The Music of the Beatles will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the maturity of Abbey Road. While the focus will be on the music, we will also consider how recording techniques, the music business, the music of other artists, and the culture of the 1960s affected John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they created the Beatles repertory. There is probably no band or artist that has had more written about their music than the Beatles. There are many good books on the band's biography, several insider accounts offering glimpses behind the scenes, books that interpret the meaning of the songs, and even books that catalog dates and people regarding the band. This course will try to synthesize much of that information into an account of the Beatles' development as musicians and songwriters.
1968 - Events and Singles
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Do curso por University of Rochester
A Música dos Beatles
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A Co-Op of Singer-Songwriters
The White Album both begins a return to roots while also continuing the musical experimentation of the earlier music, but now each song is less of a group effort. Creative differences arise. The White Album and singles from this period.
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John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Welcome to week five of The Music of the Beatles, here on Coursera.
And this week we're going to talk about 1968.
And for the most part, 1968 and the career of the Beatles, is encompassed with the,
the recording of the album often, often called
the White Album, but officially just called The Beatles.
Anyway a double album with a lot of songs for us to get through this week.
And then,
at the end of our, our videos this week,
we'll talk a little bit about the project, Yellow Submarine.
I'm, I'm not giving it full consideration, as much
consideration as we've given some of the other records.
Because, in many ways, it's not even really a Beatles
project but almost kind of like the licensing the images their
images for the purposes to look at, I'll look at
that when we get to the last video of this week.
For now I'd like to start of by giving
you an overview of some of the main points that we'll hit on.
And some of the main points I'll be going back
to again and again during the course of this week.
One the things that we can see in 1968, is
the Beatles remained friends despite some kind of, some, some
kinds of growing tensions in the group that we already
talked about last week when they made the transformation from
being a live band to being a studio band.
It meant that people's roles in the group were kind of shifted.
John and Paul became more the main movers and shakers in what
was going on, and George and Ringo, not exactly reduced to being
side men, but it was not the same kind of relationship the
four had been in when they were, doing live shows all the time.
Even though recording had been part of that, now recording really was
the only thing. But they remain friends.
And you can see that, already in the taking a trip to India, which
we'll talk about in just a minute,
going together and not, not taking separate vacations.
Now even though they, they were still together as
a group, when we get to the White Album,
we'll see that they work like less of a
band together, and more like a kind of songwriters'
co-op in which each of the members played on the other one's
songs, or didn't in some cases and so it's less like a group.
That has one single identity as this sort of
four guys sort of pulling together as the Beatles,
than kind of like Paul McCartney and the Beatles,
John Lennon and the Beatles, George Harrison and the Beatles.
And so now, this line we've been following
all the way through it, it kind of keep the
John songs and the Paul songs and the George songs separate.
Now, we can see how that can be useful because we really
are going to be talking almost like we're talking about three albums.
An album by Paul, an album by John, and
maybe sort of an EP or something by George.
And even one song by Ringo on this album.
Another thing that happens in 1968 is the Beatles attempt
to take control of their business affairs. Launching a company called
Apple Corps, corps. Of course, the the pun, apple core, right?
But nevertheless, they're trying to take control of
their, their the business part of their their
activities because as we talked in the last
video Brian Epstein passed away in August of 1967.
They've already been planning to do something like Apple when Brian
passed away but now it was really imperative
that they try to get the business part of
it together so we'll talk a little bit in just a second about how all that went.
So let's run through some of the big events of 1968 just to kind of sketch the
year out before we actually get into the White Album and the songs that are on it.
At the very end of 1967 in December the group opened the Apple Boutique
in London.
And the initial idea behind the Apple Boutique was to have a shop
where they could have not only clothes, but also books, and records, and things
that they, that they really kind of endorsed in terms of what we
would today think of as a kind of a lifestyle kind of a shop.
Remember now this was very early days before the idea.
I mean there was already a psychedelic shop for example, in San Francisco,
but there weren't really a lot of shops that really, sort of,
catered to kind of what was becoming the counter-culture or hippie world view.
Some of the records and some of the music they sold there was, was, was music
that we would now think of as world music, and the Beatles were in many ways.
Some of the first ones to really bring in an appreciation of, for music of
other cultures to their fans in the case
of, especially in the case of Indian music.
But also in books that reinforce their world view.
The Apple Boutique opens as a kind of
beatle business enterprise in the summer of 1967.
Unfortunately it doesn't go particularly well.
I mean, I think they think, I think they ended
up thinking that the, the, the shop was, was fine.
But they really kind of dabbled at it, and it didn't
work out, and by the summer, July of 68, it was closed.
You gotta
hand it to the Beatles, they closed the shop in style.
Rather than just closing the store or remaindering all the inventory, you
know, going out of business sale or something like that, they just decided
they were going to close it And they set up a, a, day
where people anybody who wanted could come in and take one item free.
In other words, they gave everything in the store away.
And that really constitutes according to Paul McCartney the bulk of the loss that
the store racked up.
Of course they had a special private session the night
before they had the public one and people who were
close to the group or knew the group got to
come and [LAUGH] take whatever they wanted from the store.
And then what was left over they opened up to the general public.
So, but already then we can see this sort
of first step, for taking care of their business.
February through April, April of 1968, they take a trip to Rishikesh
the four of them together. Paul Ringo stays just a couple of weeks.
Paul stays a little bit longer than that.
John and George stay the full time, to study.
They, they went to Rishikesh to study in India.
To study with the Maharishi Mesho, get
to study transcendental meditation at his ashram there.
There were other famous people there with them.
Madonna then I believe was there, Mike Love of the Beach Boys
was there as well.
Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence were
there, giving rise to the song Dear Prudence.
We'll talk about that when we talk about the White Album.
So, it was a whole cohort of young 20 something people.
Young beautiful people, all going to, to this what essentially was a
kind of meditation camp with the Maharishi in India, and staying there long.
Longer certainly than they had certainly than they had
the experience in Bangor, in the summer,
the late summer of 1967 studying transcendental meditation.
The trip to Rishikesh ended up with a misunderstanding with the Maharishi.
it, it was at the time it was the John Lennon thought that he found out
that the Maharishi was making passes at some
of the young women that were with him.
And he found this
incredibly hypocritical of somebody who was talking about,
you know, living a life free from, you know
earthly desires, and trying to reach a kind of a
spiritual level, and then you know heading out after the women.
Yeah this didn't seem, didn't seem right and, and in
John's mind it was just another person who was trying
to rip The Beatles off, to take advantage of their
fame to advance their own personal agenda, this kind of thing.
Well, it later turns out that this this people who
were there, have this, more information came out over the years,
and it turned out none of this really happened that way at all.
There was some trouble making going on inside the
members that were there, and stories were made up
and this kind of thing, and, most of the
Beatles, who commented on it later ended up saying
that they thought the maharishi was really a fantastic
guy and they were glad they had an experience
with him, but nevertheless, the song Sexy Sadie comes
out of John's anger over the, the way things ended.
So anyways, they left, they left the Ashram
there in Rishikesh kind of feeling like like
it, they made or some things hadn't worked out quite the way they wanted them to.
We get in March the release of the single Lady Madonna.
With the inner light of the b side of
that in May the Beatles officially launched Apple Corps.
And they go to the United States and have a big press conference.
They appear on the Tonight Show, talking about it.
Announcing that they've started their own company, their own
record label, their own production company, this kind of thing.
You know, in years following, lots of bands would have their own record label.
Do their own production and various kinds of things like that.
The Beatles were kind of the first in and so they were laying the groundwork for
maybe a kind of a change that would happen in the business in the years to come.
Well,
in May after the Beatles get back after John and Paul get back to the U.S., the
White Album sessions begin in earnest, and the album
they work on the album from May through October.
At the end of the summer in August Hey Jude
is released as a single with revolution as its B side.
In November, the White Album is released,
and then in early January, the animated feature
Yellow Submarine, is also released, the album and the
film, are, are released and so we'll talk about yellow
submarine at the very end of this week's lectures although
it's strictly speaking as, you know, just outside of 1968.
nevertheless, having looked over the, the, look, sort of done
a quick survey of the Beatles in 1968, we can
kind of see the main events of what was happening with the group in that year.
Let's take a, a minute now to kind of look
at the songs that were on the singles that were released.
Remembering now that Magical Mystery Tour had been a
flop at the end of December when the film was
broadcast it was panned by critics. The U.S. network that had
the rights to broadcast it, it, it, in America cancelled the show.
And so that part of it was a flop.
Now the album itself, was really quite successful and the music that
went with it but there was a sense in The Beatles camp that
maybe they needed to, maybe they needed a hit, you know, to really
kind of make sure that people didn't get the idea that The Beatles
were on the way out. And so.
We get Lady Madonna from Paul recorded in February of 1968 and released in March.
It went to number four in the U.S., number one in the UK.
And, even the fact that it went to number
four, most groups would kill for a number four hit.
Even the fact that it went to number four,
was seen as, oh, The Beatles are losing it.
Their single only went to number, it's only a top five single.
What could possibly
be wrong with the group, right?
And so even that didn't satisfy a lot of folks.
Now we'll come back to this song in one of our closeups, when
we look at some of the Paul songs, and talk about Lady Madonna.
In more detail and how it fits into Paul's what seems to be his new tendency at this
time, to really look back into his own past
and into previous rock and roll and pop music styles
to sort of find a new way forward.
But I don't want to anticipate my story too much.
The B-side of Lady Madonna, The Inner Light, a George song, another one
we'll talk about in one of the song close ups a little bit later.
This one recorded in India in 68.
So just before Lady Madonna, and then finished during
some of the same sessions that produced Lady Madonna.
The B-side continues in George's Indian music style.
And we'll talk
about that when we talk about it in more detail.
And two other songs that we'll talk about in detail a little bit later.
Paul's Hey Jude.
Which was the big hit that proved to
everybody that The Beatles were not out of it.
It recorded in July of 1968 and released in August.
This album, this song went to number one in the U.S. and the UK and we'll
talk a little bit more about the lyrics,
the song and what makes that song so special.
With the B side of it being Revolution.
Imagine another sort of AB kind of thing, and that, that song went to number 12.
So you had the A side going to number one, the B side going to number 12.
The Beatles were definitely back and any any rumors
to the effect of their death were greatly exaggerated and certainly premature.
So this gives us a sense of what was
happening with the singles over, over the year 1968.
I want to say a word, before we go on, about
the Beatles as idealist. One of the things that we can see as we
watch the Beatles career unfold, is that, even in the times when they're
failing they're failing trying to do something that
is very idealistic so if they, if they, fail
perhaps because it was because they were naive
or their expectations were too great or something like
that, I think we can see that with
regard to their their their relationship to drugs especially
to psychedelic drugs not so much pot which
I think they used more recreationally than anything else.
But with regards to LSD and other drugs the idea
of sort of exploring some kind of higher awareness, the
turning to the Maharishi and
transcendental meditation making the commitment to
take a couple of months and go to to India to
sort of get closer to the source, that kind of thing.
It's all a very idealistic kind of approach,
the idea that they could start a company and
help other musicians with that company as they,
as they try to do it with Apple Corps.
You know, there was even an ad at one point that they
put in the, the, in, in, in, in the paper that said, you know,
send us your tapes, send us your projects, and you know, we'll help you
produce them, you won't have to go to the big, you know corporate types,
you know, the money grubbers, this kind of thing, the Beatles refer to help.
This was naive, but incredibly idealistic, and
so you can see that sort of consistently.
What you don't see a lot of is them scheming to kind of
maximize their product or really sort of thinking the way the way sort
of in a caricature of the sort of greedy business model.
They really seemed, where they, where they made mistakes they
made them out of naivety and out of unbounded idealism.
And I think this attitude really hooks into the
way they approach their music during this period, that
is the emphasis on the artist approach, you know,
and the, and, and the emphasis on authenticity, being real.
Trying to do something that's
real, that has some real substance to it, that's really trying to achieve
something in the music and try not doing anything cheap or quick or kind
of a a second rate kind of manner, a fast kind of manner
just, which a group like, like The
Beatles could have done considering they're celebrities.
People would have bought almost anything at a, a certain point.
And so I think the combination of
The Beatles' idealism with their sense of authenticity,
they're, they're projecting an image of authenticity and casting
themselves as we're looking as artists in a really
earnest and kind of sincere way, became a very
important model to many who would father them follow them.
In the period, in the period following this a
lot of people looked at the White Album as that
album you know that may have had certain flaws
and maybe all the tunes weren't as sort of consistently
good, but it was the one where the Beatles were really sort of authentically
there at least for a lot of artists coming later so that's May, maybe
part of the big impact of 1968 is the real nailing down of what
it means to be a, sort of a responsible artist in the popular music community.
And again what a big transformation that is from.
What they, what they stood for in 1963 and 1964 which was just really,
you know, charismatic performers and talented pop song writers and musicians.
Well, having talked about that let's move on
to our actual discussion of the Beatles' White Album.
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