PTPOP - A Mind Revolution

Unraveling The Beatles: Myth, Music, and Cultural Revolution

• PTPOP • Season 6 • Episode 9

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What if the story of The Beatles isn't exactly as we've been told? Join us as we unravel the complexities behind their meteoric rise from Liverpool lads to global icons of cultural change. We challenge the official narrative, sharing personal tales of Beatlemania and scrutinizing their enigmatic transformation. With a special nod to John Lennon, we explore how these four musicians not only wrote the soundtrack of the 1960s but also stood at the helm of the British Invasion, altering the soundscape of popular music and youth culture alongside legendary acts like The Kinks and The Rolling Stones.

Our journey continues as we delve into The Beatles' revolutionary impact on music, breaking down their approach as a self-contained band that penned their own songs, a defiant move against an industry reliant on pre-written hits. Discover how their groundbreaking albums like "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" pushed the boundaries of pop, introducing novel sounds and redefining what an album could be. We dissect their legacy, from studio wizardry with George Martin to their influence on contemporary artists who saw The Beatles as the blueprint for musical creativity and expression.

Beyond music, The Beatles' societal influence was profound. Through their platform, they championed civil rights, voiced anti-war sentiments, and mirrored the counterculture's embrace of psychedelics and Eastern spirituality. We reflect on how their evolution in fashion and gender norms challenged the status quo, inspiring a new wave of self-expression and rebellion. As we unpack these layers, we ponder whether their global influence was a spontaneous cultural shift or a meticulously orchestrated phenomenon. Engage with us in this probing conversation that questions the very fabric of The Beatles' legacy.

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Speaker 1:

Hey there everybody. Pt Pop here with All Four Loaves, my Brain engulfed in Beatlemania and today I'm going to be talking about the Beatles' impact on culture. Got a great show for you. Alert the media, wake the dog, tell the kids it's going to be a fun show. Do you like fries with that? Do you like fries with that?

Speaker 1:

In my previous live streams and my previous videos, I've discussed the Beatles' impact on America, the Beatles' impact on me, and I've questioned how did a band of four guys end up number one, getting famous, and how did they end up having so much power over the world? How did they have so much influence on our cultures, on our lives, on our minds, on our emotions? And I wanted to take a deep dive into this, to try to go over it in more detail. Now I'm going to just jump right into this, but before I get into this, if you like what I do, if you enjoy what you see here on my channel, please give me the thumbs up, like and subscribe, tell your friends about the channel, get people to come and watch it, and if you have ideas of what you want me to do on here, send me a direct message at skatingbearstudios at gmailcom that's skatingbearstudios at gmailcom and I'll be glad to take a look at your ideas. And you know this is a lot of fun to do for me but it cost me money to make. This takes a lot of time, a lot of money. If you have the extra cashola and you'd like to make a donation, feel free to do so by joining here as a member of this channel or making you know paying for a membership on my Patreon channel. Links to both will be in the description of this video.

Speaker 1:

So I'm a huge Beatles fan. I was a huge John Lennon fan. I looked up to John Lennon, I idolized him. I idolized all four Beatles well into my 30s and into my very early 40s, until I began to question the official narrative. Now I actually kind of always questioned the official narrative because in 1978, the Beatles released an album called Live at the Star Club and when I first heard this recording I was in fifth grade. Maybe it wasn't 70 yet I think it was 77.

Speaker 1:

So I was in fifth or sixth grade when I first heard this and I was stunned by how awful the band sounded. Now people today will hear that album and go. It's a very raw album of the Beatles, you have to understand. It was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder at the back of the club one night and it's a very raw recording and that's how they kind of pass it off, as if that makes it okay.

Speaker 1:

But I was very shocked because when I was in fifth, sixth grade, I was at the peak of my Beatle fanaticism, my Beatle obsession, and I heard this band and I said that's the Beatles. I mean, I actually didn't even recognize it as being the band that I had heard for several years already and I thought, wow, that's the band. And keep in mind, at the time I wasn't a musician, I had never picked up the guitar. I had a toy guitar I played with and I didn't know how to read music. I didn't know how to write songs. I had never written or played or anything that wouldn't happen for several more years. So I was questioning the official narrative from that point forward and I always wondered how a band that sounded that rough the rough band at the Star Club, could end up getting so big within a couple of years of that show at the Star Club. And I was very, very. I was very, I guess you would say, skeptical about it. And as I've gotten older I've began to question the official narrative of the Beatles and much of that recently has been inspired by the work of Mike Williams on the Sage of Quay radio channel here on YouTube and I urge you to check out Mike Williams' work. He's a great guy and he's a brilliant guy and he's done an immense amount of work to put forth a narrative that the Beatles may not be the band that we all thought they were, and I kind of look at myself as a graduate of Mike Williams' class, Mike Williams' studies on the Beatles' narrative and a variety of other things, including DePaul is Dead, quote, conspiracy unquote.

Speaker 1:

But the Beatles had an immense impact on culture and that's putting it lightly. And their impact on culture didn't happen just during their years active as a band in the 1960s, but their influence went well beyond the 1960s and their influence influenced music, politics, social norms, all kinds of things. I mean their arrival in the US in 1964, it sparked what many of you know of as the British invasion and of course that's a play on the original British invasion when America was becoming a country and we were fighting the British back in the 1700s. But this British invasion was spearheaded by the Beatles and it altered the landscape of popular music, youth culture and even larger social norms around the world. And that included bands like the Kinks, the Stones, the who. You know all of those bands and you've all heard of those bands, and I'm a fan of all those bands. I wasn't a fanatic for them, like I am the Beatles, but I was a big Kinks fan Still am Kinks and the who fan. I've never been a big Stones fan. I've never really found the Stones to be all that intriguing. When I was really little I liked them, but as I've gotten older, it's like they sound like they're playing the same songs over and over and over again. They've never really evolved, but that's a whole other story. Now. They revolutionized popular music. Now you have to consider a couple things.

Speaker 1:

Before the Beatles got here, there were other bands and other artists that had screaming girls and fanaticism surrounding them, and one of the big, big names is Frank Sinatra, and if you don't know who Sinatra is, you've got to crawl out from underneath your rock and check him out. He was a brilliant singer and entertainer from the 30s, 40s and 50s and beyond. He did songs like Fly Me to the Moon. But Frank was an entertainer. He wasn't a songwriter and he was a singer and he worked with great composers that wrote songs for him. He worked with what's called the Great American Songbook and that included. Songwriters he worked with were Cole Porter, sammy Kahn, jimmy Van Heusen, harold Arlen, rogers and Hart and he created with them. He sang the songs they wrote and turned them into timeless standards and they're still played on the radio and everybody knows these songs to this day. But he had these screaming girls and fans called Bobby Soxers that would line up and throw themselves at them and faint and swoon and all that stuff.

Speaker 1:

But after Sinatra in the 1950s came Elvis, elvis Presley and I'm not going to go into the history of Elvis Presley. We should all know. Most of you know who Elvis is and who Sinatra was or who these guys were, because they both passed away. But Elvis Presley was also a performer. He was the consummate performer. I mean both these guys, sinatra and Elvis had the complete package. But Elvis really had this charisma, this look, this energy that was unseen and unheard before in the entertainment world. And you know he had the whole package. He had everything. But he didn't write any of his songs. He worked on a few of his songs with his songwriters, but his songs were primarily written by a team of professional songwriters including Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, which is the Lieber and Stoller famous songwriting duo, otis Blackwell, doc Palmas and Mort Schumann and others. So these two guys that had such huge fandom in the United States and around the world didn't write their own music. They were known as entertainers, crooners, singers and really good-looking guys. They were known as entertainers, crooners, singers and really good looking guys, and both artists were interpreters of the highest order. I mean, they were taking songs written by others and elevating them into iconic performances. That started the shaping of the future of music and it's really interesting to see.

Speaker 1:

After Elvis, the Beatles arrived on the scene right and the Beatles were a self-contained band who allegedly wrote their own songs. This was unheard of in the music business up to this point, other than Buddy Holly. I think Buddy Holly wrote his own music. He wrote and performed his own music, but he didn't have near the impact that Elvis or Sinatra did and he was just one guy. But I think Buddy Holly wrote his songs with Perry. I can't remember the man's first name. I think a lot of the songs are like Holly and Perry. I might have the wrong name. I think a lot of the songs are like Holly and Perry. I might have the wrong name, but the Beatles arrived, these four guys from England who allegedly wrote their own songs, and this revolutionized the approach of rock and roll.

Speaker 1:

And what did this do? In the process, like myself and millions and millions of other men and women and boys and girls around the world, it inspired millions of us to write, perform and record their own original material. Now, myself, I became a songwriter in 1990, 1990, but I didn't start really pursuing it until 1992. But I've written over 150 songs and released five CDs of original music. Am I famous? No, I'm not famous and I have no qualms about that. I don't want to be famous. When I was a kid, sure I wanted to be famous. I thought I wanted to be Beatle, like a Beatle with Beatlemania, and the Beatles inspired me. But as a self-contained group who wrote their own songs, they influenced so many people and so many things. I mean everybody got it in their mind.

Speaker 1:

Because when you hear the Beatles' story, you hear that they did know how to read music, that you didn't need to know music. You didn't need to to read music, that you didn't need to know music. You didn't need to understand music theory, you didn't need to understand staff and bars and time signatures. You didn't have to understand any of that stuff. You could just pick up a guitar, teach yourself a few chords and learn to play the guitar and that would be it. That was everything, and you could be like a beetle, shake your head like a beetle.

Speaker 1:

So it gave this impression to young men and women around the world that hey, if they can do it, if four nobodies from Liverpool, england, working class guys that live near poverty it was portrayed that at least a couple of them were poor, from broken homes could pick up a guitar, just learn to play a few songs and get famous, hey, anybody could do it. It gave the impression that anyone could do it and you know they took their influences. Now they were influenced by genres you know, like rock and roll, of course, blues, folk, later on Indian music, later on orchestral arrangements, which eventually turned into psychedelia and they pushed the boundaries of what was possible in pop music at the time because prior to the Beatles, Elvis, sinatra, they didn't go off into psychedelic stuff. Psychedelic wasn't even known. They weren't playing Indian instruments in their songs.

Speaker 1:

And in later years the Beatles would eventually branch out with experimental albums like Rubber Soul and Revolver. And what this did, these two albums were, you know, ahead of their time because they did what's called album-oriented rock or concept albums. They helped invent concept albums as an album form of art, because in the old days a band like Elvis Elvis would release an album and he'd have one single and the single would be on the album and the single would be released separately. But the single was the big song that everybody knew, like Hound Dog. Now don't get me, don't get me, I'm not an Elvis fan, so I don't know his records. But I know he'd have an album and there'd only be one good song on it that anybody would listen to. The rest were like throwaways. But everybody knew Hound Dog. Now I don't know specifically if that song was on an album, I'm just showing you what it's like. So he'd record an album of songs that nobody else knew about, but they knew Han Dog. With the Beatles they'd release an album like Revolver, and people would want to listen to this album from beginning to end and they wanted to listen to all the music on it. Same with Rubber Soul, and same with some of their earlier records too, where they had cover tunes. They still did cover tunes on some of their albums, but they were the leaders in that they brought that to the forefront of music.

Speaker 1:

Albums became an art form. They weren't an art form before. The idea before was to get one good song, get it to the top of the charts, get your name out there and keep releasing singles. You throw out an album out there and people would buy both, but most people would toss the album aside and not want to listen to it. And of course I'm summarizing quite a bit. I can't tell you what everybody did around the world with their Elvis or their Sinatra albums. I've never heard an entire Sinatra album. I've never heard an entire Sinatra album. I've heard the best of Sinatra. I have best of Sinatra albums and I had a best of Elvis album, but you know I never got to listen to it much.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it comes to the concept album the Beatles they pioneered concept albums and the first concept album allegedly of all time was Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Now this is one of the first concept albums where the songs were allegedly tied together throughout the album. You know weaving a story throughout the whole thing. Okay, it also helped push psychedelic, psychedelic things, psychedelic drugs, lsd. The album cover art was very brightly colored. It was kind of like an acid trip funeral or something like that and it influenced bands like Pink Floyd, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, which I'm not going to go into them either. But if you listen to Sgt Pepper's after the first song or two, none of the others are really connected unless you're on some type of. You're on the inside and you know what the album's about.

Speaker 1:

When I was a kid I first heard this album in 1975 when I was nine years old, and when I put it on my record player I couldn't even tell it was the Beatles. I was like I saw the album cover art and it kind of looked like them and John didn't look like John. To me Paul looked a little bit odd. The only two that I thought still looked like Beatles were George and Ringo and I remember seeing that. I thought that the album looked dark and dreary and just mysterious and the album sounded murky, poorly mixed, dark and hideous kind of sound to a nine-year-old's ears. Now, keep in mind, when you're a kid you have no filters really and you can process things and you can kind of take it and say things and see things as they really are, because you're not really that heavily influenced yet by society and by culture that you're living in, yet by society and by culture that you're living in. So when I talk about what I heard and I saw from my own ears and eyes as a nine-year-old, it's a pretty accurate reflection of how I really saw the album. Now the rest of the world portrays that album as this earth-shattering breakthrough in musical history.

Speaker 1:

But after the first two songs the wrists aren't really attached to anything. I mean you've got Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the intro song which leads into With a Little Help from my Friends, you know. You've got the introduction of Bailey Shears, which I'm not going to go into that but which leads into Loosing the Sky with Diamonds. Then you go on to Getting Better Fixing Holes. She's Leaving Home Mr Kite Within you, without you, so on and so forth, and it ends with A Day in the Life. None of the songs are connected but for some reason people back then heard this one whoa man. This blows my mind. It's a great concept album. There was. This blows my mind. It's a great concept album. There was no such thing as a concept album at the time. Myself, this is my least favorite Beatle record. I don't get it. I've never understood it. I didn't like it as a nine year old and it's one of the very few albums that I'd ever would put on and listen to all the way through. That Magical Mystery Tour, magical Mystery Tour, sgt Pepper's and Yellow Submarine are just abysmal albums. Yellow Submarine isn't even really an album because they mixed in all that George Martin Pepperland crap like they did on the Hard Day's Night release and the Help release of the movie soundtracks of those albums. They put the George Martin instrumental pieces in there.

Speaker 1:

The Beatles were also known all of a sudden to be a band that used the studio as an instrument. Okay, prior to the Beatles, nobody really thought about the recording process. Nobody sat down and said I wonder how Elvis recorded Blue Hawaii. You know, I wonder how Elvis recorded Blue Hawaii. I wonder how Sinatra sang and recorded Fly Me to the Moon. I did it my way. Nobody cared. They didn't care what microphones they used. They didn't care who the drummer was or who was on bass, who played saxophone, any of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

But the Beatles started to use the studio as an instrument, and, in a way, it transformed the way music was produced. Not in a way it did. It transformed the way music was produced all over the world. They were the first to integrate multi-track recording, overdubs and tape loops and experimental sounds, especially with their producer, george Martin. George Martin, though, was a classically trained musician, and he primarily worked with the Goon Show, with Peter Sellers and Mike Mulligan of the Goons, and so he was known for more, and they were a comedy group, so he was more known for working with sound effects and funny sounds and comedy records. I'm not quite certain how he got to produce the Beatles.

Speaker 1:

You go from the Goons show to the Beatles and I'm like, okay, that's kind of a big leap, but all right, and they did all their work at Ebrew Road Studios in London, and they did all their work at Every Road Studios in London, and their studio innovations influenced generations of artists and producers like myself. Now, I'm not famous, but there's millions and millions of guys just like me that aren't famous, that were influenced by the Beatles and opened up home recording studios. I've got a studio here, a makeshifter studio. It's not really professional, but I've recorded songs here that are pretty good. You can do a lot of stuff now at home that you couldn't do 50 years ago at home unless you had lots of money.

Speaker 1:

And the funny thing is now, keep in mind this is just a band. This is just four guys. They're portrayed if you believe the official story they're just portrayed as four regular guys that just had a dream of being rock and rollers and wanted to go to the topper-most, popper-most of everything. Right, just four lads to go to the topper-most, popper-most. And they somehow got there. They stumbled, they just stumbled into it after just schlepping around these dank, dark halls in Germany and London just pounding out cover tunes, mostly cover tunes. 90% of the repertoire was cover tunes. They didn't play many of their original tunes and they weren't known as songwriters. Up to this point they weren't. They were known as a cover band, and not a very good one at that.

Speaker 1:

Now, keep in mind George Martin is quoted as saying that when he first met the Beatles and first heard them, he didn't think much of them. He thought they were garbage. He thought they were garbage and their sound was garbage and he didn't want to produce them. I'm not going to go down that alleyway because there's lots of little alleyways to go off on here, but I'm going to kind of stick them under the culture now. Now, the Beatles, these four rough guys. They polished them up, they give them haircuts, they put them in Italian collar suits, they give them these ankle-high boots that are eventually called beetle boots, and so they start to shape youth culture and counterculture.

Speaker 1:

Now, at the time there was a thing called beatniks or the beat culture, which was like a bunch of beatniks and poets and they'd sit in coffee shops smoking brown cigarettes, drinking coffee with bongos going. Man, that is cool stuff, man, hey, man, did you hear the one about the spider and the flea? And they're sitting there with the guitars and stuff like that. But the arrival of the Beatles has been coined and phrased as being a cultural earthquake. You can see this in all the tabloids and stuff from back then. That triggering it triggered Beatlemania, and it's portrayed that their youthful energy and their style captivated millions of teenagers, turning the Beatles into global symbols of a youth rebellion and freedom. And this is what I don't understand. Okay, and again, in another video I talked about what our culture was like at the time.

Speaker 1:

America was a very clean-cut society, very Christian society, predominantly white, but it was very segregated. So there was a black part of town and a white part of town and the white people or the black people weren't permitted to drink out of white drinking fountains. They had to drink out of black drinking fountains and they had to sit at the back of the bus. When they got on the bus with the white people. There's all kinds of things like that. That went on and they had no rights. They couldn't vote, they were treated like dogs and the country was segregated. But overall it was a pretty peaceful country. Post-war World War II America there was a boom of industry.

Speaker 1:

A guy could get out of the war, go get a job, work for 30 years and retire with a pension, one source of income. The father worked, the mother stayed at home, raised the kids it was all sunshine and puppy dogs and rainbows, or so it was portrayed and the kids. If you had a home like that where the dad worked, the kids had a roof over their head, they had money, they had food in the kids. If you had a home like that where the dad worked, you know the kids had a roof over their head, they had money, they had food in the fridge, they had a new car. In the driveway they had a dog and TV set and the whole thing. And people lived this way and the dad would come home like my mom and dad.

Speaker 1:

My dad was a war vet. He went to college, met my mom in college. He graduated, she dropped out of school, they got hitched, had my brother in 1950, and they had a house in the suburbs here in Cleveland and pick a white fence and they had my sister and my brother. Then I was born like eight years later and they weren't living happily ever after, but they put forth the image that they were. But on my dad's salary, working in advertising for the Cleveland Press, he was able to buy brand new cars and, I guess, new houses, I think with a little help from my mom's side of the family, because my mom's side of the family at one time had some money. But there was this portrayal that everybody had back then where the dad was the breadwinner. The mother stayed at home and cooked and brought dad a martini and sat and rubbed his feet after a long, hard day at work, while he sat in his armchair and smoked a pipe and watched Walter Cronkite on the news.

Speaker 1:

And so what I'm trying to figure out is when they say that the Beatles were this global symbols of youth, rebellion and freedom. Now, I wasn't alive until 1965, but I'm trying to figure out what did they have to rebel against these kids? They rebelled against a successful father who broke his back and his butt to bring home money so you could have food on the table and you could have a wagon to run up and down the driveway in and a tricycle and, you know, you could have a nice house and you could go on vacation once a year and all the things that you know that you have. I mean, what were they rebelling about? What was the freedom? How were they being held back? And I don't understand it. I don't understand why would this band inspire symbols of youth, rebellion and freedom? Look at our country. Since the youth rebellion and freedom. If the Beatles inspired this, our country's falling apart because of rebellion and freedom. Right now, our country is falling apart because there's not a father in most households.

Speaker 1:

I didn't have a father in my household. My father was laying drunk in the gutter somewhere while I was being born and he wasn't a part of my life at all. When he was around. He was unconscious and at times my mother was too. So I was kind of raised by a half-sober mother and kind of my sister and one brother, you know.

Speaker 1:

The family unit began to fall apart. So you know, and it wasn't just me I knew lots of guys. All my friends had broken homes. All my friends did Broken homes. I had one friend whose parents were swingers. You know they openly would read the book the Joy of Sex, which was a big popular book in the 70s. They had it out in their bedroom. My friend Dave and I would go in and look at the Joy of Sex. These are wild people but my point is okay.

Speaker 1:

So the family unit was strong. The family unit was stable. You only needed one source of income to have a house, a car, food, pay all the bills, the insurance. The mother could stay at home, raise the kids. You had a strong, stable environment with security, mental and emotional security for the most part. Let's take out all the other factors like spousal abuse that was going on at the time and extreme addiction to pills for the women and addiction to alcohol. But let's just take it at face value. It was a great, happy home life.

Speaker 1:

What did they have to rebel against.

Speaker 1:

Look at the houses. Now Nobody has a dad anymore. People are getting divorced at an exponential rate. Today, more than 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Today the African-American people have equality on paper anyway, right, but most of the black kids are raised by their moms because the dad took off or they got divorced or whatever it happens. The same thing in the white community it's not just the black people.

Speaker 1:

My dad was not around and I'm as white as the German snow and I can tell you that if the Beatles are responsible for youth rebellion and freedom, it's undermined the integrity of our country, it's ruined us. But that's just my opinion. So I guess they were rebelling against a stable, stable parents, a stable economy, good paying jobs and secure jobs and no war. There was no war in 1945. After 1945 there was no war until like 1965. So for 10 years or 20 years we were not at war. Beatles show up all of a sudden. Oh my God, we're in Vietnam. Oh my God, the world's falling apart.

Speaker 1:

But the Beatles somehow became this rallying point for the emerging youth culture. I mean, what is this rallying point? Youth culture? I don't understand why the youth were so miserable. I guess they resented authority. They resented their parents for giving them a good life, not giving them the freedom to be who they wanted to be. Like Dad, I don't want to work at the newspaper, I want to go out and be a Beatle.

Speaker 1:

Music was a form of self-expression and resistance to the more conservative traditional values of the post-World War II generation. You know, my dad was World War II. My mom was a World War II person from that generation. They both saw the effects of that war and the men that came back from that war. But they also benefited from the post-industrial boom in our country. I don't understand what's to rebel against there. We had a strong, stable company. Everything was made in this country. The world looked up to us. Nobody would mess with us. We had a strong, mighty military. We had a great Navy, great Air Force, everything was going good. The economy was strong. Somehow the Beatles gave the young kids a reason to scream and cry and want something better. I don't think they got what you know. I don't think they got something better Because look at the results. The repercussions are seen in our society today.

Speaker 1:

I guess it's been said that the Beatles' work in the later 1960s with the Sgt Pepper Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album and so on. It paralleled kind of a counterculture movement because the Beatles started to experiment with psychedelic drugs and they became associated with the Eastern spirituality, you know, with the Maharishi, mahesh Yogi and transcendental meditation, and they kind of became icons of the emerging hippie movement. And you see, as a kid, when I look back at this, I was really little when there were hippies and I remember seeing guys like I had a brother-in-law that had a really long hair and a beard and stuff and I had my, my oldest brother and his wife were kind of they were kind of hippies. They weren't full-blown hippies, they were kind of bordering, teetering on hippie yuppie, hippie, yuppie conservative types. But but the Beatles released a song called Loosing the Sky with Diamonds, which its initials are LSD, which is supposed to be synonymous with the drug, the psychedelic drug, and they I don't know if they participated in the Summer of Love. I don't know if they made it over to Haight-Ashbury I think George and Ringo did or something. I don't know if all four Beatles were ever there, but it kind of made them where they were portrayed as being central figures in promoting peace and love. Because their song All you Need Is Love and all that stuff. And they had. I don't know if they all had.

Speaker 1:

I think Paul and John had stances on anti-war, especially to Vietnam. I know John was very outspoken against the Vietnam War. They're very pro-civil rights, they're very pro. They wouldn't perform in concerts up until 66 when they started touring. They wouldn't perform for segregated audiences. They want everybody to sit in the same arena together as one free group.

Speaker 1:

And I guess their personal freedom influenced the political consciousness of the 60s generation. Now I just don't know. I don't really know if this band did that or if it was just the situation of the 60s or was it something more nefarious behind all of it. And this culture was globalized, this world spread of peace and love and anti-war. It extended beyond the English speaking world. It went into Japan, india, latin America and it contributed to Western pop culture. It was spread globally and I guess the Beatles' music and their attitudes and their beliefs made the group one of the first truly global pop phenomena.

Speaker 1:

Because they were a household name. Everybody knew about the Beatles. They knew what they were wearing, they knew what they drank, they knew what they ate, they knew the cigarettes they smoked, they knew what their political affiliations were and what they thought of all this stuff. But I don't know how that got that way. I don't know why it had to be known. Did somebody behind the scenes push that narrative to make it global? Or did the press just pick up on it because they were all constantly being harassed by paparazzi and people said, oh, they went to India and said the Maharishi, mahayogi and it got into the paper. I don't know. I don't know if the four men sat down and said you know what we've got to do? We've really got to tell the world about Latin America and tell Latin America and Japan and India all about meditation and LSD. That way we can change the world and make it more peaceful. I don't think they sat around thinking that way. But I don't know. I don't know what was going on behind the scenes and who their handlers were. And I know there was an introduction of Eastern Sounds because of George Harris and the star work on Robert Soul and Within you, within Out you. You know Ravi Shankar and all that stuff. I don't want to get into all that because I really don't find that that stuff was all that influential for me. I guess it was for the world. I guess the world went oh sitar, I've never heard that before. Let's go buy a sitar, billy, and get into meditation. I don't know if that happened. I don't know if that happened.

Speaker 1:

But they also allegedly influenced a redefinition of fashion and gender norms because of the long hair. They went from like the moderate they were called mods and with their beetle haircuts and kind of the beatnik look to the hippie fashion they were at the forefront allegedly. I don't know if there's any documented proof that they were the first ones to change fashion trends, like you know, wearing the hair long and introducing a mod look with their suits. I guess they did. They started with their collarless Italian suits, jackets and mop top hairstyles suits, jackets and mop top hairstyles.

Speaker 1:

By the late 1960s, you know, that look evolved in the counterculture movement and it kind of embraced a more casual, psychedelic and hippie style with the long hair, the color prints, the beads, the patchouli, eastern influence attire and it kind of the long hair kind of grayed the boundaries. The gray the boundaries between men and women with the long hair, because sometimes there's a guy walking down the street you couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. You know, the long hair, use of makeup, androgynous looks, challenging the rigid gender norms of the time. So you go from the end of the war. The long hair, use of makeup, androgynous looks, challenging the rigid gender norms of the time. So you go from the end of the war, World War II. Men had buzz haircuts, boys wore button-down shirts and nice pants, girls wore little dresses.

Speaker 1:

You know it was all very rigid and structured and allegedly the Beatles, for some reason somehow had this massive influence where people started growing their hair long, dressing like hippies, getting stoned all the time and I'm painting this with a large generalized brush. But their influence helped create a more broader acceptance of more fluid expression of gender, I guess, you would say. And you can kind of see residual effects on that in the glam rock movement of the 70s and the 80s. And you know they became spokespeople somehow, this band of four scruffy guys from Liverpool that didn't know how to read music or write anything, they all of a sudden became these prolific songwriters. They became a spokespeople for their generation, a spokespeople for that generation. They influenced all these changes, somehow, these just blue-collar guys from Liverpool. And you know they made a lot of commentation with songs like the song Revolution Blackbird was allegedly about a black girl who was, I don't know, made to sit at the back of a bus or something.

Speaker 1:

I've heard it's about a bird and I've heard it's about actually a black girl that was being discriminated against. But I guess allegedly they were pro-racial justice, they were pacifists. They never spoke of Christianity, they spoke of spiritualism. So they were kind of introduced as kind of anti-Christian. I can't say that they were Satanists, but they were introduced as kind of like these anti-Christian figures in the world of entertainment, figures in the world of entertainment.

Speaker 1:

Because you know, previous generations of musicians often avoided, completely avoided, any discussion whatsoever politics or sex or religion or anything. Sex was taboo way, big taboo back then, before the Beatles. Man, if you were gay you could be killed, you could be locked up for being gay. Even when the Beatles were a band, you could be killed. You could be locked up for being gay. Even when the Beatles were a band, you could be 86 because you were gay and anything kinky, anything outside the missionary position to make babies, was considered. You were a freak, a dirty old man, you were really out there, man.

Speaker 1:

Excuse me but I ask did our culture need spokespeople at this time. Why did we need spokespeople? I mean, allegedly, the Beatles set the stage for future generations of artists like Bob Dylan, bruce Springsteen, u2, public Enemy these bands are all well-known for blending their music with social activism. I mean, do I really want somebody in the rock and roll world or the entertainment world telling me what I should think and who I should vote for? I mean, today, bruce Springsteen, just, you know he endorsed Kamala Kamala, kamal Toh Harris. I'm like, okay, bruce, I guess if Bruce says so, I'm going to go vote for you. I was born to run baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah, born in America, born in the USA.

Speaker 1:

And the Beatles also were responsible for allegedly for music videos With their new, you know, the moves like A Hard Day's Night in Hell. But I beg to differ. They came up with promotional videos for songs like Paperback Rider, strawberry Fields, forever. They had promotional videos for those to promote the songs. But Elvis had entire movies with his songs in them. So what were those? Somehow the Beatles take credit for a lot of stuff that already happened. You know, I don't know. They're putting a lot of, they're giving the Beatles a lot of accountability and they're giving a lot of credit for things that may not be theirs to be given to Now.

Speaker 1:

What I find interesting is, overall, the economic impact on the music industry that this band had and the Beatles had unparalleled commercial success that was never seen by any prior artist. And the Beatles, completely single-handedly, somehow just four uneducated guys from Liverpool, working class blue class guys that couldn't read a dot of music somehow entirely changed the economics of the music business. Think about this. I mean, they set new records for album and merchandise sales and their success played a major role in the shaping of modern music industry's culture. They completely took a shotgun to it. They just walked in with a and it was changed. They started, as I said previously, album-oriented rock where record albums became the piece of art rubber soul from rubber soul onward. And what that did is it demonstrated that albums could be commercially successful and could be seen as a cohesive piece of artwork rather than just vehicles for singles, as I talked about earlier. And this influenced how record labels approached albums as major commercial products in the industry.

Speaker 1:

Prior to that they didn't take albums seriously. Albums really weren't something that people went out and bought, didn't have a lot of them, and they also changed merchandising the Beatles were the first to capitalize on merchandising. They had Beatle wigs and lunch boxes and boots and shirts. The kids were just bugging the crap out of their parents Please, please, buy me a Beetle Boots.

Speaker 1:

In 1975, the Beetles had been broken up for five years and I bugged my parents my parents are still married. At the time I bugged them for an entire winter or something to take them to the mall so they could buy Beetle Boots. And they tried to explain to me that they didn't sell Beetle Boots anymore. The Beetle Boots hadn't been made since like 1966. Almost that they didn't sell Beetle boots anymore. The Beetle boots hadn't been made since like 1966, almost 10 years previous to this. But I said, well, there's got to be boots like it, there's got to be boots like it. And they took me to the mall and they took me to every goddamn shoe store like 10 shoe stores, including Sears and Penny's and there were kind of boots like make them for kids, and they weren't just like the Beatles, and I drove them crazy. I was absolutely just a little pain in the ass and I guess the thing that I find odd here is if you look at how they really influenced music. Let's take a look at. I'm going to conclude with this. Let's look at what the Beatles did to guitar sales. Now think about this Back when Sinatra was singing and crooning, there was predominantly big band guys.

Speaker 1:

There was Sinatra, there's Benny Goodman, glenn Miller, a lot of instrumental musicians that played brass instruments and drums and bass and piano. There was jazz and blues. There was some black rock and roll. Then Elvis. Elvis came along and Elvis inspired more people to pick up a guitar and get into bands. I don't know if Sinatra really did, because Sinatra and those guys prior to Elvis were real musicians.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if Sinatra could read music, but his musicians around him all could, and they would sit in a bandstand or sit on a riser behind him with sheet music in front of him and they would follow a band leader and the saxophone players and the trumpeters and the bass players. I think they all had sheet music in front of them and if they didn't, they knew their music. They knew their instruments inside and out. These were well-trained, polished musicians that knew how to play music and they were damn good. These were damn good men and women that could play the fuck out of their instruments. The Beatles, on the other hand, were just kind of these haphazard guys that kind of stumbled into music somehow.

Speaker 1:

But look at guitar sales, think about it. You know the sales data for electric guitars that I could find here on the internet, the sales data for electric and acoustic guitars in the US between 1954 and 1964 isn't really all that available available, but from what I could find I can find some general trends between a couple different time frames. Now between 1954 and 1964 is where I'm going to go. But you know, this was this. The 1950s and the early 1960s was known as the golden era for electric guitars, which was obviously driven by rock and roll and influential musicians like Elvis Presley, buddy Holly and later the Beatles. Now, companies like Fender and Gibson saw a really huge and a sharp increase in the sales of electric guitars, especially after the release of iconic models like the Fender Stratocaster in 1954 and the Gibson Les Paul in the early 1950s. Now, electric guitar sales began to accelerate in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. By 1965, it estimated that Fender was selling around 50,000 guitars annually, while Gibson and other manufacturers like Rickenbacker and Gretsch were also ramping up production. Acoustic guitars, on the other hand, were also popular but were often overshadowed by growing excitement around electrics. But companies like Martin Martin Guitars and Gibson still produce significant numbers of guitars and folk musicians like Bob Dylan help sustain demand.

Speaker 1:

Now the rough sales estimates between 1954 and 1964, 1950s electric guitar sales. By 1954, total US guitar sales were in the tens of thousands per year, growing rapidly due to the explosion of rock and roll. Between 1954-1960, guitar sales could have been in the range of 20,000 to 40,000 total per year, increasing as more musicians adopted electrics. 1961 to 64, sales continued increasingly, possibly reaching around 50,000 plus units total all things combined annually by 1964, due to bands like the Beatles, sales increased in popularity and electrics increased in popularity. Now acoustic guitars Martin reported annual production numbers in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 units in the 1950s and growing somewhat by the 1960s, not too much but somewhat. Between 1954 and 1964, acoustic guitar sales could have a range between 10,000 and 30,000 units total and this is I guess this is US or maybe worldwide. There wasn't a whole lot of units moving back then. So with a modest increase in the folk music gain traction in the early 1960s because of Dylan and all those people, because Dylan was on the scene before the Beatles. Now it's clear that the combined sales of electric acoustic guitars in the 1960s were likely exceeding 60,000 to 80,000 units annually In the US, where electric guitars were showing a sharper growth trajectory due to rock music. But between 1964 and 1974, it all changed. It all changed. Now it wasn't all just because of the Beatles, but bands like the Beatles, the Stones, led Zeppelin and Hendrix and Dylan and Clapton made the guitar culture a huge symbol during this time and there was an explosion in guitar sales.

Speaker 1:

1964 to 1969, fender, gibson and Gretsch and Rickenbacker became dominant players in the electric guitar market, became dominant players in the electric guitar market. Sales continued to rise as the Beatles' popularity peaked and other British invasion bands took over the US charts. By 1965, fender alone was producing around 50,000 guitars annually just Fender alone, with Gibson selling slightly fewer but still significant numbers. It's estimated that total US electric guitar sales from all manufacturers were likely in the range of 200,000 to 300,000 units per year by the mid-1960s. So between 1964 to 1965-1966, they went from selling a total of everything combined acoustic and electric 80,000 units to 300,000 units. That's a huge, huge increase in numbers.

Speaker 1:

And between 1970 and 74, the trend of electric guitar sales continued through the 1970s with the rise of hard rock, you know, blues, psychedelic rock, all that stuff that came about. Gibson by the early 1970s, gibson and Fender were producing tens of thousands of guitars each year, producing tens of thousands of guitars each year. Fender, for instance, was likely producing around 60,000 to 70,000 guitars annually by the 1970s. Industry-wide estimates suggest that the total US sales of electric guitars across all manufacturers were possibly 350,000 to 400,000 units per year by the early 1970s. So between 1964 and 1974, it almost quintupled the amount of guitars, five times the amount of guitars, five times the amount of guitars being produced just because of these bands. It was spearheaded by the Beatles, same with acoustic guitar sales, and acoustic guitar sales in the early 1960s was a small number of guitar sales Between 64 and 69,. I mean the sales grew steadily because the Beals and Dylan, martin, gibson and Gilded Guitars were among the leaders in this. Martin reported producing around 5,000 to 7,000 guitars per year during this period between 1964 and 1969.

Speaker 1:

All manufacturers of acoustic guitar sales in the US range between 100,000 and 150,000 units per year by the late 1960s. Between 1970 and 1974, the US was the first to produce. It says the acoustic guitar sales were in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 units per year, with companies like Martin Gibson and Yamaha selling strong numbers. Now Yamaha used to be a huge guitar manufacturer. I don't know if they're even still around. I've had a couple of Yamahas, but look at them. The acoustics combined with the electric sales is well over 500,000 units per year, when the combined was nowhere near even 100,000 just several years earlier. But between 1964 and 1974, it went up by more, almost 10 times. It was probably more like eight times what they were doing before total. So it's a cumulative effect that the Beatles started. I mean, if you look at the estimates I have here, if you look at the estimates I have here, the cumulative sales estimate between 64 and 74 electric guitars in 10 years. Those 10 years approximately 2.5 to 3.5 million sold Acoustic guitars. In 10 years 1.5 to 2 million units sold. Now these are estimates I got off of Wiki and ChatGBT, but the estimates are based on industry trends and production data available from major guitar manufacturers during the period.

Speaker 1:

It's clear that the guitar became an iconic symbol of Americana and music and culture and in the next episode I'm going to talk about music and emotions and how music affects your emotions. But let me ask you this so you've got this band as I've perpetuated and peppered I'm not perpetuated, but peppered throughout my conversation here. So these four scruffy guys uneducated guys who barely made it through grade school, just happened to pick up guitars because they were influenced by Buddy Holly and Elvis uneducated guys who barely made it through a grade school just happened to pick up guitars because they were influenced by Buddy Holly and Elvis All of them none of them are really well-known, prolific songwriters. They just somehow wow, they just made it, man, they really made it. And they influenced culture around the world. They influenced the increase of musical sales, musical instrument sales, hair trends, clothing trends, lifestyle trends, attitude trends.

Speaker 1:

And what do you see in our country since then? Now don't get me wrong, I'm not some right-wing conservative lunatic here. I'm not. But look, we had a strong, stable country after World War II, between 1945 and 1965. Things were going good, right, we had industry here, you could find a job, you could work for 30 years, you could get a pension, you had a mom and dad at home that were trying their best to raise the kids and give you a good life, a strong, stable platform. Cities weren't in the greatest shape, but the crime was very low Then after the Beatles, if you want to say they had that much influence on culture, look what they've done to us.

Speaker 1:

Our country's a mess. Can we blame it all on the Beatles? No, so what do you blame it on? What do you blame the disintegration of my society here in the United States or in the United Kingdom, or anywhere else for that matter? What do you blame it on? Was there a nefarious force behind behind the Beatles? Was there an ulterior motive behind the band, behind all those bands, not just the Beatles, the Stones, the who, the Kings, jerry and the Pacemakers and Hermits Hermits and all those god awful bands that came out of the United Kingdom. I hate Hermits Hermits. I can't stand that band Jerry and the Pacemakers and all these god awful bands that came out of there. Oh my god, it's so amazing. Such great music.

Speaker 1:

You know, I can't help but think look where we were prior to the arrival of these bands and look where we are today. Everybody is at each other's throats in the streets. There's no jobs, the industry's gone, all the factories are gone. Kids back in the 60s started to protest the government and their parents. They started to rise up and ask for freedom. They didn't want to follow in their father's footsteps and work in some glass tower or at the assembly line. They wanted to become artists, they wanted to become musicians, they wanted to do all these other things. And look at where we are now. There's no parents at home. Most parents both work. People don't have any money. They're struggling to get by. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

And this leads you know, I'm not bringing this up. I'm bringing this up rhetorically because down the road I'm going to tell you what I'm going to try to tell you. I'm going to theorize what's behind it. I'm going to try to tell you, I'm going to theorize what's behind it. I'm not going down the Tavistock route, indirectly I will be. As I've said in other videos, I'm not educated on Tavistock like Mike Williams, but I'm going to educate myself on it when I can find time to watch videos and read books about it. But there's something much bigger behind this that everybody else has been hypnotized by. They put us into this trance to distract us from the real motivating force behind it. And I'm going to go into the next episode and have an episode about music and emotions, how music affects the human brain and mind and emotions and decision-making processes. And then I'm going to talk about a document called Communism, hypnotism and the Beatles, and it's going to keep going on this, because I think there's a lot more to rock and roll than what we see on the surface.

Speaker 1:

So well, everybody, I'm PT Pop. Thank you for watching today. That is my commentary on the Beatles and how they affected culture. If you like my videos again, give me the thumbs up. It's the cheapest and easiest and least expensive way you can support this channel. If you do have some extra cashola in your pockets over the day, become a member here. Join my Patreon channel there's links to both of those in the description here. Buy one of my t-shirts, my books, my songs, my videos, and with that I bid you do hasta la vista, baby, would you like fries with that? Would you like fries with that?

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Peter Tompkins

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