¶ … Beatles
The early takes of the Beatles music would not, upon first glance, inspire in the listener's mind the image group that would become the greatest rock music band ever to exist. Instead, the group's sound strikes one as formless and often imitative of American music. This sense of imitative American rock n' roll actually stood the group in good stead, however, as the Beatles eventually blended its early attempts at rockabilly with the then-British popular music scene. The more rough than refined rockabilly sound and the Liverpool strains as typified by other bands of the era such as The Animals, combined with a sense of humor that was the Beatles' own, conspired to create such upbeat yet soulful-sounding hits as "Love me do," and "Money Can't Buy me Love."
If this style were all the Beatles as a musical group had accomplished over their history, the Fab Four would be a notable footnote to the music of the 1960's, rather than stand as a testimony to historical musical greatness for all time. The humor that characterized the early sounds of the Beatles was later fused into a new kind of sound itself that transcended simple fads, through hits like "I am the Walrus," and "Strawberry Fields." The emotional longing of the early Beatles sound was shackled to a more intellectual spirit and a more probing interest into the limits of popular music and structuring of the popular musical consciousness of the 1960's. The soul of Paul McCarthy and the mind of John Lennon were able to combine in unique accord to lay bare the current cultural questions of freeing one's consciousness beyond mere rebellion, and to search for a purpose of why one was alive, and the limits of government, in such hits as "Revolution," and "A Day in the Life." Finally, different members of the group had found different voices.
Early Beatles, after the band's initial rocky start, was imitative. Late Beatles however, took popular music itself to its farthest conceptual limits. Early Beatles was of the street, of genuinely popular folk music such as rock n' roll. Late Beatles was a phenomenon in and of itself, embracing religion and straining the limits of the conventionally sold album and the discourse of Western music itself, fusing Eastern as well as Western musical harmonies into its mix.
