tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/beatles-3360/articlesBeatles – The Conversation2016-08-15T13:28:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/627512016-08-15T13:28:25Z2016-08-15T13:28:25ZAre the Beatles still more misunderstood than Jesus?<p>“We should be wearing targets here,” quipped Paul McCartney as he stepped nervously off a plane at Memphis airport on August 19 1966. </p>
<p>The Beatles arrived in Memphis amid massive controversy. In March, John Lennon had suggested in an interview with Maureen Cleave of the London Evening Standard that the Beatles had grown more popular than Jesus. When his remarks reappeared in the American teen magazine Datebook in August, they sparked a fierce backlash just as the band embarked on its final tour.</p>
<p>Hostility was particularly intense in the American south. In Alabama, DJs Tommy Charles and Doug Layton at the WAQY-Birmingham radio station were first to initiate a “ban-the-Beatles campaign”. Other stations, cities and towns soon followed suit. Starke in Florida had the dubious distinction of being the first place to burn Beatles records and memorabilia. </p>
<p>Similar conflagrations spread quickly across the region. Some of the most pyrotechnical protests involved those formidable guardians of white racial and religious purity, the Ku Klux Klan. In Chester, South Carolina, Klan Grand Dragon Bob Scoggins nailed a Beatles record to a large cross and set it on fire. In Tupelo, Mississippi, Grand Wizard Dale Walton urged teens to “cut their Beatle wigs off” and send them to a “public burning”. In Washington DC and Memphis, Klansmen in full regalia were an ominous presence outside the band’s concerts.</p>
<p>The “Jesus” controversy is <a href="http://ultimateclassicrock.com/john-lennon-beatles-more-popular-than-jesus/">often considered</a> a watershed moment in the Beatles’s career. In the aftermath, they abandoned live shows and, according to biographer Jon Weiner, Lennon took his “first steps towards radical politics”. And yet the controversy remains largely misunderstood and misrepresented in the vast literature on the band. Virtually nobody has explored what kind of publication Datebook, the magazine responsible for circulating the claim, really was. Few commentators have got to grips with the motives of its owner-editor <a href="http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/behind-the-scenes-with-arthur-unger/article_593cc397-53f9-5c45-8ac9-1de3037a2813.html">Art Unger</a>, or considered the role of Danny Fields, later manager of the Ramones, who worked briefly at the magazine in mid-1966.</p>
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<h2>Datebook</h2>
<p>While on Datebook’s payroll, Fields was tasked with revamping its cover for a special “Shout Out!” issue to mark the transition from bi-monthly to monthly publication. That was the issue that featured Lennon’s interview with his infamous quote, “I don’t know which will go first, Christianity or rock’n’roll!” on its cover. Even more prominent was McCartney’s tart comment on US race relations: “It’s a lousy country where anyone black is a dirty nigger!” The cover also advertised articles on LSD, the Vietnam War and the virtues of interracial dating. </p>
<p>This content suggests Datebook was not the “standard teenybop rag” routinely depicted in accounts of the “Jesus” controversy. Most of those accounts also erroneously accuse Datebook – Unger is seldom mentioned by name – of cynically reproducing Lennon’s controversial comments out of context and using the interview without permission.</p>
<p>In fact, Unger had been encouraged to use all four Beatles interviews, which were reproduced in Datebook without any significant changes, by Tony Barrow, the band’s press officer. In March 1966, Barrow wrote to Unger:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think you might be more than interested in a series of ‘in-depth’ pieces which Maureen Cleave is doing on each Beatle for the London Evening Standard. I’m enclosing a clipping showing her piece on John Lennon; I think the style and content is very much in line with the sort of thing DATEBOOK likes to use.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Clearly, Barrow already understood Datebook’s politics. Unger had created a socially engaged magazine dedicated to challenging all manner of prejudice, dogma, and discrimination, even as it dispensed advice about haircare, makeup and dating etiquette. The fact that Unger, like Fields, was gay may have fuelled their determination to nurture more tolerant attitudes among Datebook’s young readers. Nowhere was Datebook’s quietly subversive agenda more clear than in the realm of race relations. </p>
<h2>‘Segregation is a lot of rubbish’</h2>
<p>At the height of the civil rights movement in the south, Datebook often focused on racial and religious intolerance. In 1961, for example, it asked “should you date boys of another race or religion?” and concluded that “across-the-line dating can be a healthy and desirable thing”. That same year Lillian Smith, a leading southern white racial liberal, urged Datebook’s overwhelmingly white female readers to break with the racism of an older generation. The magazine even included contact details for various civil rights groups so that readers could support the movement. </p>
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<span class="caption">Datebook July edition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brian Ward</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The Beatles were also aware of Unger’s liberal agenda. They first met him in 1964. Afterwards, their press office regularly supplied Datebook with news scoops and provided extensive access whenever the band toured the US. The band often proved willing accomplices in Unger’s plans. In 1965, Datebook reported a flight from Houston when drummer Ringo had “joined a circle of performers, many of whom were Negroes, and they talked about everything, including race relations, Ringo making his pro-integration feelings very clear”. Ringo insisted: “Segregation is a lot of rubbish. As far as we’re concerned, people are people, no different from each other.”</p>
<p>Understanding the Beatles’s links to Unger and their willingness to speak out on social issues in his magazine long before 1966, changes our perspective on the dramatic events of that summer. Suddenly, they begin to look less like the first chapter in the story of the band’s political awakening and more like an important episode in a much longer tale. Looking back through the pages, not to mention the covers, of Datebook certainly reminds us that Lennon was not the only Beatle with strong opinions on current affairs.</p>
<p>Fifty years on, it is time to stop casting Unger’s decision to reprint Lennon’s interview as the act of the unscrupulous owner of a “cheesy American teen magazine” out for a fast buck. Instead, we need to see it as one phase in his efforts to use Datebook to showcase progressive politics, encourage unconventional opinions, and expose all kinds of prejudice. The Beatles certainly recognised that Unger’s Datebook was very different from other teen publications. And so should we.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Ward received funding from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust that supported research on this topic. </span></em></p>The ‘Jesus’ controversy is often considered a watershed moment in the Beatles’s career. And yet it remains largely misunderstood.Brian Ward, Professor in American Studies, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/561032016-03-31T08:39:19Z2016-03-31T08:39:19ZThe Beatles revolutionised music by putting the record centre-stage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116917/original/image-20160331-28459-voho2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sessions Live</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jef Hanlon spent decades at the forefront of live music promotion, putting on acts such as B B King, Chuck Berry, Simon and Garfunkel and Stevie Wonder. But were it not for the Beatles, says Hanlon when I interview him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’d probably now be a retired civil engineer living in a nice part of Lancashire … because they opened the door for the northern accents, the northern guys to get down there and do things.</p>
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<p>Hanlon came out of retirement to produce <a href="http://www.thesessionslive.com/">The Sessions Live</a>, a “live restaging of the historic recording sessions of the Beatles”, which premieres at London’s Royal Albert Hall on April 1. The complexity of the show is testament to the changes wrought on the fabric of popular music by the quartet and their production team at Abbey Road. </p>
<p>Hanlon stresses that this isn’t a lookalike show with “guys with wigs on their heads and tie-dyed jackets and Cuban-heeled boots”. Instead, it is an attempt to capture the <em>sound</em> and the recording process. It features 45 performers, including seven singers (veterans of previous Beatles shows) to recreate double-tracked vocals, a six-piece band of leading session musicians and a 21-piece orchestra. It also features actors playing technicians, Yoko Ono, recording engineer Geoff Emerick, and, of course, <a href="https://theconversation.com/farewell-to-george-martin-the-fifth-beatle-56045">George Martin</a>, the Beatles’s legendary producer.</p>
<h2>Spinning records</h2>
<p>When Martin died recently, the celebrations of his achievements hinged largely on his status as the “fifth Beatle”. But this fruitful relationship was by no means a given in the beginning. Martin, a Guildhall graduate and ex-Royal Navy officer, was a stark contrast to, as Hanlon puts it, the “cheeky scousers who came round from Liverpool and said what they thought”. </p>
<p>But Martin’s track record of working with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/thegoonshow/">the Goons</a>, who were admired by the Beatles, gave him an open ear for innovation and word play. When asked after they worked together if there was anything about the session they didn’t like, George Harrison’s response – “Well, there’s your tie for a start” – broke the ice and led to a revolution in recording history.</p>
<p>For all their success as live performers, the Beatles’s ultimate legacy was their recordings. Martin provided the technical and musical ballast for their imaginative flights, from string arrangements, to synching two four-track machines in different studios, to developing sound effects. </p>
<p>The Beatles pushed the envelope of what popular music <em>was</em>, making the studio a creative space – an instrument in itself, rather than just a place to record performances. With George Martin, then, they changed the commercial and artistic realities of popular music, driving forward the recording as the key creative statement and putting the album at the centre of the commercial process. When Martin started at EMI, producers were rule-bound functionaries and engineers, effectively lab assistants in white coats. By the end of the 1960s, the recording studio was at the centre of both creative innovation and social change. </p>
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<span class="caption">The rise of the recording.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Sessions Live</span></span>
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<p>Popular music made a grab for the “authentic” status previously reserved for “high art”, just as social barriers had broken down elsewhere when postwar austerity gave way to the more liberal 60s. Again, the Beatles typified this shift, as illustrated by Lennon’s exhortation at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWDFuVRWdn4">Royal Variety Performance</a>: “The people in the cheaper seats, just clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery.” As Hanlon says, “pop stars two years before the Beatles established themselves wouldn’t dream of doing that.”</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that wider social forces were also at play. But the Beatles’s work with Martin and Emerick helped to drive the boat by placing recording at the centre of popular music creativity. Their work helped to define the role of “record production”, taking it beyond the technical realm into the creative sphere and making the record, rather than the underlying song, the key text in pop.</p>
<h2>Staging recordings</h2>
<p>Over 50 years on from their first recording, the extent of that legacy is revealed by the challenges of depicting the process on stage and moving beyond the “tribute show” – not to mention the minefield of rights negotiations involved with anything Beatles-related. (Even former Beatles aren’t immune to this, as shown by Paul McCartney’s decades-long efforts to <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7263857/paul-mccartney-beatles-songs-publishing">reclaim publishing rights to his songs</a>.) </p>
<p>Song suites in the Sessions Live illustrate the changing production process over time, with particular emphasis on tunes featuring groundbreaking techniques. Of this documentary element to the show, Hanlon describes the painstaking attention to detail:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve got about 37 different guitars, so that every guitar the Beatles used in the studio will be used on the track it was used on … We have the same mics, the same mic positioning from the studio plugs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That portraying the work of the Beatles, Martin and Emerick requires such effort is a marker of their place in music history. In a way, the Sessions Live crystallises a key change in the dynamic between live performance and recordings driven by the Beatles. Where once the goal was to capture a performance in the studio, the question now is how to recreate the recording on stage. Asked whether he sees this show as a one-off, or a way forward for other such productions, Hanlon laughs: “Well, it’s a one-off for me. I’m never working this hard again.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>A new show offers viewers the chance to be a fly on the wall at the Beatles recording sessions.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/444362015-07-29T05:20:47Z2015-07-29T05:20:47ZThe Beatles, Help! and the creation of the modern British man<p>It’s 50 years since the release of the Beatles’s second feature film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059260/">Help!</a>. Whatever you may think of the film itself (which got very mixed <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B0CEEDC103CE733A25757C2A96E9C946491D6CF">reviews</a>) this rollicking film of “good, clean insanity” provides a wonderfully unique window on to the social changes that men saw in the 1960s. </p>
<p>As Alex Bilmes recently wrote in <a href="http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/music/8511/paul-mccartney-interview/">Esquire</a>, the Beatles “made it not just OK but insanely desirable to be a stylish, successful, smartarse British man”. The representation of masculinity embodied in Help! is a key stepping stone to more obvious displays of gender fluidity that were to emerge in later decades.</p>
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<p>The music journalist, Ian MacDonald, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qr7z-LnVsZ4C&">says</a> the Beatles were critical to popular culture in the 1960s because of their global fame and the media interest in their activities. He argues that they were therefore a prism through which social changes were magnified and reflected. </p>
<p>Their first feature film, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-hard-days-night-at-50-how-john-paul-george-and-ringo-redefined-pop-celebrity-22199">A Hard Day’s Night</a> (1964) had provided a global audience with the chance to see a mockumentary about a day in the life of the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. Despite their exuberance, feminised appearance and a number of queer moments (such as Lennon batting his eyelids and saying “give us a kiss” to a bowler hatted gent in a railway carriage), the film had much in common with the new-wave kitchen sink dramas of the early 1960s. It presented the most famous men on the planet as trapped by their day job; work central to their male identity. </p>
<p>But Help! sees them as men at play, in a technicolour international travelogue ranging from London to the Bahamas. Here it is not work but style, upward mobility and independent exotic living that become central to their identity as 60s Englishmen. There is also no central romantic plot, a significant break with cinematic convention.</p>
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<h2>Nonsense</h2>
<p>Described by Chris Hutchins in his NME review at the time as “100 minutes of nonsense”, the plot of Help! revolves around the attempt of a rogue Eastern religious sect to retrieve a sacrificial ring sent to Ringo by a fan. Yes, it’s silly. </p>
<p>The beginning of the film emphasises a shift from reality to fantasy. First the Beatles are seen in black and white, wearing black roll-neck sweaters and Beatle boots in what looks like an outtake from A Hard Day’s Night. The next time they appear, they’re in colour. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, they have travelled from the black and white “reality” of Kansas (read Liverpool) to the Technicolour fantasy world of Oz (read pot-fuelled swinging London, 1965). Director Dick Lester brings a style over substance fantasy approach which preempts other key 60s texts, such as Batman and the Avengers, that bring the extraordinary to the ordinary. </p>
<p>This ordinary yet extraordinary nature of the Beatles is established in a memorable early scene where they arrive in a limousine in a terraced street and walk up to the doors of four adjoining terraced houses. As they step through four separate front doors, they enter one large communal room filled with contemporary designer furniture. </p>
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<p>This transition is another that mirrors the shift from the black and white reality of 1964 to the technicolour hyperreality of 1965. It is also reflective of the potentially different lifestyle opening up for men in the mid 1960s. The house is a fantasy world where expectations created by the outside are subverted by the inside view. They are men reclaiming the indoors, independent and homosocial.</p>
<h2>Metrosexual prototypes</h2>
<p>Bearing this in mind, Mark Simpson’s 1994 “identification” of the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=i2x--PuwzZ0C&">metrosexual</a> clearly has its roots firmly in the mid 1960s. Simpson describes the typical metrosexual as a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of the metropolis, who could be gay, straight or bisexual. The Beatles in Help! undoubtedly fit these criteria: they dramatise the increasing feminisation of men’s visual appearance, characterised by increased hair length and an ever more dandified dress sense.</p>
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<p>The clothes worn by the Beatles in Help! are a development of the mod style of the early 1960s. Suits are worn with coloured roll-neck sweaters, coloured shirts begin to be introduced along with materials such as corduroy and denim and the addition of capes and hats. A scene where they are seen recording on Salisbury Plain wearing a camped-up version of military attire is just one example from the film where they are juxtaposed with traditional sartorial symbols of masculinity and subvert them.</p>
<p>Two years after Help! The Beatles would push the boundaries of male attire and masculine possibilities still further, frolicking in the psychedelic foliage of the Magical Mystery Tour. But the initial thrust of change is nowhere better depicted than in Help!, a film that encouraged nothing less than the re-imagination of the Englishman.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin King does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first film to see The Beatles in technicolour is 50 years old.Martin King, Principal Lecturer, Social Care and Social Work, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220292014-02-07T00:16:52Z2014-02-07T00:16:52ZAll hail Beatlemania – when culture crossed the pond<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40214/original/9c9ncsqq-1391092078.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Good morning America!</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years after the Beatles <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4rV0GWZHuU">first appeared</a> on the Ed Sullivan Show, the band is still the benchmark for Anglo-American relations. With their swift rise to fame in the US, they started the so-called British Invasion of American music. Until their triumph it had always been a one-way street of influence, from America to Britain.</p>
<p>Before the Beatles, American music was suffering from a post-rock ‘n’ roll hangover. But due to slow transport and communication links at the time, Britain was enjoying a rock boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Elvis continued to have massive hits during his career. Buddy Holly had numerous posthumous Top 20 hits in UK, though none in the US. Yet almost no British musician could crack America. Even the beloved Cliff Richard had only one minor Top 40 in the decade.</p>
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<p>But with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” having just reached the top of the American charts earlier in the week, from the moment they first <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZiYzze6qwE">landed</a>, with 4000 screaming fans waiting at the newly-renamed JFK airport in February 1964, there was something special about the Beatles. They turned the US and British music scenes on their Cuban-heeled boots. They started the first case of American Anglophilia in popular culture in decades. In both countries there was a rush to imitate, copy or rebel against them.</p>
<h2>British Invasion</h2>
<p>Immediately after the Beatles had their first American hits, the radio waves opened to other British groups. Bands ranging from Beatles soundalikes <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3MyH09BL0o">Peter & Gordon</a> to the brasher <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDSepEeMgPg">Dave Clark Five</a> and the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1xR8PYDqMg">Rolling Stones</a> found success in the States. Suddenly Americans could not get enough of British sounds and styles.</p>
<p>Partly because the Beatles wore collarless suits and had mop top hair, fashion became an essential piece for musicians. Some groups, such as Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, copied the same clean-cut image of the Beatles. Others, like the Rolling Stones, went for the arrogant, unkempt style, leading to famous <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/khiltscher/3471500454/in/set-72157617265145148">headlines</a> in the press. Long hair was not only accepted, it became required.</p>
<p>For both men and women, <a href="http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/galleries/TMG7188461/3/Carnaby-Street-celebrates-its-50th-anniversary.html">Carnaby Street</a> was the fashion capital of the world. The mini – both skirt and car – became a symbol for Swinging London, with the Beatles as its rulers. For most of the decade the Beatles, and most British artists, were more concerned with fashion than politics. In <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUNoVcUAEs8">Revolution 1</a>, the band showed their political ambivalence. So too, with the Rolling Stones’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64nCCjonKW0">Street Fighting Man</a>.</p>
<h2>American Reactions</h2>
<p>In the US, British-fever happened almost immediately. The Billboard <a href="http://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1964/hot-100">number one songs</a> during 1964 were almost entirely either the Beatles, other British artists or Motown groups. New groups popped up immediately to copy and respond to the sounds of the fresh, lively lads from Liverpool. <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/The+Beau+Brummels">The Beau Brummels</a> believed that having a British-sounding name, with a spelling similar to the Beatles, would make the public buy their records. So too did the Sir Douglas Quintet, from Texas.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40215/original/gpn8pkz7-1391092473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The mop-topped Byrds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps the two most famous groups to emerge because of the Beatles were the Byrds and the Monkees. Byrds founder and guitarist Roger McGuinn once said that after seeing the Beatles film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058182/?ref_=nv_sr_1">A Hard Day’s Night</a> the group knew they needed to change their sound and style. They grabbed the <a href="http://www.rickenbacker.com/model.asp?model=360/12C63">Rickenbacker 12-string</a> guitar George Harrison had used in the movie and made it their own. They grew their hair long and found McGuinn’s famous “granny glasses”. On a trip to London they spent hours shopping for the latest Carnaby fashions. On looks alone they could have been the second coming of the Beatles. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/40216/original/j3hny5yx-1391092729.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Monkees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">scarlatti2004</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Monkees, too, could have been the Beatles. The group starred in a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060010/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">television show of the same name</a> which was intended to be a spoof of A Hard Day’s Night. It saw the actors become musicians in their own right. That the actor-musicians ran around in a similar way to early Beatles antics did not harm the ratings of the show, nor their record sales.</p>
<p>Yet, whereas most British groups were apolitical, many American artists used music to provide social commentary. The Byrds produced <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4">Turn! Turn! Turn!</a> and the Monkees had <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejw_LOi-nhk">Randy Scouse Git</a>, renamed <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/The+Monkees/_/Alternate+Title">Alternate Title</a> for the UK audience. It was the Vietnam War, however, that inspired the most commentary from American artists, in everything from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo">folk</a> to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboRijhWFDU">psychedelic</a>.</p>
<h2>Anglo-American relations today</h2>
<p>The Beatles opened up the American pop market, and there has been a British presence there since. There have been British highs, ranging from the supremacy of Led Zeppelin and heavy metal in the 1970s, to lows during the early 1990s and the dominance of grunge. There is now regular traffic going back and forth across the Atlantic, with artists having hits in both countries on a regular basis.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mTGbKbEEE8o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Simpsons in London.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than just in music, however. From Harry Potter, Sherlock and Adele to Law & Order, The Simpsons and Katy Perry, popularity in one country often translates to popularity in the other. Before the Beatles, it had only ever been Americans liked in Britain, not the other way around. That’s why, 50 years after their most famous American television appearance, the two surviving Beatles played the <a href="http://www.grammy.com/photos/paul-mccartney-and-ringo-starr">Grammys</a>, and received Lifetime Achievement Awards: for breaking down that transatlantic barrier.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Collin Lieberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years after the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, the band is still the benchmark for Anglo-American relations. With their swift rise to fame in the US, they started the so-called British…Collin Lieberg, PhD Student, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/227582014-02-07T00:07:49Z2014-02-07T00:07:49ZBeatlemania hit 50 years ago but why did it drive girls so mad?
<p>This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s debut appearance on <em>The Ed Sullivan Show</em> in the US. But what was it about? Was it the moptop haircuts, Cuban heels, and “<em>yeah yeah yeahs</em>” that turned us, our parents, or our grandparents into primeval beings whose sole purpose was to drown out the blare of a Vox AC30 amplifier?</p>
<p>The term “Beatlemania” has come to be associated with many things over the past half-century. Coined in October 1963 during the Beatles’ tour of Scotland, the extent of Beatlemania in the US is obvious from record sales alone. </p>
<p>Between the 1964 release of I Want to Hold Your Hand on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Let it Be EP in 1970, the Lads from Liverpool had a Number One single for, on average, one out of every six weeks and a top-selling album <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Beatles_Forever.html?id=WYmgQgAACAAJ">every third week</a>.</p>
<iframe width="100%" height="338px" frameborder="0" src="https://player.ooyala.com/iframe.html#pbid=M2IxMTZiNDExZmU1MDIyOTc2NzA0NmVi&amp;ec=E4OTVnazouXM7ma6apuZrXEyN9id8-TT" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
<p>But to most, Beatlemania conjures up a vivid image of frenzied fans, predominantly teenage girls, with facial expressions that look more like they’d witnessed a gruesome murder, and “I love George!” badges hanging on for dear life as their owners attempted to push past overwhelmed human police barricades. Lots of tears and lots of screaming.</p>
<p>But what can neuroscience tell us about what might have been happening in their brains? </p>
<h2>Why do we like music?</h2>
<p>One could argue that fanatics were interested in more than just the Beatles’ musical talent, but <a href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/the-beatles-total-album-sales/">record sales</a> prove that people did enjoy a Beatles tune. And what about music can make us tap our toes, lulls babies to sleep, well up with emotion, dance around or stir up furious mosh pits?</p>
<p>In short, we know music makes us feel good; even those tunes that incite a feeling of sadness may bring us pleasure because we can relate to them. Take one <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11818.full">2001 study</a> by researchers Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University. They recruited ten individuals who had at least some formal music training. Each participant selected a song that, they claimed, gave them (good) chills.</p>
<p>The researchers played a 90-second excerpt of their chosen song while the subject laid in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, a device that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. Compared to control (neutral) sounds, music that elicits physical and emotional changes activated limbic, paralimbic, and midbrain regions. And these areas are implicated in pleasure and reward, not unlike the neural pathways that recognise yummy food, addictive drugs, and sex.</p>
<p>In an extension to this study <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6129/216.short">published last April</a>, Zatorre’s group used fMRI to scan the brains of 19 volunteers while they listened to the first 30 seconds of 60 songs they’d never heard before. Participants then rated how much they were willing to spend if they were to buy each song, from $0 to $2.</p>
<p>As it turns out, connections between a limbic system structure called the amygdala with the hippocampus (involved in learning and memory) as well as the prefrontal cortex (important for decision-making) could predict how much participants were willing to spend on each song.</p>
<p>The strength of these connections may partially explain why die-hard Metallica fans might completely shun hip-hop, while others may refuse to listen to anything but country. Music is a personal preference, and although we know that it brings us pleasure, that’s about the extent of our understanding.</p>
<h2>What’s with all the crying and fainting?</h2>
<p>Typically, we equate crying with sadness and fainting with illness.</p>
<p>The truth is, our brains are actually pretty dumb, and any sudden, strong emotion – from happiness to relief to stress – can elicit these vulnerable physical reactions.</p>
<p>Our autonomic nervous system (the “involuntary” nervous system) is divided into two branches: sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest-and-digest”). Acting via the hypothalamus, the sympathetic nervous system is designed to mobilise the body during times of stress. It’s why our heart rate quickens, why we sweat, why we feel ready to run. The parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, essentially calms us back down.</p>
<p>The parasympathetic nervous system does something funny, too. Connected to our lacrimal glands (better known as tear ducts), activation of parasympathetic receptors by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22222703">results in tear production</a>. So for those fans relieved to finally see their Fab Four, tears were commonplace.</p>
<p>For others, though, the sudden activation of their parasympathetic nervous system is <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1986-29341-001">accompanied by </a> something much more dramatic. A quick drop in blood pressure results from vessels widening and heart rate slowing, hence the fainting.</p>
<p>Fainting, crying … exactly the things you’d want your hero to see you do when you finally meet them, right?</p>
<h2>Everybody’s crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed man</h2>
<p>Let’s be honest, there’s a reason Beatlemania is typified by hordes of young women: <em>The Beatles looked good.</em></p>
<p>When Brian Epstein officially signed on as the Beatles’ manager in early 1962, the first thing he did was smarten up their stage appearance; he fitted them into Edwardian collarless suits, matching boots, and choreographed a synchronised bow at the end of each song.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/study-reveals-clothes-do-make-the-man-sexier-smarter-and-more-successful-112858669.html">2011 survey</a>, 91% of Americans believe that a well-dressed man appears smarter, sexier, and more successful than one who is not, regardless of their overall physical attractiveness or how much money they have.</p>
<p>And a <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01542229">1990 study</a> of 382 college students by the University of Toledo examined just how clothes can make the man. One “attractive” and one “unattractive” man (as previously determined by a panel of females) donned a variety of clothes – from designer watches and pressed shirts to baseball caps and Burger King polos. Consistently, women rated the well-dressed man as more attractive than the sloppier one, regardless of which model sported which ensemble.</p>
<p>The Beatles had some pretty great hair, too. Inspired by a man they saw during a gig in Hamburg, Germany, John and Paul reportedly hitchhiked to Paris and requested the distinctive haircut.</p>
<p>Across cultures, long, shiny female hair is rated attractive by both genders. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=esDW3xTKoLIC&pg=PA309#v=onepage&q&f=false">Evolutionary psychologists reason</a> that the ability to grow long hair can reveal several years of a person’s health status, age, nutrition, and reproductive fitness, as vitamin deficiencies result in hair loss.</p>
<p>Plus, moptops eliminate any sign of androgenic alopecia, or <a href="http://www.stevens-trichology.com/male-pattern-baldness-chart.jpg">male-pattern baldness</a>, which studies <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-4362.2002.01446.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false">have been associated</a> with perceived ageing and less attractiveness. But don’t worry, men – evolutionary biologists theorise that baldness is <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/229694/why-bald-men-never-went-extinct-4-theories">actually a sign</a> of dominance, longevity, and social status due to its cause – a more potent <a href="http://bit.ly/LztAJ7">form of testosterone</a> called DHT.</p>
<p>Although the fans may have drowned out the music with their shrieks, at least they still had a sight to behold.</p>
<p>So 50 years ago this Sunday, <a href="http://www.edsullivan.com/the-beatles-on-the-ed-sullivan-show-on-february-9-1964/">73m Americans</a> crowded around 60% of the country’s televisions to watch the Beatles’ debut, and the birth of Beatlemania. But while there are some explanations for why frenzied fans might have reacted the way they did to the Fab Four, for some the teenage shrieks and hysteria remained utterly baffling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the US. But what was it about? Was it the moptop haircuts, Cuban heels, and “yeah yeah…Jordan Gaines Lewis, Neuroscience Doctoral Candidate, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76102012-07-05T03:49:52Z2012-07-05T03:49:52ZA Hard Day’s Night by numbers: The Beatles decoded<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12276/original/3t9zh3sc-1340776124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C42%2C1022%2C676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Roll up for the mathematical mystery tour.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucy (嘉莉)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“TWANG! It’s been a …” </p>
<p>There is perhaps no song as quintessentially Beatle-ish as A Hard Day’s Night - it just bubbles with unbridled enthusiasm and joy. And in my mind, there’s no other opening chord of a rock song that is as instantly recognisable as that one. </p>
<p>I grew up grudgingly playing the piano, practising only the half-hour before my lesson each week. But as soon as heard my first Beatles’ record, I dropped the piano to teach myself guitar eight hours a day during my high school summers. </p>
<p>Something about the early Beatles’ music struck a chord, so to speak, deep down inside of me, and it hasn’t left.</p>
<p>At about the same time, my love for mathematics blossomed, and I played in a band while attending my undergraduate studies. It was a tough choice, but I gave up music for the safer gig, as a mathematician. But unbeknown to me, the music that lay dormant inside me would serendipitously mix with the math inside me.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zSm0M-BbVdY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In 2004 I heard it was the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ [first movie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hard_Day’s_Night_(film) – A Hard Day’s Night – and the soundtrack of the same name. All of the media attention brought to mind that famous opening chord that opened the movie and title song. </p>
<p>While teaching myself guitar years earlier, I had invested in a lot of Beatles songbooks, only to find that every book had a different transcription for how the author thought <a href="http://www.georgeharrison.com/#/">George Harrison</a> had coaxed that initial sound out of his brand new twelve-string <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickenbacker">Rickenbacker</a> guitar. All were derived by some combination of listening and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory">music theory</a>, but to me none sounded quite right.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12263/original/rtbnps6d-1340772604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1999 Rickenbacker guitar with the distinctive R-tailpiece.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mr.Fingers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My mathematical outlook had me take a different approach in 2004 – was there a scientific way to decide how the chord was played? Indeed, I had read a math book for leisure (yes we mathematicians do that sort of thing!) about ten years earlier that described the mathematics of sound and music.</p>
<p>In particular, there was a process, called a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform">Fourier transform</a>, that could allow one to decompose a sound wave into its constitute pure tones (which were modelled by <a href="http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMAT6680/Dunbar/Assignment1/sine_curves_KD.html">sine</a> and <a href="http://www.wku.edu/%7Etom.richmond/Cosine.html">cosine curves</a>). I had also remembered that there were algorithms to do just that, so I embarked on some CSI-like musical forensics. I took a small part of the opening chord and ran it through a Fourier transform, and held my breath waiting for the output.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12426/original/cmdjm5pj-1340981947.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The spectrum of the 48 frequencies of largest amplitude from “The Chord”.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Brown</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was a bit daunting – there were thousands of frequencies in the opening chord. But all was not lost, as I could tell the amplitudes of the frequencies, and the amplitude corresponds roughly with the loudness. So I began to make mathematical deductions from the data, and I quickly came upon some interesting conclusions. </p>
<p>First, all of the transcriptions I had seen for the guitar chord were incorrect – they had a <a href="http://www.gotaukulele.com/2011/02/ukulele-beginners-what-is-low-g.html">low G note</a> present, and the mathematics clearly indicated that the frequency simply wasn’t present. </p>
<p>Musicians thought they had heard the note, and as the [key](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_(music) of the song was G, they believed it to be there all the more strongly. But it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I could see that the frequencies often were not particularly close to notes, so that it would have behoved the Beatles’ producer, <a href="http://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-martin/">George Martin</a>, to have knocked on the studio window before the final take of the song and said: “Better tune up again, boys.” The Beatles’ guitars were gloriously slightly out-of-tune, adding to the difficulty in reproducing the chord.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12278/original/xs4rjst8-1340776544.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Beatles with producer George Martin in the studio at Abbey Road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Capitol Records</span></span>
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<p>A much bigger problem loomed. There were three frequencies corresponding to a certain “F” note, with no corresponding note up the octave, and this meant that note couldn’t have been played on George Harrison’s twelve string, and further, there was no way for the Beatles’ guitars to cover the frequencies. The answer involved throwing out the assumption that only the Beatles played on the opening chord. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1789&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1789&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/12277/original/xsfzhv8n-1340776338.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1789&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The correct chords to play discovered via the Fourier transform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Brown</span></span>
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<p>A solution lay with insertion of a piano into the mix, as pianos have, toward the top end of the keyboard, three identically tuned strings under each note. Upon this realisation, the remainder of the chord began to unravel fairly quickly, and I could deduce what instruments (guitars, bass and piano) played what notes. A little bit of math went a long way!</p>
<p>The greatest difficulty I encountered after the research was finding a public forum to publish the work. It was going to appear in a <a href="http://www.jasonibrown.com/pdfs/n-oct04-harddayjib.pdf">peer-reviewed journal</a>, but I thought the story was interesting enough for everyone to read. One magazine refused to read it based on the fact that the article had mathematics in it! But <a href="http://www.guitarplayer.com/">Guitar Player</a> magazine loved the work, and was happy to publish the <a href="http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/mathematics-johns-left/mar-09/92751">article</a>, and the rest is, as they say, history.</p>
<p>Over the ensuing years, I have applied mathematics in a variety of ways to analyse pop music. In a <a href="http://jasonibrown.com/images/gp-ahdn2.JPG">second article</a> in Guitar Player magazine I deduced mathematically that George Harrison must have recorded his famous, brilliant solo in A Hard Day’s Night by slowing down the tape speed in half, and recording the solo at half-speed down the octave. </p>
<p>Some musicians I’ve spoken with have been upset at the research, as perhaps it showed George’s technical skills were not what they should have been, but the truth I think says more – it showed George was a musician first, doing what it took to play what was in his head rather than in his fingers, and he had to have an incredible amount of confidence to choose to record a solo at half-speed, knowing that all of the world would be watching for when he played it up to speed, live (which, of course, he did!).</p>
<p>I’ve also <a href="http://jasonibrown.com/images/Riffs-March09.jpg">written</a> about why the music to I Want To Hold Your Hand was so imaginative and clever that it brought America to its knees, and why Paul McCartney so correctly named Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally as perhaps one of the greatest rock songs ever (and more generally, <a href="http://www.jasonibrown.com/pdfs/Notesv41n4.pdf">a mathematical basis for why the blues chord progression is so damn good</a>). </p>
<p>Finally, in recent work with Robert Dawson of St. Marys University, <a href="http://www.jasonibrown.com/pdfs/Notesv43n1-2.pdf">we explained mathematically</a> why George Martin’s famous edit in Strawberry Fields Forever never quite satisfied Paul (and never could).</p>
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<p>Moreover, the research continues to open doors for me, especially as an ambassador for mathematics. I’ve written a book for the general public called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Our-Days-Are-Numbered-Mathematics/dp/0771016972">Our Days Are Numbered: How Mathematics Orders Our Lives</a> and published my first CD, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Songs-In-Key-Pi/dp/B003HB5LG2">Songs in the Key of Pi</a>, of my own songs. </p>
<p>In fact, the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123325321424929493.html">Wall Street Journal</a> came a-knocking back in 2008, and shot a video of a <a href="http://live.wsj.com/video/math-professor-jason-browns-a-million-whys/86E3D76F-17C6-404C-8B2C-A5AF139026DC.html">song</a> I wrote in the style of the early Beatles, using mathematical principles I gleaned from their music. </p>
<p>And I continue to travel worldwide, giving <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NCBDU8UvbY">public lectures</a> on mathematics and music, most often with a guitar slung over my shoulder and with a rockin’ band behind me. The Beatles, it seems, gave me a great ticket to ride!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7610/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Brown receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research of Canada. He is affiliated with Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.</span></em></p>“TWANG! It’s been a …” There is perhaps no song as quintessentially Beatle-ish as A Hard Day’s Night - it just bubbles with unbridled enthusiasm and joy. And in my mind, there’s no other opening chord…Jason Brown, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics and Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.