The Beatles (band): Difference between revisions

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''The love you take
''Is equal to
''The love you make''|"[[Grand Finale|The End]]"}}
|"[[Grand Finale|The End]]"}}
 
Four'''The Beatles''' are an obscure British band, made up of four lads from Liverpool -- [[John Lennon]], [[Paul McCartney]], [[George Harrison]], and [[Ringo Starr]] -- who released some albums in [[The Sixties]], and are credited by many for changing the face of rock music, while; for others they were at least major pioneers of the new style of pop rock, and a major force of [[The British Invasion]]. For many people, they are also the face of [[The Sixties]]. Which is not bad work, really.
 
''[[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]]'' is considered by many critics to be the greatest album in history and is credited with really changing the way people listened to pop music; it also has one of the most parodied and homaged album covers in the history of music. The simpler image on the cover of ''Abbey Road'' of [[Abbey Road Crossing|the band walking in near-lockstep across the street]] is a close competitor for most homaged cover, as is the half-shadowed band portrait that was used on the British album ''With the Beatles'' and its American equivalent/[[Macekre]] ''Meet the Beatles''.
 
The Beatles were the first band in history to make music video equivalents to their own songs, which every musician does now. They played themselves in three fictional films: the [[Mockumentary|pseudo-documentary]] ''[[A Hard Day's Night|A Hard Days Night]]'' (1964), the [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] parody ''[[Help!]]'' (1965), and the critically-panned surrealist television film ''[[Magical Mystery Tour]]'' (1967); they were also the subject of the [[Documentary]] film ''[[Let It Be]]'' (1970). Their [[Celebrity Toons]] equivalents starred in two very different [[Band Toon]]s, each with a distinct set of character designs for the Fab Four. [[The Beatles (animation)|Their wacky 1965]] [[Animated Series]] was the first made-for-TV cartoon based on a real band (or any real people), and therefore both the [[Ur Example]] and [[Trope Maker]] for [[Celebrity Toon]]. Meanwhile, the 1968 feature ''[[Yellow Submarine]]'' brought kid-friendly psychedelic imagery to the masses.
 
The band broke up in 1970 under [[Creative Differences|circumstances painful to think about]]. Everyone went on to solo careers. The dissolution was finalized in 1974, but Apple Corps (the Beatles' management company) was left intact. For perhaps fifteen years, few people saw any purpose for that...
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On December 24 2015, their music became available on most streaming services.<ref>[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35166985 BBC News article]</ref>
 
[[File:The Beatles logo.svg|thumb|200px]]
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{{discography|Their complete discography (as available in the 9/9/09 remastered box sets) is:}}
* ''Please Please Me'' (1963)
* ''With The Beatles'' (1963)
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* ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'', a Mamma-Mia style musical using parsed lyrics to cobble together a loose plot
* ''[[I Am Sam]]'', a [[Sean Penn]] movie whose mentally disabled protagonist loves the Beatles
* ''[[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (film)|Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]]'', a 1978 [[Jukebox Musical]]
 
{{tropenamer|The Beatles are the [[Trope Namers|Trope Namer]] for:}}
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{{tropenamer}}
* [[Abbey Road Crossing]] (The album cover from ''Abbey Road'')
* [[Bigger Than Jesus]] (Although [[John Lennon]] [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|didn't actually say that]])
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* [[Yoko Oh No]] (John's wife [[Yoko Ono]])
 
{{creatortropes|The Beatles provide examples of the following tropes:}}
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{{creatortropes}}
* [[Alliteration]]: Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam.
** Bungalow Bill and Rocky Raccoon. And Sexy Sadie.
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** "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" is probably the best example of this - both are in the key of G, both are full of special effects, neither uses that many chords, and neither is a love song. However, where "Paperback Writer" is a gritty, fast-paced, journalistic sorta-first person letter, "Rain" is a mystical, slow-paced third-person rant. It's even better if you compare both songs with "Taxman", Harrison's first song on the album that follows, which is again very similar and very different to both.
** "We Can Work It Out" is the best example of this, with Paul writing the optimistic, yet arrogant refrain - "Try to see it my way...We can work it out" - while John wrote the pessimistic "Life is very short, and there's no time..." middle eight (with the time signature change as George's sole contribution to the song).
* [[Four -Philosophy Ensemble]]: John is the cynic, Paul is the Optimist, George is the Realist, and Ringo is the Apathetic.
* [[Four-Temperament Ensemble]]: Paul is choleric, John--despite his witty, loud-mouthed, smart-aleck facade--was really melancholic, George was phlegmatic, Ringo is sanguine.
** Interestingly, early on their personas were presented as Paul being sanguine, John being choleric, George being melancholic, and Ringo being phlegmatic.
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** Hell, everything about Julian Lennon. Both he and his father were born to parents too young and immature to raise a child; both were pretty much abandoned by their parents (though Julian did still live with his mother); and then, by the time they had mended their respective relationships, both times the parent gets killed by someone else. And Julian looks like his mother, Cynthia, and sounds a lot like his father.
** His younger half-brother Sean did better, at least from an artistic POV. Sean's 1998 indie rock effort ''Into the Sun'' was different enough from not only Julian's more pop efforts, but also the works of [[Oasis (band)|a certain other band who played the same genre as him]] who were endlessly indebted to his father, that it wound up being very well received.
*** Sean unfortunately has decided to imitate his parents in his own [https://web.archive.org/web/20100822082516/http://www.thetripwire.com/news/2009/09/10/sean-lennon-rips-off-john-lennon/ pretty creepy way]. (Link NSFW).
** There's also Dhani Harrison, who is half of the alternative rock duo, thenewno2. And by the way, his voice sounds nearly identical to that of his father. And he somehow looks just like George.
*** He looks so much like George that during the big tribute concert that Eric Clapton arranged a year after George's death, Paul quipped that with Dhani onstage alongside himself, Ringo, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, and a lot of George's other longtime friends, "It looks like George stayed young and all the rest of us got old."
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** Of course, even in their "mass-marketed pop band" days the Beatles wrote original material and played their own instruments, which doesn't really fit this trope.
* [[Insult Backfire]]: All four were skilled at giving smart assed answers to criticism, but Paul may have achieved the crowning moment at a 1965 press conference:
{{quote|'''Reporter:''' In a recent article, [[Time (magazine)|Time magazine]] put down pop music. And they referred to "Day Tripper" as being about a prostitute, and "Norwegian Wood" as being about a lesbian. I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today.
'''Paul:''' Well, we were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all. }}
* [[Intercourse with You]]: "Please Please Me," "A Hard Day's Night," "Drive My Car", possibly "Revolution 9," "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?", and others.
** Wait, "Revolution [[Mind Screw|9]]"? How is that -- ''what''?
* [[In the Style Of]]: A few. A notable one is "Rocky Raccoon," more or less an explicit semi/AffectionateParody-[[Affectionate Parody]] of cowboy ballads. "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" is also supposedly John doing an [[In the Style Of]] Paul.
** "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" is basically John doing [[Bob Dylan]].
** Don't forget "If I Needed Someone" being in the style of [[The Byrds]]. Or "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Because" being in the style of [[The Beach Boys]] (no, seriously -- listen to those harmonies). And "Back in the U.S.S.R." is not only in the style of Sixties-era [[Chuck Berry]], but it's specifically a parody of one of Berry's smaller-scale hits.
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** He was described as an ADD monster.
** Reports of what a complete tool he could be are especially glaring in light of the modern picture of him as being St. John of Peace.
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Paul. See [[Heartwarming Moments (Sugar Wiki)|Heartwarming Moments]].
** Despite being an infamous control freak after "Sgt. Pepper", he did his best to hold the crumbling band together after manager Brian Epstein passed away.
** John's neglected son Julian has admitted that he was much closer with Paul than his father.
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* [[Only Sane Man]]: "The Fool on the Hill". The [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Oop North]]: They're from Liverpool, after all.
* [[Opinion Myopia]]: Yoko Ono's fans (which apparently exist, for some strange reason) really like to insist that the Beatles were just this brief, unimportant little project that John was fiddling around with, killing time until he met Yoko. They can't seem to grasp just why everyone acts like the Beatles were such a big deal when there's John and ''Yoko's'' work together to consider.
* [[Parody]]/[[Affectionate Parody]]: The song "Back in the USSR" is both a parody of Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA" and a decent imitation of the Beach Boys' distinctive "Surfing Sound".
** It's also suggested that it's a oblique (if not entirely affectionate) reference to Prime Minister Harold Wilson's "[[wikipedia:I'm Backing Britain|I'm Backing Britain]]" productivity campaign.
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{{reflist}}
{{Grammy Award for Best New Artist}}
{{Grammy Award for Album of the Year}}
[[Category:The Sixties{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:The BeatlesSixties]]
[[Category:The Seventies]]
[[Category:Musicians]]
[[Category:Baroque Pop]]
[[Category:The Sixties]]
[[Category:Trope Overdosed]]
[[Category:Trope Makers]]
[[Category:The Beatles]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]
[[Category:Musicians of the 1960s]]
[[Category:Musicians of the 1970s]]
[[Category:Names to Know in Music]]
{{Featured Article}}
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