"All you need is love. That's my story and I'm sticking to it." George Harrison

If you weren't there, there's no way to explain just how completely the Beatles overtook the world in February of 1964. Suddenly everything, and I mean everything, from music to fashion to dinner time conversations across the world, was filtered through a kind of Beatle-vision. Everybody from stand-up comics to the President of the United States had to somehow work the Beatles into their act. Millions of teenagers, for years the  oppressed quasi-property of elders who constantly sniped and tore away at their natural inclinations toward the wild in the name of propriety and conformity, suddenly became a Youth Culture, united under the spell of JohnPaulGeorgeRingo and ready to take on the world. Their new world. The Beatles were more than a watershed moment in rock and roll, they were the sea from which all rivers hence, from Freddie and the Dreamers to Korn, flowed.

They became as much a part of our language as our own names, no matter what language we spoke. Even today. Even tomorrow. If you doubt the cultural significance  of this ancient beat group from Liverpool, if you think that their impact can be swept aside by a dismissive like "That's your Grandfather's music", implying that anything not directed specifically at you in your own time is irrelevant (talk about self-importance!), then I urge you to try this experiment. All you will need is a stranger, a stopwatch and your own bad self. Here's what you do. Walk up to a stranger, any stranger. Young, old, male, female, black, white - makes no difference. Just walk up to this stranger and ask him/her the following: "Hey! Have you ever heard of this band from England called the Beatles?"
Click your stopwatch and see how long it takes before they stop laughing at you. Not with you. At you. ‘Cause, like ‘em or not (and for the record, I'm personally not that big a fan of the music. Lennon's stuff yeah, but beyond a profound sense of comfortable nostalgia when I hear certain, early tunes, there's not much there for me. I own no Beatle records.), there was life before the Beatles and life after the Beatles. They changed the world. Case closed.

The questions I find more interesting to explore are how and how much? On a strictly musical level they influenced everybody, with the possible exception of James Brown. Garage bands across the country went from sharkskin suits, pompadours and "At the Hop" to collarless jackets, unkempt bangs and "Love Me Do". Electric guitar sales soared. Singers started writing their own songs and, after Dylan met Lennon, they all started writing better songs. "Sgt. Pepper" was the shot heard round the world. All of a sudden everyone had moustaches and horn sections. Every band thought they had a "Sgt. Pepper' in them. Most, if not all, didn't, but their response to "Pepper" and their attempts to match it raised the bar for rock song writing and recording forever. Hell, bands today think they have a "Sgt. Pepper" in them and while Jellyfish probably came the closest, "Pepper" still stands alone.   It was their role as cultural barometer that revealed the extent, and finally the limit of their influence on a public united as none had been before. 

As they explored the new world that their fame had opened to them, they passed their discoveries on to us and we followed, two steps behind, for longer than usual. Long hair? Cool. Shaking our heads and going "ooooooooooooh"? Cool. Pot? Cool. Acid? Cool. Sitars? Uh...cool, I guess. Transcendental meditation? What? Love? Yeah, yeah, yeah, too hip.....gotta go. 

In this day and age when, given a spotlight and a microphone big enough for the planet to see and hear them, most pop stars use the opportunity to hype either themselves or a soft drink, or both, it's easy to forget what a monumental task the Beatles took upon themselves; how nobly they shouldered the responsibility of having THAT many people hanging on their every word. They chose love. Love. Love. Love. 

I'm referring to the Beatles' June 25, 1967 recording of "All You Need Is Love" which was transmitted live to over 400 million people via satellite in the first ever global TV link up, a special entitled "Our World".  Given the chance to communicate with what at that time was the largest audience ever assembled the Beatles sang clearly and directly to a planet ripe for the word. All you need is love. Love is all you need. Don't need a degree in Dylanology to understand that one. They really were bigger than Jesus. Lennon only reported a fact, which is as sure a way to get crucified as any in this world.  But weren't they on the same page as Jesus? Love is all you need. Wasn't/isn't that essentially the same message as Jesus? Where did it all go wrong?

It all went wrong because we, as a people, found it too embarrassing to believe in something as simple as love. We had become too sophisticated, too hip to actually accept everybody on their own terms. That was all well and good in the parking lot at the War Memorial or the Free Concert in the Park when you're trying to score. "Oh yeah, love, love, love. Come here, baby." Whatever  works where, y'know, but to actually take the time and effort to get to know one another as brother and sister, to extend ourselves enough to take another's heart, mind and beliefs into consideration and work until common ground for all was achieved? That's just silly. "Now, pass me that joint and dig my new Nehru jacket".

Yes, the Woodstock Generation got stoned and lost its nerve. The promise of the Aquarian Ideal is revealed to be the pipe dream that it was and that same Youth Culture that was so united and full of grace and promise in the beginning has evolved, through denial, apathy and no little collusion with that which they profess to hate, into the radically segmented pop scene of today. Genres and sub-genres that share little beyond a certain cynicism and an emotion approaching hatred for anything not of their own. We were offered Enlightenment and settled for entertainment. 

It's our loss. Happy Valentine's Day.

You can read more from Tim at Punk Rock Blues. Be sure to take a listen to his new CD and even read excerpts from his novel. The guy never sleeps!

Your turn. 

Fan Speak:

Posted by BUTCH:
ugh, ..gee, Tim. Take it easy, slick. The world stinks, life is fukked up and 90% of humans are fools- that what makes it all so damn interesting. Don't take stuff so seriously. I side with aG, I always liked your posts and comments. Don't go and blow ur head off or nothing.