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WHEN WRONG IS RIGHT
By Ed Ward
It seems to be an unspoken rule of popular music: everything new comes from someone trying to imitate something and getting it wrong. The classic example, of course, is Elvis at Memphis' Sun Studios in 1954 -- recording Arthur Crudup's blues tune "That's All Right, Mama" and Bill Monroe's bluegrass tune "Blue Moon of Kentucky," the first as an homage and the second as a joke -- and starting a whole new era of rock and roll. Jamaicans trying to imitate the rhythms they heard on New Orleans radio stations got it so wrong that they invented ska and reggae. Countless British bands tried to imitate American blues and wound up becoming everything from the Rolling Stones to Fleetwood Mac to Black Sabbath.
That's why the Beatles seem so totally remarkable. From the very first song we heard, no matter when we dropped into the Beatles story, it sounded like they were doing something utterly original. But they weren't, not entirely.
Let's take a quick look at the Beatles' prehistory before opening up John Lennon's jukebox to gaze at its contents. John Lennon and Paul McCartney met in the Quarrymen, a skiffle group in Liverpool, in 1957. Skiffle was a British take on American folk music, played on acoustic guitars and a bass (often improvised from a tea chest, a broomstick, and a thick string). It made very little impression on America both because it was British -- and who cared about British pop music back then? -- and because it wasn't really very good. Of all the skiffle musicians, only Lonnie Donegan made the American charts, and then only as a novelty.
Lennon and McCartney, their young friend George Harrison, and, later, drummer Pete Best, along with John's art school friend Stu Sutcliffe, were actually rock and roll fans. Like lots of British kids, they idolized Gene Vincent, Little Richard, and the "girl group" sound coming from New York's pop factory, the Brill Building. They listened to what the British called "Tamla Motown" and to early soul singers like Arthur Alexander. These were the sounds they worked into their repertoire as the Silver Beatles, and the songs they played night after night during their arduous sojourns at the Star Club in Hamburg.
They didn't have to be very good at it to impress the German audiences, who were more interested in getting drunk and chasing women. Nor, on their visits home to Liverpool, did they have to be very good to play for teenagers at the Jacaranda Coffee Bar or the Cavern. But as the Beatles searched for new stuff to copy, they began to write their own material. Try as they might, they couldn't come up with rock and roll songs that sounded like the ones they'd been hearing. Their songs sounded better, because they were their own.
Top banner photos: John Lennon playing harmonica and his portable traveling companion that offers a prehistory of Beatles influences. |
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The teenaged John Lennon loved listening to and singing American rock 'n' roll. |
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John Lennon performing with the Beatles during their first stateside tour in 1964. |
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