The Music of the Beatles will track the musical development of the band, starting from the earliest days in Liverpool and Hamburg, moving through the excitement of Beatlemania, the rush of psychedelia, and the maturity of Abbey Road. While the focus will be on the music, we will also consider how recording techniques, the music business, the music of other artists, and the culture of the 1960s affected John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they created the Beatles repertory. There is probably no band or artist that has had more written about their music than the Beatles. There are many good books on the band's biography, several insider accounts offering glimpses behind the scenes, books that interpret the meaning of the songs, and even books that catalog dates and people regarding the band. This course will try to synthesize much of that information into an account of the Beatles' development as musicians and songwriters.
Brian Epstein and George Martin
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The Music of the Beatles
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From the lesson
Success in America and the World
The Beatles begin to move toward the artist model. Music from A Hard Day's Night, Beatles For Sale, and singles from this period. From this point on we will closely follow particular authorship of songs, keeping track of John, Paul, and George as individual songwriters.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Often when we tell The Beatles story, we focus on John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
And maybe don't spend as much time talking about the two other people who
played a big role in The Beatles music, and career success, Brian Epstein,
their manager and George Martin, the producer.
Where last week we talked a bit about them, as well.
So I wanna update this week, update into 1964, what's happening in the careers of
these two crucial figures in The Beatles careers and music.
Now let's talk about Brian Epstein as you know,
as I said last week, that name is pronounced either Epstein, or Epstein.
I do it interchangeably now, but it turns out that he preferred Epstein.
But most people say, Epstein.
So forgive me if I keep lapsing, back and forth in these lectures.
Anyway, Brian Epstein's big sort of rival, but
also a mentor, the person he sort of modeled himself on.
Larry Parnes was the guy.
I don't think he was exactly Brian Epstein's mentor,
as much as he was somebody who Brian Epstein wanted to be like him.
We've talked a bit about Larry Parnes, and all of the artists he had out of
the coming out of the 1950s, and then the beginning into the 1960s
all sort of roster of pop singers with those fantastic names.
And he was Larry Parnes in many ways, one of the most important and
powerful figures in British popular music in the period, before The Beatles.
Brian Epstein had personal contact with Larry Parnes.
There's even a story that Brian Epstein might have even gone to work for
Larry Parnes at a certain particular point, very early in his career,
before The Beatles thing began to take off the way that it did.
And so it's very clear whatever the story about that is, that Brian Epstein was
very aware of Larry Parnes, what he'd done, what his accomplishments were,
and very much wanted to do a similar kind of thing, or even outdo, Larry Parnes.
Be even bigger than Larry Parnes had been.
And in many ways, he achieved exactly that during this period, 1964 into 65, and 66.
He had a roster of stars like Larry Parnes, and
here are some of the stars that, well stars, and
stars that didn't quite make it [LAUGH] that he managed at the time.
Of course the biggest ones would have been The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers,
Cilla Black, whose originally name was Cilla White, but
he changed it to Cilla Black.
Billy J Kramer, The Big Three, The Paramounts,
Sounds Incorporated Paddy, Klaus and Gibson, Tommy Quickly,
a group from the US called Cyrkle, and a group called the Fourmost.
That it doesn't exhaust all of the Brian Epstein acts,
that he gathered around himself in 1964, into 63,
64, 65 as he began to create this fantastic talent agency,
that became one of the biggest agencies certainly in the UK,
and in the pop music business.
Largely on the success of people like The Beatles, Cilla Black, and Gerry and
the Pacemakers.
Talking for a minute about Gerry and the Pacemakers.
So here's a group that actually ended up having the hit with the song,
How Do You Do It.
You may recall the story about Please Please Me,
when The Beatles came in with Please Please Me.
George Martin wanted them to record How Do You Do It,
a song written by a professional songwriter by the name of Mitch Murray.
And The Beatles did it, but didn't like it.
And George Martin said,
well if you can come in with a song that's as good as that one, we'll do that one.
So the new version of Please Please Me, the one that went to number one,
is the one that The Beatles did.
And George Martin promptly producing Gerry and the Pacemakers, took the song
from The Beatles, and gave it to Gerry and the Pacemakers, and guess what?
They had a number one hit, with it.
And they followed with another Mitch Murray hit called, I Like it.
And then Gerry Marsden, the lead singer of the group, did an aweful lot of
songwriting, either by himself, or with other guys in the group, and
had hits with songs that came from his own pen including Ferry Cross the Mersey,
It's Gonna Be Alright, and Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying.
A lot of these Brian Epstein groups did songs written by John Lennon and
Paul McCartney, either specifically for the artist, or the ones they wrote, but
didn't wanna use for The Beatles, or whatever it was.
So if you wanna go looking for Lennon and McCartney songs that were
never recorded by The Beatles, here are some to go, and look for.
Cilla Black's, Love of the Loved, and It's for You.
Billy J Kramer's, I'll Keep You Satisfied, and Bad to Me.
And you could go looking for The Fourmost, and
their versions of Hello Little Girl, and I'm in Love.
There are actually even more of these Lennon-McCartney songs
never recorded by Lennon and McCartney, and
never recorded in released versions by The Beatles to look at.
So, Brian Epstein builds this fantastic talent agency.
He gets involved in the publishing end of it.
We mentioned before a guy by the name of Dick James.
He often had a publishing piece, of a lot of this Brian Epstein music.
A lot of these groups were produced by George Martin, so
you had a kind of a small group of people who were controlling a lot of what was
happening in this music, and much of it fueled by all the money The Beatles were
making which is kind of what kept the project going.
But Brian [INAUDIBLE] into a couple of different areas besides that.
He brought a place called The Saville Theater, or leased it from 1965, and
still owned it at the time of his death in 1967, the family relinquished it in 69.
They would do the Sunday Night rock shows.
In fact I believe the famous Jimmy Hendrix show, where he does Sargeant Pepper was
done on a Sunday Night, after the release of Sargeant Pepper in June of 1967.
But there was nothing else to do on Sunday night, in London.
So you get a lot of famous people would show up for
these Brian Epstein shows, at The Saville Theatre.
Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, people like that.
Jeff Beck would show up for these things.
So it was a kind of be, and be seen kind of thing there.
He got involved in theater productions, including James Baldwin's,
The Amen Corner, and On The Level.
I couldn't remember that Brian had a background in the musical theatre,
or in theatre from before he started working with The Beatles.
He produced a show called A Smashing Day at the New Arts Theater Club.
And that interesting became a celebrity in his own right for
a brief period of time, when he appeared on the NBC television show Hullabaloo,
as there British pop correspondent.
And so you could begin to see Brian Epstein coming out of the shadows, and
sort of becoming his own man, as a celebrity getting his own fan mail.
And being mobbed by fans as he got out of his limousine for
restaurants in important places like New York and London.
And so in many ways, we could say that if Larry Parnes had been his model and
his rival, sometime in the mid-1960s Brian Epstein had surpassed Larry Parnes.
We turn now to George Martin.
And if we wanna talk about a rival, or a model for
George Martin, probably the guy to think about is one of
the other producers at EMI during this time, Norrie Paramor.
Now you may remember me telling you last week, that Norrie Paramor was responsible
for Cliff Richard, and all of these Cliff Richard hits.
In just a few videos ago this week,
I just was telling you how many hits Cliff Richard had during his previous time,
what was it 27, or something like that?
[INAUDIBLE] was, Norrie Paramor was the guy behind all that.
So when The Beatles were coming in and recording, George Martin was coming and
hoping he would have some success with The Beatles in 1963.
But he had to put up with Norrie who had had years worth of top hits
with Cliff Richard, and still I think in many ways George Martin felt like,
he wasn't taking him very seriously.
Well, all of that began to change in 1963, and
1964 into 1965 as George Martin produced The Beatles, Gerry and
the Pacemakers, Cilla Black, Billy J Kramer, The Fourmost.
And when you think of it, The Beatles having all that success,
they had to find time to come into the studio to record.
So there was only a limited amount of time that George Martin could possibly even
spend, with The Beatles.
And since he was a label head, and needed to go into work everyday, and
have something new, he had lots of other recordings going on.
So, he was working with Brian's groups.
He was working with other acts, and so
he was beginning to become one of the most successful producers of the time.
What was ironic about it however, and you will find these complaints
with anybody writing about their time with EMI, during this period of time.
They characterized EMI as being extremely stingy.
[LAUGH] The facilities as being not very good,
then being very, very tied up with protocol, and
who would touch which machine, and who was gonna be allowed to do what, and all of
these kind of very sort of formal kind of routines about how things would go.
That even The Beatles felt was enormously constraining, and
many times they wished they didn't have to record at EMI at all.
Well, how this fits into our story is that during this period of 1963, 64, 65,
George Martin was not only having all of these hits with The Beatles, but
he was having hits especially in the UK, with all of these other acts as well.
And in fact in one of those years, I think there's an amazing fact that out of 52
weeks, George Martin had a number one hit in 32 weeks out of that.
[LAUGH] I mean, with one of this different groups.
It's fantastic.
The guy was at the top of the game, and all of that.
And what ended up happening is,
he didn't have any kind of financial piece of their success.
He was basically employed by the label, to do these recordings for them.
And so, Brian Epstein could have make a lot of money on The Beatles.
Dick James, the publisher, could make a lot of money on The Beatles.
The Beatles themselves could make a lot of money although,
that they should have maybe made more.
Is a question that often comes up in discussion of Brian Epstein,
especially with regard to the merchandising of the material.
You know, lunch boxes, wigs, T-shirts, that kind of thing.
But nevertheless, everybody was making money, but George Martin.
In fact he got a promotion at EMI because of his great success, but
because the promotion, because he had now moved to a different category of
employee at EMI, he no longer got a Christmas [LAUGH] bonus.
So ironically, the first year,
one of the big years in which he had all this success with all these acts.
He didn't even get a Christmas bonus, out of EMI.
Well, he just felt like enough is enough.
So he, in August of 1965 formed an independent producing
co-op with a couple of other producers called Associated Independent Recording,
though it's often referred to as AIR Studios, A-I-R, AIR Studios.
He pulled together some of the younger people, that he knew in the business.
John Burgess had worked with Norman Newell, another producer at EMI.
Ron Richards had worked with Rich Martin, himself.
And Peter Sullivan had worked with Walter Whitley at EMI, and
the four of them left their jobs at EMI, and started license,
or sort of renting themselves out back to EMI.
But they kept a percentage of profits, and this kind of thing.
So by doing this, it allowed them to share in some of the profit that was
being made from all of these recordings, and be able to still use the EMI studios,
and everything that they had available to them before.
But under a different kind of contracting system that made money for EM, and
made money for them, as well.
So really by the Fall of 1965, for all intensive purposes,
George Martin was an independent producer, producing The Beatles.
Well, by the end of 1964 into 1965,
I think it's fair to say that The Beatles had become
one of the most successful pop acts coming out of the UK, that there ever was.
In fact, they were at the top of the game worldwide.
Brian Epstein had surpassed Larry Parnes, and
George Martin had surpassed Norrie Paramor.
So we have a team of people who all set out to sort of be world-beaters,
and in their own way came to the very top by the end of 1964 into 1965.
Next week we'll take a look at what happened in 1965, and
the two important albums, and
another movie that came along in 1965, Help, and Rubber Soul.
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