There were only four people on this Earth who were able to see The Beatles for what they truly were.
As much as people like to mythologise their story every single time they talk about the greatest acts in rock music, the Fab Four could always see the true irony behind being treated like modern musical gods. But it’s not like the fans didn’t have good reason to consider them geniuses of contemporary music, either.
Looking through their history, every single one of their albums was like a new adventure unfolding whenever they went into the studio. A lot of their early stuff may have consisted of the standard teenybopper-style singles, but when listening to albums like A Hard Day’s Night, the songwriting is still magnificent from one track to the next, even if they were making the typical love songs of the time.
When they started to get comfortable in the studio, though, their records started to become more like sophisticated art pieces half the time. Nothing that they ever did was meant to be a rehash of their old material, and by the time they got to work on records like Revolver, they had found the perfect middle ground between the pop-flavoured songs of their early days and the experimental side of themselves.
It’s also easy to see all of them maturing into their own individual songwriters after 1966. Paul McCartney was the balladeer who could write some serious rockers when he wanted, John Lennon was the revolutionary who could casually break your heart with the right tune, George Harrison was turning into the wise guru of the band, bringing Eastern elements into his music, and Ringo Starr was the court jester, happy to add the right bounce to every tune.
But after they broke up, it’s not hard to see all of them become a little bit bitter about their old band in the next few years. McCartney was always more than happy to talk about his history with the group, but while John Lennon seemed either dismissive or outright resentful towards some of their most celebrated work, Harrison was simply confused about why the band still resonated over the years.
For most kids of his generation, rock and roll bands didn’t last more than a few years, and Tom Petty remembered his Beatle best friend being a bit uncomfortable with their fame, saying, “[George] was very funny, like, ‘The Beatles, they weren’t all that they were cracked up to be.’ He loved The Beatles. He used to bitch sometimes about individual Beatles who got on his nerves. But he really loved them down deep.”
And it’s not like what Harrison was saying was outright malicious. He simply knew that the band could be less than perfect every now and again, and while every member was more than happy to see the funny side of a band like The Rutles, seeing Harrison portray a news reporter in the spoof film must have been very therapeutic for him, especially since he didn’t have to be the centre of attention.
Harrison never wanted to be the biggest name in music, but when any band does their job that well, they don’t really have a choice. Because as much as Harrison loved the idea of writing music for himself, what The Beatles created feels more like the world’s property now more than any other artist.
