The
Beatles: Their Economic, Social, Political, and Business impact on the world
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In MY view: Two of the most creative songwriter team members of the 20th century; a heralded lead guitar player who also wrote one if not THE most celebrated love song recorded in modern times; a bassist who could inspire others with his tone and playing and brought the instrument to the foreground of audio; FOUR vocalists who could independently hold the stage; a rhythm guitarist who could savagely fight with chords, and a drummer who effortlessly used basic patterns and out-played his peers. Plus a portfolio that arguably contains MAYBE five-at-most should-could-be overlooked compositions, but due the credit for creating-expanding genres of punk, pop, and rock. And gifted visionary ideas for engineering techniques and sound effects plus orchestration.
- A charismatic event of the modern
era. "More popular than Jesus."
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Changed music: pop, recording, album
covers, foreign music influences, instruments
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Changed social trends: clothes,
hair, influence of drugs and escape
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Political change: U.S.S.R., peace
movements, racial conflict
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Global awareness of poverty and
suffering: Concert for Bangladesh
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Financial: income royalties that
still continue to beat all catalogue. Sales of personal property. Remastered catalog.
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Entertainment media: cartoons,
movies.
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Performances: sold-out shows that
were hysterical for audiences.
**Rumor of Paul's
death--and John's murder.
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Efforts to stop the Vietnam War.
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Their relationships with wives,
media figures: the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
•
Bringing guest artists (Clapton) to
play.
•
Their decision not to tour
again--and to fight in the studio, then to go separately and release music.
"The Beatles promoted
a cultural revolution in the former Soviet Union that played a part in the
demolition of communism in that part of the world," said British Cold War
spy and documentarian Leslie Woodhead. "The Beatles were totally illegal…
the kids thought, 'the Kremlin told us this is evil music but it's not true.
It's lovely music! Maybe they've been lying to us about other things as well.'
That had a very corrosive impact."
Album
covers and images that changed art and merchandising
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$2.2
million dollar drum set at auction
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Concert
for Bangladesh: global social relief
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THE
BEATLES CONTRIBUTE £82 MILLION EVERY YEAR TO LIVERPOOL ECONOMY
A
new report has valued the Beatles to be worth £82 million ($118 million) a year
to Liverpool, the city’s local newspaper the Liverpool Echo reports.
Thousands
of fans from all over the world flock to the Fab Four’s birthplace every year
to pay homage. Thanks to their devotion, the city employs over 2,300 people in
what is described as the “Beatles-related economy”.
In
an attempt to ensure the Beatles legacy is harnessed effectively, Mayor Joe
Anderson commissioned a group of researchers from the University of Liverpool
and John Moores University to put a figure on the group’s continued
contribution to the city.
The report confirmed that the city can
expect that contribution to continue for many more years as it’s growing by up
to 15 percent a year.
Musical
biography
The
story of Paul McCartney, no ear required
May
4th 2016, 17:31 BY D.H.
PAUL
MCCARTNEY is pure music, the first singer and multi-instrumentalist with sex
appeal who breathed melody. He lived in our speakers and on our screens, and
wrote the soundtrack of much of the 20th century. “Paul McCartney” is, by
comparison, fair and solidly researched, with only a few errors of fact. The
author’s British class consciousness can be catty, but as a whole, it fits the
Beatles’, and McCartney’s, story. At a net worth of $1.3 billion dollars,
Sir Paul is perhaps the most spectacular example pulling oneself up by the
bootstraps, going from manual labourer to superstar all before turning 21, and
a national treasure for more than half a century since.
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My notes
When I look back at two cultural influences in my life, there are two events that I think totally shaped who I became and how and why. Of special significance for me is that I was a child of the '60s, growing up in some of the most creative and volatile eras that America has known. These two influences were both dramatic and violent in their outcome as well as overwhelming: the Beatles and the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. I measure their impact on my life for several reasons right up until this very moment, and for what I believe, they will continue to influence me until my dying day. These two ideas: music and political themes—changed my outlook on society in every way possible. In particular, the Beatles—because EVERYTHING they did (as a group and then as solo artists)—was examined, analyzed, discussed, and thrashed out by us—in detail and with great conviction.
Four guys from Liverpool, England, who talked in a funny accent that vanished when they sang. I didn’t understand that—nor the fact that girls just screamed and shrieked over them. It was infuriating. But their music was something different—it was EXCITING in a way that I didn’t understand. And it wasn’t the same as the sugar-sweet singing that was a daily diet on whatever kind of cheap radio was in a car or at home. Not only their singing, but the way they looked—and kept changing their appearance. It was their clothes too: the Beatles influenced my clothes and how I looked. I wore “Beatle Boots” as a 5th grader, and it was the talk of the classroom. I didn’t know what was so important, but if ANYTHING these guys did could make me seem noticed, I was impressed.
If they said it was cool, then it was so. But it was the THOUGHT that they approved of it. And their music kept shifting. When they released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” in 1966, I was stunned. NO ONE understood it, but we all talked about it. Even adults found it mesmerizing. When the “White Album” came out later, it was the same thing all over: what the hell had happened to them, but more importantly, what was the message for us? The fact that radio stations that I could access on my cheap hand-held AM transistor radio MIGHT play a Beatles song was like looking for water in the desert: you KNEW it might be there, but you had no idea of when it would be found.
The end of the band as a unit was like losing a trusted family member—and there were the hopes that they would someday reform just one more time. When they released “Abbey Road,” it was like the magic had been made complete once again. And this new thing called “FM radio” was around now—and it was amazing! It was both underground and contemporary—and they PLAYED the Beatles with a passion. But the only way to get access to FM radio was to hope that my parents somehow got the idea that music was cool—and my mother got a large stereo console unit. It was like a doorway to a higher realm. In 1968, “Hey Jude” came out, and it was on the radio for WEEKS at length. It was the ONLY song that mattered—and the fact that it was much longer than anything else at the time was worth the difference. When the Beatles did solo material (George and Paul were the first), we all bought it like it was food for our ears. We also had our critical views of who did what and how it compared to the original group.
We changed when they changed their hairstyle. Guys either refused and wore short hair or became long-hair followers. Hippies were part of the “this is going to be me” ideal of my upcoming teen years, and at 17, I just stopped going to a barber. I remember that when I went to high school that year, someone noticed it and nudged a classmate in disapproval—but I didn’t care. The BEATLES were my role models.
The news that George Harrison was playing a concert in New York in 1971 was phenomenal. Not that I could have afforded a ticket nor a way to go, but the IDEA that a Beatle was playing so close was so tantalizing. And I remember hearing from people who went how they responded when Bob Dylan came out on stage. If the crowd was pumped up at George and his pals, the site of Dylan drove them into a frenzy. So it was the FRIENDS of the Beatles that made us wild too.
The end—or the realization that it was all over—came for me when I heard that John Lennon was murdered. That was like killing Michelangelo, or maybe Da Vinci. You didn’t kill an artist—not someone who had won our hearts because he declared so many times that “All You Need is Love.” That was our hope: that the violence of the ‘60s would end, and along with it, the atrocity of men and women lost in Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War. We had lost one of our Great Heroes; one of our Voices. We lost one of our emotional and social godfathers. We had lost one of our most precious Designers of our future.
