Are the Beatles the Greatest Band Ever Or What?!?!

Oh, Yeah, Says Who?

Hey folks, time now for another Cousin B musical soapbo- er, adventure!! Today we’re discussing the greatest band in the world.

Yes, the Beatles.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

It’s almost pointless to try to retell the story here. The four lads from Liverpool, fresh out of school, busting a gut in the shady clubs in Hamburg, finally getting signed and becoming the biggest band in the world. Paraphrasing here for the sake of brevity.

Scholars have written books about them. Films have been made. Documentaries. Hell, I even took a college class in it. (Got an A.) I also had the pleasure of growing up during their heyday, hearing their first songs at 7 years old, and eventually learning to play them. The story and the music hold far too much meaning to adequately describe here.

Instead, we’ll look at them from a more fundamental aspect, one that will allow a secret soap-box issue of mine oops I shouldn’t have said that never mind look over there shiny!

The given assumption in much of the world is that the Beatles are the greatest band ever and the most common objection to that is ‘oh yeah, says who?’

Well, says us.

And here’s why.

Music is a language, and it’s formed from the same source as language- vocabulary. Just as we have a vocabulary of words, we have a collective vocabulary of music- phrases, melodies, riffs, motifs, rhythms, chord progressions, harmonies- elements of music that are recognizable to the audience.

The thing is, it’s not constant- it’s additive. Vocabulary grows. Evolves. And the people that make history generally increase vocabulary in their field.

Because there is vocabulary in every field of everything. And for music, that encompasses the audio electronic world now, too. (Alert! Alert! Historical sidetrack shit incoming!)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791), and Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) were such individuals. Each one’s works added to the vocabulary of European music. Our entire classical music world is built on their foundations of melody, rhythm, counterpoint and orchestration, to name just a few.

And, then we had George Gershwin (1898-1937), who pushed all that vocabulary into pop, blues and jazz, combing classical elements with jazz in his renown piano/orchestra piece ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and his penultimate work- ‘Porgy and Bess’, which gave us the perennial favorite ‘Summertime’, still performed today by thousands of musicians around the world.

Next, you have Les Paul, whose musicality may have already been enough to place him in history, but we also have his incredible inventions! Besides pushing Gibson into making the solid body electric guitar that bears his name, he pioneered sound-on-sound tape recording, allowing him and then-wife Mary Ford to overlay multiple vocals and guitar parts. He went on to design all kinds of audio gear, including the compressor, a widely used audio tool, but he was especially known for multi-track tape recorders, legendarily building the first 8-track reel recorder using 1” wide tape.

These and their contemporaries were the influences dominant in the world when the four lads from the ‘Pool took off into the big time. Les Paul’s methods were popping up in the studios, and George Martin, as head of classical music for EMI, was heavily ensconced in the Bach-Mozart-Beethoven tradition. And, from the ‘Gershwin’ generation. So, everything from Bach on was relevant to him, which included modern (c.1962) composers like Phillip Glass and John Cage.

So, because all of this was going on, our heroes were thrust into a foreboding and rigorous test. While they could play whatever they wanted back in the safety of the ‘Cavern Club’ in Liverpool, the red light clubs in Hamburg were demanding gigs, over seven hours long, seven nights a week. And, how did the Beatles manage to fill seven sets?

They played (shudder) covers!

Oh, noes!

Yes, covers.

Or, as we old guys used to call it- songs.

We didn’t distinguish ‘covers’ as anything negative. To us, a ‘cover’ was releasing a record of a previously released song. We didn’t consider a live band playing popular songs to be ‘covers’.

In a sense, it was all moot because the vast majority of music making it to the public back then was written by professional composers, such as those from Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building- legendary centers of famous composers.

Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra were huge, and are, indeed, vocabulary, but not ‘original’ in the sense we use it today, as they didn’t write their songs, but chose them from a cornucopia of writers in LA and New York. But, you also had artists who did write some of their own material, like Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins, and of course, Chuck Berry.

So, these were the kind of covers that the Beatles had to play in Hamburg, meaning they had to learn all those songs and I bet you’ll never guess what I’m going to say that did for them.

Oh, you did?

Awww.

But, what is it about vocabulary that makes it such an issue for me? (soapbox alert!!)

The two most common ways to write a song are one, you choose a rhythm pattern- beat and a chord progression, and make up words and melodies to it, or two, you make up words and melodies and follow them with the chords. The majority of rock, pop, and blues songs are the former, jazz, and broadway style songs are usually the latter.

Of course, any song can be written in any way and any combination of these, and either one can be simple or complex. Rock songs typically have have 1-3 repeating patterns of 2-5 chords- a verse, a chorus, and maybe, a bridge.

So, here’s where it gets dicy. If you start with a chord progression, it’s already suggesting melody notes. That’s why ten million 12-bar blues songs have exactly the same melody. Every chord progression implies a range of melodies. A singer merely has to sing notes that the chord is playing.

Harder though, is to sing a melody and parse the chords. For that, you have to be able to hear the chords implied by the melody and the beat.

One doesn’t need to read music or know complex music theory to get to know how chords and melodies combine. This is what’s always been meant by ‘playing by ear’. Once you learn to recognize and follow the chords in enough songs, you even begin to ‘hear’ them on the radio in songs you never heard before. Or suddenly recognize them in songs you have heard many times.

This means the Beatles came out of the gate intrinsically armed with that Gershwin vocabulary- chord changes, melody and rhyme patterns, phrasing, much of it acquired through osmosis in that frying-pan period of playing seven sets worth of ‘covers’.

Which, the Beatles demonstrated on their debut album, covering the decidedly jazzy ’Til There Was You’ from the Broadway show ‘The Music Man’, even performing it on the Ed Sullivan Show.

So, when they met George Martin, like most bands, they had ‘the songs we do and the songs we wrote’. And, their first two albums had multiple covers of Motown, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins songs.

Because the Beatles had the vocabulary to draw from, they were able to write songs that were on par with the hits they were playing in the clubs. This was probably a key element for Martin, who had not been deeply interested in producing rock bands. But, the Beatles won him over. (When Harrison said ‘I don’t like your tie.’)

As they grew, so did their vocabulary. And, being signed to a major label, they now had access to the latest technology. By then, Les Paul’s ideas had taken over, and with stereo becoming a standard, meaning most tape machines had two tracks, left and right, Les Paul’s idea of multiple tracks took off, with several companies making 3 and 4 track recorders. Eventually, that 1” 8-track went into production, and by 1968, George Harrison owned one, which we see in the ‘Get Back ‘ film.

This meant they could do more, creatively, because it didn’t all have to happen live at once. They could experiment. The Beatles tried everything from mic’ing techniques to using organ Leslie speakers for guitars and vocals to backward recording to the first feedback on a record to eventually joining all of these elements in breathtaking albums like ’Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and ‘Abbey Road’, and ground-breaking songs like ’Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘I Am the Walrus’.

Not to mention musical influences and instruments from ragtime to India to classical to avant-garde.

By doing all of this and reaching such a wide audience with such a divergent range of new and familiar sounds and memorable, singable melodies and lyrics, they contributed to the global-

Yep- you knew it was coming-

Vocabulary.

There, I said it.

And, while the Beatles didn’t ‘shred’ like jazz and prog-rock players, they did have the right bit of speed, the right way, where it needed to be. Technique fed their vocabulary, giving us the wonderful range of riffs and solos we hear on their records.

It’s the songs and those famous recordings that establish the vocabulary of the audience. People are relating and reacting subconsciously.

Now, we’re not saying the Beatles created that vocabulary. Far from it. But they contributed to it at the level of Beethoven or Gershwin.

We would still have Elvis, Buddy Holly, Perkins, Berry, Little Richard, and yes, The Beach Boys, and they are all and will long be vocabulary, as well.

But, without the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the British Invasion may not have happened the way it did, overtaking the US market and putting hundreds of Brit-written tunes into the American vocabulary. The Beatles wild and unexpected success left record companies racing to sign new British artists.

There had been British hit artists in America, namely folk-rock duos Chad and Jeremy, and Peter and Gordon. But, the Beatles opened the flood gates, and boatloads of British groups who wrote their own music began hitting US airwaves.

Which is only fair because it was the US rock and roll and blues that inspired the Beatles, the Stones, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, I could go on for days.

And, we gladly acknowledge that those artists, as well as groups like Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Yes, ELP and Genesis, among many others, have entered vocabulary as well. And, that their counterparts in the US- Alice Cooper, Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, Eagles, Grand Funk Railroad and dozens more have contributed a great deal.

It’s not a competition. But it is a prize to have any song reach this level of impact.

Because it’s not by artist as much as it is by songs and records. That’s what gets us to the artist in the first place- a great record.

The songs and records we’ve all heard are the vocabulary. If you’ve heard Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, that’s in your head now. Exposure leads to vocabulary.

And, this is the commonality in the British Invasion and the US ‘garage band’ era in the 1960s. These artists and writers were driven by both the Gershwin melodic paradigms and the rock and roll/blues rhythms combined with the advances in the electric guitar from Les Paul and guitar pioneer Leo Fender (1909-1991).

This is what established what we call ‘classic rock’ - the songs and records from about 1955 to 1985. The most impacting artists of that period were schooled by the Gershwin generation, and are the primary vocabulary of the following generations.

No one band manifests that like the Beatles.

This is what has made them the greatest band, and by measurable means.

Their songs make full use of a wide range of musical and technical- yes- the ‘v’-word again, and are still selling and being performed. The recording tricks they created are taught in audio schools. Their songs are taught to music students.

Hell, Paul and Ringo are still touring!!!

Virtually every big city has at least one Beatles tribute band. And those bands have to be really good, because the Beatles’ performances are also you-know-what and everybody knows if you played it different or wrong. How much grace the band gets for that is dependent on the cover charge. At free or $5, some leeway is allowed. At $10 and up, they better nail it.

So, this is the technical virtuosity of the Beatles- their note placement, and use of textures, all combined to make almost movie-level experiences out of their songs. Yes, Martin was a huge part of this, but without their inherent skill and insight of the ‘Gershwin-Elvis era’ vocabulary from the demanding Hamburg club gigs driving their strong songwriting, Martin may have passed on them.

Vocabulary is wide, and it’s supposed to be. It encompasses all that the public routinely knows and recognizes. Musical vocabulary, no less. The US and Europe have been exporting recorded music to the rest of the world since the 1920s. Sometimes even breaking political barriers, or being smuggled in.

The Beatles, like Sinatra and Elvis, are ubiquitous. You hear them everywhere.

Somewhere in the world, right now, a band is playing ‘Saw Her Standing There’.

And, it’s filling the dance floor with every age.

Now, that’s great!

Do you think I said ‘vocabulary’ enough?

c. 2024 Cousin B