Beatles from craftsmen to artists

Now we examine the craftsman-to-artist idea through the Beatles’ music. Of course it appears in other careers too; we use the Beatles as the example because they led the way.

A craftsman, once skilled at a technique and able to use it fluently, applies it again and again. Say people who make tables for a living find a way to cut dovetails well and efficiently—good for business. What do they do? From then on they use that craft element on every table. They found a good method, so they apply it again and again. That is a common sense of “craft.” They do not say: well, since I made one table that way, I must not make another the same way or I am repeating myself. That sounds funny, right? Now think of artists: the harshest criticism is “oh, he just wrote the same symphony many times” or “she just recorded the same song over and over.” That roughly means they keep repeating what they have done, with no invention—nothing new, a flaw. So “craftsman” means those who live off one trick; “artist” means those who struggle to innovate and refuse the charge of mere self-repetition. The two ideas partly oppose each other.

What we see in the mid-1960s Beatles and many other artists is a shift from craftsman to artist. For the Beatles, craftsman practice meant staying inside traditional American pop song frames. If you want early Beatles close to Brill Building models, 1963’s “Please Please Me” and 1964’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand” are good examples—very typical formula pieces, with so-called Beatles charm and so on, but basically Brill Building pop. Even so, by “A Hard Day’s Night” (released summer 1964, recorded months earlier) you hear small signs they are widening the frame, seeking more creative methods—first steps toward being artists. By 1965, under Bob Dylan’s important influence, you get songs like John’s “Help!” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and Paul’s “Yesterday” (written 1964), with more serious lyrics. They met Dylan in autumn 1964—I note the date because next lecture we will see that before summer 1965 Dylan was not yet a star performer on that scale. His albums were known in folk circles, but mainly to insiders; the Beatles admired him, and Dylan talked with John and Paul, urging them to dig into lyrics—not only I love you, she loves me, hold your hand, and kisses—but more serious subjects. Signs of that shift first show on 1965’s Help!, as above: the title track, “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and “Yesterday.”

Pop songwriters often use AABA form, going back a long way in American popular song. Not the only option, but many American writers used it—Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, the Tin Pan Alley crowd. Look at the Beatles’ first four albums and related singles: heavy AABA use. It was almost the default; songs that skip it are few—maybe 75% to 80% AABA. They did not stumble into AABA and reuse it by accident; they knew the structure because they had studied how pop works. That reuse, I think, may even carry a touch of pride. But as the 1960s unfold, AABA grows rarer. Ambition in lyrics rises; new instrumentation enters. Song structures change as they leave Brill Building thinking for a more art-driven direction. In 1965 we hear “Norwegian Wood,” unlike anything they had written—tonally different, telling an interesting story, and the first time we see them use sitar as color. In 1966 Paul’s “Eleanor Rigby” sketches existential angst and alienation. “For No One,” about a broken marriage, uses French horn—an anticipation of the piccolo trumpet he will use on “Penny Lane” in late 1966 / early 1967. “Eleanor Rigby” also uses strings, a continuation of “Yesterday,” but a bit more advanced in writing. And the closer of 1966’s Revolver, “Tomorrow Never Knows”: John intones lines from Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience, themselves drawn from the Tibetan Book of the Dead; they use tape loops, something they had never tried. The stylistic gap between “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” is huge—and only about two years, or a bit more, separate them.

The path from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Tomorrow Never Knows” is the craftsman-to-artist path. That is the Beatles’ musical evolution. They were not alone. In the 1960s many artists did work of the same kind. Next we will see Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys innovating on surf. Dylan innovates; many Beatles-imitating bands do too. But the Beatles are a clear case of how the trajectory developed—how rock musicians began to see themselves as artists rather than craftsmen. Rock developed a new aesthetic we can call rock authenticity: write your own songs, with real personality and feeling; play the instruments on the record yourself, do not rely on session players; the person on the record must be you. My ideas, my songs—that is the accepted “real.” So by 1966–67, when news broke that the Monkees’ records were played by studio professionals, not the band, it became a scandal—“inauthentic,” no different from industry craftsmen. Yet only a few years earlier the Byrds—later a symbol of authenticity—issued “Mr. Tambourine Man” with only Roger McGuinn of the band playing (12-string); the rest was session players. Beatles records and Beach Boys work on Pet Sounds used session players too. But complaints piled up; musicians began playing their own records or face the charge of being “inauthentic.” Authenticity also meant at least some control of your image—inside matching outside. Not playing a role, not wearing a mask; sincere and real. That kind of image design was indispensable.

One last point on the Beatles: as an artist you push forward. Do not repeat yourself; keep going—that is the direction. Keep trying new and different things; try to open the borders. One exception: you may return to roots. You can always strip music back to your roots; that too is read as a sign of authenticity. What you must not do is copy successful precedents again and again. By the late 1960s—and even more in the 1970s—almost everyone measured music by the authenticity aesthetic I have sketched, at least on FM rock radio. In the first half of the 1960s, from the end of the 1950s to 1965, no one did. Brill Building practice still ruled. The grassroots move from craftsman to artist shows not only in Beatles music but across rock history. In the next few lectures, as we approach 1967–69, I will detail that wider movement. We will see how FM rock radio kept amplifying authenticity-first attitudes, while AM rock—this is when the two paths split—stuck to Brill Building thinking and extreme singles orientation. FM chose album-oriented artists and the authenticity aesthetic. Enough for now: next we turn to the rise of British blues—or the blues revival in Britain—and how that movement helped produce bands like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.