When I think about The Beatles, l like to consider an interesting if not provocative statement: 'No masterpiece was ever produced by several people together.'
In a clip that recently went viral, Richard Osman delivers some depressing news that points to a significant cultural shift, and not a good one: So far in the 2020s, bands have collectively secured three weeks at Number One in the UK Singles Chart, with the lion's-share of the laurels going to solo artists. It gets worse: One of these bands is Little Mix, who were pieced together from members of rival vocal groups during the eighth season of The X Factor. I would argue that they aren't a band in the conventional sense of a gang of boys or girls, clad in unwashed leather trousers, falling out of the back of a clapped-out van with their instruments. Another of these so-called bands is an ensemble of predominately solo artists collaborating on a gelded cover version of the Foo Fighters 'Time Like These' that radiates an air of muso smugness. You can practically smell the camomile tea. The other band is a little known group of up and comers called The Beatles.
Bands, as a cultural phenomenon, seem to be racing the black rhino to extinction. There are several reasons for this: A dearth of venues where they can cut their teeth; the expense of maintaining a group while also balancing the delicate web of human relationships that are essential to its continuance; advances in technology that favour solo home-recording; and the rise of song-writer / producer who feeds material, mostly to solo artists.
What is slipping through our fingers is a dynamic element that is the exclusive hallmark of bands, both good and bad; successful or unsuccessful. A solo artist; Beyonce, for example, can surround themselves with the best musicians they can lay their hands on, but ultimately what transpires will be a choreographed performance. There is no danger to it. It's an on the rails roller-coaster experience vs a traffic-baiting street luge through San Francisco.
In a band there is a creative tension that fuels collaboration, elevating a group to something that is greater than the sum of its individual parts, while at the same time threatening to wreck the whole enterprise. It can yield unexpected moments during a live performance when musicians suddenly realise that they are meeting on common ground and there follows a desperate, doomed to fail, collective attempt at keeping the ball in the air. I went to see Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde at the Borderline Club, just off Charing Cross Road. Her support was Steve Wynn, who is better known as the frontman for The Dream Syndicate. He had a female drummer with him. During an instrumental break in one of the songs her head was tilted back as she played. She was beaming radiantly at one of the other band members with an expression that seemed to say 'look at me' and he was looking at her, and it was this perfect moment of collaborative musicianship and human connection. I don't remember the song but I remember that part of the performance.
While a solo artist will draw focus and the spotlight, the best bands know that every member has to stand out in some regard. I watched a TV broadcast of Queens of The Stone Age, at Glastonbury, I think. Every performer in that group looked cool as fuck; not just Josh Homme, who has lost the red from his hair and now resembles an elderly Luke Skywalker.
An example of a individuals who achieved more creatively in a group than they did on their own: In 1993, I was walking north along Poland Street in London, Soho. As the window of HMV came into view, I saw that it was dominated by the blown-up cover for the self-titled debut album by Suede – a soft glow image of two androgynous women kissing (cropped from a book titled 'Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs'). I went in and purchased the record.
Suede, whose bass player, Matt Osman, is the older brother of the aforementioned Richard Osman, emerged on a wave of creativity that was fuelled by an increasingly tense creative partnership between the frontman, Brett Anderson, and the guitar player, Bernard Butler. This was seasoned with a dash of sexual intrigue courtesy of Justine Frischmann – the Helen of Troy of Britpop – who fronted the band Elastica. Animal Lover, perhaps the most makeweight song on Suede's debut, documents a period where Frischmann's dying relationship with Anderson overlapped with her burgeoning romance with Damon Albarn – the lead singer of Blur – during which time she would return to Anderson's bed with scratches down her back.
The band were so dialled-in to their vision that they were throwing excess masterpieces onto the b-sides of their singles. It is incredible now, listening to the likes of 'High Rising', 'Whipsnade', and 'The Big Time' to think that these songs weren't considered for inclusion on an album, though they have since been anthologised.
After Bernard Butler acrimoniously left Suede He released a couple of anodyne solo records that proved beyond doubt that, while he was an exceptional guitar player, he lacked the elan and the charisma that is required of a frontman. He needed somebody else to fill that role. These days he mostly collaborates with other artists, mostly to good effect.
Similarly, following the dissolution of Suede, Brett Anderson attempted a solo career. Absent the musical weight of a band, his songs were bloodless and lacking in energy. He needed a gang. Suede have since reformed and the urgency has returned to his song-writing, though the impetus of those early years, that fuelled the first two albums, was lightning in a bottle. Once something like that's gone, it's gone for good.
The Counterfeiters was published in 1925. Whoever it was in the book who claimed “No masterpiece was ever produced by several people together,” can be forgiven for thinking this, having never heard Suede's second album 'Dog Man Star', or its lead single 'We Are The Pigs', that will add a foot to your height, and put a dangerous swagger in your step, if you hear it playing in public.
Agree with Doe. Beautiful piece about a band I only got to love slowly. My mate Tim Phillips and his mate Keith Hughes used to do “Please Please Me” in the 5th form tapping out the rhythm on a wooden desk with a ruler. Then it was “With the Beatles” at parties while you waited for a slow number so as you could hold her during “Till there was you “ and later still…they wrote such great songs….
Thanks for this Hanif! A piece so lovely tears well up. The personal Beatles soundtrack we all carry with us throughout our lives. And the passion you have for them and their music is just as poignant and powerful.
I always love a well-written essay about The Beatles, because they have so many facets; there's always something one forgets about them or remembers incorrectly, and the essayist straightens that out. Strange quote by Gide; what did he think when he saw Chartres?
When I was a child in California, we thought the entire British Isles were peopled by The Beatles and folk like them. Then I read--I think in Len Deighton--"the Beatles aren't British," because they were Liverpudlian Irish. There were times in my punk years when I'd lost interest, when I wanted to walk away from how much they'd meant to me--and the bad years of Wings' awful hits helped that. My mother took me to what Joe Strummer described as "phony Beatlemania," the stage production. (And I used to snicker over The Residents' "Meet the Residents" cover.) But then I learned my fascination with The Beatles was like malaria--it kept coming back unexpectedly over the years. It astonishes me how the miracle of The Beatles occurred in the time and place that it did.
Thanks for that Ringo Starr story about his dispute with foreign food. He's always been my favorite and always will be; I love the hangover scene in A Hard Day's Night with him walking by the dirty canal, and his at long last answering Marge Simpson's twenty-five years old fan letter, a plausible fantasy. I read recently that, according to Lemmy from Motorhead, that Ringo was the one from a really bad neighborhood. How could I not love him for that?
Thank you for this. The Beatles were exactly what you say in all the ways you say it. My artist parents did not allow me to listen to rock and roll or AM radio, at all, except on the roof, until the Beatles. The Beatles broke through the barriers for me. I adored them. I have found that I can sing their songs in the car, remembering a lot of the lyrics, which are so natural and fit so perfectly in with the tunes and instruments that they are carried along together like the flow of a river. The wonderful recording of Concert For George moved me deeply. And what you say here, that masterpieces are not only created by individuals, is really the most moving thing of all.
Beautiful..I was 13 when the Beatles entered my life-perfect time to become the direction and sound track of my young life..George was my favorite.....I still can hear just a bar and know what song it is! Thank you for great piece!
Wonderful piece - thank you. I'm of the same era as you, and also grew up with the omnipresent Fabs. We are so lucky to have experienced their precocious, prolific ,collective genius as it happened. Thank you for putting your thoughts so superbly into words.
Thank you, Hanif, for this wondrous encapsulation of what The (note the capital T) Beatles represented. I am older than you, and grew up in my teens with John, Paul, George and Ringo (always in that order), so the soundtrack of my adolescence is Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's NIght, Beatles for Sale, Help, Rubber Soul, Revolver, etc. What I'd like to add is that The Beatles ushered in a generation where for the first time, youth didn't want to look like their parents, didn't want to be associated with adulthood. Thus we had Biba, Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, etc. And at my advanced age, I still don't look like my mother did at age 50! All the best for Shattered. Can't wait.
What generous warm writing about a band tbh I never liked at the time ( more of a Motown/ soul / Stones girl ) but now want to listen to again. Thank you.
So nice to be reminded of my own youthful artistic energy that got a bounce out of the Beatles and 'English beat' bands, even NOW getting MORE, from internet access to songs from the likes of the Who, who scream me back to youth again. Thanks Hanif, for your expansive time machine of great insights and memories.
In a clip that recently went viral, Richard Osman delivers some depressing news that points to a significant cultural shift, and not a good one: So far in the 2020s, bands have collectively secured three weeks at Number One in the UK Singles Chart, with the lion's-share of the laurels going to solo artists. It gets worse: One of these bands is Little Mix, who were pieced together from members of rival vocal groups during the eighth season of The X Factor. I would argue that they aren't a band in the conventional sense of a gang of boys or girls, clad in unwashed leather trousers, falling out of the back of a clapped-out van with their instruments. Another of these so-called bands is an ensemble of predominately solo artists collaborating on a gelded cover version of the Foo Fighters 'Time Like These' that radiates an air of muso smugness. You can practically smell the camomile tea. The other band is a little known group of up and comers called The Beatles.
Bands, as a cultural phenomenon, seem to be racing the black rhino to extinction. There are several reasons for this: A dearth of venues where they can cut their teeth; the expense of maintaining a group while also balancing the delicate web of human relationships that are essential to its continuance; advances in technology that favour solo home-recording; and the rise of song-writer / producer who feeds material, mostly to solo artists.
What is slipping through our fingers is a dynamic element that is the exclusive hallmark of bands, both good and bad; successful or unsuccessful. A solo artist; Beyonce, for example, can surround themselves with the best musicians they can lay their hands on, but ultimately what transpires will be a choreographed performance. There is no danger to it. It's an on the rails roller-coaster experience vs a traffic-baiting street luge through San Francisco.
In a band there is a creative tension that fuels collaboration, elevating a group to something that is greater than the sum of its individual parts, while at the same time threatening to wreck the whole enterprise. It can yield unexpected moments during a live performance when musicians suddenly realise that they are meeting on common ground and there follows a desperate, doomed to fail, collective attempt at keeping the ball in the air. I went to see Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde at the Borderline Club, just off Charing Cross Road. Her support was Steve Wynn, who is better known as the frontman for The Dream Syndicate. He had a female drummer with him. During an instrumental break in one of the songs her head was tilted back as she played. She was beaming radiantly at one of the other band members with an expression that seemed to say 'look at me' and he was looking at her, and it was this perfect moment of collaborative musicianship and human connection. I don't remember the song but I remember that part of the performance.
While a solo artist will draw focus and the spotlight, the best bands know that every member has to stand out in some regard. I watched a TV broadcast of Queens of The Stone Age, at Glastonbury, I think. Every performer in that group looked cool as fuck; not just Josh Homme, who has lost the red from his hair and now resembles an elderly Luke Skywalker.
An example of a individuals who achieved more creatively in a group than they did on their own: In 1993, I was walking north along Poland Street in London, Soho. As the window of HMV came into view, I saw that it was dominated by the blown-up cover for the self-titled debut album by Suede – a soft glow image of two androgynous women kissing (cropped from a book titled 'Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs'). I went in and purchased the record.
Suede, whose bass player, Matt Osman, is the older brother of the aforementioned Richard Osman, emerged on a wave of creativity that was fuelled by an increasingly tense creative partnership between the frontman, Brett Anderson, and the guitar player, Bernard Butler. This was seasoned with a dash of sexual intrigue courtesy of Justine Frischmann – the Helen of Troy of Britpop – who fronted the band Elastica. Animal Lover, perhaps the most makeweight song on Suede's debut, documents a period where Frischmann's dying relationship with Anderson overlapped with her burgeoning romance with Damon Albarn – the lead singer of Blur – during which time she would return to Anderson's bed with scratches down her back.
The band were so dialled-in to their vision that they were throwing excess masterpieces onto the b-sides of their singles. It is incredible now, listening to the likes of 'High Rising', 'Whipsnade', and 'The Big Time' to think that these songs weren't considered for inclusion on an album, though they have since been anthologised.
After Bernard Butler acrimoniously left Suede He released a couple of anodyne solo records that proved beyond doubt that, while he was an exceptional guitar player, he lacked the elan and the charisma that is required of a frontman. He needed somebody else to fill that role. These days he mostly collaborates with other artists, mostly to good effect.
Similarly, following the dissolution of Suede, Brett Anderson attempted a solo career. Absent the musical weight of a band, his songs were bloodless and lacking in energy. He needed a gang. Suede have since reformed and the urgency has returned to his song-writing, though the impetus of those early years, that fuelled the first two albums, was lightning in a bottle. Once something like that's gone, it's gone for good.
The Counterfeiters was published in 1925. Whoever it was in the book who claimed “No masterpiece was ever produced by several people together,” can be forgiven for thinking this, having never heard Suede's second album 'Dog Man Star', or its lead single 'We Are The Pigs', that will add a foot to your height, and put a dangerous swagger in your step, if you hear it playing in public.
Nonetheless, they are wrong.
Very well said. And just as there are less bands I think that there are less fans, too. Today's "artists" just have "viewers".
... for me, this is a masterpiece piece of writing about the Beatles... exquisite. Thank you SO much. Sending gratitude and love to you
Agree with Doe. Beautiful piece about a band I only got to love slowly. My mate Tim Phillips and his mate Keith Hughes used to do “Please Please Me” in the 5th form tapping out the rhythm on a wooden desk with a ruler. Then it was “With the Beatles” at parties while you waited for a slow number so as you could hold her during “Till there was you “ and later still…they wrote such great songs….
It was so strange to see The Music Man (1961, I think) and go, "Shirley Jones is singing a Beatles song!"
Thanks for this Hanif! A piece so lovely tears well up. The personal Beatles soundtrack we all carry with us throughout our lives. And the passion you have for them and their music is just as poignant and powerful.
I always love a well-written essay about The Beatles, because they have so many facets; there's always something one forgets about them or remembers incorrectly, and the essayist straightens that out. Strange quote by Gide; what did he think when he saw Chartres?
When I was a child in California, we thought the entire British Isles were peopled by The Beatles and folk like them. Then I read--I think in Len Deighton--"the Beatles aren't British," because they were Liverpudlian Irish. There were times in my punk years when I'd lost interest, when I wanted to walk away from how much they'd meant to me--and the bad years of Wings' awful hits helped that. My mother took me to what Joe Strummer described as "phony Beatlemania," the stage production. (And I used to snicker over The Residents' "Meet the Residents" cover.) But then I learned my fascination with The Beatles was like malaria--it kept coming back unexpectedly over the years. It astonishes me how the miracle of The Beatles occurred in the time and place that it did.
Thanks for that Ringo Starr story about his dispute with foreign food. He's always been my favorite and always will be; I love the hangover scene in A Hard Day's Night with him walking by the dirty canal, and his at long last answering Marge Simpson's twenty-five years old fan letter, a plausible fantasy. I read recently that, according to Lemmy from Motorhead, that Ringo was the one from a really bad neighborhood. How could I not love him for that?
Thank you for this. The Beatles were exactly what you say in all the ways you say it. My artist parents did not allow me to listen to rock and roll or AM radio, at all, except on the roof, until the Beatles. The Beatles broke through the barriers for me. I adored them. I have found that I can sing their songs in the car, remembering a lot of the lyrics, which are so natural and fit so perfectly in with the tunes and instruments that they are carried along together like the flow of a river. The wonderful recording of Concert For George moved me deeply. And what you say here, that masterpieces are not only created by individuals, is really the most moving thing of all.
Beautiful..I was 13 when the Beatles entered my life-perfect time to become the direction and sound track of my young life..George was my favorite.....I still can hear just a bar and know what song it is! Thank you for great piece!
Brilliantly described and recalled. Born in 1945 in the USA, I can relate to just about everything you say so eloquently and truly.
Thank you for putting this remembrance into words.
"Unlike us, The Beatles had busy lives" Oh I don't know. Some of us are pretty busy. And we don't have personal chefs : ) BTW great pictures Hanif
Wonderful piece - thank you. I'm of the same era as you, and also grew up with the omnipresent Fabs. We are so lucky to have experienced their precocious, prolific ,collective genius as it happened. Thank you for putting your thoughts so superbly into words.
Thank you, Hanif, for this wondrous encapsulation of what The (note the capital T) Beatles represented. I am older than you, and grew up in my teens with John, Paul, George and Ringo (always in that order), so the soundtrack of my adolescence is Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's NIght, Beatles for Sale, Help, Rubber Soul, Revolver, etc. What I'd like to add is that The Beatles ushered in a generation where for the first time, youth didn't want to look like their parents, didn't want to be associated with adulthood. Thus we had Biba, Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, etc. And at my advanced age, I still don't look like my mother did at age 50! All the best for Shattered. Can't wait.
You make reading so easy ...cheers x
Fabulous writing. I think I am your exact vintage and that was spot on.
Beautifully written as always. Thank you ☺️
What generous warm writing about a band tbh I never liked at the time ( more of a Motown/ soul / Stones girl ) but now want to listen to again. Thank you.
So nice to be reminded of my own youthful artistic energy that got a bounce out of the Beatles and 'English beat' bands, even NOW getting MORE, from internet access to songs from the likes of the Who, who scream me back to youth again. Thanks Hanif, for your expansive time machine of great insights and memories.