OK…here goes…(anyone on this board familiar with my posts knows how long I can go on about music…)
I love the Beatles because I am a multi-instrumentalist and a lover of unorthodox instrumentation, and a firm believer that there is no such thing as an instrument that doesn’t belong in rock and roll. Long before I played bass, guitar or drums (what I primarily play now,) or was interested in rock, I played the bassoon in wind ensemble (in middle school,) and I was good enough at it that I was also allowed to play with the local high school orchestra. I also played bass clarinet (I played in a clarinet choir that won a first-place medal in the regional ensemble competition.) I also played both alto and baritone sax in both jazz band and in advanced concert band. This was all while I was still in middle school. I played sax in the jazz bands in high school too, but by that time I was much more interested in rock.
Because I played all these instruments, I was always listening to non-rock music that featured them. I liked woodwind concertos and small woodwind ensembles, and chamber music, and frequently attended recitals at IU which is considered by many to be the best music school in the country. (OK, maybe part of it was to see all the cute Asian girls.) So I got a good background in instrumentation and small ensembles.
I had always listened to the Beatles growing up, but it wasn’t until later that I truly appreciated their music (marijuana might have something to do with it - I’m not one of those people who thinks that pot is some kind of mystical, divine herb, but at the same time I have to credit it with heightening my musical sense, even though I don’t do it anymore.) Listening to it knowing everything I do now about music, I’m absolutely blown away by the Beatles’ use of instrumentation. They were not afraid to use every instrument in the orchestra, and even some that aren’t, like sitars. They (or the people like George Martin who helped them in the studio) obviously had very good backgrounds in traditional English brass band music (Penny Lane, Mother Nature’s Son, Good Morning Good Morning) and strings (Strawberry Fields, She’s Leaving Home, I Am The Walrus, Eleanor Rigby [I preferred the strings-only version on the Beatles Anthology to the track on Revolver,]) and a lot of other stuff that I won’t go into because I don’t feel like being up until 6. The point being, they took rock music and incorporated classical and instrumental music into it. That is the key to their originality, for me anyway. The musical experimentation is when they started to really become a dynamic group. Hard Day’s Night is a great album, but I’d just as soon listen to the Zombies or the Beach Boys. But Sgt. Peppers, White Album, Abbey Road? This stuff is religion to me. Abbey Road in particular. Not only does it incorporate instrumentation and style from non-rock music, it actually incorporates structure from classical music. The Abbey Road “medley” is a rock symphony - it has different movements, tied together with recurring motifs (the You Never Give Me Your Money melody, for example, reprised later on in the medley by the horn section.)
There’s also the bass playing of Paul McCartney, who is number one in my top three bassists of all time (the other two are Phil Lesh and Peter Cetera of Chicago.) As a bass player, it’s really striking to me how responsible Paul’s melodic and fluid lines are for driving the songs forward. He taught himself how to play his instrument, forcing him to create his own style as if he were singing along with the music - playing the bass as a melodic rather than simply a rhythmic instrument. (Being completely stoned and taking in the transition from You Never Give Me Your Money to Sun King was a religious experience for me. It was then that I noticed that the fade-out of the former song [the 'one-two-three-four-five-six-seven, all good children go to heaven part] was supposed to evoke stepping out of a crowded, noisy party and onto the back porch, and the fade-in of the latter song is supposed to represent walking out into the backyard with the crickets chirping. Then when I heard that amazing guitar-and-bass part at the beginning of Sun King - that was the moment when I realized that Paul McCartney was the best bassist of all time.)
Yeah.