October 15, 2024 • 58 mins
What if the story of The Beatles isn't exactly as we've been told? Join us as we unravel the complexities behind their meteoric rise from Liverpool lads to global icons of cultural change. We challenge the official narrative, sharing personal tales of Beatlemania and scrutinizing their enigmatic transformation. With a special nod to John Lennon, we explore how these four musicians not only wrote the soundtrack of the 1960s but also stood at the helm of the British Invasion, altering the soundscape of popular music and youth culture alongside legendary acts like The Kinks and The Rolling Stones.
Our journey continues as we delve into The Beatles' revolutionary impact on music, breaking down their approach as a self-contained band that penned their own songs, a defiant move against an industry reliant on pre-written hits. Discover how their groundbreaking albums like "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" pushed the boundaries of pop, introducing novel sounds and redefining what an album could be. We dissect their legacy, from studio wizardry with George Martin to their influence on contemporary artists who saw The Beatles as the blueprint for musical creativity and expression.
Beyond music, The Beatles' societal influence was profound. Through their platform, they championed civil rights, voiced anti-war sentiments, and mirrored the counterculture's embrace of psychedelics and Eastern spirituality. We reflect on how their evolution in fashion and gender norms challenged the status quo, inspiring a new wave of self-expression and rebellion. As we unpack these layers, we ponder whether their global influence was a spontaneous cultural shift or a meticulously orchestrated phenomenon. Engage with us in this probing conversation that questions the very fabric of The Beatles' legacy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there everybody.
Pt Pop here with All FourLoaves, my Brain engulfed in
Beatlemania and today I'm goingto be talking about the Beatles'
impact on culture.
Got a great show for you.
Alert the media, wake the dog,tell the kids it's going to be a
fun show.
Do you like fries with that?
Do you like fries with that?
(00:20):
In my previous live streams andmy previous videos, I've
discussed the Beatles' impact onAmerica, the Beatles' impact on
me, and I've questioned how dida band of four guys end up
number one, getting famous, andhow did they end up having so
much power over the world?
(00:40):
How did they have so muchinfluence on our cultures, on
our lives, on our minds, on ouremotions?
And I wanted to take a deepdive into this, to try to go
over it in more detail.
Now I'm going to just jumpright into this, but before I
get into this, if you like whatI do, if you enjoy what you see
here on my channel, please giveme the thumbs up, like and
(01:02):
subscribe, tell your friendsabout the channel, get people to
come and watch it, and if youhave ideas of what you want me
to do on here, send me a directmessage at skatingbearstudios at
gmailcom that'sskatingbearstudios at gmailcom
and I'll be glad to take a lookat your ideas.
And you know this is a lot offun to do for me but it cost me
(01:25):
money to make.
This takes a lot of time, a lotof money.
If you have the extra casholaand you'd like to make a
donation, feel free to do so byjoining here as a member of this
channel or making you knowpaying for a membership on my
Patreon channel.
Links to both will be in thedescription of this video.
(01:49):
So I'm a huge Beatles fan.
I was a huge John Lennon fan.
I looked up to John Lennon, Iidolized him.
I idolized all four Beatleswell into my 30s and into my
very early 40s, until I began toquestion the official narrative
.
Now I actually kind of alwaysquestioned the official
(02:12):
narrative because in 1978, theBeatles released an album called
Live at the Star Club and whenI first heard this recording I
was in fifth grade.
Maybe it wasn't 70 yet I thinkit was 77.
So I was in fifth or sixth gradewhen I first heard this and I
(02:34):
was stunned by how awful theband sounded.
Now people today will hear thatalbum and go.
It's a very raw album of theBeatles, you have to understand.
It was recorded on areel-to-reel tape recorder at
the back of the club one nightand it's a very raw recording
(02:55):
and that's how they kind of passit off, as if that makes it
okay.
But I was very shocked becausewhen I was in fifth, sixth grade
, I was at the peak of my Beatlefanaticism, my Beatle obsession
, and I heard this band and Isaid that's the Beatles.
I mean, I actually didn't evenrecognize it as being the band
that I had heard for severalyears already and I thought, wow
(03:18):
, that's the band.
And keep in mind, at the time Iwasn't a musician, I had never
picked up the guitar.
I had a toy guitar I playedwith and I didn't know how to
read music.
I didn't know how to writesongs.
I had never written or playedor anything that wouldn't happen
for several more years.
So I was questioning theofficial narrative from that
point forward and I alwayswondered how a band that sounded
(03:39):
that rough the rough band atthe Star Club, could end up
getting so big within a coupleof years of that show at the
Star Club.
And I was very, very.
(04:02):
I was very, I guess you wouldsay, skeptical about it.
And as I've gotten older I'vebegan to question the official
narrative of the Beatles andmuch of that recently has been
inspired by the work of MikeWilliams on the Sage of Quay
radio channel here on YouTubeand I urge you to check out Mike
Williams' work.
He's a great guy and he's abrilliant guy and he's done an
immense amount of work to putforth a narrative that the
(04:23):
Beatles may not be the band thatwe all thought they were, and I
kind of look at myself as agraduate of Mike Williams' class
, Mike Williams' studies on theBeatles' narrative and a variety
of other things, includingDePaul is Dead, quote,
conspiracy unquote.
(04:44):
But the Beatles had an immenseimpact on culture and that's
putting it lightly.
And their impact on culturedidn't happen just during their
years active as a band in the1960s, but their influence went
well beyond the 1960s and theirinfluence influenced music,
(05:05):
politics, social norms, allkinds of things.
I mean their arrival in the USin 1964, it sparked what many of
you know of as the Britishinvasion and of course that's a
play on the original Britishinvasion when America was
becoming a country and we werefighting the British back in the
(05:25):
1700s.
But this British invasion wasspearheaded by the Beatles and
it altered the landscape ofpopular music, youth culture and
even larger social norms aroundthe world.
And that included bands likethe Kinks, the Stones, the who.
You know all of those bands andyou've all heard of those bands
(05:46):
, and I'm a fan of all thosebands.
I wasn't a fanatic for them,like I am the Beatles, but I was
a big Kinks fan Still am Kinksand the who fan.
I've never been a big Stonesfan.
I've never really found theStones to be all that intriguing
.
When I was really little Iliked them, but as I've gotten
older, it's like they sound likethey're playing the same songs
(06:07):
over and over and over again.
They've never really evolved,but that's a whole other story.
Now.
They revolutionized popularmusic.
Now you have to consider acouple things.
Before the Beatles got here,there were other bands and other
artists that had screaminggirls and fanaticism surrounding
(06:27):
them, and one of the big, bignames is Frank Sinatra, and if
you don't know who Sinatra is,you've got to crawl out from
underneath your rock and checkhim out.
He was a brilliant singer andentertainer from the 30s, 40s
and 50s and beyond.
He did songs like Fly Me to theMoon.
But Frank was an entertainer.
He wasn't a songwriter and hewas a singer and he worked with
(06:51):
great composers that wrote songsfor him.
He worked with what's calledthe Great American Songbook and
that included.
Songwriters he worked with wereCole Porter, sammy Kahn, jimmy
Van Heusen, harold Arlen, rogersand Hart and he created with
them.
He sang the songs they wroteand turned them into timeless
(07:12):
standards and they're stillplayed on the radio and
everybody knows these songs tothis day.
But he had these screaminggirls and fans called Bobby
Soxers that would line up andthrow themselves at them and
faint and swoon and all thatstuff.
But after Sinatra in the 1950scame Elvis, elvis Presley and
(07:35):
I'm not going to go into thehistory of Elvis Presley.
We should all know.
Most of you know who Elvis isand who Sinatra was or who these
guys were, because they bothpassed away.
But Elvis Presley was also aperformer.
He was the consummate performer.
I mean both these guys, sinatraand Elvis had the complete
package.
(07:55):
But Elvis really had thischarisma, this look, this energy
that was unseen and unheardbefore in the entertainment
world.
And you know he had the wholepackage.
He had everything.
But he didn't write any of hissongs.
He worked on a few of his songswith his songwriters, but his
(08:17):
songs were primarily written bya team of professional
songwriters including JerryLieber and Mike Stoller, which
is the Lieber and Stoller famoussongwriting duo, otis Blackwell
, doc Palmas and Mort Schumannand others.
So these two guys that had suchhuge fandom in the United
(08:37):
States and around the worlddidn't write their own music.
They were known as entertainers, crooners, singers and really
good-looking guys.
They were known as entertainers, crooners, singers and really
good looking guys, and bothartists were interpreters of the
highest order.
I mean, they were taking songswritten by others and elevating
them into iconic performances.
That started the shaping of thefuture of music and it's really
(09:05):
interesting to see.
After Elvis, the Beatles arrivedon the scene right and the
Beatles were a self-containedband who allegedly wrote their
own songs.
This was unheard of in themusic business up to this point,
other than Buddy Holly.
I think Buddy Holly wrote hisown music.
He wrote and performed his ownmusic, but he didn't have near
(09:27):
the impact that Elvis or Sinatradid and he was just one guy.
But I think Buddy Holly wrotehis songs with Perry.
I can't remember the man'sfirst name.
I think a lot of the songs arelike Holly and Perry.
I might have the wrong name.
I think a lot of the songs arelike Holly and Perry.
I might have the wrong name,but the Beatles arrived, these
four guys from England whoallegedly wrote their own songs,
(09:50):
and this revolutionized theapproach of rock and roll.
And what did this do?
In the process, like myself andmillions and millions of other
men and women and boys and girlsaround the world, it inspired
millions of us to write, performand record their own original
material.
Now, myself, I became asongwriter in 1990, 1990, but I
(10:14):
didn't start really pursuing ituntil 1992.
But I've written over 150 songsand released five CDs of
original music.
Am I famous?
No, I'm not famous and I haveno qualms about that.
I don't want to be famous.
When I was a kid, sure I wantedto be famous.
I thought I wanted to be Beatle, like a Beatle with Beatlemania
(10:38):
, and the Beatles inspired me.
But as a self-contained groupwho wrote their own songs, they
influenced so many people and somany things.
I mean everybody got it intheir mind.
Because when you hear theBeatles' story, you hear that
(10:59):
they did know how to read music,that you didn't need to know
music.
You didn't need to to readmusic, that you didn't need to
know music.
You didn't need to understandmusic theory, you didn't need to
understand staff and bars andtime signatures.
You didn't have to understandany of that stuff.
You could just pick up a guitar, teach yourself a few chords
and learn to play the guitar andthat would be it.
That was everything, and youcould be like a beetle, shake
(11:23):
your head like a beetle.
So it gave this impression toyoung men and women around the
world that hey, if they can doit, if four nobodies from
Liverpool, england, workingclass guys that live near
poverty it was portrayed that atleast a couple of them were
poor, from broken homes couldpick up a guitar, just learn to
(11:47):
play a few songs and get famous,hey, anybody could do it.
It gave the impression thatanyone could do it and you know
they took their influences.
Now they were influenced bygenres you know, like rock and
roll, of course, blues, folk,later on Indian music, later on
orchestral arrangements, whicheventually turned into
(12:08):
psychedelia and they pushed theboundaries of what was possible
in pop music at the time becauseprior to the Beatles, Elvis,
sinatra, they didn't go off intopsychedelic stuff.
Psychedelic wasn't even known.
They weren't playing Indianinstruments in their songs.
And in later years the Beatleswould eventually branch out with
(12:30):
experimental albums like RubberSoul and Revolver.
And what this did, these twoalbums were, you know, ahead of
their time because they didwhat's called album-oriented
rock or concept albums.
They helped invent conceptalbums as an album form of art,
(12:52):
because in the old days a bandlike Elvis Elvis would release
an album and he'd have onesingle and the single would be
on the album and the singlewould be released separately.
But the single was the big songthat everybody knew, like Hound
Dog.
Now don't get me, don't get me,I'm not an Elvis fan, so I
don't know his records.
But I know he'd have an albumand there'd only be one good
(13:15):
song on it that anybody wouldlisten to.
The rest were like throwaways.
But everybody knew Hound Dog.
Now I don't know specificallyif that song was on an album,
I'm just showing you what it'slike.
So he'd record an album ofsongs that nobody else knew
about, but they knew Han Dog.
With the Beatles they'd releasean album like Revolver, and
people would want to listen tothis album from beginning to end
(13:37):
and they wanted to listen toall the music on it.
Same with Rubber Soul, and samewith some of their earlier
records too, where they hadcover tunes.
They still did cover tunes onsome of their albums, but they
were the leaders in that theybrought that to the forefront of
music.
(13:58):
Albums became an art form.
They weren't an art form before.
The idea before was to get onegood song, get it to the top of
the charts, get your name outthere and keep releasing singles
.
You throw out an album outthere and people would buy both,
but most people would toss thealbum aside and not want to
listen to it.
And of course I'm summarizingquite a bit.
I can't tell you what everybodydid around the world with their
(14:19):
Elvis or their Sinatra albums.
I've never heard an entireSinatra album.
I've never heard an entireSinatra album.
I've heard the best of Sinatra.
I have best of Sinatra albumsand I had a best of Elvis album,
but you know I never got tolisten to it much.
Now, when it comes to theconcept album the Beatles they
(14:40):
pioneered concept albums and thefirst concept album allegedly
of all time was Sgt Pepper'sLonely Hearts Club Band.
Now this is one of the firstconcept albums where the songs
were allegedly tied togetherthroughout the album.
You know weaving a storythroughout the whole thing.
Okay, it also helped pushpsychedelic, psychedelic things,
(15:03):
psychedelic drugs, lsd.
The album cover art was verybrightly colored.
It was kind of like an acidtrip funeral or something like
that and it influenced bandslike Pink Floyd, the Doors and
Jimi Hendrix, which I'm notgoing to go into them either.
But if you listen to SgtPepper's after the first song or
two, none of the others arereally connected unless you're
(15:26):
on some type of.
You're on the inside and youknow what the album's about.
When I was a kid I first heardthis album in 1975 when I was
nine years old, and when I putit on my record player I
couldn't even tell it was theBeatles.
I was like I saw the albumcover art and it kind of looked
like them and John didn't looklike John.
(15:47):
To me Paul looked a little bitodd.
The only two that I thoughtstill looked like Beatles were
George and Ringo and I rememberseeing that.
I thought that the album lookeddark and dreary and just
mysterious and the album soundedmurky, poorly mixed, dark and
hideous kind of sound to anine-year-old's ears.
(16:08):
Now, keep in mind, when you'rea kid you have no filters really
and you can process things andyou can kind of take it and say
things and see things as theyreally are, because you're not
really that heavily influencedyet by society and by culture
that you're living in, yet bysociety and by culture that
you're living in.
So when I talk about what Iheard and I saw from my own ears
(16:29):
and eyes as a nine-year-old,it's a pretty accurate
reflection of how I really sawthe album.
Now the rest of the worldportrays that album as this
earth-shattering breakthrough inmusical history.
But after the first two songsthe wrists aren't really
attached to anything.
(16:49):
I mean you've got Sgt Pepper'sLonely Hearts Club Band is the
intro song which leads into Witha Little Help from my Friends,
you know.
You've got the introduction ofBailey Shears, which I'm not
going to go into that but whichleads into Loosing the Sky with
Diamonds.
Then you go on to GettingBetter Fixing Holes.
She's Leaving Home Mr KiteWithin you, without you, so on
(17:12):
and so forth, and it ends with ADay in the Life.
None of the songs are connectedbut for some reason people back
then heard this one whoa man.
This blows my mind.
It's a great concept album.
There was.
This blows my mind.
It's a great concept album.
There was no such thing as aconcept album at the time.
Myself, this is my leastfavorite Beatle record.
I don't get it.
I've never understood it.
(17:32):
I didn't like it as a nine yearold and it's one of the very
few albums that I'd ever wouldput on and listen to all the way
through.
That Magical Mystery Tour,magical Mystery Tour, sgt
Pepper's and Yellow Submarineare just abysmal albums.
Yellow Submarine isn't evenreally an album because they
mixed in all that George MartinPepperland crap like they did on
(17:56):
the Hard Day's Night releaseand the Help release of the
movie soundtracks of thosealbums.
They put the George Martininstrumental pieces in there.
The Beatles were also known allof a sudden to be a band that
used the studio as an instrument.
Okay, prior to the Beatles,nobody really thought about the
(18:21):
recording process.
Nobody sat down and said Iwonder how Elvis recorded Blue
Hawaii.
You know, I wonder how Elvisrecorded Blue Hawaii.
I wonder how Sinatra sang andrecorded Fly Me to the Moon.
I did it my way.
Nobody cared.
They didn't care whatmicrophones they used.
They didn't care who thedrummer was or who was on bass,
(18:41):
who played saxophone, any ofthat stuff.
But the Beatles started to usethe studio as an instrument, and
, in a way, it transformed theway music was produced.
Not in a way it did.
It transformed the way musicwas produced all over the world.
They were the first tointegrate multi-track recording,
(19:03):
overdubs and tape loops andexperimental sounds, especially
with their producer, georgeMartin.
George Martin, though, was aclassically trained musician,
and he primarily worked with theGoon Show, with Peter Sellers
and Mike Mulligan of the Goons,and so he was known for more,
(19:27):
and they were a comedy group, sohe was more known for working
with sound effects and funnysounds and comedy records.
I'm not quite certain how hegot to produce the Beatles.
You go from the Goons show tothe Beatles and I'm like, okay,
that's kind of a big leap, butall right, and they did all
their work at Ebrew Road Studiosin London, and they did all
(19:48):
their work at Every Road Studiosin London, and their studio
innovations influencedgenerations of artists and
producers like myself.
Now, I'm not famous, butthere's millions and millions of
guys just like me that aren'tfamous, that were influenced by
the Beatles and opened up homerecording studios.
I've got a studio here, amakeshifter studio.
It's not really professional,but I've recorded songs here
(20:11):
that are pretty good.
You can do a lot of stuff nowat home that you couldn't do 50
years ago at home unless you hadlots of money.
And the funny thing is now, keepin mind this is just a band.
This is just four guys.
They're portrayed if youbelieve the official story
they're just portrayed as fourregular guys that just had a
dream of being rock and rollersand wanted to go to the
(20:33):
topper-most, popper-most ofeverything.
Right, just four lads to go tothe topper-most, popper-most.
And they somehow got there.
They stumbled, they juststumbled into it after just
schlepping around these dank,dark halls in Germany and London
just pounding out cover tunes,mostly cover tunes.
90% of the repertoire was covertunes.
(20:54):
They didn't play many of theiroriginal tunes and they weren't
known as songwriters.
Up to this point they weren't.
They were known as a cover band, and not a very good one at
that.
Now, keep in mind George Martinis quoted as saying that when he
first met the Beatles and firstheard them, he didn't think
much of them.
He thought they were garbage.
He thought they were garbageand their sound was garbage and
(21:16):
he didn't want to produce them.
I'm not going to go down thatalleyway because there's lots of
little alleyways to go off onhere, but I'm going to kind of
stick them under the culture now.
Now, the Beatles, these fourrough guys.
They polished them up, theygive them haircuts, they put
them in Italian collar suits,they give them these ankle-high
boots that are eventually calledbeetle boots, and so they start
(21:37):
to shape youth culture andcounterculture.
Now, at the time there was athing called beatniks or the
beat culture, which was like abunch of beatniks and poets and
they'd sit in coffee shopssmoking brown cigarettes,
drinking coffee with bongosgoing.
Man, that is cool stuff, man,hey, man, did you hear the one
(22:00):
about the spider and the flea?
And they're sitting there withthe guitars and stuff like that.
But the arrival of the Beatleshas been coined and phrased as
being a cultural earthquake.
You can see this in all thetabloids and stuff from back
(22:21):
then.
That triggering it triggeredBeatlemania, and it's portrayed
that their youthful energy andtheir style captivated millions
of teenagers, turning theBeatles into global symbols of a
youth rebellion and freedom.
And this is what I don'tunderstand.
Okay, and again, in anothervideo I talked about what our
(22:43):
culture was like at the time.
America was a very clean-cutsociety, very Christian society,
predominantly white, but it wasvery segregated.
So there was a black part oftown and a white part of town
and the white people or theblack people weren't permitted
to drink out of white drinkingfountains.
They had to drink out of blackdrinking fountains and they had
(23:04):
to sit at the back of the bus.
When they got on the bus withthe white people.
There's all kinds of thingslike that.
That went on and they had norights.
They couldn't vote, they weretreated like dogs and the
country was segregated.
But overall it was a prettypeaceful country.
Post-war World War II Americathere was a boom of industry.
(23:25):
A guy could get out of the war,go get a job, work for 30 years
and retire with a pension, onesource of income.
The father worked, the motherstayed at home, raised the kids
it was all sunshine and puppydogs and rainbows, or so it was
portrayed and the kids.
(23:46):
If you had a home like thatwhere the dad worked, the kids
had a roof over their head, theyhad money, they had food in the
kids.
If you had a home like thatwhere the dad worked, you know
the kids had a roof over theirhead, they had money, they had
food in the fridge, they had anew car.
In the driveway they had a dogand TV set and the whole thing.
And people lived this way andthe dad would come home like my
mom and dad.
My dad was a war vet.
He went to college, met my momin college.
He graduated, she dropped outof school, they got hitched, had
(24:09):
my brother in 1950, and theyhad a house in the suburbs here
in Cleveland and pick a whitefence and they had my sister and
my brother.
Then I was born like eightyears later and they weren't
living happily ever after, butthey put forth the image that
they were.
But on my dad's salary, workingin advertising for the
Cleveland Press, he was able tobuy brand new cars and, I guess,
(24:31):
new houses, I think with alittle help from my mom's side
of the family, because my mom'sside of the family at one time
had some money.
But there was this portrayalthat everybody had back then
where the dad was thebreadwinner.
The mother stayed at home andcooked and brought dad a martini
and sat and rubbed his feetafter a long, hard day at work,
while he sat in his armchair andsmoked a pipe and watched
(24:53):
Walter Cronkite on the news.
And so what I'm trying to figureout is when they say that the
Beatles were this global symbolsof youth, rebellion and freedom
.
Now, I wasn't alive until 1965,but I'm trying to figure out
what did they have to rebelagainst these kids?
(25:14):
They rebelled against asuccessful father who broke his
back and his butt to bring homemoney so you could have food on
the table and you could have awagon to run up and down the
driveway in and a tricycle and,you know, you could have a nice
house and you could go onvacation once a year and all the
things that you know that youhave.
(25:36):
I mean, what were theyrebelling about?
What was the freedom?
How were they being held back?
And I don't understand it.
I don't understand why wouldthis band inspire symbols of
youth, rebellion and freedom?
Look at our country.
Since the youth rebellion andfreedom.
If the Beatles inspired this,our country's falling apart
(26:00):
because of rebellion and freedom.
Right now, our country isfalling apart because there's
not a father in most households.
I didn't have a father in myhousehold.
My father was laying drunk inthe gutter somewhere while I was
being born and he wasn't a partof my life at all.
When he was around.
He was unconscious and at timesmy mother was too.
(26:21):
So I was kind of raised by ahalf-sober mother and kind of my
sister and one brother, youknow.
The family unit began to fallapart.
So you know, and it wasn't justme I knew lots of guys.
All my friends had broken homes.
(26:41):
All my friends did Broken homes.
I had one friend whose parentswere swingers.
You know they openly would readthe book the Joy of Sex, which
was a big popular book in the70s.
They had it out in theirbedroom.
My friend Dave and I would goin and look at the Joy of Sex.
These are wild people but mypoint is okay.
(27:04):
So the family unit was strong.
The family unit was stable.
You only needed one source ofincome to have a house, a car,
food, pay all the bills, theinsurance.
The mother could stay at home,raise the kids.
You had a strong, stableenvironment with security,
mental and emotional securityfor the most part.
Let's take out all the otherfactors like spousal abuse that
(27:26):
was going on at the time andextreme addiction to pills for
the women and addiction toalcohol.
But let's just take it at facevalue.
It was a great, happy home life.
What did they have to rebelagainst.
Look at the houses.
Now Nobody has a dad anymore.
People are getting divorced atan exponential rate.
Today, more than 50% of allmarriages end in divorce.
(27:48):
Today the African-Americanpeople have equality on paper
anyway, right, but most of theblack kids are raised by their
moms because the dad took off orthey got divorced or whatever
it happens.
The same thing in the whitecommunity it's not just the
black people.
My dad was not around and I'm aswhite as the German snow and I
(28:12):
can tell you that if the Beatlesare responsible for youth
rebellion and freedom, it'sundermined the integrity of our
country, it's ruined us.
But that's just my opinion.
So I guess they were rebellingagainst a stable, stable parents
(28:32):
, a stable economy, good payingjobs and secure jobs and no war.
There was no war in 1945.
After 1945 there was no waruntil like 1965.
So for 10 years or 20 years wewere not at war.
Beatles show up all of a sudden.
Oh my God, we're in Vietnam.
(28:53):
Oh my God, the world's fallingapart.
But the Beatles somehow becamethis rallying point for the
emerging youth culture.
I mean, what is this rallyingpoint?
Youth culture?
I don't understand why theyouth were so miserable.
I guess they resented authority.
They resented their parents forgiving them a good life, not
(29:15):
giving them the freedom to bewho they wanted to be.
Like Dad, I don't want to workat the newspaper, I want to go
out and be a Beatle.
Music was a form ofself-expression and resistance
to the more conservativetraditional values of the
post-World War II generation.
You know, my dad was World WarII.
(29:35):
My mom was a World War IIperson from that generation.
They both saw the effects ofthat war and the men that came
back from that war.
But they also benefited fromthe post-industrial boom in our
country.
I don't understand what's torebel against there.
We had a strong, stable company.
(29:55):
Everything was made in thiscountry.
The world looked up to us.
Nobody would mess with us.
We had a strong, mightymilitary.
We had a great Navy, great AirForce, everything was going good
.
The economy was strong.
Somehow the Beatles gave theyoung kids a reason to scream
and cry and want somethingbetter.
I don't think they got what youknow.
(30:16):
I don't think they gotsomething better Because look at
the results.
The repercussions are seen inour society today.
I guess it's been said that theBeatles' work in the later 1960s
with the Sgt Pepper MagicalMystery Tour, the White Album
and so on.
(30:36):
It paralleled kind of acounterculture movement because
the Beatles started toexperiment with psychedelic
drugs and they became associatedwith the Eastern spirituality,
you know, with the Maharishi,mahesh Yogi and transcendental
meditation, and they kind ofbecame icons of the emerging
(31:00):
hippie movement.
And you see, as a kid, when Ilook back at this, I was really
little when there were hippiesand I remember seeing guys like
I had a brother-in-law that hada really long hair and a beard
and stuff and I had my, myoldest brother and his wife were
kind of they were kind ofhippies.
They weren't full-blown hippies, they were kind of bordering,
teetering on hippie yuppie,hippie, yuppie conservative
(31:24):
types.
But but the Beatles released asong called Loosing the Sky with
Diamonds, which its initialsare LSD, which is supposed to be
synonymous with the drug, thepsychedelic drug, and they I
don't know if they participatedin the Summer of Love.
I don't know if they made itover to Haight-Ashbury I think
(31:47):
George and Ringo did orsomething.
I don't know if all fourBeatles were ever there, but it
kind of made them where theywere portrayed as being central
figures in promoting peace andlove.
Because their song All you NeedIs Love and all that stuff.
And they had.
I don't know if they all had.
I think Paul and John hadstances on anti-war, especially
(32:09):
to Vietnam.
I know John was very outspokenagainst the Vietnam War.
They're very pro-civil rights,they're very pro.
They wouldn't perform inconcerts up until 66 when they
started touring.
They wouldn't perform forsegregated audiences.
They want everybody to sit inthe same arena together as one
free group.
(32:32):
And I guess their personalfreedom influenced the political
consciousness of the 60sgeneration.
Now I just don't know.
I don't really know if thisband did that or if it was just
the situation of the 60s or wasit something more nefarious
behind all of it.
And this culture was globalized, this world spread of peace and
(32:54):
love and anti-war.
It extended beyond the Englishspeaking world.
It went into Japan, india,latin America and it contributed
to Western pop culture.
It was spread globally and Iguess the Beatles' music and
their attitudes and theirbeliefs made the group one of
(33:18):
the first truly global popphenomena.
Because they were a householdname.
Everybody knew about theBeatles.
They knew what they werewearing, they knew what they
drank, they knew what they ate,they knew the cigarettes they
smoked, they knew what theirpolitical affiliations were and
what they thought of all thisstuff.
But I don't know how that gotthat way.
(33:39):
I don't know why it had to beknown.
Did somebody behind the scenespush that narrative to make it
global?
Or did the press just pick upon it because they were all
constantly being harassed bypaparazzi and people said, oh,
they went to India and said theMaharishi, mahayogi and it got
(33:59):
into the paper.
I don't know.
I don't know if the four mensat down and said you know what
we've got to do?
We've really got to tell theworld about Latin America and
tell Latin America and Japan andIndia all about meditation and
LSD.
That way we can change theworld and make it more peaceful.
I don't think they sat aroundthinking that way.
But I don't know.
(34:19):
I don't know what was going onbehind the scenes and who their
handlers were.
And I know there was anintroduction of Eastern Sounds
because of George Harris and thestar work on Robert Soul and
Within you, within Out you.
You know Ravi Shankar and allthat stuff.
I don't want to get into allthat because I really don't find
(34:40):
that that stuff was all thatinfluential for me.
I guess it was for the world.
I guess the world went oh sitar, I've never heard that before.
Let's go buy a sitar, billy,and get into meditation.
I don't know if that happened.
I don't know if that happened.
But they also allegedlyinfluenced a redefinition of
fashion and gender norms becauseof the long hair.
(35:03):
They went from like themoderate they were called mods
and with their beetle haircutsand kind of the beatnik look to
the hippie fashion they were atthe forefront allegedly.
I don't know if there's anydocumented proof that they were
the first ones to change fashiontrends, like you know, wearing
(35:24):
the hair long and introducing amod look with their suits.
I guess they did.
They started with theircollarless Italian suits,
jackets and mop top hairstylessuits, jackets and mop top
hairstyles.
(35:46):
By the late 1960s, you know,that look evolved in the
counterculture movement and itkind of embraced a more casual,
psychedelic and hippie stylewith the long hair, the color
prints, the beads, the patchouli, eastern influence attire and
it kind of the long hair kind ofgrayed the boundaries.
The gray the boundaries betweenmen and women with the long
(36:06):
hair, because sometimes there'sa guy walking down the street
you couldn't tell if it was aman or a woman.
You know, the long hair, use ofmakeup, androgynous looks,
challenging the rigid gendernorms of the time.
So you go from the end of thewar.
The long hair, use of makeup,androgynous looks, challenging
the rigid gender norms of thetime.
So you go from the end of thewar, World War II.
Men had buzz haircuts, boyswore button-down shirts and nice
pants, girls wore littledresses.
(36:26):
You know it was all very rigidand structured and allegedly the
Beatles, for some reasonsomehow had this massive
influence where people startedgrowing their hair long,
dressing like hippies, gettingstoned all the time and I'm
painting this with a largegeneralized brush.
But their influence helpedcreate a more broader acceptance
(36:50):
of more fluid expression ofgender, I guess, you would say.
And you can kind of seeresidual effects on that in the
glam rock movement of the 70sand the 80s.
And you know they becamespokespeople somehow, this band
of four scruffy guys fromLiverpool that didn't know how
(37:12):
to read music or write anything,they all of a sudden became
these prolific songwriters.
They became a spokespeople fortheir generation, a spokespeople
for that generation.
They influenced all thesechanges, somehow, these just
blue-collar guys from Liverpool.
And you know they made a lot ofcommentation with songs like
(37:35):
the song Revolution Blackbirdwas allegedly about a black girl
who was, I don't know, made tosit at the back of a bus or
something.
I've heard it's about a bird andI've heard it's about actually
a black girl that was beingdiscriminated against.
But I guess allegedly they werepro-racial justice, they were
(37:55):
pacifists.
They never spoke ofChristianity, they spoke of
spiritualism.
So they were kind of introducedas kind of anti-Christian.
I can't say that they wereSatanists, but they were
introduced as kind of like theseanti-Christian figures in the
world of entertainment, figuresin the world of entertainment.
Because you know, previousgenerations of musicians often
(38:17):
avoided, completely avoided, anydiscussion whatsoever politics
or sex or religion or anything.
Sex was taboo way, big tabooback then, before the Beatles.
Man, if you were gay you couldbe killed, you could be locked
up for being gay.
Even when the Beatles were aband, you could be killed.
You could be locked up forbeing gay.
Even when the Beatles were aband, you could be 86 because
(38:41):
you were gay and anything kinky,anything outside the missionary
position to make babies, wasconsidered.
You were a freak, a dirty oldman, you were really out there,
man.
Excuse me but I ask did ourculture need spokespeople at
(39:03):
this time.
Why did we need spokespeople?
I mean, allegedly, the Beatlesset the stage for future
generations of artists like BobDylan, bruce Springsteen, u2,
public Enemy these bands are allwell-known for blending their
music with social activism.
I mean, do I really wantsomebody in the rock and roll
(39:24):
world or the entertainment worldtelling me what I should think
and who I should vote for?
I mean, today, bruceSpringsteen, just, you know he
endorsed Kamala Kamala, kamalToh Harris.
I'm like, okay, bruce, I guessif Bruce says so, I'm going to
go vote for you.
I was born to run baby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, born inAmerica, born in the USA.
(39:47):
And the Beatles also wereresponsible for allegedly for
music videos With their new, youknow, the moves like A Hard
Day's Night in Hell.
But I beg to differ.
They came up with promotionalvideos for songs like Paperback
Rider, strawberry Fields,forever.
They had promotional videos forthose to promote the songs.
But Elvis had entire movieswith his songs in them.
So what were those?
(40:07):
Somehow the Beatles take creditfor a lot of stuff that already
happened.
You know, I don't know.
They're putting a lot of,they're giving the Beatles a lot
of accountability and they'regiving a lot of credit for
things that may not be theirs tobe given to Now.
(40:28):
What I find interesting is,overall, the economic impact on
the music industry that thisband had and the Beatles had
unparalleled commercial successthat was never seen by any prior
artist.
And the Beatles, completelysingle-handedly, somehow just
(40:53):
four uneducated guys fromLiverpool, working class blue
class guys that couldn't read adot of music somehow entirely
changed the economics of themusic business.
Think about this.
I mean, they set new recordsfor album and merchandise sales
and their success played a majorrole in the shaping of modern
(41:14):
music industry's culture.
They completely took a shotgunto it.
They just walked in with a andit was changed.
They started, as I saidpreviously, album-oriented rock
where record albums became thepiece of art rubber soul from
rubber soul onward.
And what that did is itdemonstrated that albums could
(41:37):
be commercially successful andcould be seen as a cohesive
piece of artwork rather thanjust vehicles for singles, as I
talked about earlier.
And this influenced how recordlabels approached albums as
major commercial products in theindustry.
Prior to that they didn't takealbums seriously.
Albums really weren't somethingthat people went out and bought
, didn't have a lot of them, andthey also changed merchandising
(42:02):
the Beatles were the first tocapitalize on merchandising.
They had Beatle wigs and lunchboxes and boots and shirts.
The kids were just bugging thecrap out of their parents Please
, please, buy me a Beetle Boots.
In 1975, the Beetles had beenbroken up for five years and I
bugged my parents my parents arestill married.
(42:23):
At the time I bugged them foran entire winter or something to
take them to the mall so theycould buy Beetle Boots.
And they tried to explain to methat they didn't sell Beetle
Boots anymore.
The Beetle Boots hadn't beenmade since like 1966.
Almost that they didn't sellBeetle boots anymore.
The Beetle boots hadn't beenmade since like 1966, almost 10
years previous to this.
But I said, well, there's gotto be boots like it, there's got
to be boots like it.
And they took me to the malland they took me to every
(42:44):
goddamn shoe store like 10 shoestores, including Sears and
Penny's and there were kind ofboots like make them for kids,
and they weren't just like theBeatles, and I drove them crazy.
I was absolutely just a littlepain in the ass and I guess the
thing that I find odd here is ifyou look at how they really
(43:07):
influenced music.
Let's take a look at.
I'm going to conclude with this.
Let's look at what the Beatlesdid to guitar sales.
Now think about this Back whenSinatra was singing and crooning
, there was predominantly bigband guys.
There was Sinatra, there's BennyGoodman, glenn Miller, a lot of
(43:28):
instrumental musicians thatplayed brass instruments and
drums and bass and piano.
There was jazz and blues.
There was some black rock androll.
Then Elvis.
Elvis came along and Elvisinspired more people to pick up
a guitar and get into bands.
I don't know if Sinatra reallydid, because Sinatra and those
guys prior to Elvis were realmusicians.
(43:51):
I don't know if Sinatra couldread music, but his musicians
around him all could, and theywould sit in a bandstand or sit
on a riser behind him with sheetmusic in front of him and they
would follow a band leader andthe saxophone players and the
trumpeters and the bass players.
I think they all had sheetmusic in front of them and if
(44:13):
they didn't, they knew theirmusic.
They knew their instrumentsinside and out.
These were well-trained,polished musicians that knew how
to play music and they weredamn good.
These were damn good men andwomen that could play the fuck
out of their instruments.
The Beatles, on the other hand,were just kind of these
haphazard guys that kind ofstumbled into music somehow.
(44:34):
But look at guitar sales, thinkabout it.
You know the sales data forelectric guitars that I could
find here on the internet, thesales data for electric and
acoustic guitars in the USbetween 1954 and 1964 isn't
really all that availableavailable, but from what I could
(45:00):
find I can find some generaltrends between a couple
different time frames.
Now between 1954 and 1964 iswhere I'm going to go.
But you know, this was this.
The 1950s and the early 1960swas known as the golden era for
electric guitars, which wasobviously driven by rock and
roll and influential musicianslike Elvis Presley, buddy Holly
(45:25):
and later the Beatles.
Now, companies like Fender andGibson saw a really huge and a
sharp increase in the sales ofelectric guitars, especially
after the release of iconicmodels like the Fender
Stratocaster in 1954 and theGibson Les Paul in the early
1950s.
Now, electric guitar salesbegan to accelerate in the late
(45:47):
1950s and the early 1960s.
By 1965, it estimated thatFender was selling around 50,000
guitars annually, while Gibsonand other manufacturers like
Rickenbacker and Gretsch werealso ramping up production.
Acoustic guitars, on the otherhand, were also popular but were
often overshadowed by growingexcitement around electrics.
(46:11):
But companies like MartinMartin Guitars and Gibson still
produce significant numbers ofguitars and folk musicians like
Bob Dylan help sustain demand.
Now the rough sales estimatesbetween 1954 and 1964, 1950s
(46:33):
electric guitar sales.
By 1954, total US guitar saleswere in the tens of thousands
per year, growing rapidly due tothe explosion of rock and roll.
Between 1954-1960, guitar salescould have been in the range of
20,000 to 40,000 total per year, increasing as more musicians
(46:56):
adopted electrics.
1961 to 64, sales continuedincreasingly, possibly reaching
around 50,000 plus units totalall things combined annually by
1964, due to bands like theBeatles, sales increased in
popularity and electricsincreased in popularity.
(47:18):
Now acoustic guitars Martinreported annual production
numbers in the range of 5,000 to10,000 units in the 1950s and
growing somewhat by the 1960s,not too much but somewhat.
Between 1954 and 1964, acousticguitar sales could have a range
between 10,000 and 30,000 unitstotal and this is I guess this
(47:42):
is US or maybe worldwide.
There wasn't a whole lot ofunits moving back then.
So with a modest increase inthe folk music gain traction in
the early 1960s because of Dylanand all those people, because
Dylan was on the scene beforethe Beatles.
Now it's clear that thecombined sales of electric
(48:05):
acoustic guitars in the 1960swere likely exceeding 60,000 to
80,000 units annually In the US,where electric guitars were
showing a sharper growthtrajectory due to rock music.
But between 1964 and 1974, itall changed.
(48:25):
It all changed.
Now it wasn't all just becauseof the Beatles, but bands like
the Beatles, the Stones, ledZeppelin and Hendrix and Dylan
and Clapton made the guitarculture a huge symbol during
this time and there was anexplosion in guitar sales.
(48:46):
1964 to 1969, fender, gibson andGretsch and Rickenbacker became
dominant players in theelectric guitar market, became
dominant players in the electricguitar market.
Sales continued to rise as theBeatles' popularity peaked and
other British invasion bandstook over the US charts.
By 1965, fender alone wasproducing around 50,000 guitars
(49:07):
annually just Fender alone, withGibson selling slightly fewer
but still significant numbers.
It's estimated that total USelectric guitar sales from all
manufacturers were likely in therange of 200,000 to 300,000
units per year by the mid-1960s.
So between 1964 to 1965-1966,they went from selling a total
(49:38):
of everything combined acousticand electric 80,000 units to
300,000 units.
That's a huge, huge increase innumbers.
And between 1970 and 74, thetrend of electric guitar sales
(49:59):
continued through the 1970s withthe rise of hard rock, you know
, blues, psychedelic rock, allthat stuff that came about.
Gibson by the early 1970s,gibson and Fender were producing
tens of thousands of guitarseach year, producing tens of
(50:19):
thousands of guitars each year.
Fender, for instance, waslikely producing around 60,000
to 70,000 guitars annually bythe 1970s.
Industry-wide estimates suggestthat the total US sales of
electric guitars across allmanufacturers were possibly
350,000 to 400,000 units peryear by the early 1970s.
So between 1964 and 1974, italmost quintupled the amount of
(50:54):
guitars, five times the amountof guitars, five times the
amount of guitars being producedjust because of these bands.
It was spearheaded by theBeatles, same with acoustic
guitar sales, and acousticguitar sales in the early 1960s
was a small number of guitarsales Between 64 and 69,.
(51:14):
I mean the sales grew steadilybecause the Beals and Dylan,
martin, gibson and GildedGuitars were among the leaders
in this.
Martin reported producingaround 5,000 to 7,000 guitars
per year during this periodbetween 1964 and 1969.
All manufacturers of acousticguitar sales in the US range
(51:35):
between 100,000 and 150,000units per year by the late 1960s
.
Between 1970 and 1974, the USwas the first to produce.
It says the acoustic guitarsales were in the range of
150,000 to 200,000 units peryear, with companies like Martin
Gibson and Yamaha sellingstrong numbers.
(51:55):
Now Yamaha used to be a hugeguitar manufacturer.
I don't know if they're evenstill around.
I've had a couple of Yamahas,but look at them.
The acoustics combined with theelectric sales is well over
500,000 units per year, when thecombined was nowhere near even
100,000 just several yearsearlier.
(52:17):
But between 1964 and 1974, itwent up by more, almost 10 times
.
It was probably more like eighttimes what they were doing
before total.
So it's a cumulative effectthat the Beatles started.
(52:42):
I mean, if you look at theestimates I have here, if you
look at the estimates I havehere, the cumulative sales
estimate between 64 and 74electric guitars in 10 years.
Those 10 years approximately2.5 to 3.5 million sold Acoustic
(53:06):
guitars.
In 10 years 1.5 to 2 millionunits sold.
Now these are estimates I gotoff of Wiki and ChatGBT, but the
estimates are based on industrytrends and production data
available from major guitarmanufacturers during the period.
It's clear that the guitarbecame an iconic symbol of
Americana and music and cultureand in the next episode I'm
(53:29):
going to talk about music andemotions and how music affects
your emotions.
But let me ask you this soyou've got this band as I've
perpetuated and peppered I'm notperpetuated, but peppered
throughout my conversation here.
So these four scruffy guysuneducated guys who barely made
it through grade school, justhappened to pick up guitars
because they were influenced byBuddy Holly and Elvis uneducated
(53:49):
guys who barely made it througha grade school just happened to
pick up guitars because theywere influenced by Buddy Holly
and Elvis All of them none ofthem are really well-known,
prolific songwriters.
They just somehow wow, theyjust made it, man, they really
made it.
And they influenced culturearound the world.
(54:09):
They influenced the increase ofmusical sales, musical
instrument sales, hair trends,clothing trends, lifestyle
trends, attitude trends.
And what do you see in ourcountry since then?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm notsome right-wing conservative
lunatic here.
I'm not.
But look, we had a strong,stable country after World War
(54:30):
II, between 1945 and 1965.
Things were going good, right,we had industry here, you could
find a job, you could work for30 years, you could get a
pension, you had a mom and dadat home that were trying their
best to raise the kids and giveyou a good life, a strong,
stable platform.
Cities weren't in the greatestshape, but the crime was very
(54:52):
low Then after the Beatles, ifyou want to say they had that
much influence on culture, lookwhat they've done to us.
Our country's a mess.
Can we blame it all on theBeatles?
No, so what do you blame it on?
What do you blame thedisintegration of my society
here in the United States or inthe United Kingdom, or anywhere
(55:15):
else for that matter?
What do you blame it on?
Was there a nefarious forcebehind behind the Beatles?
Was there an ulterior motivebehind the band, behind all
those bands, not just theBeatles, the Stones, the who,
the Kings, jerry and thePacemakers and Hermits Hermits
(55:36):
and all those god awful bandsthat came out of the United
Kingdom.
I hate Hermits Hermits.
I can't stand that band Jerryand the Pacemakers and all these
god awful bands that came outof there.
Oh my god, it's so amazing.
Such great music.
You know, I can't help but thinklook where we were prior to the
(55:57):
arrival of these bands and lookwhere we are today.
Everybody is at each other'sthroats in the streets.
There's no jobs, the industry'sgone, all the factories are
gone.
Kids back in the 60s started toprotest the government and
their parents.
They started to rise up and askfor freedom.
They didn't want to follow intheir father's footsteps and
(56:18):
work in some glass tower or atthe assembly line.
They wanted to become artists,they wanted to become musicians,
they wanted to do all theseother things.
And look at where we are now.
There's no parents at home.
Most parents both work.
People don't have any money.
They're struggling to get by.
I don't know.
And this leads you know, I'm notbringing this up.
(56:39):
I'm bringing this uprhetorically because down the
road I'm going to tell you whatI'm going to try to tell you.
I'm going to theorize what'sbehind it.
I'm going to try to tell you,I'm going to theorize what's
behind it.
I'm not going down theTavistock route, indirectly I
will be.
As I've said in other videos,I'm not educated on Tavistock
like Mike Williams, but I'mgoing to educate myself on it
(57:03):
when I can find time to watchvideos and read books about it.
But there's something muchbigger behind this that
everybody else has beenhypnotized by.
They put us into this trance todistract us from the real
motivating force behind it.
And I'm going to go into thenext episode and have an episode
about music and emotions, howmusic affects the human brain
and mind and emotions anddecision-making processes.
(57:23):
And then I'm going to talkabout a document called
Communism, hypnotism and theBeatles, and it's going to keep
going on this, because I thinkthere's a lot more to rock and
roll than what we see on thesurface.
So well, everybody, I'm PT Pop.
Thank you for watching today.
That is my commentary on theBeatles and how they affected
(57:46):
culture.
If you like my videos again,give me the thumbs up.
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(58:09):
with that I bid you do hasta lavista, baby, would you like
fries with that?
Would you like fries with that?
Hey there everybody.
Pt Pop here with All FourLoaves, my Brain engulfed in
Beatlemania and today I'm goingto be talking about the Beatles'
impact on culture.
Got a great show for you.
Alert the media, wake the dog,tell the kids it's going to be a
fun show.
Do you like fries with that?
Do you like fries with that?
(00:20):
In my previous live streams andmy previous videos, I've
discussed the Beatles' impact onAmerica, the Beatles' impact on
me, and I've questioned how dida band of four guys end up
number one, getting famous, andhow did they end up having so
much power over the world?
(00:40):
How did they have so muchinfluence on our cultures, on
our lives, on our minds, on ouremotions?
And I wanted to take a deepdive into this, to try to go
over it in more detail.
Now I'm going to just jumpright into this, but before I
get into this, if you like whatI do, if you enjoy what you see
here on my channel, please giveme the thumbs up, like and
(01:02):
subscribe, tell your friendsabout the channel, get people to
come and watch it, and if youhave ideas of what you want me
to do on here, send me a directmessage at skatingbearstudios at
gmailcom that'sskatingbearstudios at gmailcom
and I'll be glad to take a lookat your ideas.
And you know this is a lot offun to do for me but it cost me
(01:25):
money to make.
This takes a lot of time, a lotof money.
If you have the extra casholaand you'd like to make a
donation, feel free to do so byjoining here as a member of this
channel or making you knowpaying for a membership on my
Patreon channel.
Links to both will be in thedescription of this video.
(01:49):
So I'm a huge Beatles fan.
I was a huge John Lennon fan.
I looked up to John Lennon, Iidolized him.
I idolized all four Beatleswell into my 30s and into my
very early 40s, until I began toquestion the official narrative
.
Now I actually kind of alwaysquestioned the official
(02:12):
narrative because in 1978, theBeatles released an album called
Live at the Star Club and whenI first heard this recording I
was in fifth grade.
Maybe it wasn't 70 yet I thinkit was 77.
So I was in fifth or sixth gradewhen I first heard this and I
(02:34):
was stunned by how awful theband sounded.
Now people today will hear thatalbum and go.
It's a very raw album of theBeatles, you have to understand.
It was recorded on areel-to-reel tape recorder at
the back of the club one nightand it's a very raw recording
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and that's how they kind of passit off, as if that makes it
okay.
But I was very shocked becausewhen I was in fifth, sixth grade
, I was at the peak of my Beatlefanaticism, my Beatle obsession
, and I heard this band and Isaid that's the Beatles.
I mean, I actually didn't evenrecognize it as being the band
that I had heard for severalyears already and I thought, wow
(03:18):
, that's the band.
And keep in mind, at the time Iwasn't a musician, I had never
picked up the guitar.
I had a toy guitar I playedwith and I didn't know how to
read music.
I didn't know how to writesongs.
I had never written or playedor anything that wouldn't happen
for several more years.
So I was questioning theofficial narrative from that
point forward and I alwayswondered how a band that sounded
(03:39):
that rough the rough band atthe Star Club, could end up
getting so big within a coupleof years of that show at the
Star Club.
And I was very, very.
(04:02):
I was very, I guess you wouldsay, skeptical about it.
And as I've gotten older I'vebegan to question the official
narrative of the Beatles andmuch of that recently has been
inspired by the work of MikeWilliams on the Sage of Quay
radio channel here on YouTubeand I urge you to check out Mike
Williams' work.
He's a great guy and he's abrilliant guy and he's done an
immense amount of work to putforth a narrative that the
(04:23):
Beatles may not be the band thatwe all thought they were, and I
kind of look at myself as agraduate of Mike Williams' class
, Mike Williams' studies on theBeatles' narrative and a variety
of other things, includingDePaul is Dead, quote,
conspiracy unquote.
(04:44):
But the Beatles had an immenseimpact on culture and that's
putting it lightly.
And their impact on culturedidn't happen just during their
years active as a band in the1960s, but their influence went
well beyond the 1960s and theirinfluence influenced music,
(05:05):
politics, social norms, allkinds of things.
I mean their arrival in the USin 1964, it sparked what many of
you know of as the Britishinvasion and of course that's a
play on the original Britishinvasion when America was
becoming a country and we werefighting the British back in the
(05:25):
1700s.
But this British invasion wasspearheaded by the Beatles and
it altered the landscape ofpopular music, youth culture and
even larger social norms aroundthe world.
And that included bands likethe Kinks, the Stones, the who.
You know all of those bands andyou've all heard of those bands
(05:46):
, and I'm a fan of all thosebands.
I wasn't a fanatic for them,like I am the Beatles, but I was
a big Kinks fan Still am Kinksand the who fan.
I've never been a big Stonesfan.
I've never really found theStones to be all that intriguing
.
When I was really little Iliked them, but as I've gotten
older, it's like they sound likethey're playing the same songs
(06:07):
over and over and over again.
They've never really evolved,but that's a whole other story.
Now.
They revolutionized popularmusic.
Now you have to consider acouple things.
Before the Beatles got here,there were other bands and other
artists that had screaminggirls and fanaticism surrounding
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them, and one of the big, bignames is Frank Sinatra, and if
you don't know who Sinatra is,you've got to crawl out from
underneath your rock and checkhim out.
He was a brilliant singer andentertainer from the 30s, 40s
and 50s and beyond.
He did songs like Fly Me to theMoon.
But Frank was an entertainer.
He wasn't a songwriter and hewas a singer and he worked with
(06:51):
great composers that wrote songsfor him.
He worked with what's calledthe Great American Songbook and
that included.
Songwriters he worked with wereCole Porter, sammy Kahn, jimmy
Van Heusen, harold Arlen, rogersand Hart and he created with
them.
He sang the songs they wroteand turned them into timeless
(07:12):
standards and they're stillplayed on the radio and
everybody knows these songs tothis day.
But he had these screaminggirls and fans called Bobby
Soxers that would line up andthrow themselves at them and
faint and swoon and all thatstuff.
But after Sinatra in the 1950scame Elvis, elvis Presley and
(07:35):
I'm not going to go into thehistory of Elvis Presley.
We should all know.
Most of you know who Elvis isand who Sinatra was or who these
guys were, because they bothpassed away.
But Elvis Presley was also aperformer.
He was the consummate performer.
I mean both these guys, sinatraand Elvis had the complete
package.
(07:55):
But Elvis really had thischarisma, this look, this energy
that was unseen and unheardbefore in the entertainment
world.
And you know he had the wholepackage.
He had everything.
But he didn't write any of hissongs.
He worked on a few of his songswith his songwriters, but his
(08:17):
songs were primarily written bya team of professional
songwriters including JerryLieber and Mike Stoller, which
is the Lieber and Stoller famoussongwriting duo, otis Blackwell
, doc Palmas and Mort Schumannand others.
So these two guys that had suchhuge fandom in the United
(08:37):
States and around the worlddidn't write their own music.
They were known as entertainers, crooners, singers and really
good-looking guys.
They were known as entertainers, crooners, singers and really
good looking guys, and bothartists were interpreters of the
highest order.
I mean, they were taking songswritten by others and elevating
them into iconic performances.
That started the shaping of thefuture of music and it's really
(09:05):
interesting to see.
After Elvis, the Beatles arrivedon the scene right and the
Beatles were a self-containedband who allegedly wrote their
own songs.
This was unheard of in themusic business up to this point,
other than Buddy Holly.
I think Buddy Holly wrote hisown music.
He wrote and performed his ownmusic, but he didn't have near
(09:27):
the impact that Elvis or Sinatradid and he was just one guy.
But I think Buddy Holly wrotehis songs with Perry.
I can't remember the man'sfirst name.
I think a lot of the songs arelike Holly and Perry.
I might have the wrong name.
I think a lot of the songs arelike Holly and Perry.
I might have the wrong name,but the Beatles arrived, these
four guys from England whoallegedly wrote their own songs,
(09:50):
and this revolutionized theapproach of rock and roll.
And what did this do?
In the process, like myself andmillions and millions of other
men and women and boys and girlsaround the world, it inspired
millions of us to write, performand record their own original
material.
Now, myself, I became asongwriter in 1990, 1990, but I
(10:14):
didn't start really pursuing ituntil 1992.
But I've written over 150 songsand released five CDs of
original music.
Am I famous?
No, I'm not famous and I haveno qualms about that.
I don't want to be famous.
When I was a kid, sure I wantedto be famous.
I thought I wanted to be Beatle, like a Beatle with Beatlemania
(10:38):
, and the Beatles inspired me.
But as a self-contained groupwho wrote their own songs, they
influenced so many people and somany things.
I mean everybody got it intheir mind.
Because when you hear theBeatles' story, you hear that
(10:59):
they did know how to read music,that you didn't need to know
music.
You didn't need to to readmusic, that you didn't need to
know music.
You didn't need to understandmusic theory, you didn't need to
understand staff and bars andtime signatures.
You didn't have to understandany of that stuff.
You could just pick up a guitar, teach yourself a few chords
and learn to play the guitar andthat would be it.
That was everything, and youcould be like a beetle, shake
(11:23):
your head like a beetle.
So it gave this impression toyoung men and women around the
world that hey, if they can doit, if four nobodies from
Liverpool, england, workingclass guys that live near
poverty it was portrayed that atleast a couple of them were
poor, from broken homes couldpick up a guitar, just learn to
(11:47):
play a few songs and get famous,hey, anybody could do it.
It gave the impression thatanyone could do it and you know
they took their influences.
Now they were influenced bygenres you know, like rock and
roll, of course, blues, folk,later on Indian music, later on
orchestral arrangements, whicheventually turned into
(12:08):
psychedelia and they pushed theboundaries of what was possible
in pop music at the time becauseprior to the Beatles, Elvis,
sinatra, they didn't go off intopsychedelic stuff.
Psychedelic wasn't even known.
They weren't playing Indianinstruments in their songs.
And in later years the Beatleswould eventually branch out with
(12:30):
experimental albums like RubberSoul and Revolver.
And what this did, these twoalbums were, you know, ahead of
their time because they didwhat's called album-oriented
rock or concept albums.
They helped invent conceptalbums as an album form of art,
(12:52):
because in the old days a bandlike Elvis Elvis would release
an album and he'd have onesingle and the single would be
on the album and the singlewould be released separately.
But the single was the big songthat everybody knew, like Hound
Dog.
Now don't get me, don't get me,I'm not an Elvis fan, so I
don't know his records.
But I know he'd have an albumand there'd only be one good
(13:15):
song on it that anybody wouldlisten to.
The rest were like throwaways.
But everybody knew Hound Dog.
Now I don't know specificallyif that song was on an album,
I'm just showing you what it'slike.
So he'd record an album ofsongs that nobody else knew
about, but they knew Han Dog.
With the Beatles they'd releasean album like Revolver, and
people would want to listen tothis album from beginning to end
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and they wanted to listen toall the music on it.
Same with Rubber Soul, and samewith some of their earlier
records too, where they hadcover tunes.
They still did cover tunes onsome of their albums, but they
were the leaders in that theybrought that to the forefront of
music.
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Albums became an art form.
They weren't an art form before.
The idea before was to get onegood song, get it to the top of
the charts, get your name outthere and keep releasing singles
.
You throw out an album outthere and people would buy both,
but most people would toss thealbum aside and not want to
listen to it.
And of course I'm summarizingquite a bit.
I can't tell you what everybodydid around the world with their
(14:19):
Elvis or their Sinatra albums.
I've never heard an entireSinatra album.
I've never heard an entireSinatra album.
I've heard the best of Sinatra.
I have best of Sinatra albumsand I had a best of Elvis album,
but you know I never got tolisten to it much.
Now, when it comes to theconcept album the Beatles they
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pioneered concept albums and thefirst concept album allegedly
of all time was Sgt Pepper'sLonely Hearts Club Band.
Now this is one of the firstconcept albums where the songs
were allegedly tied togetherthroughout the album.
You know weaving a storythroughout the whole thing.
Okay, it also helped pushpsychedelic, psychedelic things,
(15:03):
psychedelic drugs, lsd.
The album cover art was verybrightly colored.
It was kind of like an acidtrip funeral or something like
that and it influenced bandslike Pink Floyd, the Doors and
Jimi Hendrix, which I'm notgoing to go into them either.
But if you listen to SgtPepper's after the first song or
two, none of the others arereally connected unless you're
(15:26):
on some type of.
You're on the inside and youknow what the album's about.
When I was a kid I first heardthis album in 1975 when I was
nine years old, and when I putit on my record player I
couldn't even tell it was theBeatles.
I was like I saw the albumcover art and it kind of looked
like them and John didn't looklike John.
(15:47):
To me Paul looked a little bitodd.
The only two that I thoughtstill looked like Beatles were
George and Ringo and I rememberseeing that.
I thought that the album lookeddark and dreary and just
mysterious and the album soundedmurky, poorly mixed, dark and
hideous kind of sound to anine-year-old's ears.
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Now, keep in mind, when you'rea kid you have no filters really
and you can process things andyou can kind of take it and say
things and see things as theyreally are, because you're not
really that heavily influencedyet by society and by culture
that you're living in, yet bysociety and by culture that
you're living in.
So when I talk about what Iheard and I saw from my own ears
(16:29):
and eyes as a nine-year-old,it's a pretty accurate
reflection of how I really sawthe album.
Now the rest of the worldportrays that album as this
earth-shattering breakthrough inmusical history.
But after the first two songsthe wrists aren't really
attached to anything.
(16:49):
I mean you've got Sgt Pepper'sLonely Hearts Club Band is the
intro song which leads into Witha Little Help from my Friends,
you know.
You've got the introduction ofBailey Shears, which I'm not
going to go into that but whichleads into Loosing the Sky with
Diamonds.
Then you go on to GettingBetter Fixing Holes.
She's Leaving Home Mr KiteWithin you, without you, so on
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and so forth, and it ends with ADay in the Life.
None of the songs are connectedbut for some reason people back
then heard this one whoa man.
This blows my mind.
It's a great concept album.
There was.
This blows my mind.
It's a great concept album.
There was no such thing as aconcept album at the time.
Myself, this is my leastfavorite Beatle record.
I don't get it.
I've never understood it.
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I didn't like it as a nine yearold and it's one of the very
few albums that I'd ever wouldput on and listen to all the way
through.
That Magical Mystery Tour,magical Mystery Tour, sgt
Pepper's and Yellow Submarineare just abysmal albums.
Yellow Submarine isn't evenreally an album because they
mixed in all that George MartinPepperland crap like they did on
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the Hard Day's Night releaseand the Help release of the
movie soundtracks of thosealbums.
They put the George Martininstrumental pieces in there.
The Beatles were also known allof a sudden to be a band that
used the studio as an instrument.
Okay, prior to the Beatles,nobody really thought about the
(18:21):
recording process.
Nobody sat down and said Iwonder how Elvis recorded Blue
Hawaii.
You know, I wonder how Elvisrecorded Blue Hawaii.
I wonder how Sinatra sang andrecorded Fly Me to the Moon.
I did it my way.
Nobody cared.
They didn't care whatmicrophones they used.
They didn't care who thedrummer was or who was on bass,
(18:41):
who played saxophone, any ofthat stuff.
But the Beatles started to usethe studio as an instrument, and
, in a way, it transformed theway music was produced.
Not in a way it did.
It transformed the way musicwas produced all over the world.
They were the first tointegrate multi-track recording,
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overdubs and tape loops andexperimental sounds, especially
with their producer, georgeMartin.
George Martin, though, was aclassically trained musician,
and he primarily worked with theGoon Show, with Peter Sellers
and Mike Mulligan of the Goons,and so he was known for more,
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and they were a comedy group, sohe was more known for working
with sound effects and funnysounds and comedy records.
I'm not quite certain how hegot to produce the Beatles.
You go from the Goons show tothe Beatles and I'm like, okay,
that's kind of a big leap, butall right, and they did all
their work at Ebrew Road Studiosin London, and they did all
(19:48):
their work at Every Road Studiosin London, and their studio
innovations influencedgenerations of artists and
producers like myself.
Now, I'm not famous, butthere's millions and millions of
guys just like me that aren'tfamous, that were influenced by
the Beatles and opened up homerecording studios.
I've got a studio here, amakeshifter studio.
It's not really professional,but I've recorded songs here
(20:11):
that are pretty good.
You can do a lot of stuff nowat home that you couldn't do 50
years ago at home unless you hadlots of money.
And the funny thing is now, keepin mind this is just a band.
This is just four guys.
They're portrayed if youbelieve the official story
they're just portrayed as fourregular guys that just had a
dream of being rock and rollersand wanted to go to the
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topper-most, popper-most ofeverything.
Right, just four lads to go tothe topper-most, popper-most.
And they somehow got there.
They stumbled, they juststumbled into it after just
schlepping around these dank,dark halls in Germany and London
just pounding out cover tunes,mostly cover tunes.
90% of the repertoire was covertunes.
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They didn't play many of theiroriginal tunes and they weren't
known as songwriters.
Up to this point they weren't.
They were known as a cover band, and not a very good one at
that.
Now, keep in mind George Martinis quoted as saying that when he
first met the Beatles and firstheard them, he didn't think
much of them.
He thought they were garbage.
He thought they were garbageand their sound was garbage and
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he didn't want to produce them.
I'm not going to go down thatalleyway because there's lots of
little alleyways to go off onhere, but I'm going to kind of
stick them under the culture now.
Now, the Beatles, these fourrough guys.
They polished them up, theygive them haircuts, they put
them in Italian collar suits,they give them these ankle-high
boots that are eventually calledbeetle boots, and so they start
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to shape youth culture andcounterculture.
Now, at the time there was athing called beatniks or the
beat culture, which was like abunch of beatniks and poets and
they'd sit in coffee shopssmoking brown cigarettes,
drinking coffee with bongosgoing.
Man, that is cool stuff, man,hey, man, did you hear the one
(22:00):
about the spider and the flea?
And they're sitting there withthe guitars and stuff like that.
But the arrival of the Beatleshas been coined and phrased as
being a cultural earthquake.
You can see this in all thetabloids and stuff from back
(22:21):
then.
That triggering it triggeredBeatlemania, and it's portrayed
that their youthful energy andtheir style captivated millions
of teenagers, turning theBeatles into global symbols of a
youth rebellion and freedom.
And this is what I don'tunderstand.
Okay, and again, in anothervideo I talked about what our
(22:43):
culture was like at the time.
America was a very clean-cutsociety, very Christian society,
predominantly white, but it wasvery segregated.
So there was a black part oftown and a white part of town
and the white people or theblack people weren't permitted
to drink out of white drinkingfountains.
They had to drink out of blackdrinking fountains and they had
(23:04):
to sit at the back of the bus.
When they got on the bus withthe white people.
There's all kinds of thingslike that.
That went on and they had norights.
They couldn't vote, they weretreated like dogs and the
country was segregated.
But overall it was a prettypeaceful country.
Post-war World War II Americathere was a boom of industry.
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A guy could get out of the war,go get a job, work for 30 years
and retire with a pension, onesource of income.
The father worked, the motherstayed at home, raised the kids
it was all sunshine and puppydogs and rainbows, or so it was
portrayed and the kids.
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If you had a home like thatwhere the dad worked, the kids
had a roof over their head, theyhad money, they had food in the
kids.
If you had a home like thatwhere the dad worked, you know
the kids had a roof over theirhead, they had money, they had
food in the fridge, they had anew car.
In the driveway they had a dogand TV set and the whole thing.
And people lived this way andthe dad would come home like my
mom and dad.
My dad was a war vet.
He went to college, met my momin college.
He graduated, she dropped outof school, they got hitched, had
(24:09):
my brother in 1950, and theyhad a house in the suburbs here
in Cleveland and pick a whitefence and they had my sister and
my brother.
Then I was born like eightyears later and they weren't
living happily ever after, butthey put forth the image that
they were.
But on my dad's salary, workingin advertising for the
Cleveland Press, he was able tobuy brand new cars and, I guess,
(24:31):
new houses, I think with alittle help from my mom's side
of the family, because my mom'sside of the family at one time
had some money.
But there was this portrayalthat everybody had back then
where the dad was thebreadwinner.
The mother stayed at home andcooked and brought dad a martini
and sat and rubbed his feetafter a long, hard day at work,
while he sat in his armchair andsmoked a pipe and watched
(24:53):
Walter Cronkite on the news.
And so what I'm trying to figureout is when they say that the
Beatles were this global symbolsof youth, rebellion and freedom
.
Now, I wasn't alive until 1965,but I'm trying to figure out
what did they have to rebelagainst these kids?
(25:14):
They rebelled against asuccessful father who broke his
back and his butt to bring homemoney so you could have food on
the table and you could have awagon to run up and down the
driveway in and a tricycle and,you know, you could have a nice
house and you could go onvacation once a year and all the
things that you know that youhave.
(25:36):
I mean, what were theyrebelling about?
What was the freedom?
How were they being held back?
And I don't understand it.
I don't understand why wouldthis band inspire symbols of
youth, rebellion and freedom?
Look at our country.
Since the youth rebellion andfreedom.
If the Beatles inspired this,our country's falling apart
(26:00):
because of rebellion and freedom.
Right now, our country isfalling apart because there's
not a father in most households.
I didn't have a father in myhousehold.
My father was laying drunk inthe gutter somewhere while I was
being born and he wasn't a partof my life at all.
When he was around.
He was unconscious and at timesmy mother was too.
(26:21):
So I was kind of raised by ahalf-sober mother and kind of my
sister and one brother, youknow.
The family unit began to fallapart.
So you know, and it wasn't justme I knew lots of guys.
All my friends had broken homes.
(26:41):
All my friends did Broken homes.
I had one friend whose parentswere swingers.
You know they openly would readthe book the Joy of Sex, which
was a big popular book in the70s.
They had it out in theirbedroom.
My friend Dave and I would goin and look at the Joy of Sex.
These are wild people but mypoint is okay.
(27:04):
So the family unit was strong.
The family unit was stable.
You only needed one source ofincome to have a house, a car,
food, pay all the bills, theinsurance.
The mother could stay at home,raise the kids.
You had a strong, stableenvironment with security,
mental and emotional securityfor the most part.
Let's take out all the otherfactors like spousal abuse that
(27:26):
was going on at the time andextreme addiction to pills for
the women and addiction toalcohol.
But let's just take it at facevalue.
It was a great, happy home life.
What did they have to rebelagainst.
Look at the houses.
Now Nobody has a dad anymore.
People are getting divorced atan exponential rate.
Today, more than 50% of allmarriages end in divorce.
(27:48):
Today the African-Americanpeople have equality on paper
anyway, right, but most of theblack kids are raised by their
moms because the dad took off orthey got divorced or whatever
it happens.
The same thing in the whitecommunity it's not just the
black people.
My dad was not around and I'm aswhite as the German snow and I
(28:12):
can tell you that if the Beatlesare responsible for youth
rebellion and freedom, it'sundermined the integrity of our
country, it's ruined us.
But that's just my opinion.
So I guess they were rebellingagainst a stable, stable parents
(28:32):
, a stable economy, good payingjobs and secure jobs and no war.
There was no war in 1945.
After 1945 there was no waruntil like 1965.
So for 10 years or 20 years wewere not at war.
Beatles show up all of a sudden.
Oh my God, we're in Vietnam.
(28:53):
Oh my God, the world's fallingapart.
But the Beatles somehow becamethis rallying point for the
emerging youth culture.
I mean, what is this rallyingpoint?
Youth culture?
I don't understand why theyouth were so miserable.
I guess they resented authority.
They resented their parents forgiving them a good life, not
(29:15):
giving them the freedom to bewho they wanted to be.
Like Dad, I don't want to workat the newspaper, I want to go
out and be a Beatle.
Music was a form ofself-expression and resistance
to the more conservativetraditional values of the
post-World War II generation.
You know, my dad was World WarII.
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My mom was a World War IIperson from that generation.
They both saw the effects ofthat war and the men that came
back from that war.
But they also benefited fromthe post-industrial boom in our
country.
I don't understand what's torebel against there.
We had a strong, stable company.
(29:55):
Everything was made in thiscountry.
The world looked up to us.
Nobody would mess with us.
We had a strong, mightymilitary.
We had a great Navy, great AirForce, everything was going good
.
The economy was strong.
Somehow the Beatles gave theyoung kids a reason to scream
and cry and want somethingbetter.
I don't think they got what youknow.
(30:16):
I don't think they gotsomething better Because look at
the results.
The repercussions are seen inour society today.
I guess it's been said that theBeatles' work in the later 1960s
with the Sgt Pepper MagicalMystery Tour, the White Album
and so on.
(30:36):
It paralleled kind of acounterculture movement because
the Beatles started toexperiment with psychedelic
drugs and they became associatedwith the Eastern spirituality,
you know, with the Maharishi,mahesh Yogi and transcendental
meditation, and they kind ofbecame icons of the emerging
(31:00):
hippie movement.
And you see, as a kid, when Ilook back at this, I was really
little when there were hippiesand I remember seeing guys like
I had a brother-in-law that hada really long hair and a beard
and stuff and I had my, myoldest brother and his wife were
kind of they were kind ofhippies.
They weren't full-blown hippies, they were kind of bordering,
teetering on hippie yuppie,hippie, yuppie conservative
(31:24):
types.
But but the Beatles released asong called Loosing the Sky with
Diamonds, which its initialsare LSD, which is supposed to be
synonymous with the drug, thepsychedelic drug, and they I
don't know if they participatedin the Summer of Love.
I don't know if they made itover to Haight-Ashbury I think
(31:47):
George and Ringo did orsomething.
I don't know if all fourBeatles were ever there, but it
kind of made them where theywere portrayed as being central
figures in promoting peace andlove.
Because their song All you NeedIs Love and all that stuff.
And they had.
I don't know if they all had.
I think Paul and John hadstances on anti-war, especially
(32:09):
to Vietnam.
I know John was very outspokenagainst the Vietnam War.
They're very pro-civil rights,they're very pro.
They wouldn't perform inconcerts up until 66 when they
started touring.
They wouldn't perform forsegregated audiences.
They want everybody to sit inthe same arena together as one
free group.
(32:32):
And I guess their personalfreedom influenced the political
consciousness of the 60sgeneration.
Now I just don't know.
I don't really know if thisband did that or if it was just
the situation of the 60s or wasit something more nefarious
behind all of it.
And this culture was globalized, this world spread of peace and
(32:54):
love and anti-war.
It extended beyond the Englishspeaking world.
It went into Japan, india,latin America and it contributed
to Western pop culture.
It was spread globally and Iguess the Beatles' music and
their attitudes and theirbeliefs made the group one of
(33:18):
the first truly global popphenomena.
Because they were a householdname.
Everybody knew about theBeatles.
They knew what they werewearing, they knew what they
drank, they knew what they ate,they knew the cigarettes they
smoked, they knew what theirpolitical affiliations were and
what they thought of all thisstuff.
But I don't know how that gotthat way.
(33:39):
I don't know why it had to beknown.
Did somebody behind the scenespush that narrative to make it
global?
Or did the press just pick upon it because they were all
constantly being harassed bypaparazzi and people said, oh,
they went to India and said theMaharishi, mahayogi and it got
(33:59):
into the paper.
I don't know.
I don't know if the four mensat down and said you know what
we've got to do?
We've really got to tell theworld about Latin America and
tell Latin America and Japan andIndia all about meditation and
LSD.
That way we can change theworld and make it more peaceful.
I don't think they sat aroundthinking that way.
But I don't know.
(34:19):
I don't know what was going onbehind the scenes and who their
handlers were.
And I know there was anintroduction of Eastern Sounds
because of George Harris and thestar work on Robert Soul and
Within you, within Out you.
You know Ravi Shankar and allthat stuff.
I don't want to get into allthat because I really don't find
(34:40):
that that stuff was all thatinfluential for me.
I guess it was for the world.
I guess the world went oh sitar, I've never heard that before.
Let's go buy a sitar, billy,and get into meditation.
I don't know if that happened.
I don't know if that happened.
But they also allegedlyinfluenced a redefinition of
fashion and gender norms becauseof the long hair.
(35:03):
They went from like themoderate they were called mods
and with their beetle haircutsand kind of the beatnik look to
the hippie fashion they were atthe forefront allegedly.
I don't know if there's anydocumented proof that they were
the first ones to change fashiontrends, like you know, wearing
(35:24):
the hair long and introducing amod look with their suits.
I guess they did.
They started with theircollarless Italian suits,
jackets and mop top hairstylessuits, jackets and mop top
hairstyles.
(35:46):
By the late 1960s, you know,that look evolved in the
counterculture movement and itkind of embraced a more casual,
psychedelic and hippie stylewith the long hair, the color
prints, the beads, the patchouli, eastern influence attire and
it kind of the long hair kind ofgrayed the boundaries.
The gray the boundaries betweenmen and women with the long
(36:06):
hair, because sometimes there'sa guy walking down the street
you couldn't tell if it was aman or a woman.
You know, the long hair, use ofmakeup, androgynous looks,
challenging the rigid gendernorms of the time.
So you go from the end of thewar.
The long hair, use of makeup,androgynous looks, challenging
the rigid gender norms of thetime.
So you go from the end of thewar, World War II.
Men had buzz haircuts, boyswore button-down shirts and nice
pants, girls wore littledresses.
(36:26):
You know it was all very rigidand structured and allegedly the
Beatles, for some reasonsomehow had this massive
influence where people startedgrowing their hair long,
dressing like hippies, gettingstoned all the time and I'm
painting this with a largegeneralized brush.
But their influence helpedcreate a more broader acceptance
(36:50):
of more fluid expression ofgender, I guess, you would say.
And you can kind of seeresidual effects on that in the
glam rock movement of the 70sand the 80s.
And you know they becamespokespeople somehow, this band
of four scruffy guys fromLiverpool that didn't know how
(37:12):
to read music or write anything,they all of a sudden became
these prolific songwriters.
They became a spokespeople fortheir generation, a spokespeople
for that generation.
They influenced all thesechanges, somehow, these just
blue-collar guys from Liverpool.
And you know they made a lot ofcommentation with songs like
(37:35):
the song Revolution Blackbirdwas allegedly about a black girl
who was, I don't know, made tosit at the back of a bus or
something.
I've heard it's about a bird andI've heard it's about actually
a black girl that was beingdiscriminated against.
But I guess allegedly they werepro-racial justice, they were
(37:55):
pacifists.
They never spoke ofChristianity, they spoke of
spiritualism.
So they were kind of introducedas kind of anti-Christian.
I can't say that they wereSatanists, but they were
introduced as kind of like theseanti-Christian figures in the
world of entertainment, figuresin the world of entertainment.
Because you know, previousgenerations of musicians often
(38:17):
avoided, completely avoided, anydiscussion whatsoever politics
or sex or religion or anything.
Sex was taboo way, big tabooback then, before the Beatles.
Man, if you were gay you couldbe killed, you could be locked
up for being gay.
Even when the Beatles were aband, you could be killed.
You could be locked up forbeing gay.
Even when the Beatles were aband, you could be 86 because
(38:41):
you were gay and anything kinky,anything outside the missionary
position to make babies, wasconsidered.
You were a freak, a dirty oldman, you were really out there,
man.
Excuse me but I ask did ourculture need spokespeople at
(39:03):
this time.
Why did we need spokespeople?
I mean, allegedly, the Beatlesset the stage for future
generations of artists like BobDylan, bruce Springsteen, u2,
public Enemy these bands are allwell-known for blending their
music with social activism.
I mean, do I really wantsomebody in the rock and roll
(39:24):
world or the entertainment worldtelling me what I should think
and who I should vote for?
I mean, today, bruceSpringsteen, just, you know he
endorsed Kamala Kamala, kamalToh Harris.
I'm like, okay, bruce, I guessif Bruce says so, I'm going to
go vote for you.
I was born to run baby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, born inAmerica, born in the USA.
(39:47):
And the Beatles also wereresponsible for allegedly for
music videos With their new, youknow, the moves like A Hard
Day's Night in Hell.
But I beg to differ.
They came up with promotionalvideos for songs like Paperback
Rider, strawberry Fields,forever.
They had promotional videos forthose to promote the songs.
But Elvis had entire movieswith his songs in them.
So what were those?
(40:07):
Somehow the Beatles take creditfor a lot of stuff that already
happened.
You know, I don't know.
They're putting a lot of,they're giving the Beatles a lot
of accountability and they'regiving a lot of credit for
things that may not be theirs tobe given to Now.
(40:28):
What I find interesting is,overall, the economic impact on
the music industry that thisband had and the Beatles had
unparalleled commercial successthat was never seen by any prior
artist.
And the Beatles, completelysingle-handedly, somehow just
(40:53):
four uneducated guys fromLiverpool, working class blue
class guys that couldn't read adot of music somehow entirely
changed the economics of themusic business.
Think about this.
I mean, they set new recordsfor album and merchandise sales
and their success played a majorrole in the shaping of modern
(41:14):
music industry's culture.
They completely took a shotgunto it.
They just walked in with a andit was changed.
They started, as I saidpreviously, album-oriented rock
where record albums became thepiece of art rubber soul from
rubber soul onward.
And what that did is itdemonstrated that albums could
(41:37):
be commercially successful andcould be seen as a cohesive
piece of artwork rather thanjust vehicles for singles, as I
talked about earlier.
And this influenced how recordlabels approached albums as
major commercial products in theindustry.
Prior to that they didn't takealbums seriously.
Albums really weren't somethingthat people went out and bought
, didn't have a lot of them, andthey also changed merchandising
(42:02):
the Beatles were the first tocapitalize on merchandising.
They had Beatle wigs and lunchboxes and boots and shirts.
The kids were just bugging thecrap out of their parents Please
, please, buy me a Beetle Boots.
In 1975, the Beetles had beenbroken up for five years and I
bugged my parents my parents arestill married.
(42:23):
At the time I bugged them foran entire winter or something to
take them to the mall so theycould buy Beetle Boots.
And they tried to explain to methat they didn't sell Beetle
Boots anymore.
The Beetle Boots hadn't beenmade since like 1966.
Almost that they didn't sellBeetle boots anymore.
The Beetle boots hadn't beenmade since like 1966, almost 10
years previous to this.
But I said, well, there's gotto be boots like it, there's got
to be boots like it.
And they took me to the malland they took me to every
(42:44):
goddamn shoe store like 10 shoestores, including Sears and
Penny's and there were kind ofboots like make them for kids,
and they weren't just like theBeatles, and I drove them crazy.
I was absolutely just a littlepain in the ass and I guess the
thing that I find odd here is ifyou look at how they really
(43:07):
influenced music.
Let's take a look at.
I'm going to conclude with this.
Let's look at what the Beatlesdid to guitar sales.
Now think about this Back whenSinatra was singing and crooning
, there was predominantly bigband guys.
There was Sinatra, there's BennyGoodman, glenn Miller, a lot of
(43:28):
instrumental musicians thatplayed brass instruments and
drums and bass and piano.
There was jazz and blues.
There was some black rock androll.
Then Elvis.
Elvis came along and Elvisinspired more people to pick up
a guitar and get into bands.
I don't know if Sinatra reallydid, because Sinatra and those
guys prior to Elvis were realmusicians.
(43:51):
I don't know if Sinatra couldread music, but his musicians
around him all could, and theywould sit in a bandstand or sit
on a riser behind him with sheetmusic in front of him and they
would follow a band leader andthe saxophone players and the
trumpeters and the bass players.
I think they all had sheetmusic in front of them and if
(44:13):
they didn't, they knew theirmusic.
They knew their instrumentsinside and out.
These were well-trained,polished musicians that knew how
to play music and they weredamn good.
These were damn good men andwomen that could play the fuck
out of their instruments.
The Beatles, on the other hand,were just kind of these
haphazard guys that kind ofstumbled into music somehow.
(44:34):
But look at guitar sales, thinkabout it.
You know the sales data forelectric guitars that I could
find here on the internet, thesales data for electric and
acoustic guitars in the USbetween 1954 and 1964 isn't
really all that availableavailable, but from what I could
(45:00):
find I can find some generaltrends between a couple
different time frames.
Now between 1954 and 1964 iswhere I'm going to go.
But you know, this was this.
The 1950s and the early 1960swas known as the golden era for
electric guitars, which wasobviously driven by rock and
roll and influential musicianslike Elvis Presley, buddy Holly
(45:25):
and later the Beatles.
Now, companies like Fender andGibson saw a really huge and a
sharp increase in the sales ofelectric guitars, especially
after the release of iconicmodels like the Fender
Stratocaster in 1954 and theGibson Les Paul in the early
1950s.
Now, electric guitar salesbegan to accelerate in the late
(45:47):
1950s and the early 1960s.
By 1965, it estimated thatFender was selling around 50,000
guitars annually, while Gibsonand other manufacturers like
Rickenbacker and Gretsch werealso ramping up production.
Acoustic guitars, on the otherhand, were also popular but were
often overshadowed by growingexcitement around electrics.
(46:11):
But companies like MartinMartin Guitars and Gibson still
produce significant numbers ofguitars and folk musicians like
Bob Dylan help sustain demand.
Now the rough sales estimatesbetween 1954 and 1964, 1950s
(46:33):
electric guitar sales.
By 1954, total US guitar saleswere in the tens of thousands
per year, growing rapidly due tothe explosion of rock and roll.
Between 1954-1960, guitar salescould have been in the range of
20,000 to 40,000 total per year, increasing as more musicians
(46:56):
adopted electrics.
1961 to 64, sales continuedincreasingly, possibly reaching
around 50,000 plus units totalall things combined annually by
1964, due to bands like theBeatles, sales increased in
popularity and electricsincreased in popularity.
(47:18):
Now acoustic guitars Martinreported annual production
numbers in the range of 5,000 to10,000 units in the 1950s and
growing somewhat by the 1960s,not too much but somewhat.
Between 1954 and 1964, acousticguitar sales could have a range
between 10,000 and 30,000 unitstotal and this is I guess this
(47:42):
is US or maybe worldwide.
There wasn't a whole lot ofunits moving back then.
So with a modest increase inthe folk music gain traction in
the early 1960s because of Dylanand all those people, because
Dylan was on the scene beforethe Beatles.
Now it's clear that thecombined sales of electric
(48:05):
acoustic guitars in the 1960swere likely exceeding 60,000 to
80,000 units annually In the US,where electric guitars were
showing a sharper growthtrajectory due to rock music.
But between 1964 and 1974, itall changed.
(48:25):
It all changed.
Now it wasn't all just becauseof the Beatles, but bands like
the Beatles, the Stones, ledZeppelin and Hendrix and Dylan
and Clapton made the guitarculture a huge symbol during
this time and there was anexplosion in guitar sales.
(48:46):
1964 to 1969, fender, gibson andGretsch and Rickenbacker became
dominant players in theelectric guitar market, became
dominant players in the electricguitar market.
Sales continued to rise as theBeatles' popularity peaked and
other British invasion bandstook over the US charts.
By 1965, fender alone wasproducing around 50,000 guitars
(49:07):
annually just Fender alone, withGibson selling slightly fewer
but still significant numbers.
It's estimated that total USelectric guitar sales from all
manufacturers were likely in therange of 200,000 to 300,000
units per year by the mid-1960s.
So between 1964 to 1965-1966,they went from selling a total
(49:38):
of everything combined acousticand electric 80,000 units to
300,000 units.
That's a huge, huge increase innumbers.
And between 1970 and 74, thetrend of electric guitar sales
(49:59):
continued through the 1970s withthe rise of hard rock, you know
, blues, psychedelic rock, allthat stuff that came about.
Gibson by the early 1970s,gibson and Fender were producing
tens of thousands of guitarseach year, producing tens of
(50:19):
thousands of guitars each year.
Fender, for instance, waslikely producing around 60,000
to 70,000 guitars annually bythe 1970s.
Industry-wide estimates suggestthat the total US sales of
electric guitars across allmanufacturers were possibly
350,000 to 400,000 units peryear by the early 1970s.
So between 1964 and 1974, italmost quintupled the amount of
(50:54):
guitars, five times the amountof guitars, five times the
amount of guitars being producedjust because of these bands.
It was spearheaded by theBeatles, same with acoustic
guitar sales, and acousticguitar sales in the early 1960s
was a small number of guitarsales Between 64 and 69,.
(51:14):
I mean the sales grew steadilybecause the Beals and Dylan,
martin, gibson and GildedGuitars were among the leaders
in this.
Martin reported producingaround 5,000 to 7,000 guitars
per year during this periodbetween 1964 and 1969.
All manufacturers of acousticguitar sales in the US range
(51:35):
between 100,000 and 150,000units per year by the late 1960s
.
Between 1970 and 1974, the USwas the first to produce.
It says the acoustic guitarsales were in the range of
150,000 to 200,000 units peryear, with companies like Martin
Gibson and Yamaha sellingstrong numbers.
(51:55):
Now Yamaha used to be a hugeguitar manufacturer.
I don't know if they're evenstill around.
I've had a couple of Yamahas,but look at them.
The acoustics combined with theelectric sales is well over
500,000 units per year, when thecombined was nowhere near even
100,000 just several yearsearlier.
(52:17):
But between 1964 and 1974, itwent up by more, almost 10 times
.
It was probably more like eighttimes what they were doing
before total.
So it's a cumulative effectthat the Beatles started.
(52:42):
I mean, if you look at theestimates I have here, if you
look at the estimates I havehere, the cumulative sales
estimate between 64 and 74electric guitars in 10 years.
Those 10 years approximately2.5 to 3.5 million sold Acoustic
(53:06):
guitars.
In 10 years 1.5 to 2 millionunits sold.
Now these are estimates I gotoff of Wiki and ChatGBT, but the
estimates are based on industrytrends and production data
available from major guitarmanufacturers during the period.
It's clear that the guitarbecame an iconic symbol of
Americana and music and cultureand in the next episode I'm
(53:29):
going to talk about music andemotions and how music affects
your emotions.
But let me ask you this soyou've got this band as I've
perpetuated and peppered I'm notperpetuated, but peppered
throughout my conversation here.
So these four scruffy guysuneducated guys who barely made
it through grade school, justhappened to pick up guitars
because they were influenced byBuddy Holly and Elvis uneducated
(53:49):
guys who barely made it througha grade school just happened to
pick up guitars because theywere influenced by Buddy Holly
and Elvis All of them none ofthem are really well-known,
prolific songwriters.
They just somehow wow, theyjust made it, man, they really
made it.
And they influenced culturearound the world.
(54:09):
They influenced the increase ofmusical sales, musical
instrument sales, hair trends,clothing trends, lifestyle
trends, attitude trends.
And what do you see in ourcountry since then?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm notsome right-wing conservative
lunatic here.
I'm not.
But look, we had a strong,stable country after World War
(54:30):
II, between 1945 and 1965.
Things were going good, right,we had industry here, you could
find a job, you could work for30 years, you could get a
pension, you had a mom and dadat home that were trying their
best to raise the kids and giveyou a good life, a strong,
stable platform.
Cities weren't in the greatestshape, but the crime was very
(54:52):
low Then after the Beatles, ifyou want to say they had that
much influence on culture, lookwhat they've done to us.
Our country's a mess.
Can we blame it all on theBeatles?
No, so what do you blame it on?
What do you blame thedisintegration of my society
here in the United States or inthe United Kingdom, or anywhere
(55:15):
else for that matter?
What do you blame it on?
Was there a nefarious forcebehind behind the Beatles?
Was there an ulterior motivebehind the band, behind all
those bands, not just theBeatles, the Stones, the who,
the Kings, jerry and thePacemakers and Hermits Hermits
(55:36):
and all those god awful bandsthat came out of the United
Kingdom.
I hate Hermits Hermits.
I can't stand that band Jerryand the Pacemakers and all these
god awful bands that came outof there.
Oh my god, it's so amazing.
Such great music.
You know, I can't help but thinklook where we were prior to the
(55:57):
arrival of these bands and lookwhere we are today.
Everybody is at each other'sthroats in the streets.
There's no jobs, the industry'sgone, all the factories are
gone.
Kids back in the 60s started toprotest the government and
their parents.
They started to rise up and askfor freedom.
They didn't want to follow intheir father's footsteps and
(56:18):
work in some glass tower or atthe assembly line.
They wanted to become artists,they wanted to become musicians,
they wanted to do all theseother things.
And look at where we are now.
There's no parents at home.
Most parents both work.
People don't have any money.
They're struggling to get by.
I don't know.
And this leads you know, I'm notbringing this up.
(56:39):
I'm bringing this uprhetorically because down the
road I'm going to tell you whatI'm going to try to tell you.
I'm going to theorize what'sbehind it.
I'm going to try to tell you,I'm going to theorize what's
behind it.
I'm not going down theTavistock route, indirectly I
will be.
As I've said in other videos,I'm not educated on Tavistock
like Mike Williams, but I'mgoing to educate myself on it
(57:03):
when I can find time to watchvideos and read books about it.
But there's something muchbigger behind this that
everybody else has beenhypnotized by.
They put us into this trance todistract us from the real
motivating force behind it.
And I'm going to go into thenext episode and have an episode
about music and emotions, howmusic affects the human brain
and mind and emotions anddecision-making processes.
(57:23):
And then I'm going to talkabout a document called
Communism, hypnotism and theBeatles, and it's going to keep
going on this, because I thinkthere's a lot more to rock and
roll than what we see on thesurface.
So well, everybody, I'm PT Pop.
Thank you for watching today.
That is my commentary on theBeatles and how they affected
(57:46):
culture.
If you like my videos again,give me the thumbs up.
It's the cheapest and easiestand least expensive way you can
support this channel.
If you do have some extracashola in your pockets over the
day, become a member here.
Join my Patreon channel there'slinks to both of those in the
description here.
Buy one of my t-shirts, mybooks, my songs, my videos, and
(58:09):
with that I bid you do hasta lavista, baby, would you like
fries with that?
Would you like fries with that?
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