Artists are freaks

The unification of the various musical developments that informed the Beatles’ early song writing was underpinned by a rigorous unity of theme in their lyrics. Their songs ranged in subject from love, heartache and friendship, to work, money troubles and paying taxes, but can all be categorised under the collective heading: the glorification of working-class life.

Artists have always been viewed by the people as rather freakish. Indeed, to possess a talent is still something of which the common man is naturally in awe and at the same time highly suspicious. Traditionally, talent is viewed as a gift from God or something one acquires through haggling with the Devil. A poet is a travelling visionary who is everywhere a welcome guest, but who is never invited to stay indefinitely.

Before the Beatles, singers sang the song. They sang with the aim best to represent the song’s emotional intention. The song told a story with a certain universal quality to it. It would deal in archetypes. The listener identified with the archetypal people and situations within the song, not with the singer, who was merely its medium.

The Beatles’ early albums are pervaded by an inescapable sense of labour: one feels that they made records at such a consistent level of quality and released them at such an awe-inspiring rate as a consequence of a tremendous innate work ethic, rather than ambition. They were as reliable as German car manufacturers. They were self-sufficient with regard to writing and performing, and recorded with an efficiency that is entirely unheard of today. In their early phase uniform black suites they seemed on stage to be working a day job. With their down to earth banter and cheeky wit they could not help but come across in the media as salt of the earth working guys, rather than elusive, glamorous and supremely gifted stars. In short: the Beatles acted out the working-class theme of their songs in ‘real’ life. Their marketing strategy was to inhabit their songs.  For the first time audiences could project their recognition of the archetypes within the songs onto the singers. They recognised the Beatles as of their own kind.

This perceived commonness caused fame and talent to become divested of their mystique. The noble art of song writing began increasingly to be taken up not by freaks, but by ordinary boys, who felt that if the Beatles could do it, then so could they: learn a few chords, bang out a few tunes over the weekend and make a smash. How hard could it be?