FOLLOWING a mysterious global blackout, the world forgets The Beatles existed – everyone except failed singer-songwriter Jack Malik.
That is the premise of director Danny Boyle’s latest romcom, Yesterday, out on Friday.
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Jack, played by former EastEnders actor Himesh Patel, was out cold after a bang on the head during the incident. And, passing off the Fab Four’s epic back catalogue as his own, he becomes a singing sensation.
Blur bassist Alex James explains why music and society would not be the same were it not for John, Paul, George and Ringo.
It’s hard to imagine a world without The Beatles. No Yesterday. No Hard Day’s Night, no Eleanor Rigby, no All You Need Is Love.
Anyone who has grown up in the Western world will have been touched, in some way, by a Beatles song.
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My love of music went supernova because of them. I was off school with chicken pox when John Lennon was shot in 1980.
I spent the week watching a VHS recording of The Beatles film Help!, which was broadcast on TV the day he died. I still watch it once a year.
Then I bought a Beatles songbook and a guitar, figured out the chord shapes and started strumming and singing along. I never looked back.
Blur certainly wouldn’t have existed without The Beatles and it’s fair to say Oasis owe them a thing or two as well. But you couldn’t have had the Rolling Stones without The Beatles either, or just about any band from Genesis to the Sex Pistols.
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Everything starts with their songbook, which will live on in hearts and minds long after we’re all dead.
The Beatles didn’t just create great, inspirational songs. They created the entire music business.
When George Martin signed them to Parlophone, he and his secretary ran the whole label. They did everything from signing bands and dealing with the contracts to helping them make the records and promoting them.
The UK music scene, now one of our greatest export businesses, was a cottage industry until The Beatles and manager Brian Epstein arrived.
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This was partly by dint of being great songwriters, and there were three of them in the group. But being a band was the key. Ringo, famously, got the most fan mail.
Before The Beatles, great artists didn’t necessarily perform their own songs. Elvis, although a great performer, wasn’t a writer. There were stars who wrote their own tunes, such as Buddy Holly, but the idea of a band was something new.
They looked pretty good, too. Epstein is credited with helping them project a strong image, encouraging the scruffy art school rebels in black leathers to dress in suits and sport their signature mop tops.
They had a look, a sound and strong personalities before The Spice Girls were a twinkle in their parents’ eyes, but it was how well they came across on camera that took them to a truly massive audience.
It wasn’t just the way they performed on stage, it was about their personalities, too. They were as interesting for what they talked and joked about as for what they sang about.
They had opinions, they had views, and this hadn’t really happened before. Television was a new medium and they were quick to realise that a cheeky one-liner was a fast way to people’s hearts.
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As well as this fun and intelligence, they were firmly working class. As Michael Caine explains in last year’s brilliant film about the Sixties, My Generation, the class divide in Britain was a massive obstacle to anyone growing up back then.
The Beatles burst through the glass ceiling as if it wasn’t there. Suddenly, there was hope for everyone.
They embraced lowbrow TV shows as well as highbrow arts and politics. They became the voice of a generation growing up in a grey, post-war Britain that suddenly realised it had the world at its feet.
The mass media gave them a huge global audience, so their live shows grew from theatres to megadomes.
Going to big gigs is now part and parcel of British summertime, but there weren’t any huge rock shows when the lads came along. I still love the footage of them playing Shea Stadium in New York. It’s all so fresh and heartfelt. Nothing like it had been seen before and it’s so very much harder to be the first to do something than the second.
They kept on paving the way, daring to do things their own way — and they kept getting better.
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It was this progression that was so wonderful, the world hadn’t seen artists evolve like this before.
The records they made after they stopped touring were their finest.
There was a technology explosion in the Sixties. At the beginning of the decade, bands were recorded live with a microphone or two, but by the time The Beatles split studios housed vast amounts of sound processing equipment.
Abbey Road Studios, with its sound technicians in lab coats, brings to mind a mad laboratory, and the band embraced new technology as it came along. They experimented with instruments, not content to stick with two guitars, bass and drums when you could get orchestras or sitars in the room.
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Even at their most far out, their music always expressed something, whether it was what the mainstream wanted to hear or not. They never lost their rebellious edge
They mastered every aspect of their careers as they blazed their trails, and even managed to bring up families at the same time.
In terms of writing, recording, image, conquering the media and living happily ever after, they basically wrote the rulebook — and all in a very short space of time.
Between 1962 and 1970 they released 12 studio albums, 13 EPs and 22 singles. Adele has brought out three albums in seven years, Ed Sheeran three in six.
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As Ringo pointed out, he was only a Beatle for a decade but people were not so interested in what he has done for the other 60 years of his life.
Modern history does divide quite simply into life before and after The Beatles.
Trying to imagine life without them is like trying to imagine life without black- birds, fields and hedgerows.
Bleak.
ALEX’S MOP TOP 10
HEY JUDE: Written late in the band’s career but one of their most enduringly popular songs. So simple, but unforgettably catchy. If you’re with a crowd of drunk people after midnight and there’s a piano or guitar in the room, you’ll end up singing this.
TICKET TO RIDE: Expressing sadness but somehow incredibly uplifting. Perfect melancholy pop song.
THE NIGHT BEFORE: A deftly crafted love song. Not one of their biggest hits but a personal favourite, and that’s the great thing about The Beatles’ catalogue – the more you dig, the more you discover.
HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY: Allegedly written about manager Brian Epstein’s homosexuality – still a taboo at the time.
CAN’T BUY ME LOVE: Pure exhilaration and a 24-carat reminder that the best things in life are free.
ELEANOR RIGBY: At the height of hysterical Beatlemania came this lament. Such a sad song, with a beautiful string arrangement.
I AM THE WALRUS: “Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.” Crazy psychedelic masterpiece. Totally surreal, but it somehow still resonates even 50 years later.
All YOU NEED IS LOVE: A masterclass in writing a chorus – it’s just one note, so anyone can sing along, but the message is clear and true.
A HARD DAY’S NIGHT: They lived an enviable lifestyle but the band had an incredible work ethic. Great tune. Great words. Job done.
SOMETHING: George Harrison’s classic ballad is an ode to beauty. Exquisite guitar playing, too.
