Paul McCartney – The Strategic Genius and What We Can Learn From Him.
Dear all,
I love the Beatles. I hate to be cliché, but I do. I remember the first record I bought – having inherited my parent’s record-player at 14 – in France in early summer 2016. I can’t remember where the market was, I think in Paris, but I do remember they had a whole load of really terrible French folk music. I remember the sun was shining. It was hot, but there was a gentle breeze. I find that those are the best conditions for doing anything. At the very bottom of another pile of the very worst music on the planet was something I recognised. It was an album, one I vaguely remembered from torturous car journeys as a seven-year-old. It was Rubber Soul. Exchanging a 20 Euro note I was given by my grandmother, I took the record, and for the next week or so it was my prized possession. I had always had some sense of The Beatles being a good band, one I identified with, but I had not been seriously into music until around March 2016. I remember that march my Father told me to listen to Abbey Road, and I found it the most amazing thing my ears had the pleasure of listening to.
When I got out of France, back home and put the record on it was really mesmerising. I had listened to Rubber Soul in eager anticipation to hearing it on record as we drove across France from Paris to Carcassonne and then two weeks later on the drive back to Calais. I remembered each vaguely from early childhood. Nothing compares with the real thing on record though. I quickly built up a record collection of The Beatles songs. I was Beatle-obsessed, re-living the sixties album by album from the living room. And when I say, re-living the sixties, I’m not exaggerating – missing out the crass early albums, I moved through Revolver, to Sgt Peppers, to the Magical Mystery Tour, to the White Album, to Abbey Road and finally finishing off with a bout of sadness with Let it Be. I would not be exaggerating to say they occupy a pivotal place in my heart, and to this day act as one of my two favourite bands.
Now what’s this got to do with anything? Other than being a good introduction to me as a person, they did something that no other band has succeeded at ever doing. They completely dominated the musical scene, and became the defining cultural symbol of a decade. If there was a most successful band in history, it is unquestionably The Beatles. They are the Mozart and Beethoven of Rock-Pop music rolled into one. Their importance should not be overexaggerated. To say they ‘captured the mood of a generation’, and to define this ‘mood’ as the desire for far-reaching reform of the system is wrong. I don’t like it at all. It’s inaccurate for one, considering the vast majority of people were not taken in by hippyism. People weren’t, generally, flouting laws, taking LSD and running around hopelessly naked in some Californian anarcho-syndicalist commune. It’s just not true, I’m afraid. Just as extreme left-wingers like to take the wind out of the sail of any narrative that exaggerates anything not fitting their historical orthodoxy – society has a duty to revise the left’s false narrative. My Grandfathers were both accountants and both came of age in the 1960s. That’s far more representative than almost whiggish-Marxist social historians like to make out. What’s more, The Beatles were far more conservative than radical. Songs like ‘Lovely Rita’ and ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ existed in conjunction at conceivably rebellious ones like ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’. If they captured anything, it was a working class social conservativism, and a sense of ‘Britishness’. I mean, obviously as the decade went on, things subtly changed – especially with Lennon’s discography – but I think that we must establish that their most significant contribution was not as political symbols.
I think however, what was most important and most impressive about The Beatles was their ability to create art, while maintaining a popular following. This is what made The Beatles successful, and ultimately is what I want to focus on.
What I want to focus on is how The Beatles were able to maintain and cement their hegemonic grip on the musical world through the sixties. I want to also explore how they were able to do this while simultaneously retaining their ‘avant-garde’ and artistic nature. This was no mean feat, and I think it can teach us a lot of lessons about how to bridge the gap between the popular and the philosophically and artistically appealing. This makes the difference between an ideology being confined to the back-rooms of academia, to it being causally responsible for a significant shift in the way in which we think about things. I think the world can learn a lot from this, strategically speaking. I will go into why I think this is important at the end, but bear with me.
Paul McCartney
I think Paul McCartney is the best Beatle. I have always felt a gut feeling that he was, Lennon always felt too arrogant and not hardworking enough to me. I mean, obviously Paul has his faults, producing quirky songs that should be relegated to second-rate Music-hall venues. If you know The Beatles, you know what I mean – those like Honey Pie and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. He was and is excellent at producing songs with excellent hooks and melodies. At its worst this skill can be a hindrance, causing a terrible pop-heavy tune that feels cheesy and soulless. In some respects, Lennon was a better songwriter – but I still think Paul is more important, as he gave The Beatles strategic vision. Paul McCartney, with the help of Sir George Martin, made The Beatles that genuinely transformative band of the late 1960s. Together they formed a strategy which was able to retain popular support while still pushing against the boundaries of the feasible.
Ok, so how did he do this? Well, it helped that The Beatles were already big. It is undoubtedly the case that in the early 1960s. They fronted the ‘British Invasion’ of America, and scored countless number one hits. In terms of raw numbers, in the early Sixties The Beatles phenomenon was probably marginally bigger than The Beatles of the later Sixties. At the same time, though, it was hollow. It was writing songs that 12-year-old girls enjoyed. Stuff like ‘I want to hold your hand’ – hardly deep, hardly meaningful, hardly significant. Musical acts had been as big as The Beatles in the early 1960s, and later acts would similarly gain that sort of level of commercial success. Think Elvis Presley, for example. Potentially a great singer, and a great act for those at the time, but nothing ever more than that. What The Beatles represented in the early 1960s was a popular phenomenon, part of a teenage movement that had been going on for a long time.
Paul recognised something that Lennon did not – the need to change, but also the need to not change too fast. John’s genius was anarchic, disordered, and creative – but these very characteristics made him unable to form a strategic long-term plan in the same way Paul could. Paul, like John, also had a sense that they wanted to produce something really significant and transformational from 1965 onwards. Similarly, Paul and John both realised the need to progress the band, but I think for slightly different reasons. Paul and George Martin recognised that the band was faltering, and was perceived in the media as such. Concerts were only half-full, and the Beatles were gaining bad press generally – the most significant examples being when John made the infamous ‘Jesus’ comment or when The Beatles almost caused a diplomatic incident in the Philippines. John was influenced by new cultural influences and his anarchic genius and egocentrism were the impetus to move on to something bigger than doing songs for teenagers. Obviously, I have exaggerated the cleft here, as both felt a complex mix of both of these two motives in changing the direction of the band. Despite this, there were other factors at play which made this division even sharper during the years 1965-8. John was increasingly experimental with new drugs and as a result, was more absent from the decision-making process. Increasing drug use, especially of LSD, gave Paul increasing control of the reigns of de facto power during these critical years. This combined with Lennon’s spontaneous character that disliked hard work made Paul the dominant Beatles’ member.
This was the genesis for Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band, and the ‘studio years’. The Beatles stopped touring, and instead entered the studio, creating what they believed to be something more significant than the surface level music of the early years. There was something really impressive about this was the way that Paul did this. Paul has said that he wanted each album to have a different feeling to it – the idea behind this was that The Beatles could transcend the idea of being a band that produces one sort of music. This made the band a creative force in its own right, rather than subsidiary to a particular musical phenomenon. The Beatles was its own ‘brand’, it owned its image – and more importantly its image did not own it. What evidence is there of this? Well, for one, the albums themselves.
The Album Progression to Sgt Peppers
Let’s start with Rubber Soul. Rubber Soul itself was a progression from a style of music that was different from The Beatles’ very early stuff. Change was evident before the album. ‘We Can Work It Out’ (1965), ‘Yesterday’ (1965) and ‘Day Tripper’ (1965) all were more musically subtle and lyrically complex than the early Merseybeat-style hits. This was the context of Rubber Soul (December 1965). Each song was crafted, and was something approximating art. New techniques were used, and new influences – namely Bob Dylan – were integrated. It integrated a lot of folk-style music. New instruments were introduced – organs, sitars and acoustic guitars. There was a lot more variation. ‘Norwegian Wood’ offered the Sitar and hinted at a new Indian-style sound. ‘Girl’ offered beautiful vocal harmonisations, and ‘In My Life’ offered lyrical depth. Despite this variation, there were a lot of rock-folk songs like ‘Word’, ‘I’m Looking Through You’ and ‘If I needed someone’ that gave the complexity of the album structure. Similarly, the material felt sufficiently new to merit a real change in direction for The Beatles. They no longer felt stale. The recognition of the need to change, spearheaded by both Lennon and McCartney – combined by a simultaneous desire to change, allowed The Beatles to avoid falling into irrelevance. For the moment, this was not strategic genius, rather just strategic success. By doing this, The Beatles partially transcended their image as just part of the ‘British Invasion’. Instead, they increasingly became a ‘brand’ and image unto themselves. The Beatles were setting up themselves as being known as The Beatles, rather than part of a phenomenon.
Next came Revolver. Revolver had a different sound to Rubber Soul. Less Folksy, more Rock-Pop, it was filled with songs with a consciously different style to Rubber Soul, and The Beatles’ earlier work. In this sense, Paul’s aim in creating a new album with a different sort of sound was largely successful. Revolver, however, although probably musically more impressive than Rubber Soul, did not have the same degree of cohesion as a record. It was a more eclectic album than Rubber Soul. It was also more experimental than Rubber Soul. I think more than anything this is reflective of two things. The continuing influence of John Lennon on the band and the difficulties the band was going through during this period. John Lennon and Paul McCartney worked in tandem and in competition with one another to produce musical masterpieces, and real art. Songs like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’ were novel and creative. The backward music on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ shows The Beatles at the cutting edge of the avant-garde despite their popularity. The use of Ringo’s fantastically out-of-tune voice on Yellow Submarine shows The Beatles’ genius for setting a scene and creating an image through sound. At the same time, however, the album was at times too avant-garde. The John of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was approximating the John of ‘Revolution no 9’ – (this is the one when John and Yoko produce 9 minutes of boring social commentary through the use of sounds). I would say, in fact, that The Beatles’ image would not be able to cope with a few more eclectic, random albums like Revolver, and would have likely fallen into relative cultural obscurity. However, this fate was not realised. Paul captured the loose ends of Revolver, and with these produced something that was able to stave off irrelevance, yet also create an image and art that contained sophistication, subtlety and genius.
Paul proceeded to start work on Sgt Peppers. The idea was his, and he had creative dominance over this period. Only Paul could make something so gimmicky and British as the idea of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. The idea of an Edwardian alter-ego band was both immensely silly and clever. What it did was create a popular image, and with it an easy to follow structure that gave the album a character and therefore gave The Beatles a sense of musical progression. The physical album itself is testament to this. Colourful and creative, it has 58 figures on the sleeve – a mix of celebrities and influences, it seems novel, and their presence raises questions and draws the eye. The Beatles are dressed up in colourful uniform, and they look visibly different to their earlier selves. The vestiges of the early 60s have disappeared as all have some form of facial hair and broken the orthodoxy of black clothes and mop-tops. This is new, and represents a conscious attempt to break with the past – yet at the same time bring the people with you.
The best way of explaining Paul’s particular genius for achieving art while bringing the public with him is through the music itself. The music throughout the album has an essential structure to it – one that makes the album feel like its for popular consumption. It starts with an introductory piece which more or less describes the basic history of this imaginary band. It leads on to the next song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. This offers a bridge between the hard rock of the first introductory piece and the overtly psychedelic ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’. Similarly, the next two songs, ‘Getting Better’ and ‘Fixing a Hole’ have an essential sense of continuity between them. Another very good example of this is the placement of George Harrison’s ‘Within You Without You’. It was placed at the very start of Side Two – by George Martin, not Paul McCartney this time (although we will likely never know for certain, as Martin and McCartney worked very closely together ). This song was perceived by Martin to be too much of a risk, as it was too artsy. He wanted to make it easy to skip – which it is as the start of side two. The point is that the album is made to be easy to listen to – and Paul, with Martin’s help did this. This shows something important about McCartney and Martin – they recognised that conservativism must work in tandem with radicalism if it was to get anywhere. Indie bands remain indie bands for a reason – complexity, creativity and subtlety can only get so far. People, generally, are fickle, and an artist must recognise that what you see as genius must also have some natural popular appeal if it is to be influential. McCartney’s genius was that he restricted the group’s radicalism and simultaneously gave it a framework for popular expression through giving each album an essential character.
Similarly, the style of music bridges a conservativism and radicalism into one ‘brand’. I have discussed these ‘brands’ on a previous blog post – and how an ambiguous new ‘brand’ that has novel images and symbolism attached to it can bring together contradictory viewpoints. Paul was able to realise that he could do this through Sgt Peppers. The ‘brand’ here was of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – which integrated elements of contradictory social and cultural influences to make something new. Included was that British conservativeness I mentioned earlier. ‘Lovely Rita’ is about a woman who gives parking tickets for God’s sake – I mean what more proof do you need about this not having conservative elements. Similarly, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ is Paul at his gimmicky best, edging on excruciating, but not quite there, and therefore producing a high quality hit. At the same time, there was some real radicalism – pushing at cultural barriers was John’s ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, which John denied was about LSD, but given the fact LSD is the abbreviated form of the song, many have doubts. A ‘Day in the Life’ and ‘Within Without You’ are similarly radical. Both would in themselves be representative of a moderate form of the youth radicalism sweeping the western would. As part of Sgt Peppers however, they represent a new version of The Beatles’ ‘brand’. The contradictory social and cultural influences that had been somewhat damaging to the popular reception of Revolver did not take away from the cohesion of Sgt Peppers. The ‘brand’ of Sgt Peppers was strong, so songs that were eclectic seemed to belong with each other. Unlike Rubber Soul, the homogeneity of the album did not make it so memorable – instead a diversity that allowed art to flourish was present, but hidden under the conscious ‘brand’ of Sgt Peppers.
Sgt Peppers was art, immensely influential and immensely popular. What more can one want from music? John, of course resented all this – typically for him, he detested not ‘writing from the heart’. He was a philosopher and an artist, but not a man with much of a practical grasp about how the world actually worked, so John chafed under Paul’s order and direction.
The Later Years and Conclusion
The later years of the band would see another four albums. Three of which were probably less culturally influential and commercially successful than Rubber Soul and Sgt Peppers. I don’t have time to go into each album – but generally, Paul’s dominance on the band was lost, and the members became more independent from one another. The Beatles started the transition away from being members of the band long before 1970, and with this increase in independence, the ability to form a cohesive strategy for the band slowly slipped away. It was not completely lost, by no means, and Abbey Road is testament to the fact that The Beatles could still produce excellent quality music that largely captured the imagination of the public. I think that even The Beatles’ later works show that Paul McCartney had a knack for combining popularity with art. Paul McCartney continued to try to give different flavours to the music to different albums The Beatles made. Abbey Road was an album that felt cleaner than others, like a breath of fresh air. It used synthesisers and vocal harmonisation. I have always admired its use of rapidly changing tempos and empty space in the form of silence. Combined with that classic album cover, it gives something both tangibly different and cohesive – sounding fresh and optimistic in a way in which the other Beatles albums don’t. I think it, or Rubber Soul are my favourite – I can never decide. Similarly, Let it Be was a conscious attempt to try and reintegrate the skiffle, blues and rock of Merseybeat into the imaginative and creative music of the mid-60s Beatles. Overshadowed by the band’s breakup, we will never know how successful this would have really been. Both, however, were tangibly different albums that worked off the back off others.
The White Album, although again great music, was another example of a relatively Lennon-heavy album. Lennon re-took the reigns from Paul, and as a result, The Beatles’ anarchy re-emerged. The White Album is a great album, it really is – and it is testament to the creativity of John that the musical quality is so high. The variation is massive – it includes Harrison’s ‘While My Guitar Gently Sleeps’, Lennon’s ‘Julia’, ‘Bungalow Bill’, ‘Yer Blues’, McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’, ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’ and that hard rock classic ‘Helter Skelter’. Even Ringo produced a song in ‘Don’t Pass Me By’. Musically and creatively, undoubtedly it is genius – probably one of their best albums. However, one can tell John’s commanding influence in its completely haphazard and random character, as well as the prioritisation of art over popularity. The clearest example of this, is of course, that aural eyesore, ‘Revolution no 9’. It may well be art, but it certainly is not music. It ruins the second side of the Double Album for me – and I’m sure it does for others. This for me, shows Lennon’s basic desire to produce art at the expense of success and something culturally transformational. What Lennon doesn’t get, that McCartney does, is that to be culturally transformational – and therefore make your art successful – you actually need to be popular. To do this requires some essential image management and self-restraint, of the sort that McCartney was so good at. McCartney recognised you need to bring the public with you, and was excellent at creating a vehicle and structure for doing so. I will conclude with a round-up with exactly what I think he did that was so clever.
For McCartney, each album was a work in itself. It had a character, and acted as a pointer to the listening public in the clearest possible terms of what The Beatles were essentially about. What is more, McCartney created - particularly with Sgt Peppers – an element of ambiguity and novelty that allowed it to transcend the internal musical division of the album. With this, he was able to package up culturally, socially and musically different influences into one structure. Sgt Peppers became a singular entity, and it was with this that McCartney was able to package up art as for the people. He created something which would carry the radicalism of The Beatles without losing popular support.
Secondly, McCartney, consciously or unconsciously brought the listeners on a Journey – and it was with this that McCartney was able to introduce them to new sounds and styles of music. Rubber Soul was a progression from the early 1960s teenage girl stuff. It was different and inventive, but not too different to scare people away from The Beatles. The Beatles were avant-garde and complex, but also not relegated to a secondary tier status. Similarly, Revolver advanced music, bringing inventive new techniques in, but stayed grounded with classic rock songs like ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’. When Sgt Peppers came along, therefore, it was not too much of a conceptual leap for the public. They had been introduced to slightly different styles of music by The Beatles over the past few years and saw this as part of a natural musical progression.
Finally, McCartney recognised the limits to radicalism. He consciously integrated conservative elements in The Beatles’ music. It often made it more surface level and fun at times, tempering the musically inventive character of the other Beatles. McCartney restricted the radicalism of his bandmates, especially Lennon, but also Harrison at times, in order to maintain their status at the top. As a result, he was able to make something that was art influence culture. Because it was art, and therefore had a core message about how things should be, McCartney was able to make The Beatles a culturally influential and transformational unit. Elvis had no essential message, yet was popular, so made little long-lasting artistic impact. Indie bands may have genuinely novel things to say, but they are not culturally influential. It was McCartney’s genius to make an outfit that combined these two things into a transformational cultural and social phenomenon.
I think this tells today’s politicians and philosophers a lot – as well as today’s budding young indie musicians. Unfortunately for you all, you cannot keep public support unilaterally because you will it to be. Your genius will not automatically garner success. It may be the best idea on earth, but in order to make it transformative in character you have to actually link this with people. It is ultimately people who remember things and create long-lasting myths that tell us about our past and purpose. The elitism of today’s intellectuals and today’s culturally inventive figures is self-defeating. They need to grit their teeth and appeal to the public if they want to create change. This approach also has an essential appeal, instead of top-down implementation through elitist pressure groups or members of the Westminster Elite – there can be a degree of popular support for change. The Beatles occupy a place in our cultural imaginings of the 1960s – they were a phenomenon, they were pushing at barriers, they were significant. Their art is still regarded as such – almost all rock and pop artists see them as a defining influence, indirectly or directly.
This proves, I think more than anything, that lessons we can learn lie everywhere. The Beatles were the most extraordinary band, unprecedented in history up to this day. I think we shouldn’t be snooty about this, saying that they don’t deserve the degree of success that they did, and that this band or that is as good as them. What The Beatles tells us is that there is something more to popular culture than often meets the eye.
Yours,
WFF