The Long and Winding Road: Remembering The Beatles' Recorded Legacy

On this day, April 9, in 1970, Paul McCartney issued the press release saying The Beatles had broken up.

It was 55 years ago today that Paul McCartney revealed, in an ambiguously worded press release accompanying advance copies of his self-titled debut solo album, that he did not intend to embark on any new projects with the Beatles. While the statement itself stopped short of formally announcing a break-up, this was how it was received by the public, and it indeed proved to put a full stop to the Beatles’ recording career (barring three solo John Lennon demos that the surviving members were to polish up and release under the 'Beatles' name decades later). Considering that just six-and-a-half years separated the releases of their debut LP (1963’s Please Please Me) and their last-to-be-recorded album (1969’s Abbey Road), an enduring element of the Beatles’ legacy is how profoundly their recorded musical output evolved over a relatively short period of time, catalysing the cultural ferment of the 1960s in the bargain.

The Early Years

The Beatles’ final lineup took shape when Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as the group’s drummer in August 1962. Starr had become acquainted with fellow Liverpudlians John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison over the preceding two years in Hamburg: as the latter three cut their teeth performing on the nightclub stages of the city’s Reeperbahn red-light district, Starr accompanied Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and Tony Sheridan, both higher-ranking artists at the time than the fledgling Beatles. Following the ouster of Best and the previous loss of original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe to Hamburg’s bohemian art scene in 1961, Starr’s formidable ability and versatility as a percussionist completed the Beatles as a musical unit.

I view the Beatles’ recording career as divided into three periods, with the 'early' period lasting from the release of Please Please Me in March 1963 to the release of Help! in August 1965. Please Please Me ushered in the phenomenon of 'Beatlemania' across the UK in 1963, and alongside the same November’s With the Beatles, served as the musical platform for the band’s epochal tour of the USA in early 1964 that cemented their position as worldwide superstars.

In these heady early days, the group were viewed as teen idols by the contemporary media. However, that simplistic view discounted the musical sophistication that was already evident in their original music, which regularly featured songwriting innovations unusual for the era. 1963’s early hit 'From Me to You' started with a simple verse in the key of C major, before smoothly modulating into a different key (F major) for the cajoling bridge section ('I’ve got arms that long to hold you…'), then modulating seamlessly back to a happy and confident C major for the next verse - a surprising and polished musical maneuver for a young pop group in this era.

With the Beatles album track 'Not a Second Time' ends the title phrase in the refrain on an ominous E minor chord, the relative minor of the song’s home key of G major, underlining the narrator’s wavering determination not to relapse into an unsteady relationship, while 'I’ll Be Back', the closing track on 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, starts in sunny A major before startling the listener with a sudden shift to an overcast A minor (the parallel minor key) as the vocals begin. The effect of this kind of musical sleight of hand, borne of instinct rather than formal training, was to constantly surprise listeners, subverting their expectations and ensuring that the course of a Beatles song was rarely predictable on the first listen, while on many occasions also serving as a musical mirror to a song’s lyrical theme. But despite the increasing artfulness of their own songwriting, throughout this era the Beatles remained enthusiastic about performing covers of their beloved late 1950s/early 1960s R&B, rock and roll and country music, even as late as 1965’s Help! which featured versions of Buck Owens’ 'Act Naturally' and Larry Williams’ 'Dizzy Miss Lizzy'.

Other innovations in this period included the pioneering use of a string quartet on McCartney’s 'Yesterday', an aggressive rhythm section on Lennon’s 'Ticket to Ride' that some believe prefigured heavy metal, Starr’s incorporation of Latin-tinged percussion on tracks like 'Till There Was You' and 'And I Love Her', and Harrison’s embrace of the gleaming, jangling sound of the brand-new Rickenbacker 12-string guitar throughout 1964-65 on tracks like 'You Can’t Do That', 'Anytime At All', 'A Hard Day’s Night', and 'What You’re Doing'. 

This period also saw the beginning of a separation in Lennon and McCartney’s efforts as songwriters. While the early hits of 1963 like 'She Loves You' and 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' were co-written by the two in 'eyeball-to-eyeball' fashion, they would now start writing alone, and though the 'Lennon-McCartney' joint songwriting credit remained in place for the rest of the group’s career, most songs so credited were primarily driven by one of the pair, albeit with important input from the other on many occasions.

The group also ventured into making movies. Seen as a natural next step for pop superstars of the era, following Elvis Presley’s lead, this period yielded the timeless showbiz comedy of A Hard Day’s Night (1964), and the less-loved (but nonetheless beloved to this writer!) spy spoof Help! (1965), both movies being accompanied by 'songtrack' LPs.

The Middle Period

The Beatles’ 'middle period' encompassed four albums: Rubber Soul (December 1965), which signalled a new creative direction for the group incorporating influences from folk, soul and Indian classical music; Revolver (August 1966), a remarkable mosaic of musical styles that tends to be one of the two top contenders in the perennial debate over which is the 'greatest Beatles album', the other being its successor, the psychedelic masterpiece Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 1967); and the even trippier Magical Mystery Tour (December 1967, released in the UK in an innovative double-EP package rather than as an LP). 

Perhaps the group’s most creatively fertile period, the evolving sound across these albums is often attributed, at least in part, to their discovery of psychedelic drugs. While that is of course true, other influences and developments were equally important, a key one being the group’s introduction to contemporaries like Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys. Dylan had a profound impact on Lennon’s songwriting in particular, and his influence is clear on 'Norwegian Wood', which also first disclosed to the public Harrison’s emerging interest in Hindustani music with its simple but earnest sitar line.

Similarly, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album (1966) made a deep impression on McCartney, influencing the beautiful ballad 'Here, There and Everywhere' from Revolver and the construction of the following year’s Sgt. Pepper album as a whole. Friendly competition, both within the group and with other artists, drove the Beatles’ music to ever greater heights of novelty and complexity during this period. The release of the 'Paperback Writer'/'Rain' single in May 1966 heralded a decisive and lasting shift in the band’s recorded sound, featuring a newly assertive, punchy bass guitar tone for McCartney who, inspired by the boosted bass on American Stax and Motown records of the period, pushed the engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios to replicate the sound for his own playing. This single also beautifully illustrated the contrast in Lennon’s and McCartney’s respective approaches to songwriting: With 'Rain', Lennon continued writing in an introspective, subjective vein (see also: 'I’m Only Sleeping', 'In My Life', 'Tomorrow Never Knows'), while McCartney’s 'Paperback Writer' adopted a novelist’s perspective, taking inspiration from the lives and experiences (real or imagined) of others (see also: 'Eleanor Rigby', 'She’s Leaving  Home', 'The Fool on the Hill'). This contrast would find its fullest expression in 1967’s 'Penny Lane'/'Strawberry Fields Forever' double-A-side single, perhaps the greatest single ever released given the monumentality of the songs on either side.

Also of note during this period was George Harrison’s emergence as a songwriter in his own right – even if still in the colossal shadow of Lennon and McCartney – demonstrating increasing confidence within both the rock ('Think For Yourself', 'If I Needed Someone') and Indian idioms ('Love You To', 'Within You, Without You'). 'I Want To Tell You' was his most remarkable contribution in this period, with the juxtaposition of a spring-heeled guitar riff and a dissonant piano vamp illustrating the lyrics’ theme of an incongruence between one’s thoughts and words. 

Two fateful events in this period were to determine the future of the group. The first was their decision to cease touring after their final concert at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in August 1966, the ceaseless global travel of the previous few years having finally taken its toll. This unprecedented decision to become a 'studio-only' group reflected both their inability to effectively reproduce live the increasingly complex tracks they had been recording in the studio given the constraints of the era – the proto-electronic 'Tomorrow Never Knows' from the recently-released Revolver being a case in point – and their desire to commit more fully to the kind of intensive studio experimentation that had started with the Revolver sessions.

The second course-altering event was the death of the group’s charismatic manager Brian Epstein in August 1967, which left them rudderless and eventually precipitated a power struggle that would hasten the group’s disintegration.

The Late Period

The release of Magical Mystery Tour at the end of 1967 ended the Beatles’ psychedelic period on a memorably high note, even though the surrealist television film accompanying it was poorly received. The new year would prove to be a turning point, and the 'beginning of the end' for the group. Shortly after recording the 'Lady Madonna' single in February 1968, the group left for a Transcendental Meditation retreat at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh.

This sojourn in the spring of 1968 proved to be very productive musically, and yielded the majority of the songs on the sprawling double-LP The Beatles (better known as the 'White Album') released towards the end of the year. The clearest demonstration thus far of the diverging creative instincts of the three principal songwriters in the group, the White Album was a kaleidoscope of musical styles ranging from McCartney’s continued exploration of different genres ('Rocky Raccoon'’s country-and-western, 'Back in the USSR'’s Beach Boys pastiche, 'Honey Pie'’s nod to the music halls of pre-World War I Britain, the acoustic folk of 'Blackbird' and 'Mother Nature’s Son', and the bellicose proto-metal of 'Helter Skelter'), Lennon’s many references to their stay in Rishikesh ('Dear Prudence', 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill', 'I’m So Tired' and 'Sexy Sadie' were all based on experiences at the ashram) and enthusiastic embrace of a guitar finger-picking technique learned there from the Scottish folk singer Donovan ('Julia', 'Happiness is a Warm Gun', 'Dear Prudence' again), and Harrison’s strongest contributions to date (the moving 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', Animal Farm-inspired 'Piggies', and deeply spiritual 'Long Long Long').

Even Starr made his debut songwriting contribution with the plodding 'Don’t Pass Me By'. In the face of accusations that the Beatles were not sufficiently attuned to the political turmoil rocking the western world in the summer of 1968, Lennon responded ambivalently with the rocker 'Revolution' on the flip-side of the 'Hey Jude' single issued that summer on the Beatles’ newly-created Apple Records label. The eventual release of the 'White Album' in November closed out the year. This period also saw early solo efforts by Lennon (who released 3 albums of avant garde music with Yoko Ono in 1968-69) and Harrison (the experimental film soundtrack Wonderwall Music in 1968 and the avant garde Electronic Sound in 1969).

The brewing discontent continued into the 'Get Back' project of January 1969, intended to bring the group back to their gritty rock and roll roots. Featuring beautifully remastered archival footage of the project, Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series 'The Beatles: Get Back' gave the lie to the commonly-held belief that an intense acrimony was the defining theme of these sessions.

While rancour was certainly present here, as demonstrated by George Harrison briefly quitting the group and the subsequent introduction of the keyboardist Billy Preston as a moderating influence, the project nevertheless included notable moments of partnership between Lennon and McCartney, in particular McCartney’s high harmony and kinetic bass playing on Lennon’s heartfelt 'Don’t Let Me Down' and Lennon completing McCartney’s hard-hitting 'I’ve Got a Feeling' by appending his unfinished song 'Everybody Had a Hard Year' as a coda. Both songs featured in the group’s impromptu performance on the rooftop of Apple Corps’ Savile Row offices on January 30, 1969 - the final public performance of the Beatles’ career. Less discussed is the influence of Enoch Powell’s anti-immigrant rhetoric on the song 'Get Back', which parodied this incipient xenophobia. All that said, the tapes do evince the growing power struggle within the group, with McCartney straining to shepherd the others towards completing the project on time, and Lennon kicking off the group’s ill-fated relationship (opposed only by McCartney) with American impresario Allen Klein.

The music from the 'Get Back' sessions would belatedly be released as the album 'Let It Be' in May 1970, which would – ironically, given its title – suffer the fate of being exhumed and re-released in various avatars over the coming decades, owing largely to McCartney’s dissatisfaction with producer Phil Spector’s meddling on the original 1970 release. Standing in stark contrast to these troubled sessions with their relatively poor recording quality was the Beatles’ true swansong, the beautiful (and beautifully produced) Abbey Road, recorded that summer and released in September 1969. Despite featuring some of Lennon’s ('Come Together', 'I Want You (She’s So Heavy)') and McCartney’s ('Oh! Darling') finest moments, it was Harrison who finally stole the show with the dewy-eyed ballad 'Something' and the uplifting 'Here Comes the Sun' – which, being the group’s most-streamed song, probably serves as a wonderful gateway to the Beatles’ music for many new listeners.

But notwithstanding these considerable individual highlights, the defining feature of the album is probably the elaborate 'Side B' medley starting with 'You Never Give Me Your Money', McCartney’s not-so-subtle dig at the machinations of Klein, and closing with the valedictory 'The End', which fittingly gave each member of the group a solo instrumental spotlight before concluding the album, and the band’s career as a recording quartet, with a now-immortal closing lyric (which I will not spoil here for new listeners!) 

The Beatles’ recorded catalog is surely a cornerstone, if not the centrepiece, of the western popular music canon. Whether measured by the immense scope of the musical evolution it represents, its centrality to the momentous cultural advances of the 1960s, its inescapable influence on later popular music, or enjoyed simply on its own terms, it stands apart and alone, in a category of one. It cannot be bettered. And as advancing technology has enabled multiple rounds of remasters and remixes of much of the catalog in recent years, modern listeners get to experience it with more vividness and immediacy than ever before (regardless of how some purists may feel about the matter!). For those who have young children, nephews or nieces in their lives, it is a privilege to be able to introduce this music to a new generation. Gather them around and put on 'Yellow Submarine', 'Can’t Buy Me Love', or 'With a Little Help From My Friends' – their reactions will show you that the magic of the Beatles lives on.

Chaitanya Ramachandran is a Mumbai-based lawyer and lifelong fan of The Beatles

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