Times-Dispatch: The Beatles’ music still inspires 50 years later

2/16/2014

Director of Library Services Laura McCutcheon and former St. Catherine's History Chair Jane Howells shared their knowledge and love for the Beatles with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

BY TONY FARRELL
Special correspondent Contact Tony Farrell at tlcoryell@aol.com.

Half a century on, we still think of them by their first names, and always in the same musical order — John, Paul,George and Ringo — like four neighborhood kids who lived just down the street.

But in that lightning-strike moment 50 years ago tonight, when they first appeared on the “Ed Sullivan” stage, we were only just beginning to size them up, sort them out, and try to squeeze out of our electrified brains the answer to the most important question of the rock ‘n’ roll age:

Who is your favorite Beatle?

Everybody has one, of course, and Beatles fans of a certain age can still offer up that name in a flash, along with the title of their most cherished album, the names of all the songs on it, and the order of the cuts on each side.

And in the years since 70 million Americans turned on their televisions to get their first look at The Beatles in fuzzy black-and-white, multiple generations have claimed the group as their own.

Sixties parents eventually sang along to the songs as much as their kids did, and today, in the 21st century, Beatles music still finds its way into every corner of modern life, from advertising to movies to Muzak, iTunes and YouTube.

Just what was it about these mopheads, these working-class boys, these Liverpool blokes who would come to be known as the “Fab Four” that compels our eternal devotion?

“It was a different sound; it was a different look; they were from another country all together,” recalled Laura McCutcheon, director of library services at St. Catherine’s School, of the Feb. 9, 1964, “Sullivan” performance that marked the launch of the so-called British Invasion. “It was more fascination than I could possibly bear!”

McCutcheon, 59, who is teaching a special “Beatles” course at St. Catherine’s to mark the Sullivan anniversary, points to The Beatles’ Feb. 7 arrival and news conference at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport just before their TV appearance as sparking thoughts of a favorite Beatle in millions of American hearts.

“In those interviews, with the big Pan American sign in the background, you got a real sense of each one of them,” said McCutcheon, who used to stack nickels and pennies on her old Westinghouse turntable’s tone arm to keep her worn-out Beatles albums from skipping.

“Paul was the cheerful, positive one. Ringo was the lovable goof,” she said. “George was quiet, but had a razor-sharp wit. And you could sense, in John, the edge.”

McCutcheon remembers the reporter at the news conference who called out a friendly — and now-infamous — question to the group:

“How do you find America?”

“Turn left at Greenland,” came Lennon’s droll reply.

“Well, that’s Liverpool,” said Jane Howells, 75, a retired Richmond educator who now serves as a historian and guide at Agecroft Hall.

“Liverpudlians are known for their wit — very clean, too, but very clever,” said Howells, “and if you go into a Liverpool store, any store, there is always some slick, funny comment.”

Howells, who grew up in 1950s Liverpool when The Beatles were still known as the Quarrymen and had a schoolmate who briefly dated Paul McCartney, also attributes The Beatles’ natural wit and warmth to the city’s long history as an eclectic seaport that drew Irish, Welsh and international influences.

“Of all the people in England, the Welsh are the most musical, and there was a lot of music around,” said Howells, who remembers her friends singing Quarrymen songs at school on Monday mornings after seeing the band perform at various Liverpool venues. “So I think they were sort of by osmosis taking in the sounds that would impact their music.”

Another clue to The Beatles’ lasting power lies in their very name: that infectious, trademark beat.

“The Beatles had a serious blues influence because the blues were really the first American records that found their way into Liverpool with the sailors at the end of World War II,” said John Porter, co-host with Henry Cook of WCVE Radio’s “Time for the Blues.”

The Beatles’ early rhythms were also built on imported American “skiffle” music, Porter noted. A Southern-U.S. improvised blend of sounds made from washboards, jugs, banjos, ukuleles and “tea-chest bass” (tea chests tapped by thimbles on fingers), skiffle swept Britain’s music scene in the late 1950s and was quickly picked up by the young Quarrymen.

Porter also thinks The Beatles’ lack of one obvious leader, vocal headliner or primary songwriter created a variety of musical sound and appeal — and helped create the “favorite Beatle” mystique that persists to this day.

“The Beatles were cool because they were the first group where it wasn’t ‘Somebody-and-the-Somebodies,” Porter said. “It wasn’t Bill Haley and the Comets, or Buddy Holly and the Crickets, or Dion and the Belmonts.”

“It was a real group,” he said. “John would sing a song. Paul would sing a song. George would sing a song. Even Ringo would sing a song.”

The Beatles also captured the world’s imagination through their original, and personal, songwriting, said Steve Bassett, the well-known Richmond musician who co-authored the 1976 hit “Sweet Virginia Breeze” with his longtime friend Robbin Thompson.

“They brought in the era when the artists wrote the songs,” said Bassett, who remembers watching The Beatles’ “Ed Sullivan” appearance as a 14-year-old and later being inspired by the group to try his hand at composing songs.

“Before that, a lot of the pop music was written in the Brill Building in New York by songwriters, and not a lot of singers actually wrote the material,” Bassett said. “And then here comes this group of four that has a collaborative effort of writing their own stuff and producing it.“

With barely any music training, The Beatles also somehow managed to create fresh harmonies, chord structures and “hooks” — memorable musical motifs — that put other musicians of the era to shame, said Keith John, 62, longtime drummer for the Starland Vocal Band, the pop group best known for its 1976 chart-topper “Afternoon Delight.”

“The Beatles had more hooks in their songs than anybody I’d ever heard,” said John, a McLean resident who had his own close encounter with screaming Beatles fans at age 12 when he and his family, fleeing war-torn Cyprus, flew into JFK on Feb. 7, the same day The Beatles arrived.

John also notes that left-handed Ringo played a right-handed drum set in a way that still leaves modern musicians shaking their heads in awe.

“His parts were totally different from what most people would play, but if you listen to Ringo’s part, it’s one fine thread — it’s got lots of wide-open spaces and holes in it that the vocal harmonies could shine through,” John said. “And all these threads weave together to make the most beautiful carpet you’ve ever seen.”

As the ‘60s progressed and The Beatles continued to claim vast tracts of the musical landscape for themselves, the clanging guitars and crashing cymbals of their nascent era began to give way to more complex orchestrations, lyrical experimentation and symphonic grandeur.

But even the sound of The Beatles’ seemingly simple, early tunes is notoriously difficult for modern artists to re-create, said Julie Quarles, 55, a vocalist with The English Channel, a Richmond-based band devoted to playing British pop music.

“Sometimes we think, ‘Oh, let’s throw together a couple of ‘earlies’ like ‘She Loves You,’“ said Quarles, whose band this year plans to dedicate one music set per concert to songs from 1964. “But when we’re trying to make it right, it stops us every time.

“The chord changes, the harmonies, the little nuances are difficult and not as easy as they sound. What they did, nobody else had done before.”

The variety in The Beatles’ sparkling musical catalog — more than 200 songs composed and recorded over barely 10 years — continues to inspire musicians young enough to be the Fab Four’s grandchildren.

“They have a little bit of something for everybody, and I get really upset when people try to tell me that The Beatles are overplayed, or The Beatles were never really that good,” said Sammy Stiles, the 23-year-old host of “Basis of Funk” on Richmond’s WRIR radio.

“But I say, ‘Do you realize that you can pretty much trace the entire evolution of rock ‘n’ roll in modern music as we know it through The Beatles?’ “ said Stiles, whose automobile license plate reads “BEATL3S.”

Stiles points to the blues, jazz, Latin, classical and mystical Eastern influences that run through Beatles music and spilled over into the band members’ solo careers after the group broke up in 1970.

Stiles, who also plays bass with Treetop Bonfire, a Richmond electronic-folk-rock band, was amazed recently by crowd reaction to his group’s cover of “Rocky Raccoon,” The Beatles’ honky-tonk ballad from 1968’s “The White Album.”

“We got just a huge response, and everybody was singing along,” he recalled. “It’s so surprising to see how much of a hold The Beatles still do have on people.”

More than anything, John, Paul, George and Ringo left us with the joyful sound of musical freedom, said Bassett: A 50-year thrumming legacy of hard-charging, original music that echoes across the decades and inspires young artists to write new songs and make their own fresh mark on the music world.

“What’s hip today is what The Beatles were digging when they were 14, just like I was,” Bassett said. “It’s live, authentic, real people, writing songs and playing instruments together and recording it into something that sounds great.

“That’s what you’re always working towards. That’s out there, and it’s Beatlesque in its simplicity.”

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