tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/george-harrison-48156/articlesGeorge Harrison – The Conversation2023-11-19T13:00:19Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173462023-11-19T13:00:19Z2023-11-19T13:00:19ZNow and Then: How composition choices made John Lennon’s music memo into a Beatles song<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559968/original/file-20231116-25-g5g3in.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C2%2C1599%2C769&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now and Then finds a place alongside Beatles' songs like We Can Work it Out or Girl which move between major-key and minor-key sections. A still from the song's video.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(YouTube)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/now-and-then-how-composition-choices-made-john-lennons-music-memo-into-a-beatles-song" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The Beatles’ “<a href="https://www.goldradiouk.com/artists/the-beatles/ringo-starr-last-song/">last song ever</a>,” released 61 years after their first single, was bound to be significant. </p>
<p>But how did John Lennon’s lo-fi, 40-something-year-old cassette recording of <em>Now and Then</em> — deemed <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-george-harrison-originally-blocked-the-upcoming-final-beatles-single-fucking-rubbish">“fucking rubbish”</a> by George Harrison during the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/music/the-beatles-now-and-then-documentary-premiering-cbc-1.7014053">failed 1995 attempt</a> to revive the song — become an instant <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67381253">No. 1 chart hit</a> and worthy addition to the Beatles’ catalogue in 2023? </p>
<p>Beyond the <a href="https://www.nme.com/features/music-features/the-beatles-now-and-then-final-song-ai-documentary-peter-jackson-music-video-inside-story-3527104?fbclid=IwAR2lTygUCfYjjrAoqgJX19Vwtp7ykMHmf_fd5dAMXygunvbac6v8f0_lEPY">AI-assisted</a> salvage of Lennon’s voice from the noisy cassette, it is worth examining Lennon’s raw materials, and the strategies that made the unfinished <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67285117">late-1970s</a> musical sketch a Beatles’ song.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Now and Then</em> official music video.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Personal music memo</h2>
<p>Had Harrison told Lennon himself that the song was rubbish, Lennon might have responded, “Well I’m not finished with it yet, am I mate?” </p>
<p>Lennon’s original <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/02/now-and-then-listen-to-the-final-beatles-song-john-lennon-paul-mccartney-ringo-george-harrison">“demo tape”</a> was not made for formal presentation (to a music publisher, for instance). </p>
<p>It was a personal memorandum to capture basic song ideas — something musicians do all the time. If they stopped there, <em>Yesterday</em> would be <a href="https://www.insider.com/paul-mccartney-yesterday-original-title-scrambled-eggs-the-beatles-2021-10"><em>Scrambled Eggs</em>,</a> and the Rolling Stones’ <em>Satisfaction</em> would be one minute of Keith Richards’s signature riff and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/satisfaction-comes-to-keith-richards">45 minutes of snoring</a>. </p>
<h2>Unorthodox compositional form</h2>
<p>The surviving two Beatles decided to finish the song in 2023, bringing in producer Giles Martin, son of George, the <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/giles-martin-wanted-to-rip-off-his-dad-george-for-the-beatles-now-and-then-3536272?fbclid=IwAR3VATdqJWRWEci4YdzOIcCF7IIfaK-zrPZx8DA9VzvtEnpX_zlnixl6ujQ">celebrated fifth Beatle</a>, and incorporating Harrison’s guitar parts from 1995. The <a href="https://amoralto.tumblr.com/post/164029803633/tape-labels-and-official-lyrics-sheet-w-jeff">lyric sheet</a> from these sessions, marked up by producer Jeff Lynne, suggest Lennon hadn’t titled his song-in-progress.</p>
<p>What likely bothered Harrison most about Lennon’s recording was its unorthodox application of verse-chorus song form. In verse-chorus form, the chorus typically provides the main “hook.” </p>
<p>Verse-chorus songs occassionally feature a “pre-chorus,” which follows the verse to set up the chorus. </p>
<p>Another section common in verse-chorus songs is the bridge, usually a contrasting musical idea introduced only after the verse and chorus. </p>
<h2>Delayed chorus</h2>
<p>On Lennon’s recording (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk88M4ABo_4&ab_channel=DavidBennettPiano">heard in this musician’s video</a>), Lennon introduced a bridge-like section where a pre-chorus would normally go. But rather than propelling the song toward the chorus, it meanders awkwardly, delaying and undermining the arrival of the chorus hook. </p>
<p>John most certainly would have revised this. In his absence, Martin and the remaining Beatles opted for the only solution available: cutting Lennon’s misplaced, unfinished pre-chorus/bridge and composing a new bridge.</p>
<h2>Most Beatles’ songs in major keys</h2>
<p><em>Now and Then</em> plays on the <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-science-of-music-why-do-songs-in-a-minor-key-sound-sad-760215">contrast between major and minor tonalities</a>. Major keys are commonly described as “bright” or “happy,” while minor keys are often described as “dark” or “sad.” </p>
<p>Major-key songs dominate the Beatles’ catalogue, comprising <a href="https://www.aaronkrerowicz.com/beatles-blog/now-that-youve-found-another-key-beatles-songs-in-minor-keys">roughly 81 per cent</a> of their recordings. Only four per cent remain entirely in minor keys, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolpPmuK2I8&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>Come Together</em></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAe2Q_LhY8g&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>I Want You</em></a>.</p>
<p><em>Now and Then</em> is among the remaining 15 per cent of Beatles’ songs that move between major-key and minor-key sections, alongside <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfqsM_XAcc&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>We Can Work It Out</em></a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l3ntDR_lI"><em>Girl</em></a>.</p>
<p>Lennon’s verse for <em>Now and Then</em> is among the most minor-laden sections of any Beatles song, opening with alternating minor chords. Mired in minor darkness, Lennon engages a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1qvgn0KY1M&ab_channel=StevenBaur">harmonic sleight of hand</a> reminiscent of Beethoven or Schubert, shifting abruptly to a major-chord refuge (on the sixth scale degree). But this ray of brightness is illusory; listeners feel the inevitable pull back to minor-key darkness. </p>
<h2>The sound of nostalgia?</h2>
<p>As musicologist <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520232082/conventional-wisdom">Susan McClary</a> explains,
this particular compositional strategy evokes “Never Never land.”: it “variously radiates hope, escape or nostalgia for a lost arcadia … but it takes only a half-step drop in the bass to return the piece to harsh, unmerciful reality.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSPAbGs6mpA&ab_channel=StevenBaur">Lennon’s melody</a> and his descending opening phrases strongly imply a melodic resolution to the home pitch (A). Following the aforementioned glimmer of major-chord brightness (on “make it through”) and its slide down to the E dominant chord (“it’s all because of …”), Lennon pauses dramatically. </p>
<p>Finally, Lennon intones the last word (“you”) over the inevitable return to A minor. But rather than the expected melodic resolution down to the home pitch, Lennon clings hauntingly to a dissonant note (B) one step above, before ending with “you-ooh-ooh-ooh” — a trademark vocal ornament.</p>
<h2>Seeking relief in the chorus</h2>
<p>Pop convention would grant a major-key payoff at the chorus, but Lennon’s pre-chorus/bridge thwarts any such gratification. So the 2023 Beatles cut it, opting for a conventional move directly to the major-key chorus.</p>
<p>The reward is bittersweet. Rather than moving upward to the stable, conventional major key alternative (the so-called relative major), the chorus falls a whole step to G major. Lennon’s melody seeks to ascend, but the melodic leap (on “I miss you”) is tinged by a passing minor chord (a common strategy to evoke longing, as in the opening melodic leap of the classic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU&ab_channel=Movieclips"><em>Over the Rainbow</em></a>.)</p>
<p>This is not the magical moment we have so often experienced with the Beatles, Beatle-esque strings notwithsanding. Rather than transcendence, fond remembrance settles into resigned acceptance.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song</em> (Short Film from The Beatles).</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Admirable guitar tribute, but not Harrison</h2>
<p>The transcendent gesture comes with the newly composed instrumental bridge, which does move up to the satisfying relative major. McCartney’s soaring slide guitar is a beautiful invocation of Harrison’s melodic sense and phrasing. But it is unmistakably not the Beatles’ late, inimitable guitarist. It is hard not to hear this loss in McCartney’s tribute. </p>
<p>Equally painful is the impossibility of Lennon and his bandmates working his pre-chorus/bridge section into the song. It contains some of the most expressive moments on Lennon’s recording. </p>
<p>Their last song offers a real experience of a glorious past, but makes painfully audible what has been lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Baur 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>For their “last single” Now and Then, the remaining 2023 Beatles kept John Lennon’s chorus, but changed where it fell. This necessary “repair” meant losing some of Lennon’s most touching passages.Steven Baur, Associate professor of musicology, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169202023-11-03T15:48:02Z2023-11-03T15:48:02ZNow and Then: enabled by AI – created by profound connections between the four Beatles<blockquote>
<p>In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music … to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not surprisingly, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67207699">Paul McCartney was positive</a> about the appearance this week of what has been trailed as the “last” Beatles song, Now and Then.</p>
<p>Much has been made of <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/paul-mccartney-ai-final-beatles-song-1235352398/">AI being part of the production</a>. Machine learning was used to <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2023/11/02/1208848690/the-beatles-last-song-now-and-then">recognise John Lennon’s voice</a>, and then isolate it from other sounds – a piano, a television in the background, electrical hum – to make it usable in a new recording. It also comes amid a slew of Beatles-related activity recently – a <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/beatles-celebration-night-bbc-newsupdate/">new podcast series</a>, Peter Jackson’s epic 2021 documentary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/26/beatles-final-days-get-back-let-it-be-john-harris-peter-jackson">Get Back</a>, new versions of the famed <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beatles-red-and-blue-sheffield-1234706610/">Red and Blue</a> compilation albums, and a Paul McCartney tour, during which he is playing some of the Fab Four’s back catalogue.</p>
<p>The commercial juggernaut seems unstoppable, so it’s perhaps easy to be cynical about a “new” song from a band that broke up in 1970, two of whose members are dead. Certainly, Now and Then does raise questions about how technologically mediated releases relate to collective artistic output, and what it means to be a band.</p>
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<h2>Collective creativity in bands</h2>
<p>In many ways, though, the AI label is a red herring, and this new song – which actually has its roots in a John Lennon demo tape from 1977 – demonstrates a continuing pattern. The Beatles and their narrative provided a seminal example of how bands work, and seemed to be ploughing the furrow for others. </p>
<p>From their original formation as schoolboys (Ringo joined in 1962 when they started recording), to their enormous financial success and cultural impact, the Beatles laid down templates that others have followed. <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/july-6-1957-day-beatles-9594637">Lennon and McCartney’s first meeting</a> at a church fete in 1957 is now the stuff of legend.</p>
<p>Their <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-revolutionised-music-by-putting-the-record-centre-stage-56103">innovations in the studio</a>, assisted by producer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Martin">George Martin</a>, helped to make recordings – especially albums – a central feature of the popular music experience. They emerged into professional practice together, splitting as they formed new relationships and moved onto the next phases of their life while still relatively young men.</p>
<p>Bands are simultaneously social groupings, creative units and economic entities. The economic “brand” can obviously run on for many years after the others have stopped. There is also long history of posthumous releases, including <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/jimi-hendrix-6-essential-posthumous-albums">Jimi Hendrix</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/6fmq/">Elliott Smith</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/prince-why-five-years-after-his-death-the-purple-one-still-reigns-159166">Prince</a>, even Otis Redding’s defining hit <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-otis-reddings-final-masterpiece-sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay-122170/">(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay</a>. Demo recordings, unheard live performances and radio broadcasts are all established parts of artists’ catalogues.</p>
<p>This becomes complicated, though, when the act in question is a collective with deceased members whose presence on the recording is technologically facilitated. A key example is the Beatles 1995 <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-free-as-a-bird/">Anthology</a> project, which saw the surviving members revisit John Lennon demos from a cassette given to McCartney by Yoko Ono, and add new parts to finish the songs.</p>
<p>This wasn’t entirely unique. Queen’s <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/behind-the-albums/queen-made-in-heaven/">Made In Heaven</a>, in the same year, saw the band finish songs that Freddie Mercury worked on in the studio before he died. But it did involve resurrecting fragments of home recordings to clean them up for the commercial market.</p>
<p>The technology wasn’t sufficient at the time to properly isolate Lennon’s voice on Now and Then, so it was abandoned until Peter Jackson used machine learning to remove noise from source recordings for Get Back. By this time George Harrison had died, so this technology allowed McCartney and Starr to return to the song, incorporating Harrison’s guitar solo from the aborted 1990s attempt.</p>
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<h2>Come together</h2>
<p>We can, then, consider the process behind this latest song in evolutionary rather than revolutionary terms. The possibilities of multi-track recording since the 1950s mean it’s long been the case that musicians have worked separately on the same song. As <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-the-beatles-white-album-60s-70s-john-lennon-wider-cultural-35006/">George Harrison said of The White Album</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a lot more individual stuff … people were accepting that it was individual. I remember having three studios operating at the same time. Paul was doing some overdubs in one, John was in another and I was recording some horns or something in a third.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even when the Beatles were together, many canonical songs were the work of only one or two of them. McCartney wrote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXTJBr9tt8Q">Yesterday</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Man4Xw8Xypo">Blackbird</a> alone, and is the only Beatle who plays on them. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1OgNqBkVE">The Ballad of John and Yoko</a> didn’t feature Harrison or Starr.</p>
<p>And the former band members played on each other’s “solo” records too. There are more Beatles on Harrison’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNL40ql4CYk">All Those Years Ago</a>, or Lennon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-SSa-D1i-M">Instant Karma</a> than on some of the band’s tracks. They all played separately on Starr’s 1973 album Ringo.</p>
<p>So Now and Then continues longstanding practices, going back to their heyday. Its status as the final Beatles song, though, reveals technological limitations. AI can create convincing facsimiles, but can’t replicate the facts of who actually played or sang the various parts, which is a central plank of what constitutes a band.</p>
<p>Audiences <a href="https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/215862/EA14B274-3E9F-47EC-94FF-5B7AF6167671.pdf">ascribe authenticity</a> to music in many ways, and core among these for bands is the line-up – some acts <a href="https://theconversation.com/ac-dcs-back-in-black-at-40-establishing-rock-bands-as-brands-143473">have effectively replaced key members</a> within the brand, others have had <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/7-times-when-replacing-the-lead-singer-of-a-band-did-not-work/">less success</a>. It’s often a source of debate, at least, with “<a href="https://livemusicexchange.org/blog/stoned-again-adam-behr/">classic</a>” line-ups being those that earn the audience stamp of authenticity.</p>
<p>So what of the song itself? It won’t supplant the likes of Hey Jude or Help in The Beatles’ musical pantheon. That bar, though, is high and the plangent piano-led ballad has a familiar yet distinctive arrangement, steeped in nostalagia but affecting on its own terms nevertheless. Lennon’s voice is clearer than on previous reconstructions and the harmonies sound like, well … The Beatles.</p>
<p>In that sense, what’s at the heart of this project is the presence – even spectrally – of the actual four people who made up the creative and social underpinning for the brand. The “last” Beatles song sees them demonstrating the importance, even as a coda to their recording career, of the interpersonal connections that set things in motion in the first place.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.</span></em></p>This new last Beatles song, enabled in part by AI, demonstrates the importance of the profound and lasting connections between the four musicians.Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2053542023-05-11T11:18:42Z2023-05-11T11:18:42ZWhat Ed Sheeran’s copyright court case win means for songwriters in future<p>Ed Sheeran came out swinging in his statement after a New York court found in his favour last week over a claim that his 2014 song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp-EO5I60KA">Thinking Out Loud</a> infringed copyright in Marvin Gaye’s hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnzUKC2tdjA">Let’s Get It On</a>. He called suits like the one brought by the estate of Gaye’s co-writer Ed Townshend “baseless” and pointed to the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/ed-sheeran-speaks-out-thinking-out-loud-case-1235322327/">wider ramifications of the verdict</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake … I want to thank the jury for making a decision that will help to protect the creative process of songwriters here in the United States and around the world … These claims need to be stopped so that the creative process can carry on, and we can all just go back to making music.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It wasn’t his first time facing <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/ed-sheeran-shape-of-you-copyright-case-star-wins-trial-over-plagiarism-claim-by-sami-switch-12569290">such charges</a>, copyright suits being a common professional hazard. As the old industry maxim states, <a href="https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=98e150af-1160-4231-aa86-bff66ac05fd3">where there’s a hit, there’s a writ</a>. So why did Sheeran allude to benefits for songwriters at large from this verdict?</p>
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<h2>A multifaceted legal mechanism</h2>
<p>Copyright is complex, with numerous points of potential dispute across different aspects of the musical work in question. First, it is not a single, indivisible legal mechanism. There is copyright in the underlying work – the composition – and copyright in the recording of that work.</p>
<p>Where a song has been sampled without permission, for example, the recording copyright has been infringed. When Sean Coombs failed to secure clearance for a sample from The Police’s Every Breath You Take in I’ll Be Missing You, he ceded royalties to Sting.</p>
<p>The relationship between composition and its realisation in recording has also been contentious, especially for songs put together in the studio by bands, where verbal agreements between the members come into play.</p>
<p>Members of Spandau Ballet <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691180802459948">argued that contributions</a> like vocal delivery and saxophone solos merited a portion of songwriter Gary Kemp’s royalties. They were unsuccessful, although Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, former drummer and bassist in The Smiths, <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-smiths-breakup-lawsuit-marr-morrissey-rourke/">claimed and won a greater share of the songwriting spoils</a> from Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr.</p>
<p>Intra-band disputes, however, don’t speak to the purpose of copyright in the same way as plagiarism suits. At issue for Sheeran was what counts as protectible under copyright.</p>
<p>Lyrics and melody have traditionally been the core musical features that enjoyed copyright protection. So when session singer Clare Torry won an out-of-court settlement from Pink Floyd over her vocal improvisation on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PMnJ_Luk_o">The Great Gig in the Sky</a>, her claim pertained to the “top-line melody” being her creation.</p>
<p>Likewise, George Harrison’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9wms6oEMo">My Sweet Lord</a> was found in 1976 to have infringed The Chiffons’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkhe0DW5Oc">He’s So Fine</a>, because there was a substantive passage in both songs where the melody was the same, and Harrison could viably be claimed to have been aware of the prior song. It wasn’t even deemed necessary for the copying to have been deliberate – the court acknowledged that plagiarism took place “<a href="https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/cases/1483">even though subconsciously accomplished</a>”.</p>
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<h2>Protecting past originality and future creativity</h2>
<p>The purpose of identifying copyrightable features of compositions is to incentivise creators, allowing them to profit from their originality. </p>
<p>Simultaneously, though, copyright was designed to benefit society by facilitating a common creative culture through a body of work in the public domain that others can draw on. This is why it is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0032321717706012">limited</a> in both time (how long a work remains under copyright) and scope (the specific elements that are protected).</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/lawyer-claims-smoking-gun-proof-29809833">smoking gun</a>” in the Sheeran case, according to the plaintiff’s legal team, was a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMDqYZebReo">live performance segueing between the songs</a> and demonstrating a shared a <a href="http://www.lotusmusic.com/lm_chordprogressions.html">I-iii-IV-V chord sequence</a>.</p>
<p>Sheeran’s defence claimed that such chord sequences are not protectible but, rather, the common currency of songwriting. As he showed in court, and as widely illustrated by musical and comedy performances, innumerable songs share such chord sequences.</p>
<figure>
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<p>Given this shared musical language and the constraints of popular music, like genre conventions or song length, a degree of similarity doesn’t automatically imply plagiarism. What’s more, musicians <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1367549417718206">learn by imitation and take inspiration</a> from the huge body of work that precedes them.</p>
<p>The legal question, then, isn’t whether two songs are similar, but whether the resemblance can be shown to reside in protectible elements of the prior work, and to constitute a substantial enough part of both songs to fall outside of being common currency. Is it a protracted rather than just a fragmentary stretch of melody, for instance?</p>
<p>Copyright suits in US circuit courts can set precedent. Indeed, it was findings against hip-hop artists’ early use of samples in the 1980s and 1990s that defined the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14797585.2017.1338277">need to license such samples</a>. </p>
<p>There are also debates about whether using <a href="https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/jetlaw/vol18/iss4/7/">juries of lay members of the public</a> is the best way to decide complex copyright disputes, especially where the protected status of musical elements is unclear or counter-intuitive.</p>
<p>This was the case with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLIxujmqCo">Blurred Lines</a>, where the song’s general feel and production were found to have <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/robin-thicke-pharrell-williams-blurred-lines-copyright-suit-final-5-million-dollar-judgment-768508/">breached copyright</a> in another Marvin Gaye song, <a href="https://youtu.be/qhFNY9zW2F4">Got To Give It Up</a>, despite a <a href="https://joebennett.net/2014/02/01/did-robin-thicke-steal-a-song-from-marvin-gaye/">lack of melodic or lyrical overlap</a> between them.</p>
<p>The risk is that lawsuits expand copyright’s remit, curtailing future creativity, especially for artists without deep pockets to sustain legal battles. This is why what was at stake in the Sheeran case was more than his artistic integrity or the musical distinctiveness of Let’s Get It On. Past originality is valuable and warrants protection, but so does the future, and the public domain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205354/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 and the British Academy</span></em></p>This case was about more than Sheeran’s artistic integrity; it was about protecting the common musical ‘currency’ that underpins all songwriting.Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1309802020-04-10T12:12:04Z2020-04-10T12:12:04ZInside the Beatles’ messy breakup, 50 years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326989/original/file-20200409-165427-i79n2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=100%2C8%2C1658%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who broke up with whom?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-beatles-celebrate-the-completion-of-their-new-album-sgt-news-photo/3297187?adppopup=true">Anurag Papolu/The Conversation via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fueling false reunion rumors that persisted well into the new decade. </p>
<p>In a press release on April 10, 1970 for his first solo album, “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/paul-mccartney/albums/mccartney/">McCartney</a>,” he leaked his intention to leave. In doing so, he shocked his three bandmates.</p>
<p>The Beatles had symbolized the great communal spirit of the era. How could they possibly come apart? </p>
<p>Few at the time were aware of the underlying fissures. The power struggles in the group had been mounting at least since their manager, Brian Epstein, died in August of 1967. </p>
<h2>‘Paul Quits the Beatles’</h2>
<p>Was McCartney’s “announcement” official? His album appeared on April 17, and its press packet included a mock interview. In it, McCartney <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1970/04/10/paul-mccartney-announces-the-beatles-split/">is asked</a>, “Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?”</p>
<p>His response? “No.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&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 Daily Mirror took McCartney at his word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Daily Mirror</span></span>
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<p>But he didn’t say whether the separation might prove permanent. The Daily Mirror nonetheless framed its headline conclusively: “Paul Quits the Beatles.” </p>
<p>The others worried this could hurt sales and sent Ringo as a peacemaker to McCartney’s London home to talk him down from releasing his solo album ahead of the band’s “Let It Be” album and film, which were slated to come out in May. Without any press present, McCartney <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1970/03/31/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-letter-john-lennon-george-harrison-let-it-be/">shouted Ringo off his front stoop</a>.</p>
<h2>Lennon had kept quiet</h2>
<p>Lennon, who had been active outside the band for months, felt particularly betrayed.</p>
<p>The previous September, soon after the band released “Abbey Road,” he <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/why-the-beatles-broke-up-113403/">had asked</a> his bandmates for a “divorce.” But the others convinced him not to go public to prevent disrupting some delicate contract negotiations. </p>
<p>Still, Lennon’s departure seemed imminent: He had played the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival with his Plastic Ono Band in September 1969, and on Feb. 11, 1970, he performed a new solo track, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQny1XxOdI">Instant Karma</a>,” on the popular British TV show “Top of the Pops.” Yoko Ono sat behind him, knitting while blindfolded by a sanitary napkin. </p>
<p>In fact, Lennon behaved more and more like a solo artist, until McCartney countered with his own eponymous album. He wanted Apple to release this solo debut alongside the group’s new album, “<a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/let-it-be">Let It Be</a>,” to dramatize the split. </p>
<p>By beating Lennon to the announcement, McCartney controlled the story and its timing, and undercut the other three’s interest in keeping it under wraps as new product hit stores.</p>
<p>Ray Connolly, a reporter at the Daily Mail, knew Lennon well enough to ring him up for comment. When I interviewed Connolly in 2008, he told me about their conversation. </p>
<p>Lennon was dumbfounded and enraged by the news. He had let Connolly in on his secret about leaving the band at his Montreal Bed-In in December 1969, but asked him to keep it quiet. Now he lambasted Connolly for not leaking it sooner. </p>
<p>“Why didn’t you write it when I told you in Canada at Christmas!” he exclaimed to Connolly, who reminded him that the conversation had been off the record. “You’re the f–king journalist, Connolly, not me,” snorted Lennon. </p>
<p>“We were all hurt [McCartney] didn’t tell us what he was going to do,” <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lennon-remembers-part-one-186693/">Lennon later told Rolling Stone</a>. “Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it! I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record…”</p>
<h2>It all falls apart</h2>
<p>This public fracas had been bubbling under the band’s cheery surface for years. Timing and sales concealed deeper arguments about creative control and the return to live touring. </p>
<p>In January 1969, the group had started a roots project tentatively titled “Get Back.” It was supposed to be a back-to-the-basics recording without the artifice of studio trickery. But the whole venture was shelved as a new recording, “Abbey Road,” took shape.</p>
<p>When “Get Back” was eventually revived, Lennon – behind McCartney’s back – brought in American producer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phil-Spector">Phil Spector</a>, best known for girl group hits like “Be My Baby,” to salvage the project. But this album was supposed to be band only – not embroidered with added strings and voices – and McCartney fumed when Spector added a female choir to his song “The Long and Winding Road.” </p>
<p>“Get Back” – which was renamed “Let it Be” – nonetheless moved forward. Spector mixed the album, and a cut of the feature film was readied for summer. </p>
<p>McCartney’s announcement and release of his solo album effectively short-circuited the plan. By announcing the breakup, he launched his solo career in advance of “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/let-it-be/">Let It Be</a>,” and nobody knew how it might disrupt the official Beatles’ project. </p>
<p>Throughout the remainder of 1970, fans watched in disbelief as the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0HfT_a3bIw">Let It Be</a>” movie portrayed the hallowed Beatles circling musical doldrums, bickering about arrangements and killing time running through oldies. The film finished with an ironic triumph – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/01/30/beatles-played-london-rooftop-it-wound-up-being-their-last-show/">the famous live set on the roof of their Apple headquarters</a> during which the band played “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and a joyous “One After 909.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Beatles played their last live show in a January 1969 concert staged for the documentary ‘Let It Be.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>The album, released on May 8, performed well and spawned two hit singles – the title track and “The Long and Winding Road” – but the group never recorded together again.</p>
<p>Their fans hoped against hope that four solo Beatles might someday find their way back to the thrills that had enchanted audiences for seven years. These rumors seemed most promising when <a href="https://longreads.com/2019/06/24/took-you-by-surprise-john-and-pauls-lost-reunion/">McCartney joined Lennon for a Los Angeles recording session</a> in 1974 with Stevie Wonder. But while they all played on one another’s solo efforts, the four never played a session together again. </p>
<p>At the beginning of 1970, autumn’s “Come Together”/“Something” single from “Abbey Road” still floated in the Billboard top 20; the “Let It Be” album and film helped extend fervor beyond what the papers reported. For a long time, the myth of the band endured on radio playlists and across several greatest hits compilations, but when John Lennon sang “The dream is over…” at the end of his own 1970 solo debut, “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/john-lennon-plastic-ono-band-108294/">John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band</a>,” few grasped the lyrics’ implacable truth. </p>
<p>Fans and critics chased every sliver of hope for the “next” Beatles, but few came close to recreating the band’s magic. There were prospects – first bands like Three Dog Night, the Flaming Groovies, Big Star and the Raspberries; later, Cheap Trick, the Romantics and the Knack – but these groups only aimed at the same heights the Beatles had conquered, and none sported the range, songwriting ability or ineffable chemistry of the Liverpool quartet.</p>
<p>We’ve been living in the world without Beatles ever since.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Riley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Unbridled ambition and bruised egos created an irreparable fissure.Tim Riley, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Journalism, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1240702019-10-01T20:25:32Z2019-10-01T20:25:32ZThe Beatles’ revolutionary use of recording technology in ‘Abbey Road’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295038/original/file-20191001-173375-wjvi1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A fan carries a copy of 'Abbey Road' as he traverses the infamous crosswalk that appears on the album's cover.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Beatles/e99384fb0ee949ef860494d82de0dd12/23/0">AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With its cheery singles, theatrical medley and <a href="https://www.biography.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_768/MTE5NDg0MDYyMjg5MTM1MTE5/bio_abbeyroad_promojpg.jpg">iconic cover</a>, The Beatles’ 11th studio album, “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/beatles-abbey-road-890229/">Abbey Road</a>,” holds a special place in the hearts of the band’s fans. </p>
<p>But as the album celebrates its 50th anniversary, few may realize just how groundbreaking its tracks were for the band.</p>
<p>In my forthcoming book, “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Recording-Analysis-How-the-Record-Shapes-the-Song/Moylan/p/book/9781138667068">Recording Analysis: How the Record Shapes the Song</a>,” I show how the recording process can enhance the artistry of songs, and “Abbey Road” is one of the albums I highlight.</p>
<p>Beginning with 1965’s “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/50-years-of-rubber-soul-how-the-beatles-invented-the-future-of-pop-59132/">Rubber Soul</a>,” The Beatles started exploring new sounds. This quest continued in “Abbey Road,” where the band was able to deftly incorporate emerging recording technology in a way that set the album apart from everything they had previously done.</p>
<h2>Sound in motion</h2>
<p>“Abbey Road” is the first album that the band released in stereo only.</p>
<p>Stereo was <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Inventor-of-Stereo-The-Life-and-Works-of-Alan-Dower-Blumlein/Alexander/p/book/9780240516288">established in the early 1930s</a> as a way to capture and replicate the way humans hear sounds. Stereo recordings contain two separate channels of sound – similar to our two ears – while mono contains everything on one channel. </p>
<p>Stereo’s two channels can create the illusion of sounds emerging from different directions, with some coming from the listener’s left and others coming from the right. In mono, all sounds are always centered.</p>
<p>The Beatles had recorded all their previous albums in mono, with stereo versions made without the Beatles’ participation. In “Abbey Road,” however, stereo is central to the album’s creative vision.</p>
<p>Take the opening minute of “Here Comes the Sun,” the first track on the record’s second side. </p>
<p>If you listen to the record on a stereo, George Harrison’s acoustic guitar emerges from the left speaker. It’s soon joined by several delicate synthesizer sounds. At the end of the song’s introduction, a lone synthesizer sound gradually sweeps from the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-and-Crafting-the-Mix-The-Art-of-Recording-3rd-Edition/Moylan/p/book/9780415842815">left speaker to the listener’s center</a>.</p>
<p>Harrison’s voice then enters in the center, in front of the listener, and is joined by strings located toward the right speaker’s location. This sort of sonic movement can only happen in stereo – and The Beatles masterfully deployed this effect.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="13" data-image="" data-title="The introduction to 'Here Comes the Sun' showcases stereo's range." data-size="218927" data-source="" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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The introduction to ‘Here Comes the Sun’ showcases stereo’s range.
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<p>Then there are Ringo Starr’s drums in “The End,” which fill the entire sonic space, from left to right. But each drum <a href="http://www.curvebender.com/rtb.html">is individually fixed in a separate position</a>, creating the illusion of many drums in multiple locations – a dramatic cacophony of rhythms that’s especially noticeable in the track’s drum solo.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="15" data-image="" data-title="'The End' peppers listeners' ears with a panoply of drums." data-size="242751" data-source="" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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‘The End’ peppers listeners’ ears with a panoply of drums.
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<h2>Enter: The synthesizer</h2>
<p>In the mid-1960s, an engineer named Robert Moog <a href="https://www.wqxr.org/story/moog-synthesizers-dynamic-musical-history/">invented the modular synthesizer</a>, a new type of instrument that generated unique sounds from oscillators and electronic controls that could be used to play melodies or enhance tracks with sound effects. </p>
<p>Harrison received a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-beatles-as-musicians-9780195129410?q=everett&lang=en&cc=us">demonstration of the device in October 1968</a>. A month later, he ordered one of his own.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295053/original/file-20191001-173337-d0fnki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Moog poses with one of his synthesizers in a 2000 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-North-Carolina-U-/3e77d51ac1e3da11af9f0014c2589dfb/9/0">AP Photo/Alan Marler</a></span>
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<p>The Beatles are among the very first popular musicians to use this revolutionary instrument. Harrison <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beatles-Recording-Sessions-Official-1962-1970/dp/B004UOC08C">first played it</a> during the “Abbey Road” sessions in August 1969, when he used it for the track “Because.”</p>
<p>The synthesizer ended up being used in three other tracks on the album: “Here Comes the Sun,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” </p>
<p>The Beatles didn’t incorporate the synthesizer for novelty or effect, as the Ran-Dells did in their 1963 hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAUuqpFLLvQ">Martian Hop</a>” and The Monkees did in their 1967 song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TCOggiUGHk&feature=youtu.be&t=82">Star Collector</a>.”</p>
<p>Instead, on “Abbey Road,” the band capitalizes on the synthesizer’s versatility, creatively using it to enhance, rather than dominate, their tracks. </p>
<p>In some cases, the synthesizer simply sounds like another instrument: In “Here Comes the Sun,” the Moog mimics the guitar. In other tracks, like “Because,” the synthesizer actually carries the song’s main melody, effectively replacing the band’s voices.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="10" data-image="" data-title="In 'Because,' the synthesizer mimics the voices of band members." data-size="171698" data-source="" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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In ‘Because,’ the synthesizer mimics the voices of band members.
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<h2>A dramatic pause</h2>
<p>In 1969, the LP record still reigned supreme. The Walkman – the device that made music a more private and portable experience – <a href="http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html">wouldn’t be invented for another 10 years</a>.</p>
<p>So when “Abbey Road” was released, people still listened to music in a room, either alone or with friends, on a record player.</p>
<p>The record had two sides; after the last song on the first side, you had to get up, flip the LP and drop the needle – a process that could take about a minute.</p>
<p>The Beatles, conscious of this process, incorporated this pause into the album’s overall experience.</p>
<p>“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” ends side one. It’s full of energetic sounds that span the entire left-to-right spectrum of stereo, bounce from lower to higher frequencies and include sweeps of white noise synthesizer. These sounds gradually amass throughout the course of the song, the tension growing – until it suddenly stops: the point at which John Lennon decided the tape should be cut. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="14" data-image="" data-title="The end of 'I Want You' is like the climax of a speech being cut off." data-size="228959" data-source="" data-source-url="" data-license="" data-license-url="">
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The end of ‘I Want You’ is like the climax of a speech being cut off.
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<p>The silence in the gap of time it takes to flip the LP allows the dramatic and sudden conclusion of side one to reverberate within the listener. </p>
<p>Then side two begins, and not with a bang: It’s the gentle, thin guitar of “Here Comes the Sun.” The transition represents the greatest contrast between any two tracks on the album. </p>
<p>That gap of silence between each side is integral to the album, an experience you can’t have listening to “Abbey Road” on Spotify.</p>
<p>“Abbey Road,” perhaps more than any other Beatles album, shows how a song can be poetically written and an instrument deftly played. But the way a track is recorded can be the artist’s final stamp on the song.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William D. Moylan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the album celebrates its 50th anniversary, an expert in sound recording details how the band deployed stereo and synthesizers to put a unique artistic stamp on this iconic album.William D. Moylan, Professor of Sound Recording Technology and Music, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1244332019-09-30T12:16:01Z2019-09-30T12:16:01ZBeatles: Abbey Road at 50 is a marker of how pop music grew up in the 1960s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294748/original/file-20190930-194829-xlqyt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C1%2C995%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imma Gambardella via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary re-issue of the seminal Beatles album Abbey Road – remixed and with a slew of alternative takes – along with the <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-reunite-abbey-road-celebrate-50th-anniversary-2551762">celebrations by surviving band-members</a> and fans alike, illustrates the recording industry’s preoccupation with <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/nostalgia-in-music-the-1975-charli-xcx-troye-sivan-1999-pop-queen-a8729266.html">nostalgia</a>. </p>
<p>It’s also an opportunity to cash in on both the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-album-at-70-a-format-in-decline-99581">vinyl resurgence and the wave of anniversaries</a> that accompanies the canonisation of Baby Boomer rock pioneers. The Beatles lead the pack but <a href="https://www.ledzeppelin.com/news/first-official-feature-length-led-zeppelin-documentary-1270591">Led Zeppelin</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2019/music/news/rolling-stones-let-it-bleed-50th-anniversary-exclusive-1203342975/">The Rolling Stones</a> have also put out anniversary re-releases and documentaries. </p>
<p>It’s easy to be cynical but Abbey Road is a musical moment with an anniversary that warrants marking. It received mixed reviews on release in September 1969. The Guardian found the record “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/oct/08/beatles-abbey-road-review-archive-1969">a slight matter</a>”, although Rolling Stone remarked that it showed that the band was “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140421055432/http:/www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/abbey-road-19691115">still unsurpassed</a>”. Commercially, there was no question. It entered the UK charts at number one, where it spent a total of 17 weeks, with similar performance internationally. </p>
<p>The album’s effect on musicians was both immediate and longstanding. Booker T and the MG’s recorded and released an instrumental cover of the album – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kQxJEBDR90XXxs3zOWts4Fy7XWaXfxVZc">McLemore Avenue</a> – within a year, featuring themselves crossing the road outside their own Stax Studios. Frank Sinatra, meanwhile, made “Something” a feature of his concerts for years, recording it twice and calling it “<a href="https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/something.html">the greatest love song of the last 50 years</a>”.</p>
<h2>Sublime swansong</h2>
<p>Abbey Road’s reach into the popular consciousness is long. It has immortalised the former EMI studios, now taking the name of their address, and the zebra crossing that featured on the iconic cover is <a href="https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk">a tourist attraction</a> today.</p>
<p>Its real emotional and musical weight, though, comes through the combination of songwriting and production craft with historical placement. Although Let It Be was released in 1970, Abbey Road was the <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/abbey-road">last album the band recorded</a> – a mixing session for Lennon’s portentous “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” was <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/08/20/mixing-editing-i-want-you-shes-so-heavy/">the last time</a> all four members were in the studio together.</p>
<p>They were mired in financial difficulties – their <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/apple-records-the-story/">Apple venture</a> (a portfolio of ventures from record label to a shortlived boutique) was struggling after a ramshackle launch period. Their increasingly divergent social and musical lives were also shot through with legal disagreements, and whether to take on Allen Klein as their manager – as favoured by Lennon, Starr and Harrison – or, McCartney’s preference, the Eastman family of his new wife Linda.</p>
<p>Their recording swansong followed fragmentary, disparate work on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-white-album-at-50-its-avant-garde-eclecticism-still-inspires-104505">1968’s White Album</a> and the fractious Get Back sessions in the early months of 1969. That was an attempt to rekindle their early, live energy first in Twickenham film studios and latterly their Apple building on Saville Row although it collapsed into discord, leaving hours of tape that would eventually surface as the 1970 album Let It Be, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/arts/album-review-getting-back-to-essentials-beatles-refuse-to-let-it-be.html">Phil Spector tasked with finishing the job</a>. </p>
<p>Work on Abbey Road in summer 1969 wasn’t free of discord but, unlike the preceding Twickenham sessions, it didn’t result in sloppy and incomplete recordings. This was due in no small part to the reinstatement of George Martin as producer and the band’s return to EMI studios. Martin instilled a sense of discipline. His involvement came <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/abbey-road">with the condition</a> that the band “let me produce it the way we used to”. </p>
<p>The band, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/15-legendary-unreleased-albums-67688/the-beatles-get-back-1969-160197/">unable to face returning to the Get Back tapes</a> – “none of us would go near them”, remarked Lennon – concurred. As Harrison <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KbY5AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=bob+spitz+the+beatles&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzvvOTrfjkAhVytHEKHSpJCFQQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=bob%20spitz%20the%20beatles&f=false">would recall</a>: “We decided, ‘Let’s make a good album again’.”</p>
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<p>It’s plausible that, sensing the end was near, they wanted to go out on a high. The extent to which Abbey Road was planned as a finale is debatable. As with much of the Beatles’ final days, matters are shrouded in contradiction. The mix of schoolboy friendships, working relationships, a strained legal partnership and creative inspiration meant that the months of recording were unlikely to be either unremitting contention or unbroken harmony. It’s also almost impossible to discount hindsight and the tendency to read their final moments as a band into the music – “The End"’s elegiac conclusion to the medley on side two in particular.</p>
<p>Regardless, they were reaching the end of the road. All were involved in solo projects by the time they recorded Abbey Road and Harrison and Starr had already temporarily left the band during recordings for the White Album and Get Back.</p>
<h2>End of an era</h2>
<p>Abbey Road, though, reveals the possibilities and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2014.969976">strengths of the "band” as format</a> – the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It’s the first time after perhaps Sergeant Pepper that their creative impetus is audible as merging across one another’s songs – the Beatles as an entity, beyond the group of individual musicians.</p>
<p>Abbey Road fuses song-craft and recording innovation with the confidence that the group dynamic brought to the table. Their first forays into eight-track tape and transistor technology gave the album a fuller sound than previously, while it was one of <a href="https://www.moogmusic.com/news/beatles-use-moog-synthesizer-abbey-road-sessions">the first mainstream albums to feature a synthesiser</a>. Sonically, it was as much the first album of the 1970s as an artefact of the late 1960s.</p>
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<p>Few, acts are as synonymous with a decade as the Beatles are with the 1960s. And while this is party historical accident – their creative collaboration ended with the decade – it also means that Abbey Road signposts the passing of one era into another. As we stumble uncertainly towards a new decade ourselves, there’s comfort in that album’s uneasy synthesis of sunshine and strife into a coherent musical statement.</p>
<p>In 1963, The Beatles had recorded their first album Please Please Me in one lightning 13-hour session. By the time they walked out onto the zebra crossing in 1969, they had expanded the parameters of popular music, helping to turn it a recording art form. Their success also solidified the concept of the band as a preeminent creative unit in popular music. Even at the end, they continued to point the way forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124433/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>Regarded as one of The Beatles finest albums, Abbey Road is the last time all four band members were in the studio together.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1045052018-11-20T11:56:01Z2018-11-20T11:56:01ZThe Beatles White Album at 50: its avant garde eclecticism still inspires<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245569/original/file-20181114-172710-19vnxrb.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">badgreeb via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For an LP with a plain white cover, the Beatles eponymous ninth studio album – more commonly referred to as the “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/the-beatles-white-album/">White Album</a>” – has generated a mass of symbolism since its release 50 years ago in November 1968.</p>
<p>With its glossy all-white gatefold cover, black inner sleeves and portraits of the Fab Four hidden inside the sleeve, the influence of the White Album can be traced across a huge range of cultural artefacts. For example, the author of New Journalism, Joan Didion, named her study of the end of the 1960s dream, <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n02/martin-amis/joan-didions-style">The White Album</a>. The starkness of the LP’s presentation seemed aligned to the collapse of post-war idealism documented by Didion’s book. </p>
<p>For cult leader Charles Manson, the record <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/charles-manson-how-cult-leaders-twisted-beatles-obsession-inspired-family-murders-107176/">contained a litany of hidden messages</a> that only he and The Beatles understood. George Harrison’s Piggies and Paul McCartney’s (admittedly crazed) Helter Skelter foretold the chaos of a bloody race war, a new apocalypse that Manson was to instigate and alone survive.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-50-the-beatles-white-album-remixed-106784">Revolution 50: The Beatles’ White Album remixed</a>
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<p>In 2004 Brian Joseph Burton, AKA Danger Mouse, issued <a href="https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/reviews-nme-7347">The Grey Album</a>, a mash-up of The Beatles and rapper Jay-Z’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/the-black-album-88686/">The Black Album</a>.</p>
<p>And, as if the cultural and commercial importance of the White Album could be doubted, a re-issue of the record to coincide with its 50th anniversary went into the Billboard top 200 <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8485591/the-beatles-white-album-returns-billboard-200-chart-top-10">with a bullet</a> at number six. Interestingly, of the 63,000 units sold in the week from November 9 to 16, 52,000 were in traditional album sales.</p>
<h2>After Sgt Pepper’s</h2>
<p>The album remains the Beatles’ most intriguing contribution to the art of sound. It’s hard to imagine in today’s landscape of remakes, sequels and parodies that the pop fans of the 1960s expected their favourite artists to keep moving forward and with each new recording to have developed something entirely fresh. So, the lush, psychedelic world of the previous LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with its iconic Peter Blake designed cover, was substituted by a stark minimalist aesthetic (albeit one created by another legendary <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/richard-hamilton-1244">British pop artist, Richard Hamilton</a>).</p>
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<p>The music inside Hamilton’s sleeve revealed a similar shift of gear. For practically the first time, Beatles songs appeared as solo efforts – some of the record’s 30 tracks had even been recorded by a single member of the band. This had occurred before (think of McCartney singing Yesterday accompanied by a string quartet or Harrison’s forays into Eastern mysticism) and yet for the first time the group was revealed as a collection of individuals rather than a well-oiled unit. </p>
<p>As the late Roy Carr, who co-wrote one of the best books on the group, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/627259.The_Beatles">The Beatles: an Illustrated Record</a>, put it, “on this double LP they act as each other’s session men”. The individual characters of each group member were also laid bare: Lennon’s dark cynicism, McCartney’s eclectic optimism, Harrison’s mysticism and Starr’s love of country music. The collaborative aspect of a pop/rock group dynamic had begun to dissolve. The White Album in fact marks the clearest instance of the disintegration of the Beatles as a group and was thus the springboard for the various solo careers of the band, with tantalising glimpses – good and bad – of what was to come in the years following the split.</p>
<p>It is the sprawling mixture of music and ideas on the record that makes is so fascinating, especially in hindsight. For example, Revolution 9 is a tape collage put together by Lennon and Yoko Ono echoing the experiments in this field by <a href="http://120years.net/the-grm-group-and-rtf-electronic-music-studio-pierre-schaeffer-jacques-poullin-france-1951/">RTF and GRM in France</a> and the <a href="https://www.soundonsound.com/people/story-bbc-radiophonic-workshop">BBC Radiophonic Workshop</a> in the UK and reviewed by the NME at the time as a “pretentious piece of old codswallop”. Birthday and Helter Skelter contain distorted blasts of guitar <a href="https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/is_helter_skelter_really_the_first_metal_song_ever_made_paul_mccartney_replies.html">prefiguring Heavy Metal</a>. McCartney was here trying to top The Who: “Pete Townshend said I Can See For Miles was the dirtiest, filthiest record ever, so we were trying to out-filth The Who.”</p>
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<p>There is also Lennon and McCartney’s trademark virtuoso vocal performances set to new diverse means (I’m So Tired, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Martha My Dear) and moments of great beauty such as Lennon’s <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/julia/">tribute to his deceased mother</a>: Julia.</p>
<h2>Growing pleasures</h2>
<p>The Beatles’ closet allies though believed they had gone too far. Their producer, <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-martin/">George Martin</a>, probably recalling the perfection of albums such as “Revolver” (1966), famously declared on the Anthology documentary: “I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double,” while stalwart engineer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/03/beatles-recording-engineer-geoff-emerick-dies-age-72">Geoff Emerick</a> described the LP as “unlistenable”. </p>
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<p>Yet ultimately it is the messiness and eclecticism of the White Album that makes it so great – an aspect I tried to capture in <a href="https://headpress.com/product/the-beatles-white-album/">my book</a> of individual reflections on the songs on the LP by artists, poets, academics and performers. The White Album is perhaps the truest deconstruction of The Beatles as a unique group of musicians that we have.</p>
<p>And still the LP continues to fascinate. New York artist <a href="http://rutherfordchang.com/white.html">Rutherford Chang</a>’s response to the record is an obsessive project. Since 2006, Chang has collected as many copies of the LP as he can, no matter the state of decay (he currently holds around 2,200 copies). In fact, it is the individual modifications (markings and collaging on the cover, and so on) that make the collection so unique. Chang has also sonically layered multiple copies of the LP one on top of another so that those so familiar songs become unrecognisable – a phased mush of noise. </p>
<p>This is precisely the kind of iconoclastic experimentation that the Beatles themselves hoped to achieve with the original 1968 project. </p>
<p>The White Album may have contained the first hints at the limits to the Beatles longevity as a group. But its avant garde eclecticism, or what <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/story-tags/barry-miles">Beatles biographer Barry Miles</a> referred to as “multipurpose Beatle music”, is one of the very things that ensures their work continues to inspire and provoke creativity 50 years on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Goodall 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 its release, the Beatles’ White Album continues to inspire and provoke creativity.Mark Goodall, Senior Lecturer Film and Media, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/875472017-12-22T13:43:31Z2017-12-22T13:43:31ZMagical Mystery Tour: a rare Beatles flop – but it paved the way for Monty Python<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200393/original/file-20171221-15883-z7wx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/november-8-2015-vector-illustration-beatles-337587353?src=JlUF0ktJHM7Ufa4zmEapnw-1-2">Shutterstock/Anita Ponne</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was <a href="http://theconversation.com/sgt-peppers-at-50-the-greatest-thing-you-ever-heard-or-just-another-album-77458">much celebrated in 2017</a>. But this Christmas also marks 50 years since the release of another Beatles production that received much less critical acclaim – the Magical Mystery Tour film. </p>
<p>Much of the music within it was produced during a particularly fecund period (even by the Beatles’ standards) and is, or course, peerless – from the music hall echoes of Your Mother Should Know through the plaintive, melodic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGEX_7IqaC4">Fool on the Hill</a> to the boundary breaking <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKIs1J_nB4A">I Am the Walrus</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the film itself fell far short of that artistic bar. First broadcast on Boxing Day 1967, it is, to put it mildly, seriously flawed. Incoherent, sexist, technically shaky and verging on boring, history hasn’t been kind to its cinematic qualities. </p>
<p>Contemporary reviews and audience responses were also so generally scathing that Paul McCartney was moved to issue an apology of sorts to the television broadcast’s 20m viewers. He said in a <a href="http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db67.html">hastily convened interview</a>:</p>
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<p>We don’t say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. We’ll know better next time.</p>
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<p>Matters weren’t helped by the Beatles’ psychedelic, colourful exploration being broadcast in black and white on BBC1. A repeat on BBC2 (then the only colour TV service) a few days later did little to redress the situation, if only because there were <a href="https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/colour-lauches-in-the-uk/">fewer than 200,000 colour sets</a> in the UK at the time. </p>
<h2>Pushing institutional boundaries</h2>
<p>For all the defensiveness of McCartney’s response (“You could hardly call the Queen’s speech a gasser”) they do point towards some retrospectively mitigating aspects of the Magical Mystery Tour film. </p>
<p>The film’s distinctly British surrealism and cavalcade of barking sergeant majors, fat aunts, dolly birds, wacky racers and midgets clearly prefigured Monty Python’s explosion of absurdity into mainstream television. </p>
<p>Indeed, George Harrison said later on that he saw Monty Python as a <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-things-you-didnt-know-george-harrison-did-w452593">continuation of the spirit of the Beatles</a>. He also funded some of their films, including The Meaning of Life – whose notorious <a href="https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/terry-jones-talks-about-playing.jpg">Mr Creosote sketch</a> has visual echoes of a scene in Magical Mystery Tour where John Lennon, dressed as a waiter, serves pasta to Ringo’s fictional Aunt Jessie <a href="http://www.magicalmysterytour.com/wp-content/gallery/what-happened-lisa-uploads/siteedp4317-045-mf.png">by the spade full</a>.</p>
<p>What the Pythons added to the mix were sharply honed scripts. Magical Mystery Tour, by contrast, was almost entirely ad-libbed from a <a href="http://www.magicalmysterytour.com/wp-content/gallery/piechart2/piechart-911x1024.jpg">one-page diagram</a>. The Beatles’ skill as writers and arrangers was poured into their music instead. </p>
<p>Something else the Pythons had, and which the Beatles lacked, was the benefit of Oxbridge educations. Magical Mystery Tour’s sensibility was more rooted in working class entertainment and tropes than the Pythons’ Oxbridge-infused references. </p>
<p>The very concept of a coach journey – albeit one largely filmed at a decommissioned RAF base – was based on the “charabanc” trips (<a href="http://onabbeyroad.com/0mmt2.html">group bus excursions</a>) of the band members’ childhoods.</p>
<p>The film evokes the past – both a British past in general and, more specifically, as filtered through the Beatles’ own histories. It certainly shows them pushing the boundaries of what a rock band of four Liverpudlians (whose post-school education essentially took place in the nightclubs of Hamburg) could attempt, both artistically and institutionally. Their commercial and creative clout allowed them to broadcast the film during a key annual peak slot for British television viewing.</p>
<h2>Prime time</h2>
<p>Magical Mystery Tour occupied a particular space in the history of mass entertainment – from the “end of the pier” shows, through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill">Donald McGill</a> postcards that George Orwell defended against artistic snobbery, to the anarchic weirdness of the likes of Mr Blobby on Saturday night TV. </p>
<p>The Beatles infused that particular strand of entertainment with the forward looking experimentalism of their music, while retaining a characteristic, widely recognisable Britishness. It was this that paved the road for Python and others to follow.</p>
<p>That Magical Mystery Tour was their first real failure since breaking through into the mainstream was also partly a matter of practicalities. While still flowering creatively, they were logistically rudderless after the death earlier that year of their manager Brian Epstein. </p>
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<p>Their lack of understanding of the demands of editing a film foreshadowed their later <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/apple-the-short-strange-blossoming-of-the-beatles-dream-2113050.html">business-related shortcomings</a>, notably the Apple boutique and record label. If the latter of these was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/neil-aspinall-beatles-friend-and-road-manager-who-became-the-boss-of-apple-800235.html">revived to become the familiar Beatles brand of today</a>, it was initially a costly failure that contributed to the band’s demise.</p>
<p>But while the film may have overreached, it still demonstrates a clear broadening of mainstream creative boundaries. Popular music fans were certainly receptive to their successful experiments. And even if the broader television public was less ready for a caustic, psychedelic vision of Britain in prime time during the Christmas holidays, Magical Mystery Tour still stands as a useful cultural document. </p>
<p>The Beatles being what they ultimately became, there’s much to be gleaned from their falls as well as their flights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>The Fab Four made a less than fabulous film.Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.