pundurs has a good point!
It should be obvious even in our musical milieu. After all, as the
Fabs themselves have told us metaphorically, there's more to love than
just holding hands. And there's more to music than the breadth of its
popularity. If you really want to get technical about it, there's an art
to pop music itself, at its most central and intrinsic core.
The Beatles were masters of it. That's no mean feat. The ability to sell
a song to society requires a talent that few of us have---an assumption
I'll have to make, having seen, heretofore, no r.m.b.'ers produce any
hit records. :-) (If Mr. Talmy is reading us on the sly, my ardent
apoligies to him!) It's a collection of talents, really: the ability to
see into the soul of humankind and strike a chord that's far more complex
than a pretty tune; and the talent, or intuition, to rely on others who
can embellish that art. This type of genius produces neither stupidity
nor trash. With the right set of circumstances, it *can* produce artistry
enmeshed *within* popular tunes.
First of all, though, there's this "American" business. What's all
the fuss? Does our xenophobia require us to turn away from music
that's not a product of the States? How ironic, when you consider
how much of the Beatles' inspiration, as songwriters and musicmakers,
came directly from American artists! You can hear them in every
harmonic thread---Buddy, Elvis, Chuck, Smokey, Arthur...forgive the
first names. You know their songs as well as I do. These erstwhile kids
from Liverpool swallowed them whole and nourished their own creativity
on music from *this* side of the pond. One of their great accomplishments
was in turning this music around---over, under, sideways, down---and
transmuting it into a new substance. And American music listeners
devoured the Mersey Sound as if it were a new source of sustenance...
which it was, after a fashion. And now it's nourished American music,
in an easily-traced timeline from the Byrds to REM and beyond.
But where was the art?
Or *was* it only a fad, at first? Some folks saw it that way. Of course,
fads have been around before; and, in the milieu of purely British pop,
musicians not only adapted American fads but spun off their own. Nobody
seriously expected great things from Adam Faith or Tommy Steele, any
more than an American would have thought that Chubby Checker heralded
the New Age of Music.
What, I wonder, did the Beatles want? At first it was obviously just a
hit record or two; that was the legendary "toppermost of the poppermost"
they kept aiming for. It was as real and as legitimate a desire as wanting
to paint a masterpiece; make no mistake. But that's quite different from
wanting to be a fad and nothing more. That was never the Boys' intent.
Initially, neither was the self-importance of becoming an Artist with
a capital "A".
Sometimes their rise to fame---a much more gradual process in the UK
than it seemed in the States---seemed to parallel musical crazes of the
past. The press was sidetracked by the hair, the accents, the wit. And
at concerts it was true you couldn't hear a thing but the screams of
a thousand or more girls. Did that make the music "trash"? Only to a
few curmudgeonly reporters...and those who mistook the peripheral
pop mystique for true substance.
The real substance was twofold, and it emerged only gradually during
the Beatles' career. It involved a seamless transition from musical
hits to artistic heights---and remarkably, at times you couldn't tell
the difference. Think of "Yesterday", "Paperback Writer", "Strawberry
Fields Forever". Consider the combined visual and musically-visceral
charm of the film "A Hard Day's Night". The compelling photographic
image of "Rubber Soul". The frenzy that accompanied the debut of
"Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The cohesiveness borne out
of fragmentation (miraculously recalling much more collaborative
times!) in a meandering medley on "Abbey Road".
Revisionism (and perhaps the passage of time) has allowed the gentle
fan to admit that *perhaps* "Revolver" was really the highpoint of
the Beatles' Art...or is it actually "Rubber Soul"? Or does it go back
even further to the simpler craftsmanship of a love song well-sung,
a preponderant theme of need, desire, loss, and hope...themes central
to the history of lyrical composition? Look back at the plaintive
words from ballads of medieval times; reach further to ancient lyrics,
now bereft of their harmonic accompaniment. It's still the same old
story. And it sells because it speaks of a fundamental human truth.
Was the world tricked? Did the Fabs put one over on us all? Was it
really all done, for years, with marketing and magic and mirrors,
till the Boys figured out how to leave "trash" behind them, till
they got up to cruising speed and started producing the Real Thing?
I think not.
For the Beatles, it was all part of the same spectrum, really. That's
one of the reasons a group like REM (as admirable as they indubitably
are) and all their compatriots in the pop world still haven't approached
what the Fabs accomplished. In fact, REM and their ilk have inherited
a musical obligation which they have yet to fulfill. I'm waiting for
it; I'm *eager* for it. I'd like to see if it can be done again! I'd
like to see one group or even a singular entity wrestle with popular
tunes, profound musical concepts, killer guitar riffs, film, words,
photographs, poetry...and come up with the same profound mixture of
message and meaning which the Fabs left to us as their legacy.
--
>
>>In <[email protected]> [email protected] (Russell) writes:
>>>Also, REM can't be the next Beatles because they don't come from Liverpool:-)
>
>>Damnit! REM is American! Its about time something intelligent was made in
>>America, and REM is as fine a blues/country-turned-rock band that has ever
>>graced the airwaves. IMHO they kill the Beatles because they NEVER had a
>>"stupid pop trash" period
>
>Neither did the Beatles -- unless you take all pop as being "stupid trash"
>by definition.
"This is pure madness," said one middle-aged woman. "There is nothing
spectacular about the Beatles anyway. I am worried for my daughter,
who might go crazy about them."______________________________________
saki ([email protected])
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