Jonathan Arthur Van Bodegraven <van-bodegraven.56@osu.edu> wrote:

>Contrary to the popular view held by this newsgroup, there was music before 
>the Beatles.

So we understand. Of course whenever I hear "Not A Second Time", I
always think of "Das Lied von der Erde"...don't you?

>The Beatles started out as little more than a group that the 
>girls happened to think were cute.

Goodness gracious *me*. What about those of us who heard them before
we saw them? As iconographically ubiquitous as the Fabs have become,
in all their visual permutations, there are still living a small,
select group of people who stumbled upon their music before we ever
beheld their collective cuteness.

As one of those few, I can tell you unequivocally (and vociferously)
that nothing beats hearing the next profound musical trend without
having the slightest idea what it looks like, what kind of suit it
wears, how it comports itself on stage, or how it charms its
audience.

I can assure you that the Beatles' sound was sufficient to enrapture
those of us who had our ears open to the new direction. And of course
they were cute...as well as alluring, graphically profound, and
visually compelling as all get-out. But that was a bonus. We didn't
need that. We had their sound. That--in December 1963---was
enough.

>I suggest the people on this newsgroup do a little bit of
>listening to music before the Beatles made the scene.  They 
>seem to credit countless performers, but the people in this group
>seem to think everything they did came from nowhere but within.

How can you believe it so? The Fabs left us a legacy in their music
that would awaken the sleepiest music fan...you want clues? I'll give
you clues. The Beatles gave their listeners a complete tutorial in
early rock and roll. Elvis was always part of the subtext, if left
directly unexpressed (probably because he was too holy).

But overtly and irrepressibly, you could hear Buddy, Chuck, Little
Richard, Orbison, Jerry Lee, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, the
Shirelles, Smokey and the Miracles, Arthur Alexander, the Isleys, the
Everlys...if you hadn't already been brought up on American pop and
rhythm-n-blues, the Fabs would have injected you with that drug as
soon as you heard their honorifically derivative harmonies and musical
constructs.

And of course you could hear more vague echoes in their live
oeuvre...Carl Perkins, Lonnie Donegan, Larry Williams, The Vipers, Sam
Cooke, Hank Williams, Big Bill Broonzy, Johnnie Ray, the Coasters....

Listening to the Fabs, whether you were privileged enough to hear
their BBC tracks live as broadcast or on scratchy bootlegs many years
later, gave you a veritable implant of rock and roll history. They
loved the songs they covered; they imparted that love to you. 

With each note they taught you that this was important to them---some
marvelous treasure they'd found on vinyl that they wanted you to hear
too ("Some Other Guy"). They couldn't keep it to themselves; and
ultimately they couldn't just do covers. They had to transform their
own mania for such music into something more personal, and so they
began to write songs. Not a bad way to work out their own awe for
melodic mentors.

When they were done, you couldn't always tell where these influences
ended and the Fabs began, so seamless and sensual was that rhythmic
affair. You can hear Chuck Berry buried deep in "I Saw Her Standing
There", but you can't quite parse it as Berry. The Everlys emerge (so
you think) in "Thank You, Girl", but in "I'll Get You"...who's tracing
the new realms of three-part harmony? Elvis was in their bones, in the
very beat of their musical heart, yet each measure of that muscle was
arguably their own.

Perhaps this leads to some confusion. It's a rather pretty paradox,
actually, where "I'm A Loser" both salutes Dylan and creates its own
inimitable character; where "And Your Bird Can Sing" trumpets its debt
to the Byrds and yet takes us beyond them. The Beatles do this
constantly throughout their songbook. 

It's almost as if they say to us: This music is sacred to us;
look how we celebrate and embellish it. And without burying their
betters, the Fabs make new fabric from them---some new weave we'd
never beheld, some aural pleasure as yet unheard...and yet profound
in its untraceable familiarity.

They said to us: We love this. Here's how we translate it. Here's how
we decipher it into something new.

And no one since them has been able to do the same.

You didn't have to see the Fabs in all their celebrated cuteness to
know what made them unique.

All you had to do was listen...and your eyes would see.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Well, I said it don't come easy; well, I sure know how it feels..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu