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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Post, the seventh -- Lucy and Marshall in the Sky with Diamonds

this week, i presented a report on The Beatles and why Marshall McLuhan included them in his book The Medium is the Massage.

it turns out, The Beatles were pretty experimental in their day.

The Beatles courtesy Google image search

McLuhan mentions The Beatles three times in his book and said of them on a separate occasion, “The Beatles are…using some of the very oldest forms of Anglo-Saxon, and some of the very oldest forms of philosophy as a basis for their music.  One of the peculiarities of new forms, electric forms, of retrieval is that they reach back for many centuries to grab things that man had forgotten long ago”.

much of The Beatles success comes from the fact that they were around during the electric age.

for example, their American debut was made on the Ed Sullivan Show where they were introduced to some 70 million people overnight. 

they took advantage of this and other things like the magnetic tape recorder.

The Beatles liked trying new things and when they realized that their new work didn't translate on a live stage, decided to spend the rest of their time in the recording studio.

George Harrison explains, “that was the key—we’d had success.  Then it was “ oh, great.  Come in lads”  and as we got more and more success, we were able to try some far out ideas.  Then you’d have success with a far out idea, and people would say “wow, that’s great”!  We’d come back again and George Martin would be keen to try other ideas.  So, it became like a free house—whatever idea we wanted, we’d try it.”
 
even though they're pretty mainstream today and it's probably "cooler" not to like The Beatles now than to like them, they really did their own thing.

i think that's probably a big reason why they were so successful.

they were unapologetically themselves. 

The Beatles courtesy Google image search

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2 comments:

  1. It is really interesting to think that the Beatles were actually very experimental artist who may have been criticized in their time. Now an idealized band which almost everyone likes it is cool to hear that they at one time where thought of as a controversial topic.

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  2. Reading about some of innovative techniques of the Beatles is truly fascinating. Their wide support is undoubtedly based on their quality of music, however I was unaware, until your presentation, how influential they were in the way people made music and the abstract techniques adopted over the years. Well done!

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