The point, my dear gentlemen, is that if one does not "contextualize" a work beyond its value, and doesn't also talk about the "famous" "American Pie," the death of Rock'n'roll on that beautiful day in 1960, one gets nowhere. However, it's necessary to make some distinctions: THE BEATLES WERE NOT ROCK! I'm tired of repeating it... The Beatles were the inventors of modern "Pop" (the era of various Bing Crosby, Sinatra and company had ended). They took some themes from R'n'R, especially those of vocal groups like the Everly Brothers, and reintroduced them to a European audience... The Beatles were the first indigenous "light music" group of the old continent... You might say... and the Mersey Beat? And Cliff Richard? Yes, they rode that wave, but more than anyone else, they shaped a genre that distanced itself from the old R'N'R and was much more "wild" than the British "beat" proposed until then... Then add the trends they launched, their "carefree" attitude... They weren't as intimidating as their fathers "Elvis Presley," "Gene Vincent," and company... They were clean, bourgeois, I would dare say... In America? In America, there were the Ventures and the "new" rock that was called surf rock, "hot rod," and so on... But of all the groups that the "new continent proposed," who eventually made the big splash? The Beach Boys, who were very similar to the Beatles in look and music... Kingsmen? Del Shannon? Yes, "Runaway" is a song that still disturbs me quite a bit today, but I could also mention that genius Duane Eddy and his "Twangy Guitar," but they did NOT leave a mark! And the "proto-punk" à la Kingsmen would arrive later, specifically in response to the "British invasion"...
Musically speaking, there were more innovative groups than the Beatles.... Just think of the Shadows (English) with their "Apache" from 1960 and the Ventures (Slaughter on 10th Avenue, Perfidia, and so on)... Why didnāt they make it big? Because they didn't offer music accessible to everyone; in '60/'62, listening to Ventures tracks was like in the '80s listening to "Killers" by Maiden or "Kill 'em All" by Metallica! Additionally, there were no singers, only instrumentals... Moreover, none of them did anything to "create" an image... Ah yes, the image, something every good record label marketer knows very well... The image after Elvis, Jerry Lee in America was no longer taken into account.... I remember my father telling me that in '60 he had all the records of the Ventures and the Shadows because my family was already traveling a lot at that time... He also told me that when he played them for his friends, they were astonished: and they decided to pick up either the guitar or the drums. Because that was the birth of ROCK, the more visceral kind, the one understood until today... The Beatles, on the other hand (also loved by my father), were listened to more for their harmonic structures, simple yet very pleasant compositions... What would you call it today? Easy Listening? Pop Lounge? In short, they invented "Yeh Yeh"... Then all the others came along... Then things got serious, but thatās a ROCK discourse! The Beatles instead played Pop... at least until "Rubber Soul"... the first album of the turning point... Then until their breakup, they did everything: from madrigals to avant-garde, even touching on "garage rock" (or punk in its infancy) with Helter Skelter.... And by Ringo Starr's own admission, HS was conceived in response to groups like MC5 and Standells that were starting to hit hard... At the end of the track, you can hear Ringo shout: "I've got blisters on my fingers!!" It was just a Divertissement, as was No. 9... And yet, even though many epigones, groups that started playing (and surpassing them) thanks to the Beatlesā¦ think of the Zombies, Small Faces, Who, Hollies, Spencer Davis, and thousands of others... the Beatles created absolute masterpieces.... Masterpieces that, in this case, NEED TO BE DECONTEXTUALIZED... Who cares what genre "E
