Ellen and I have always been Beatle’s fans. The cover shot of this post is our collection of Beatle’s albums. Here are our 45 rpms.
The past week I attended a seminar on the Beatles at Lawrence University’s Bjorklunden facility in Door County, Wisconsin. The course was taught by Lawrence bassoon professor Carl Rath. He is quite a passionate Beatlephile as well as teacher.
We read Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America by Jonathon Gould in preparation. He did a nice job providing the cultural and political context of the Beatles’ formative years. I thought the deconstruction of songs went a bit far, but that’s just me.
Carl brought a great many Beatles artifacts which was quite fun. We also saw the four Beatle’s movies. On Tuesday night we played Beatle’s Trivia. I was the lucky winner. I think I was sitting in the right place and got some of the easier questions. My prize:
Some of my key takeaways are:
- Liverpool was the crucible the provided the lads enough chutzpah to handle Hamburg. Hamburg was their apprenticeship, where they played virtually non-stop. It was also a very rough place, and it seems likely that part of the bond they developed came about there. John, Paul and George were 20, 19, and 17 respectively.
- I knew they harmonized, but not how much. They a lot of three part harmony, in many cases it was very sophisticated. They were hugely influenced by the girl bands of the day.
- They were workaholics. In 1963 they played over 350 gigs. In 1964 it was over 380. They also recorded radio and TV shows and made a movie. If you subscribe to the Malcolm Gladwell Outliers model, they were at the right place, at the right time, with some natural talent. They then proceeded to work their butts off.
- Brian Epstein offered his personal assistant 2 1/2% of revenue if he would help him put the original contract together. The assistant said he’d prefer a higher salary instead. He walked away from an estimated $128 million.
- The Beatles sold over 545,000,000 records. One year they had over 30 songs in the top 100.
Shots from the class:
