The Beatles and the Creative Process
The Beatles is one of, if not, the greatest and most unique band to ever play in the face of the earth. The band was formed in Liverpool in 1960. They are known to be the most influential band in history. Their uniqueness was based on how they created their music genre. Many people enjoyed The Beatles being that their songs were related to spirituality, which was one of the most influential components in human life during the 1960s. Also, the Beatles tended to enjoy life without fearing people’s thoughts and perceptions about them. Their motto was to live a judgmental free life and have fun while doing what they love, that is, music. They were always open to new things, ideas and advancements. For instance, they implemented Indian instruments into their music resulting in more advanced sounds effects. They were as well open to trying new foods, new places, and even drugs. They did whatever they could to ensure that they had a full and satisfying life experience. The Beatles had unique approaches towards things, making them different and special in front of many people. Regarding their music, the Beatles had a unique process known as the “random”. Randomness signified oddness, weirdness as well as the ability to create music easily and freely.
This “random” process that was used by The Beatles was based upon Surrealism art movement that was famous between the 1920s and 1930s. According to Voorhies n.p, “Surrealist movement was a radical one whose goal was not merely the production of weird images, but the transformation of everyday life”. In other words, the artists aimed at creating and expanding life from known and ordinary objects such as trees. Also, the famous artist during the Surrealism art movement used their art to awaken people’s minds and allow them to see the bigger picture of objects in everyday life. Most of the surrealism arts were seen to be “weird” and ultimately different. These pieces of art required the viewers to develop and use more profound thoughts to fully understand what a particular piece of art meant (Voorhies n.p). Surrealism’s main aim was to come in contact with an individual’s unconscious minds and go beyond their conscious thoughts using images that seemed to be quite strange.
Surrealism involves the use of juxtaposition and elements of surprise to bring the feeling of discomfort and shock to the audience or viewers. The artists used and connected their life experiences in terms of the things they had dreamt about, what you have found fascinating as well as those that seemed weird in artwork (Voorhies n.p). Many of surrealism arts are random; therefore, the viewers have the opportunities of coming up with different meanings on what the artists portray. Also, the surrealist artist used the automatic writing technique, which involved developing and writing ideas without looking and even thinking. With time, the automated writing technique gave birth to the cutup techniques that involved cutting up and juxtaposing of old texts to form new ones.
Surrealism is associated with many of the Beatles works in terms of sound effects, instruments as well as their lyrics. The Beatles applied the surrealism ideas in their “random” wave of music. Their pieces of work had no specific meanings to the listeners. The listeners had to use total reasoning behind the music to come up with the meanings. The Beatles also used this random process by creating music based on their life experiences and thoughts. Therefore, to us, the music and their names were “weird” and “odd”; however, to The Beatles, every song that they wrote during this era had some crucial meanings. Their songs portrayed and talked about their life experiences; thus, they treasured them. For instance, in the song, I Am the Walrus. “The ambulance siren that gave John, one of the singers, the idea for this song’s melody is the sonic equivalent of a found object; it’s something he stumbled across and put to artistic use.” (McCartney n.p).
Many songs that The Beatles produced were based on the random process. The other song that was based on this process is the Beatles famous album called “White Album”. The album itself was white in colour, and the only words on the album were “The Beatles”. Moreover, the names that they gave the songs were strange to the extent that the listeners wondered how they came up with these names and ended up correlating them with the melody and lyrics of a song. For instance, some of the songs within the album include Wild Honey Pie, Glass Onion, and Why Don’t We Do It in the Road. Two of these songs are particularly outstanding
to me, that is, Wild Honey Pie and Why Don’t We Do It on The Road. Wild Honey Pie was a minute long and had the same lyrics throughout the song. This song is shocking and is one of the Beatles strangest song to ever existed. According to McCartney n.p, the song Why Don’t We Do It on the Road was created from McCartney’s experience of two monkeys having intercourse in India. Therefore, these names can be strange and weird to us, but to them, they presented their real-life experiences.
The battles also played around bringing to life distant realities. Their controversial recording, revolution 9, perfectly models Surrealism, taking into account that it was constructed of tape loops, dialogue, and flashes of music. They placed these sounds together and randomly juxtaposed the two to create a new association. Also, Revolution 9 came as a shock to its audience due to its absurdity. Many viewers disliked this song as they viewed it as being formless and without meaning. However, the Beatles purposely created it using a juxtaposition of sounds to convey a deeper message.
The Beatles also used John Lennon’s girlfriend, Yoko Ono’s, book as a form of tool for writing and developing songs. According to The Beatles as Musicians by Walter Everett, John Lennon says that the verses from the song Imagine were his instructions. He also says that the lyrics of the song were connected to Yoko Ono’s book, Grapefruit (Everett 161). Lennon based his lyrics on things that he found inspirational and unique. He created his lyrics in Imagine based on things that he had encountered. Thus, the lyrics were related to Surrealism, as they also had hidden messages. Moreover, he used words that he found to be moving from the book to create lyrics. This is a perfect example of modern-day Surrealism.
Surrealism was about transforming experiences and thoughts into art. According to Barry Miles, “Paul was always on the lookout for new techniques; new ways of making sounds, particularly those which utilized unorthodox sounds” (Miles 221). Miles shed light on McCartney reading about Andre Breton, the creator of Surrealism and how he was influenced by surreal artists, such as Salvador Deli and Rene Magritte. Paul incorporated personal experiences he encountered into his work and admitted to, “loving these little touches” (Miles 231).
This randomness that the Beatles created and used in music was a significant determinant factor of their career success. It did not only equip people with new techniques of hearing and analyzing songs but also showed the world that the Beatles were different. Though surrealism techniques, they embraced new ideas that changed the music world, thus enabling them to be influential across the globe. Moreover, they were the first band to popularize Surrealism into music, a technique that made the Beatles capable of creating good music from different ideas and new platforms. The Beatles band was unique; thus, they paved the way for the notion that music does not need sound uniforms or be logical to be appreciated. Surrealism was just a stepping stone for the Beatles to achieve new heights and create better progress.
Work Cited
Everett, Walter. The Beatles As Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=UmrVa2U7jB0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=The+Beatles+as+Musicians%E2%80%9D+by+Walter+Everett+&ots=r30n9XtPqu&sig=9MhCix0y4Z-kLuFUsfunjODFbY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=The%20Beatles%20as%20Musicians%E2%80%9D%20by%20Walter%20Everett&f=false
McCartney, Lennon. Why Don’t We Do It in The Road? Beatle Bible, 1968. https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/why-dont-we-do-it-in-the-road/
Miles, Barry. Paul McCartney: many years from now. Macmillan, 1998. https://b-ok.africa/book/1436349/4e0d01
Voorhies, James. Surrealism. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2004. https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm