The Act You've Known For All These Years (9/4/13)

So, this Beatles theory that I've been trailing for ages.

It's only a little thing and it's obviously not the only, or indeed the main, reason for The Beatles genius. (My wife has just stopped reading by the way)

I'm fairly sure that its nigh on impossible for anybody to put their finger on exactly what The Beatles had that no other band had before or has had since, there's an almost perfect storm of influence and circumstance that leads to their becoming the biggest and best band that has ever graced the planet.

That they had the right four individuals is obvious; the right blend of character and creativity to challenge and support each other through a mania that had no real precedent. Two of the greatest songwriters that have ever walked the earth working in tandem and competition with each other and a third (who would have been the greatest talent in most bands) pushing to get the best of his material given small slots on each album.

Obviously these four (or at least the three writers) kept pushing themselves and each other; looking for new interests, new influences to expand their music. Where the technique they needed to get a recording sounding the way they heard it in their heads didn't exist, they simply invented it. They pioneered using the studio as a writing tool. Their live career was exceptionally short lived, over by mid 1966. They had time to educate themselves and draw classical music, folk, jazz, musique concrete into their art. The likes of The Searchers, Merseybeats, Gerry & The Pacemakers and the rest of the Mersey Beat boom had neither the time, the inclination nor the level of fame and influence to be able to indulge themselves in this manner.

You can make a lot of their family situation, that both John and Paul lost their mothers early. That this caused a deeper bond between the two than they would otherwise have developed and that this closeness brought about a more symbiotic writing partnership than their peers would develop.

Their families are vital to the point I'm going to make shortly, as is their locale.

Liverpool is vital. It gave them the audience that they needed to grow as well as providing them with repertoire. That they lived in a thriving port where the local merchant seamen were bringing in tons of fresh American vinyl every week gave them access to the early days of Motown and to obscure R&B tracks that others outside Liverpool weren't hearing.

Hamburg is also vital. Eight hour sets fuelled by amphetamine and alcohol at a ridiculously young age makes for a tight live unit if not a healthy lifestyle.

But the key for me here is melody and the melody comes from their parents and their backgrounds.

The Beatles could only originate from Liverpool because so much of their sense of melody, their sense of harmony comes from the way that the working class of Liverpool learn about music (and yes, Lennon was working class, his upbringing may have been aspirational middle class but his mother was the most influential figure in his life and she was resolutely working class)

The Liverpool culture is the working class culture, the Irish culture, the culture of the extended family party, the post pub sing song, the fact that there is no greater regard than the ability to 'get up and give a song'.

I'm sure it happens in other cities as well. London has its Knees Up Mother Brown and Maybe
Because I'm A Londoner and Lambeth Walk and Roll Out The Barrel but their monotonous, enforced jollity doesn't wash on the banks of the Mersey. Liverpool song has always come from the sea shanties, from the Irish Balladeers; it's the melancholic and the romantic. It's not necessarily the sound of an entire room joining in (although it may generally end up that way) it's the ability to entertain that room. It's the strength of the melody, the strength of the unaccompanied voice carrying a tune, of a second voice joining to harmonise, a third, a fourth....

Liverpool doesn't do the blues, so while London was investigating the sound of the 1930s Delta, Paul McCartney was more interested in looking back to his father's music hall days, Ringo was immersing himself in country music, John and George leaning toward Dylan and the new folk. It's about the structure of the song and the accessibility, it's about the popular. It's why the Beatles were great at middle rights and the Stones weren't. It's why they could stamp their sense of harmony and melody on other acts material, why their versions of Twist And Shout or Money are so superior to the originals

It's about knowing your tradition, knowing that it's a different tradition.

You could ask then, why weren't the other Mersey Beat acts as great as The Beatles? Surely if my claim for the origin of their melodic strength is at all valid then every other Liverpool act would have the same influences?

They do, that's how Gerry Marsden could write material as strong as Ferry, Cross The Mersey and Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying, why their best known song was a show tune. They just couldn't adapt and assimilate and progress in the way that The Beatles could.

Only The Beatles could. It's part of their magic and their mystery. It's why you can't put your finger on exactly why they were so great, so inventive, so revolutionary, so world changing.

It's because those four lads from a small corner of a small city, with their particular background were the only people that could be The Beatles.

Nobody else could come close.