When the tectonic plates of culture shifted in the 1960s, most people in music were happy. The Beatles came barging in to open up the world of creativity and set pop music on a path that would change music for the rest of the century. But while The Beatles would create a playing field that would ultimately benefit most of their fellow musicians, there were a handful who were left in the shadows.
Prior to the 1960s, two pillars of American culture shared the musical crown. One was, of course, Elvis Presley, whose modernisation of blues rock laid the foundations for The Beatles to go on and conquer the world with a somewhat similar formula.
But alongside Presley was Frank Sinatra. The world-famous big band crooner, who with his hair tightly slicked to one side and his perfectly tailored tuxedo, presented the perfect image of traditional America. He was inspiring yet inoffensive, charismatic yet familiar and talented, yet tentative as he performed songs written by other people, but made for him.
So The Beatles, despite their initial breakthrough as a suit-wearing charmers, presented the complete antithesis to him. They were on the verge of musical exploration, and did so completely on their own steam. They didn’t need to employ the novelty addition of a more famous collaborator or, for the most part, star relentlessly in a string of awful movies. For the most part, their own music, written by them, did the talking for them.
So by the time they got to around 1966, when their sonic exploration took them into more experimental realms, the time for collaboration had long gone. Not a single artist in the world would have had any right featuring on a Beatles album, and at this point in history, that was a rarity.
They had stolen the crown from Presley and Sinatra, and felt no desire to offer them any riches in return. In fact, when asked about the nature of their musical endeavours, John Lennon gave a quite defiant answer that stuck the boot into Sinatra and his previous way of working.
“None of us have ever liked those albums where they put two people together who are either similar or, I don’t know, like Sinatra and somebody else, you know,” Lennon explained. He added, “I don’t like that. I’d hate an album like that.”
It was a bold claim through which a pointed subtext was laid out: The Beatles were here, and they didn’t need any help from Sinatra. It was another small chapter in what was quite a lengthy yet subtle feud between the two artists, who respectively represented a shift in musical history.
The new free-thinking generation of the 1960s no longer wanted to hear about the conservative world, sung by multiple artists who shared a position within the entertainment elite. They wanted authenticity, delivered by kids who were less inclined to clutch onto an olive branch from the past. Over half a century later, individual albums written by the artist in question are still the very best format of music.
