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The Beatles Evolved as their Spirituality Deepened 

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The Beatles Evolved as their Spirituality Deepened 

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Interesting article about the impact of spirituality on the Beatles. Maybe an icon is made when the art created is deeper than just what is presented before you.

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Shake It Up Baby....

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Why the Beatles’ Shea Stadium Show Was Even Greater Than You Knew 

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Why the Beatles’ Shea Stadium Show Was Even Greater Than You Knew 

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Leaving festivals like Woodstock and Monterey aside, there is no more famous gig in rock & roll history than when the Beatles played Shea Stadium, an orange and blue ass pit of a venue in front of 56,000 mostly teenyboppers on August 15th, 1965. It is a gig one might even term infamous, for all of the misunderstanding it has generated over the years, with one old saw after another getting parroted in the various histories of rock.

If you've seen the footage, you know that the Beatles were positioned on a rickety stage on an infield diamond, with the screams raining down from all directions. The band laughs maniacally, exchanges "shit, can you believe this is happening?" looks and takes the piss with song introductions repeatedly.

Chances are if you've seen footage of a single Beatles gig, it is this one. And chances are, too, that you've heard they were rubbish as a live act once they became famous, couldn't even hear themselves, just wanted to haul ass out of Dodge ASAP, all of that. And, for many years, the tales surrounding that Shea Stadium gig, plus the footage, plus the bootleg of the show, reinforced all of this. Which is a shame, and a matter in need of redressing.

Help! had just come out earlier in August. There may be no worse Beatles album. Granted, that's not the most damning remark, given that we're talking a record that contained the title track - one of John Lennon 's half dozen best songs - "Yesterday," "I've Just Seen a Face," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Ticket to Ride," the last of which Lennon hilariously claimed invented heavy metal, a totally spurious argument that is nonetheless fun to muck about with.

Come 1966, when the band played Shea again - something rarely brought up - there were huge chunks of empty stadium seats, as this was an era when an uptick in psychedelia meant meant a downturn in the Y.A. market. "Eleanor Rigby," the spinster with a face in a jar by her front door, lived a long way off from the world of "I Want to Hold Your Hand." That meant less head-flailing oohs and ahhs and shaking moptops as the next chorus rolled around. Plus, the States had just learned that Lennon had called the group more popular than Christ.

But in August 1965, the Beatles were having their last fling as a top shelf live band. They had uncorked fine sets on both The Ed Sullivan Show, in their last appearance there, and on Blackpool Night Out. The end of the month would find them tearing it up at the Hollywood Bowl, and on their best musical behavior, more or less, on account of George Martin hoping to get a releasable performance from the gig.

There aren't a ton of new Beatles finds unearthed anymore, but one of the more significant of recent years was when a soundboard of the Shea show hit the bootleg market in 2007. It was called The Beatles and the Great Concert at Shea! - an effectively simple and hyperbolic title in the best bootleg sense - that told you right on the cover it was a line recording sans overdubs, a conceit that seemed almost too perfect, after all of those intervening decades.

The Beatles became who they were on the back of their catalog - which is to say, as songwriters - but that endgame would never have been secured without them first being absolute badasses of the stage. You hear an absolute mother of a band on something like the Star Club tapes, recorded - in exchange for free beer - in Hamburg in late 1962. This was a group that, from an in-concert standpoint, could beat the piss out of all comers. The songs were almost always not theirs, but the point wasn't ownership in the compositional sense, but rather a kind of sonic rank pulling - in effect, saying, "Yep, we'll have this bad boy number by you, Fats Waller, and you, Arthur Alexander, and we will make it no one else's but ours."

Take that attitude, take those burgeoning chops, add some rakehell glee and fly in songs that were better than songs anyone else could write, and you have that first Shea Stadium concert, by way of being the best bar band ever to come out of Hamburg.

There's a nice, sturdy bottom to the songs at Shea, and one can hear the Stax-influenced groove, that bass and drums rumble, beginning to creep into the group's thoughts as players. Listening to something like the Shea line recording of "She's a Woman" you realize that "Drive My Car" is not far away and a logical progression.

Lennon's voice is slightly worn, but this was a voice that was changing. This probably had something to do with all of the pot, but listen to Hard Day's Night-era Lennon vs. what starts to happen in August of 1965. The voice is becoming wider; cherubic qualities are falling away. It's becoming more English, more conversational, more capable of asking the haltering queries of "Strawberry Fields Forever" than screaming to the back rows with "Twist and Shout."

This is, let's say, the third and final defining moment of Beatlemania after Ed Sullivan and A Hard Day's Night (album and film, both), and just as they had been doing, they did at Shea that special thing endemic to the Beatles: taking up digs in the future as they appear to be fully in possession of the present.

Help!, which one could, indeed, argue is the band's LP nadir, is also one of their most important discs, the album that first mixed soul, folk, rock, and mild psychedelia, albeit in sometimes clumsy ways, freeing the band up for the mid-career run of Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.

At Shea they even dressed a sort of proto- Pepper part, with the military regalia. The line version of "Help!" has special resonance, for here is a man in Lennon staring into his latest abyss in life and singing about that abyss while being all but worshipped by the largest crowd in rock history to date.

The irony would not have been lost on him, and for all of the joy at this performance - there's little doubt that once they adjusted to the surreality of the event, the Beatles were having a good time - this is the great howled blues moment, a confessional hymn cloaked in the three-part disguise of a major key, peppy drums and exciting George Harrison lead guitar lines.

Lennon remarked that he wrote two honest songs in his life - which is bullshit, but never mind - one being "Help!", the other "Strawberry Fields Forever," and while no one would associate the madness at Shea with the studio wizardry of late 1966, there is a likemindedness at play, and even a sonic likemindedness, too. And that starts with the voice, which is not like the voice of just a year before. That voice cuts A-to-B straight-line style to the soul, a not very mistakable sound, just as the Shea line tape asserts itself as a live album that could have thrown elbows for some space on that top shelf of Beatles recordings.

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Why Beatles' Shea Show Was Even Greater Than You Knew

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Leaving festivals like Woodstock and Monterey aside, there is no more famous gig in rock & roll history than when the Beatles played Shea Stadium, an orange and blue ass pit of a venue in front of 56,000 mostly teenyboppers on August 15th, 1965.

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The Beatles were many things simultaneously: the most famous celebrities of their day, the most successful songwriters of their age and, ultimately, the most beloved band of all time.

And one more thing: The Beatles were also the most creative single force to ever hit popular music.

The band has influenced generations, and still continues to have a profound impact. The Beatles not only changed music; they also forever altered the way music is made.

The fifth Beatle: Producer George Martin (center) worked on all but one of The Beatles' albums.

Through ceaseless inventiveness, The Beatles set musical trends that are still being followed. They never rested on their achievements, constantly stretching the boundaries of pop music. There is a chartable creative progression that begins with the first Beatle album and ends with the last.

It should also be noted that The Beatles were assisted greatly by studio wizard George Martin, who produced every Beatle album (except Let it Be) and helped the band with its various sonic experiments.

Trying to list The Beatles' various creative achievements would take nearly forever, but we can zero in on five songs that demonstrate the band's technical mastery and explosive creativity.

I Feel Fine

Album: Beatles '65 (1964)
How It Changed Music: The first intentional use of feedback in a pop music recording.

Filming the video to accompany "I Feel Fine," Ringo plays exercise bike. On the record, he employs a rhythm that can be traced to Ray Charles' "What'd I Say."

Backstory: In 1964, the idea of musicians actually trying to get their instruments to produce distortion was radically new. And although The Beatles certainly didn't invent feedback and weren't the first to incorporate it into their live act (The Who or The Kinks probably have that distinction), The Beatles were the first to release a single that featured feedback.

How It Happened: It was all due to a happy accident in the studio, when John propped his Gibson acoustic/electric against a switched-on amplifier. The guitar erupted with feedback, which stopped Lennon and McCartney in their tracks. The uniqueness of the sound impressed Lennon so much, he instantly asked producer George Martin if they could somehow use feedback in the recording.

The producer suggested tacking it onto the front of the song and the rest is Rock 'n' Roll history. On the final master, John plucks the A string on his guitar. The note at first stings, then buzzes and finally dissolves into an ear-piercing wail. A million bands may have incorporated feedback into their sound, but The Beatles were the first to put it on record.

Eleanor Rigby

Album: Revolver (1966)
How It Changed Music: Rock songs don't always need to have happy endings - or traditional drums and guitars - to become hits.

By 1966, The Beatles were beginning to look at everything through new eyes...and glasses.

Backstory: Each song on Revolver has a unique, fully formed sound, but none more distinctive than Paul McCartney's "Eleanor Rigby." A grim song about alienation ("Ah...look at all the lonely people!"), "Eleanor Rigby" tells the story of a lonely woman (who eventually dies) and a lonely minister (who presides over her burial).

The song was a shock to Beatle fans that were used to upbeat love songs from the Fab Four. This was a song with no happy endings. Nonetheless, despite the somber subject matter, the song spent four weeks topping the British pop charts. More than 60 pop artists have covered the song since then.

Revolver marks the point when The Beatles stopped being a live performing act and became a full-time studio band. Aside from the general exhaustion of touring, The Beatles were becoming more ambitious about their music and had already mastered conventional multi-track recording techniques. Individual songs were being crafted with more time and creative techniques.

In recording "Eleanor Rigby," McCartney's genius was to suggest the use of an eight-piece string section. In fact, none of The Beatles actually play instruments on the recording. Instead, the song is driven by its churning cello, mournful violas and stabbing violins.

How It Happened: There was a real Eleanor Rigby, who worked as a scullery maid in a Liverpool hospital and died in 1939. As teenagers, Lennon and McCartney hung around near a cemetery bearing her tombstone. It's been suggested that McCartney absorbed the name subconsciously and used it years later when penning the song.

By the way, "Father MacKenzie" started out as "Father McCartney," until Paul feared that people would think he was describing his own father.

Tomorrow Never Knows

Album: Revolver (1966)
How It Changed Music: Experimentation is good, part one.

The Beatles used a Leslie spinning speaker for John's spacey vocals on "Tomorrow Never Knows."

Backstory: The Beatles were still a unified force in 1966, but Revolver demonstrated the individual gifts of each Beatle. Paul scored high marks with "Eleanor Rigby," while George Harrison contributed one of his best songs ("Taxman") and drummer Ringo Starr sang lead on the innocent anthem, "Yellow Submarine."

As for John Lennon, he added the album's closing track - a stunning piece of early psychedelic music called "Tomorrow Never Knows." The lyrics, inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, were strange enough ("Listen to the color of your dreams") but the song itself sounded like virtually nothing the band had recorded up to that point.

How It Happened: To give Lennon's chanting vocal the desired "sound of a guru on a mountaintop," producer Martin ran the vocal track through a Leslie spinning speaker, a type of rotating speaker that produced an odd, wobbly sound by replicating the Doppler effect. John's vocals were also doubled by using an Automatic Double Tracking (ADT) system.

Meanwhile, Ringo used a unique drum pattern for his rhythm tracks and his drums and cymbals were recorded and played in reverse, as was Harrison's sitar.

The Beatles also gave the song an added layer of weirdness by adding 16 six-second-long tape loops of various sounds (most of which were played in reverse), which producer Martin interspersed through the song. The resulting final track was an amazing, riveting piece of music that predicted the band's next stage: psychedelia.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite

Album: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
How It Changed Music: Experimentation is good, part two.

John Lennon with the actual 1843 circus poster that inspired "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"

Backstory: Things were getting pretty crazy in groovy 1967, and that influence colors the album that many critics regard as not only The Beatles' best album, but the best Rock album of all time. Sgt. Pepper is loaded throughout with one innovation after another, but "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" capably demonstrates the band's daring musical experimentation.

The song's lyrics, which tell of an upcoming old-style circus event, were inspired by an antique music-hall poster that Lennon had acquired. Much of Lennon's lyric was taken word-for-word from the original handbill.

How It Happened: For one musical passage within the song's middle eight bars, a collection of different pieces of audio was gathered. Each tape contained a different type of carnival music.

Producer George Martin, unhappy with their attempts to find one signature carnival sound, had all of the tapes cut into small pieces, which were then thrown into the air and onto the studio floor. The studio engineer then randomly picked up the pieces of tape, which were re-assembled in precisely that order to create a flowing montage of circus sounds.

I Want You (She's So Heavy)

Album: Abbey Road (1969)
How It Changed Music: Simplicity can be a lot deeper than you think.

Even though the foursome would soon part company, The Beatles were still in step when recording the band's final masterpiece, Abbey Road.

Backstory: After the dense, multi-layered psychedelic rumble that The Beatles pioneered during the Pepper era, most of Abbey Road (which was the last Beatle album recorded, although Let it Be would be released after it) was marked by a simpler sound that didn't seem to rely quite so much on audio "tricks."

But even at their simplest, The Beatles' music contains multiple levels. And that was certainly the case for "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," which took a simple blues-type song and stretched it out to nearly eight minutes

How It Happened: Songwriter Lennon answered criticisms of the primitive lyric ("I want you...I want you so bad...I want you...I want you so bad it's driving me mad") by saying that it was an urgent love song that required a simple lyric. (Lennon used the example of a drowning man, who doesn't scream, "Excuse me, but could you please possibly throw me that float and save me?" when "Help! I'm drowning!" is more to the point.)

Then there are the song's special effects, which were tacked onto the building instrumental that dominates the back half of the song. The bizarre sound of an increasing, howling wind (created by Lennon playing a Moog synthesizer) was grafted onto the song, with the white noise becoming louder as the song's thundering chords repeat over and over.

Even The Simpsons have paid tribute to The Beatles with this Abbey Road homage.

The end of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" is also technically interesting, because there really is no ending, per Lennon's idea. The instruments keep hitting the main theme over and over (with the wind SFX now up to hurricane force) and then the song just unexpectedly goes silent.

No final chord or drumbeat: just pure silence. An amazing and unexpected finish to a song that was more complex than originally judged...and one of the very last Beatle songs to be mixed by the group itself.

Creativity on Tap
The Beatles' music still shines decades later, thanks to the careful craft that went into every Beatle recording. Each member of the band quickly became a master of the audio studio arts. Their early music shows The Beatles' progression as audio producers who were determined to give the world a new kind of sound.

The Beatles' legacy lives on. Digital Media Academy is a proud partner of The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, and shares its mission.

Like the Lennon Bus, Digital Media Academy can help teach you how to become a music producer.

The Beatles constantly upped the creative ante throughout their history. Thanks in large part to that magnificently recorded legacy, music production tech camps continue to attract creative and musical young people.

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How The Beatles Changed Music - Digital Media Academy

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The Beatles were many things simultaneously: the most famous celebrities of their day, the most successful songwriters of their age and, ultimately, the most beloved band of all time. And one more thing: The Beatles were also the most creative single force to ever hit popular music.

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Pop Icons:  How the Beatles Changed Music and the World

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Pop Icons:  How the Beatles Changed Music and the World

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It's impossible to give an account of Western life in the 1960s without somewhere referencing the Beatles. Not only were they the most popular group of the decade with their music permeating every area of life, but they seemed to encapsulate the era from its joyous early optimism through consciousness-altering experimentation to eventual disillusionment, bickering and fragmentation.

When they began recording in 1962, American rock and roll had lost its early bite. Elvis had gone to Hollywood, Little Richard had gone to church, Chuck Berry had gone to jail, and Buddy Holly had gone to his grave. Into the vacated space came various Billys, Tommys and Bobbys who had the right haircuts but the wrong attitude. The Beatles took the original American rock-and-roll style, brought back the bite, Anglicized it a little, and sold it to the world.

Perhaps because of their more complete education (John Lennon had been to art school and Paul McCartney had studied advanced-level English literature) they were able not only to write their own songs but to progress artistically in terms of range, depth, and innovation. They made the previously unheard-of transition from touring pop idols to recording studio artists.

Rubber Soul (1965) saw them incorporate subjects other than love; Revolver (1966) displayed a complex musical imagination that drew on styles ranging from chamber music and Motown to folk and the avant-garde; and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), the first album to be made after their retirement from live performance, was consciously produced as a work of recorded art rather than as a template for future concerts.

Along with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, the Beatles dominated the popular music of the 1960s and their choices of fashion, girlfriends, drugs, music and belief were highly influential on Baby Boomers. Each album they released was anticipated as a new indication of the way forward for a generation desperate for leadership in a time of uncertainty.

In spiritual terms, the Beatles were a paradox. On the one hand they were irreverent, openly atheistic, and symptomatic of the break with so-called traditional values. When John Lennon claimed in 1966 that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus," he vocalized the fears of many believers, fears that had already been expressed in books like David A. Noebel's Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles (1965).

On the other hand, they represented the youthful quest for a meaningful spirituality that offered transcendence, beauty, love, freedom and social justice. Their widely publicized experimentation with drugs (mainly cannabis and LSD) was not a mere search for kicks but an attempt to gain perceptions that would make sense of life. Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor turned acid guru, said in his book The Politics of Ecstasy that they were "philosopher-poets of the new religion" and that their songs were "delicate hymns of glory to God."

In 1968, at the urging of George Harrison, who had fallen in love with all things Indian, the Beatles went to Rishikesh to study Transcendental Meditation under the personal tutelage of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was during this period of study that they wrote much of the double album The Beatles (better known as The White Album), which was appropriately more simple than their recent creations and had a plain, white cover that suggested the blankness of a mind cleared of the sort of thoughts that Maharishi said kept us bound to the "gross level" of existence.

If the Beatles had a core message, it was that we need to rise above the petty issues that bog us down by enlarging our field of consciousness. As John put it in "Revolution," we've got to free our minds. Yet such a message manifests itself only after careful scrutiny, because the band members' instinct was to write from the perspective of the altered state of mind rather than to command others to achieve it. The magical realism of "Penny Lane," which turned a mundane area of Liverpool into a blue-sky paradise, practiced the freed mind whereas "Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" preached it.

Christians were ill-equipped to deal with the Beatles' phenomenon. Rather than judging them by their artistic achievements, integrity and handling of truth, many Christians dismissed them as unworthy idols and misguided heathens. Rather than sensitively evaluating their records, they burned them. The Beatles' view that salvation was possible through an expanded consciousness may have been wrong, but it was a view worth countering intelligently rather than flinging it to the flames.

The Beatles are an object lesson to anyone endeavoring to incorporate his or her worldview into art. Most of the time they were unaware that this was what they were doing, but it's probably this lack of self-consciousness that made them so effective. The ideas that were poured into their minds just came out naturally through their lips and fingertips. They didn't make a statement; they became a statement.

Who are the men, women, films, TV shows, books, computer games and other pop culture icons from the last 60 years that have shaped us in theological ways? That's the question that Robert Johnston, Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor sought to answer in their new book Don't Stop Believin': Pop Culture and Religion from Ben-Hur to Zombies.

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Pop Icons: How the Beatles Changed Music and the World (1960s)

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It's impossible to give an account of Western life in the 1960s without somewhere referencing the Beatles. Not only were they the most popular group of the decade with their music permeating every area of life, but they seemed to encapsulate the era from its joyous early optimism through consciousness-altering experimentation to eventual disillusionment, bickering and fragmentation.

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Is this an okay group to serve as our icon? They changed the music industry in their time, so they deserve to be an icon.