Something about the Beatles

My fiancee and I argue sometimes about the Beatles.  Why, she asks, are they still considered the most influential band in the world.  How could they influence hip-hop bands, or Lady Gaga?

At my new job, I can listen to Pandora (occasionally) which has sparked my observation that Pandora treats the Beatles like salt - you can add a pinch to anything.  I've had the Beatles come up on my Iron and Wine station, my Spoon station, and my Ron Sexsmith station.  Pretty soon they'll come up on my Queens of the Stone Age station.

I love the Beatles, but they practically define overplayed.  There's nothing they've done that's new, or that you can even approach as new.  This is a problem with a lot of classic bands, but with some, there's still a sizable catalog you can sift through for gems.  I'd been a Bob Dylan fan for years before I discovered "Isis" which promptly catapulted to the top of my favorite Dylan songs list.

This is why I love the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack album "Love."  If you're unaware, the basic idea was to do mashups of Beatles songs with other Beatles songs.  A lot of the album ends up being full songs that we all know with little flourishes, or pieces of instrumentals stretched out to function as background for some of Cirque's set pieces, but there are a couple of songs that make the whole album worth buying.

First off, what they did with "Lady Madonna" is transformative.  The whole song has been turned inside out, with the little singing-imitating-saxaphones thing leading off rather than being the bridge.  Then, halfway through, they splice it into the riff from "Hey Bulldog" and then splice the guitar solo from "Bulldog" back into "Lady Madonna."  For the first time since I was six or seven years old, a Beatles song surprised me - I didn't know what was going to happen next.  Melodies were bubbling up all over the place - a keyboard line I didn't expect, a bass line in counterpoint with the vocals, etc.  "Love" lets you here the Beatles with fresh ears.

My favorite song is "Drive my Car" which starts off just like the original.  But then, at the second verse, a completely different song cuts in - lyrics, melody, everything.  It's "What You're Doing" - always a second rate early Beatles song - over the instrumentation from "Drive my Car" and through some studio magic, the melody fits.

The Beatles' reputation rests almost entirely on their abilities as craftsmen, but the other day I came home with a song stuck in my head, and decided to listen to it on youtube.  I checked out their versions of both "Money (That's What I Want)" and "Please Mr. Postman."  It's hard to see, in the sedate TV appearances, but you can hear a bit in John Lennon's voice as he sings "The best things in life are free" - this was a hard rocking band.  They must have been amazing to see live back in the day, back when you could actually hear them, instead of the crowd.

I have to imagine that anyone listening to love, or hearing John's scream at the end of "Twist and Shout" would consider them a seminal influence.  Even Lady Gaga.