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| Beathoven |
| Studying the Beatles |
I often see debate on the technical
proficiency of this or that Beatle. While this subject
has it's own intrinisic interest we should be clear on
one point: instrumental virtuosity is not a particularly
important attribute for a Pop Rock musician.
If you want to find the real instrumental virtuosos of
the sixties then you need to look at Jazz or Classical
performers. You'll not find any passage work in Pop Rock
that compares with the agility of Dhjango Rheinhart or
Stefan Grapelli. You'll not find any drumming in Pop Rock
top of Jazz calibre (unless you have cross-over musicians
such as those used by Zappa). Thus, comparing this or
that Pop Rock musician in terms of virtuosity makes
little sense: they all tend to be at the low end of the
scale, as virtuosos go (remember, I'm talking about the
sixties).
In 1980 Lennon employed the best session people that
could be found in New York. He got each of them to play
like a Beatle, employing very simple patterns. There is
an outtake on the Lennon Anthology that has him
instructing the musicians on Walls And Bridges
to avoid any ornamentation. Pop Rock requires a clarity
of expression that would often be clouded by overtly
complex passages.
This doesn't imply that Pop Rock performers are
incompetent musicians in any sense of the word, only that
that their specialisations lie in different areas.
You won't find many classical performers who are expected
to write and arrange their own material. You'll very few
who are expected to sing while they perform on their
instruments. Yes, some jazz musicians sing while they
play, but they fall into three categories: (1) many of
them stopped playing their instrument when they sang; (2)
others sang rather perfunctorily; (3) the small remainder
were usually Pop Jazz musicians. Fats Waller is a superb
example. His atypical small combo is a great model for
the rock 'n' roll band (the Beatles performed his Your
Feets Too Big).
The main quality required of a Pop Rock muso is to be distinctive.
Now, I'm going to give some examples, but I'm not going
to attempt to be exhaustive in any sense of the word:
Eric Clapton is clearly a more dextrous guitar player
than John Lennon, but which of the two has left the
larger legacy of distinctive guitar pieces and motives?
Think of all Lennon's riffs, from I Feel Fine
to those on Revolution. Think of the
distinctive guitar parts for All My Loving,
Norwegian Wood, Dear Prudence
etc. Even Lennon's solos, while not particularly taxing,
are all memorable, from You Can't Do That
to I Want You. Lennon's guitar solo for Yer
Blues is trivial when compared to Clapton's, but
which one can you remember?
Who can match the distinctiveness off Harrison's fills?
Think of his lick in She Loves You, the
fills in Nowhere Man: over a hundred
songs have his personal signature written all over them.
Sure, Harrison had some problems in transitioning his
solos from the live environment to the studio, but that
in itself shows that the solo as such was not of central
importance to the band. Starr made not playing
them a condition of employment.
McCartney and Starr's career has to be divided into two
clear sections: pre and post Rubber Soul. Before
Rubber Soul the bass and drum parts tended to be
deemphasised in the mix and they were largely expected to
be seen and not particularly heard. However, listen to
Starr's drums open She Loves You or
McCartney's bass walk in All My Loving.
From Revolver on, bass and drums surged ahead album by
album in exploring new accompaniment figures in a search
remain distinctive. A listen to any track on Abbey
Road shows a contrapuntal approach that does not
sacrifice anything to Pop Rock's style.
This last point brings up another point with regard to
the Beatles. They imposed a condition on themselves to
always be innovative: being distinctive implied the
constant introduction of novelty into their arrangements.
This is one reason they moved from style to style,
burning up idioms in a restless frenzy to stay new.
Perhaps they broke up because they had run out of idioms.
Finally, one of the really big attributes of a Beatle was
the ability to collaborate in a single unified goal:
producing utterly distinctive recorded songs. If that
meant playing a tambourine, blowing bubbles or playing
nothing, then that was what counted. Quality requires a
ruthless impatience with the ordinary and the merely
competent idea. What impresses me, when hear the studio
chatter, is the ease with which ideas are discarded and
how quickly the band moves on, as a whole, to a new
approach.
Put another way, one of Starr's finest moments is his
utterly simple drumming to Get Back, as
are McCartney's pumping bass and Harrison's offbeats. One
should not equate minimalism with triviality. Quite the
opposite. In many cases a cascade of a thousand notes
simply masks an inability to find a single distinctive
idea.
One staggering achievement by the Beatles was that each
single they released went straight to the top of charts.
They did not release a single dud. Elvis released an
average of one dud for every hit. Only Whitney Houston
has matched the Beatles in this regard. I think no-one
has matched their success in albums in terms of quality,
and it is the quality Pop Rock album that they invented.
To put it simply, it is the virtuosity of the idea,
of creativity that counts in Pop Rock. I put it to you
that that is far more demanding than mechanical
dexterity. I think it is this virtuosity of the idea that
keeps all their albums in the shelves of every
almost any record store you might care to visit.