How the Beatles Changed the World (Documentary) | Amplified

foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] burst onto the world stage in 1963 they transformed popular music overnight a commercial phenomenon like no other they paved the way for every artist who followed in their wake they were selling vast amounts of Records the course of a million a week no one has ever done that before you know Elvis hadn't Lonnie Donegan had every week selling quarter a million records you had a revolution just in terms of sales but in addition to that we wouldn't have had the Rolling Stones you wouldn't have had the birds you wouldn't have had Dylan going electric you wouldn't have had doors and all those other bands that we associate also with the 60s the chances of them existing without the peoples are pretty slim yet the band's impact spread far beyond music as figureheads for a blooming youth culture their influence penetrated to the heart of the post-war world they were agents of change they were carrying everyone with them everything felt modern new fresh everywhere you looked the world started to look different the colors started to really emerge the screen shoots of a new culture from the point of The Beatles arrival they completely reinvented how culture works suddenly adults were growing their hair long grown-up women were wearing mini skirts suddenly it was young people who were determining everything that started with the Beatles by the second half of the 60th the band transformed into leaders of the emerging counterculture bringing new social sexual and artistic ideas into the mainstream through their peaceful Revolution they became the Undisputed voice of a generation The Beatles were the most commercial band on Earth but they were also the most avant-god and experimental that was their role through their music they opened up people's minds they helped to move a lot of people who might not otherwise have gone along with the stuff that happened in 66 and 67 and 68. they were inspirational and influential in that way but as they became more involved in the counterculture and more representative of it they became a political threat this film traces The Beatles path through the most extraordinary decade of the 20th century it reveals the lasting impact to four musicians from Liverpool who went from class Warriors to cultural revolutionaries while providing the soundtrack for a generation they were a catalyst for great many things they changed just about everything [Music] foreign [Music] 1962. a small and once dominant Kingdom finally recovering from years of austerity following the Second World War a nation of discipline and Order of industrial cities and quiet Village greens and although outwardly it appeared stuck in the past beneath the surface a fresh culture was developing that would rapidly transform it at the close of the year the UK was hit by some of the coldest weather it had ever suffered everyday life grinding to a halt as snow-covered the country Breaking Through This Bitter winter on January the 11th 1963 a record was issued that provided the first glimpse of the Brave New World that was to come please please me the second single by liver pudlian four-piece The Beatles quickly Rose to number two on the British charts and its mainstream success announced the arrival of a revolutionary force in both music and culture you don't make sure [Applause] why do I always have to say [Music] Please Please Me with the kind of an eruption they took the blunt force of 1950s rock and roll which was a blunt instrument there's no other way to describe it musically and socially it was a blunt instrument and they grafted onto that the harmonies and the whole sort of plaintive vocal quality of the girl groups of the early 1960s nobody had ever heard anything quite like this before this was a group that had two of the best singers of their era in the same group and something like that I don't think had really happened before the sound of John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing together is one of the great sounds in music of the 20th century [Applause] [Music] they were shocked to the system Love Me Do was the first single and it was a bit of a false start out please please me it's when you had the Unison sound of the band they're singing come on come on there's this sense of anticipation and a sense of excitement it was a fresh sound I mean it sounds so traditional now but at the time the look and the sound was completely fresh it was positive uplifting and modern The Beatles John Lennon Paul McCartney George Harrison and Ringo Starr provided a much needed shot in the arm to Britain's pop scene although American rock and roll have been enormously popular in the mid-1950s its electrifying initial surge proved short-lived with its major Stars either selling out or disappearing from the scene the musicians that came in their wake were more wholesome and less threatening British artists followed suit and the musical landscape in the UK was dominated by talented imitators and the Teen Idols of Pop Svengali Larry ponds with the support of their manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin The Beatles offered something very different driven by the unique songwriting Partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney this band composed their own material most of conventional English show businesses we think of it was really a pale reflection of American Show Business it hadn't not always been the case but since the war certainly it was you had singers like Matt Monroe who did an almost letter perfect invitation to Frank Sinatra by the same token you you had the famous facile fatuous English pop stars of the period of whom Cliff Richard was by far the the best known and most successful who was a kind of third-rate version of Elvis and not of the Elvis of Heartbreak Hotel but of the Elvis of King Creole the Elvis of Elvis the movie star oh we're all going on a summer holiday no more working for a week or two one and laughter on a summer holiday no more worries for me oh you or a week or two it was pretty professional Cliff Richard and the Shadows were good players it was a good act but it was family friendly and you had also characters like Larry ponds with a stable of pretty boys who did what they were told who sung what they were told to sing and who had no particular creative input at all so when somebody like the Beatles comes along and they're not only playing their own instruments singing beautifully they're also singing their own compositions this was incredibly rare at the time the Beatles were Keen from the start to write their own material they wrote the songs to the audience to address the audience they knew that the audience was 80 teenage girls and they wrote songs that elicited the perfect response from them and after that the the delues followed it sent the signal out to everybody that you can all write your own song get a slice of the action within a year or two all bands are right or having a crack at it wasn't only the extraordinary sound of the Beatles all the unique talents of Lennon and McCartney that were revolutionizing popular music as they came to dominate the charts in 1963 their string of hit records transformed the commercial fortunes of the British record industry itself as the Beatles became more popular and every record seemed to sell more and more you had a revolution in the British record industry just in terms of sales they'd never seen anything like this both in in the amount of sales and how long the Beatles would hang around in the charts for months and months and months in addition to that there was the rolling impact of hit after hit after hit that never let the quality drop if anything the quality increased from please please me to from me to you which was a little more downbeat but was no less Wily and then between the eyes she loves you which explodes out of the radio to this day [Music] yeah yeah [Applause] [Music] yeah You've Lost Your Love song you know they were selling quite substantial amounts of Records so either per se but by beginning of 1963 you know please please me and from me to you so Please Please Me album they were selling vast amounts of Records no one's seen anything like this in the pop industry before I mean this was suddenly a happening industry that not only young people were taking notice of it but the bean counters too so you had everyone scouring Birmingham for The Moody Blues The Hollies in Manchester and Liverpool of course all the scouts are up there looking for the next Beatles everyone wanted a slice of the action because they'd revolutionized the music industry in just a matter of months in 1963. but the group's impact was not merely confined to the musical world they also both represented and inspired a seismic shift at the very heart of British Society how these four young working-class liver pudlians managed to spearhead such a change lie in the Beatles and the countries past in the two centuries before the second world war the United Kingdom had led the Industrial Revolution and had ruled over the greatest Empire on Earth one of the foundations behind the superpower was its class system which both divided and ordered its citizens after emerging Victorious from war in 1945 the elite class in this system known as The Establishment which included the monarchy the aristocracy and the heads of all the major institutions governing Society immediately tried to reinforce their power and this chain of command would once again shape life in Britain during the post-war years Britain was a very class-ridden Society we are a nation of subjects not citizens and as long as you do have a royal family and and a set of Lords and Ladies and the whole hierarchy of privilege then obviously someone that's going to be at the bottom after the war The Establishment obviously tried to reassert itself so you still had the old sort of Christian values for instance nothing happened on a Sunday even children's swings in the Parks were chained up on Sundays the 60s really was the first time that anyone really kicked a hole in any of that and started to challenge all of these traditional assumptions really it was the the same group of middle class people who assumed that they had the right to tell everybody how to live we're still very much in power yet Britain's power was waning and its Empire slowly crumbling almost bankrupt as a result of its war effort the years of hardship that followed saw the entire country suffer the north of England in particular struggled to recover and the once dominant Port City of Liverpool heavily targeted by German Air Raids was beset by widespread damage and disappearing industry during the 19th century the north sort of developed this kind of proud sense of itself the port of Liverpool was the greatest port in the world because England was the greatest commercial nation in the world and everything or most things came in and out there but over the course of the 20th century England went through a phenomenon that is now very familiar to Americans of the late 20th century which is the decline of industrialization the decline of manufacturing by the 1940s it was very clear that Liverpool was in Decline as a result The Beatles generation grew up in this place that was filled with the emblems of Imperial might but which was becoming a very dire place to live in many ways everywhere there was a debris the the street was full of bomb buildings all the kids used to play in the buildings and deserted places the debris was still going 20 or 30 years later you know there was no money about and it was very hard what did your people have in Liverpool to look forward to everything was closing down all the factories were closing down it was um pretty tough times in Liverpool in those days they're gorgeous or whatever and I believe I can run a piece of marathon thank you very much download V lean and it was within this Stark landscape that the Beatles grew up the band's founder and eldest member John Lennon was the product of a broken home and was raised by his aunt and uncle in a fairly affluent area of the city his future band mates Paul McCartney and George Harrison however both came from working class neighborhoods despite the derelictions surrounding them and the hard times in which they were raised the future prospects of all three were given a boost by a new educational initiative that saw the brightest children enrolled in grammar schools whatever their financial background John Lennon Paul McCartney and George Harrison took an examination when they were 11 years old that essentially certified them as clever and as a result of passing what was called the 11 plus exam that meant that they were eligible to go to grammar schools grammar schools were designed to educate children in order to go on to some form of higher education what this meant was that at a relatively early age at the age of 11 particularly Paul McCartney and George Harrison whose Origins were truly working class John Lennon was a bit more complicated John was a little betwixted in between but in the case of both Paul McCartney and George Harrison at the age of 11 they were somewhat isolated from the world of the housing Estates that they had grown up on every day they took the bus into the center of Liverpool to go to a place called the Liverpool Institute and they were essentially marked and educated from the age of 11 to transcend their working-class Origins with far better schooling than their parents these future Beatles were a new breed raised within the proud liver puddly and working class yet unfazed by the educated Elites supposedly above them and with the coming of rock and roll in 1956 a musical form exploded that spoke directly to their youth and their sense of difference it was the following year that John Lennon met Paul McCartney and invited him to join his band for Quarrymen with George Harrison joining shortly thereafter all around them in Liverpool a new phenomenon was Finding its own rebellious voice the teenagers had arrived the 50s became the era when teenagers rarely came into their own we were together in our love of the music up until that time a young lad would be taken to the pub for his first paint when he turned of age by his dad it dressed like his dad he'd go into the union of his dad and go in the same work as his dad with the girl she was in the kitchen then now to make the breakfast do the cleaning all the rest of it but suddenly the youngsters were now earning money and they wanted to spend it their way and do their things and not be told what to do a generation gap was opening up and this would dominate cultural life in Britain across the next decade and while rock and roll resonated with young working-class britons other American influences from the beat poets to Jazz and Blues were embraced by middle-class teenagers if the future Beatles were at heart rock and roll Rebels none of them more embodied this than John Lennon but having failed his exams in 1957 he found a place at the Liverpool College of Art where he was thrown into an unfamiliar Bohemian student culture although this would prove vital in expanding his talents here Lenin was an outsider I first met John Lennon at the College of Art I was sitting down in the sort of canteen and suddenly I noticed this guy wore past and I thought what's he dressed up like because he was dressed almost like a teddy boy and a completely unconventional type of dress compared to all the other students and I looked around and everyone was wearing duffel coats and tail neck sweaters I thought oh they're all wearing the same they're all conventional he's the rebel he's the one who's different I must get to know him yeah if you're in art school in the 1950s you would have been exposed to the intellectual radicalism and rebellion of figures like Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation who were anti-established religion Pro self-expression anti any kind of establishment repression And The Angry young men of theater John Osborne Arnold Wesker these guys were angry but they were clever they found a way of directing their anger which may well have been a kind of personal angst but when it's directed to the outside world it can create a great articulate voice of a generation if you like 954 [Music] could get through it after time if I went like a ball but they'd only slash me wages so they can get stuffed [Music] no matter bastards grown you down that's one thing I've learned this sort of influence influence would have been very appealing to someone like John Lennon who was himself an Angry Young Man for all kinds of personal reasons but if you could be an Angry Young Man and thoughtful with it then that's very appealing by the summer of 1960 the school days of John Lennon Paul McCartney and George Harrison were over yet they were quickly thrust into an education of another kind in August the band now calling itself The Beatles headed for a season of shows in the vibrant German City Hamburg and over the following year it was here that they earned their stripes as a rock and roll band upon their return to Liverpool in 1961 they quickly Rose to the very top of the city's music scene yet they were isolated in the North and the rest of the country paid little attention I started writing to papers like the daily mail saying what is happening in Liverpool is like New Orleans at the 10th of the century but with rock and roll instead of jazz but of course no one was interested so I decided to do it myself and create a mersey piece and of course my friends that John and the group performed the Beatles were the main people I wrote about the teenage audience hungry for information about this new rock and roll scene Bill Harry's mersey beat music paper proved a huge success in the north of England celebrating the Beatles in almost every issue it brought them to the attention of one of its contributors local businessman Brian Epstein the manager of a Liverpool music store through Bill Harry Epstein arranged to see the band play at the city's legendary Cavern club and was blown away by their performance he immediately offered to manage the bone and by January 1962 a contract was signed wary of the controlling approach of managers Like Larry Palms Epstein was still conscious of the unwritten rules of the British entertainment industry if the Beatles were going to change the world they'd first have to change their look what I think he had was the instinct to realize the general overall sort of pattern of how things worked in this country they were the Savage young Beatles dressed in black leather and playing rock and roll to prostitutes gangsters and all the rest of it and handbag take in drugs and all the rest of they were the Savage young Beatles they would never have been accepted by the the established media and the Beatles breakthrough in early 1963 confirmed that Epstein's instincts were spot on he had successfully smuggled the unique band of rebels Into the Heart of the mainstream yet unlike the controlling managers that dominated the British entertainment world he then simply set them loose from the moment they saw to the top of the British charts the Press radio interviewers and television presenters came face to face with the Beatles and these quick-witted confident and very modern young men chose to play the game by their own rules in the beginning The Beatles Behavior with the Press was the most revolutionary thing about it nobody of their age group and to a certain extent of their background had ever behaved this way with reporters before do you know you look like Matt Monroe give us a roshi with love thanks boys The Beatles were just audacious when they were being into they kind of turned the tables when Adam Faith or someone like that was interviewed before it was very much you know kind of a master and servant kind of thing what sort of tour did you have oh I like honestly say it's been probably the most pleasurable one we've had for some time mainly because um not just the audiences but because we've had a few hours off and we've been swimming and sunbathing and things The Beatles just ripped into that and almost ridiculed the whole thing turned the whole thing into a Marx Brothers fast which was fantastic I hear that I hear anyways before if you're going to be millionaires by the end of the year if you've got time to actually spend this money what money he said doesn't he give any to you no no no didn't you seen that card of this it was very very close to the way groups of male adolescents interacted with one another as a matter of course this is what teenage boys and and do they try to top one another they try to cut one another down all of this sort of thing The Beatles simply had the nerve to take this thing and to sort of perform it in front of microphones and cameras there's a rumor um in the news of The Beatles paper this you might be leaving the group rovish contracted I've been trying to get out for years you've been there writing something poetry what paper yeah paper called the news of The Beatles never heard of it do you want to see it no it must be America part of their success came from the fact that they were not plastic they were authentic they came out of a fairly Tough City and then they were just being themselves and that was astonishingly that was new to actually be yourself was new by presenting themselves genuinely The Beatles managed to highlight the mannered stilted exterior of British cultural life at a time when it was already showing signs of weakness polite society's attitude to all forms of behavior in particular sex have been prudish and stuffy for centuries but by the early 1960s things were changing at the beginning of the decade the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was successfully published withheld from the general public since the late 1920s this erotic Tale Of Love across the class divide became a phenomenon upon its release quickly selling over 3 million copies at the same time a scandal erupted at the very heart of the British establishment with the exposure of an illicit Affair between politician John perfumo and a 19 year old model the uptight sexual attitudes of the British were being confronted in public and then Beatle Mania happened by the summer of 1963 the band's overwhelming effect on teenage girls was becoming a nationwide epidemic their critics warned that the liver pardleans had Unleashed a wave of sexual frenzy in their female audience yet The Liberation that the Beatles offered these girls was more complicated than it first appeared what everybody wanted to think and also didn't want to think was this was somehow all about eroticism this was all about sex and what was going on here was that these young women were having something that looked like it simulated a sexual experience in response to the beetle The Sight and Sound Of The Beatles and therefore it was always talked about and written about in the Freudian terms of Hysteria which of course is a sexually charged term also were these girls orgasmic was this orgasmic that's not what was going on with rock and roll in the 1950s that was a catalyst for a lot of young men finding a reason to be something other than a version of their dad when they became adolescents and it wasn't necessarily fabulously articulate to dress as a Teddy boy and be a bit Rowdy on the street but at least it was finding an identity and I think for a young female it wasn't quite a straightforward something like beetlemania the screaming that surrounded The Beatles it's quite tempting to interpret it as a sort of howl or frustration as they try and find their own identity and it's as inarticulate in a way as Teddy Boys rampaging in cinemas you do deliberately try and create this sort of screaming reactions no we just you know arrive at the theater and they're always there waiting um whenever we're doing a show the police always come and say don't look out the window you know because you excitement these girls were controlling public space and nobody could do anything about it it's a perfect example what we would call bad behavior screaming yelling weeping in public this is bad behavior in one way or another and yet it was sanctioned not by the authorities but by The Beatles themselves The Beatles phenomenon was Unstoppable at the end of August the single she loves you became the fastest selling record that had ever been released in the UK in less than a year the band success outstripped that of any artist who had preceded them and the final stage in their conquest of Britain came on November the 4th 1963 when For the First Time The Beatles came face to face with the highest order of the establishment the Royal Family the occasion unleashed the rock and roll Rebel in John Lennon who saw in the night's performance an opportunity too good to pass up John in this Royal Variety Show in European before royalty uh your language has got to be pretty good obviously this thing about Ted he's saying that he couldn't distinguish [Music] I'm not going to vote for Ted um but uh you're not going to change your act just for the Lord oh no like we'll keep like the same kind of thing like when we oh well yeah that's right Lennon always had an ambivalent relationship with how The Establishment the entertainment establishment were cozying up to the Beatles on the one hand the professional in him loved the fact that they were being fantastically successful but the rebel in him found it all hard to take and so on the occasion of the the Royal Command Performance he teased Brian Epstein by suggesting that he was going to go up and swear in front of the queen but in the end his professionalism won out he managed to create a little bit of subversion but it was very carefully thought through [Applause] I'd like to ask your help the people in the cheapest seats clap your hands and the rest of you if you just rattle your jewelry this is sort of like a moment of insurrection it felt like but the thing is it wasn't quite as radical perhaps because you look at Lennon's face after he says it and he he sort of looks as if he's just admitted to his mum that he's messed himself or something like that it was something really Humble Pie you know he felt quite sheepish but no one else but John Lennon would really come out and even have the Gaul to say that but what may have seemed a kind of a revolutionary insurrectionary Moment by saying rattle your jewelry in a really class driven moment was actually punctured by this sense that the Beatles were nice boys and they can get away with anything with the Youth of Britain in their thrall The Beatles headed out to new territories traveling to Scandinavia at the close of the year and then on to France [Music] the domestic pop scene that they left behind had been transformed by their success and from liver puddling acts like Jerry and the Pacemakers to London's the Rolling Stones new groups were emerging on an almost weekly basis to battle it out in the clubs and on the charts The Beatles were moving on however with manager Brian Epstein's sights set firmly on the largest territory of all America the new reaction over there you've got any fan clubs going as well as one suppose we started and they go they're getting quite good response you know 12 000 letters a day but the beetle movement's going over there yeah it wouldn't even be a beetle booster folks I must tell you by the way that Detroit University have got to Stamp Out a beetle Movement Detroit I think they think your uh haircuts are un-American well it was very observant of them because we aren't America there was always that thing here well what happens next is the beat bubbly on the burst you know but it never did it just kept going on if Britain was suffering a particularly harsh winter when the Beatles had first set the chart to light in early 1963 when they're single I Want to Hold Your Hand reached America the following year it entered a nation grappling with far greater misfortunes having emerged from the second world war as one of the world's two superpowers the following decade had been dominated by the country's hostile relationship with the Soviet Union and the threat of a full-blown nuclear war but Americans themselves were enjoying the fruits of a flourishing economy a strong consumer culture had developed and domestic confidence was running High in 1960 President John F Kennedy came to office a young charismatic politician who embodied this new confidence and who promised a bright and optimistic future my fellow citizens of the world if not what America will do for you but what together we can do for the freedom of man three years later in November 1963 his assassination shook the country to its core there was this injection of energy into American life that he represented you know he was young he was handsome it represented such a marked change from Dwight Eisenhower I mean Eisenhower was a carryover from World War II obviously he was a war hero he was an extension of that generation into modern America but John Kennedy was Modern America all of the optimism and youthfulness the baby boom was going on it was kind of epitomized by John Kennedy and the Kennedy assassination just it just ended that The Beatles represented also youth just as John Kennedy did and wit and intelligence certainly for young people it turned things around immediately The Beatles just lit America up I'm sure it could have been something else I mean I'm sure that some other joyful manifestation of something could have occurred but what occurred was a psalm and it's really important to realize in Britain The Beatles personalities their repartee their whole public performance was a critical part of the way that they came to the attention of the British public in America it was a song [Music] [Music] it was the perfect vehicle to come into this traumatized National atmosphere what is a dominant quality of the sound of John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing together joy joy and performance joy in listening to one another's voices join in whatever kind of reinforcement is going on here that's that's you know that's painting with really broad Strokes there's nothing subtle about that there is no question The Beatles changed everything immediately and I want to hold your handmade a gigantic impact and then of course I mean the floodgates opened not only with one great Beatles song after another but you know the British Invasion I mean the Beatles just knocked the door down what the Beatles had done to Britain they were now doing to America released at the close of 1963 within two months I Want to Hold Your Hand had sold more than a million copies and became the band's first number one single in the US a week after they topped the charts John Paul George and Ringo crossed the Atlantic and arrived in New York City to greet a new set of screaming teenage fans they were also met by members of the press Keen to understand this foreign phenomenon and the group introduced them to their unique brand of informal humor as rare in America as it had been in Britain there's no question that the way they dealt with the Press was original it was quite clear that they were not like anything else how smart they really were how funny they were I mean John and Paul in particular were extremely intelligent articulate original people uh and George was also a very droll guy and Ringo was sort of a natural clown who was just that quick that smart who was a pop star I mean I must be forgetting somebody but damned if I can think of who it would be what do you think of your records as funny record please [Music] [Music] he knows music all right [Music] we try not to Define it because well that's we you know we've got so many wrong classifications of it it's no use we just call it music with an exclamation mark the underlying message of the Beatles witch in their press conferences was about a youth movement that wasn't going to be determined by old people from the point of The Beatles arrival they completely reinvented how culture works before that everything you know fashion you know movies music it all was topped down it all was you know what grown-ups liked and then it filtered down to the kids after a year or two suddenly it was young people who were determining everything that started with the Beatles having broken all previous sales records in Britain the year beforehand by April 1964 the band made Billboard Hot 100 history by becoming the only act ever to occupy the first five positions on the chart the four mop tops were now revolutionizing popular music in America too and beatlemania spread like wildfire throughout the country and then in July following the time-honored career trajectory of all post-war popular entertainers the band starred in their first full-length feature film yet A Hard Day's Night was unsurprisingly unlike anything that had preceded it [Music] music movies before A Hard Day's Night were profit making Ventures intended exclusively for the teen audience of you know whoever whatever artist happened to be in them A Hard Day's Night just kind of flipped that they took what was a toss-off form you know the Rock movie and made it something great directed by American Richard Lester the film created an entirely new language for rock and roll Cinema previously musicians had all made their transition to the big screen playing fictional characters created by screenwriters in A Hard Day's Night however the Beatles played themselves in a comedy inspired by their own experiences of Fame it was both a commercial and a critical phenomenon they're playing themselves in a sort of a fictional film that did not you know so much of what happened in the the early career of The Beatles hadn't really happened before they were breaking through on so many different levels tell me uh how did you find America turn left to Greenland has success changed your life yes I'd like to keep Britain tidy are you a mod or a rocker um no I'm a mocker have you any Hondas [Music] as I see it it's really A Hard Day's Night that establishes them as something completely new and interesting Beyond Your Wildest imaginings I don't snore you do repeatedly do I snore jump yeah you're a window rattle is on it's just your opinion do I snorkel with a trombone neuter like yours would be unnatural if you didn't no Paulie don't Mark The Afflicted oh come off it it's only a joke uh it may be a joke but it's his nose he can't help her just great Hooter and a poor little head trembling under the weight of his this was not the rock and roll movie that you were expecting to see not at all and although their wit had always been clear they you know they were always funny on camera on the microphone it's irreverence and it's a reverence about themselves was just completely unprecedented and of course it just made them seem even more Godlike and while the Beatles embarked on a substantial U.S tour in the summer of 64. back in Britain the whole country was evolving in their wake following the sex scandals of the previous year the nation had turned against the establishment and voted in the labor government of new prime minister Harold Wilson a man who seemed to represent the voice of a younger more Progressive United Kingdom Harold Wilson actually became leader of leopardy around the same time that the Beatles were just having the first stirrings of huge success he was Northern let's not forget that so this was Again part of this big Northern Powerhouse you know you had the Beats on the popular culture sense and then you had Harold Wilson who was reflecting modernity in the political sense we're thrusting into a new world we were behind Europe in the 50s the toys had let us down he wanted to let's get modern like the Italians like the French like the Germans let's get working and let's make everyone enjoy the fruits of the success [Music] Central to this new Progressive Britain was its youth The Staggering International success of the Homegrown pop scene had injected the younger generation with confidence and boosted by the country's growing Prosperity a new consumer culture emerged fresh from the breeding grounds of the art colleges the modern ideas of Britain's budding designers were Unleashed this was nowhere more apparent than in fashion and its nerve center in London's bustling carnaby Street this was the first time that young people had enough money to buy records to buy clothes to have their haircuts out of that almost immediately came a separate youth Market carnaby Street thrived I mean up until that point when a girl left school she immediately began dressing like her mother whereas someone like Mary Coyle made dresses that you could run in and you could dance in and do stuff you know that young people do and of course that transformed the whole face of British fashion everything felt modern new fresh everywhere you looked the world started to look different the black and white of the early Beatles And pre-beetles even with the Beatles all in black and white even Hard Day's Night was in black and white within a year the colors started to really emerge the screen shoots of a new culture although they had played the central role in cultivating this new cultural landscape by late 1964 The Beatles themselves were growing weary of their eight days a week Fame in an attempt to escape from beatlemania both John Lennon and George Harrison had moved to rural Surrey 30 miles from the center of London and Ringo Starr would join them there the following year in December Beetles for sale the band's fourth studio album was released and it clearly showed signs of fatigue you're going to have to look at the cover these are young men exhausted really by a couple of years of beatle Mania it was just obvious that they were becoming worn out and that the incredible appeal of early Fame which they just rode that like a wonderful wave and you can see and feel the joy and the records and in the interviews by Beatles for sale that's it's losing its luster quite quickly yet the onward March of youth culture would soon revive the band while the kaleidoscopic colors of carnaby Street were in full bloom a more experimental subculture was developing in West London the leaders of which would soon cross paths with the Beatles inspired by avant-garde literature art and music this loose group of artists and Artisans lacked a sense of community in June 1965 however Barry miles the manager of renowned independent Bookshop better books arranged a momentous poetry event at London's Albert Hall featuring Alan Ginsberg and other leading American beat writers it was of huge significance uniting the various creative clans of an emerging British counterculture the big poetry reading at the upper Hall in 65 was I think the first time a constituency was seen in London up until that point the Actors and The Poets and the filmmakers and the people who ran boutiques and none of them knew each other at this event which was basically a Beat Generation reading of Alan Ginsburg Lawrence felangetti and Gregory Corso all of these people came together into the Albert Hall 7 000 people the whole thing was a giant party and it was really like a the first sort of mass networking session I suppose at this pivotal event that he had helped organize miles met John Dunbar an artist friendly with both Alan Ginsburg and Gregory corso and who had recently married young singer Marion faithful together they planned a new center for underground activities the Indica Bookshop and gallery and this would bring miles directly into the Beatles world we went along to the Albert Hall and a friend called Paolo Leone kind of went oh you should meet this guy you know who miles worked a better books at that point and uh so we got chatting and I don't know how many people it holds the alcohol because a couple of thousand five I don't know anyway we kind of thought well look everybody's paid a quid to see this so maybe we could do a shop we decided to to combine forces and start a Bookshop Art Gallery combined his best friend was um a guy called Peter Asher who at that point was in Peter and Gordon A Little Rock and folk Duo who had the number one hits in fact in Britain and America and Japan and so Peter had some money so naturally we looked Peter for to finance this this Venture and so consequently we started a company called miles Asher and done by mad I got to know Peter of course uh through this and he was living at home with his parents and also living at home with his sister Jane Asher Jane was a TV personality She interviewed people she was a child star in films and a lot on the radio also living there was Jane Asher's boyfriend who was Paul McCartney who was living on the top floor in a little attic room next to Peter's Room so there was this extraordinary household and that I got introduced to and when I was setting up the Bookshop we had all the books delivered to the basement there because we haven't found any premises yet and obviously through that I got to know Paul as well he would come in late at night browse through the books and just leave me a note saying what he'd taken so he was my first customer in fact in the Bookshop and when we did find some premises he helped put up the shelves and paint the walls so he was very very involved with the whole project and it was wonderful to get to know him while his bandmates had fled London in favor of the quiet Suburban life through his contact with the progressive art World Paul McCartney soon became the most cultured of The Beatles where John Lennon had been married for years and was raising a young son George Harrison had moved in with girlfriend Patty Boyd and Ringo Starr was a newlywed McCartney was actively pursuing fresh sounds and fresh concepts with Miles as his avant-garde guide in his own words he used to go around London with his antenna out you know one day he would go to to see uh you know John Cage concert where Luciano Barrio or some electronic music and then next day he would go and see tessio at the Talk of the Town and then there were some torch singer done in the Blue Angel amid it was all being sucked in McCartney was very much the culturally aware Beetle about town while the others went into a slightly Cozier existence in the stock broker boat he was still curious he was still hungry for any stimulation it's around this time 1965-66 that McCartney really begins to drive the Beatles he hung around in London being stimulated and bringing all of that back to the Beatles table and giving them continuing to give them an artistic Edge that artistic Edge would prove unmistakable when the Beatles headed to the studio in mid-1965 to record the album Rubber Soul across the previous year the wave of band inspired by The Beatles example had not only begun to catch up with the liver pudlians but in some cases threatened to overtake them following Lennon McCartney's lead the Rolling Stones had managed to break America and have begun to write their own hits folk icon Bob Dylan had gone electric and transformed into the preeminent poet of rock and new bands were emerging from the who to the birds introducing fresh sounds and perspectives yet The Beatles were ready to pave the way once again in pursuit of total creative control with Rubber Soul producer George Martin booked the band into Abbey Road Studios for an entire month turning conventional recording rules on their head before Rubber Soul a professional recording day was overseen by recording engineers in white coats and there was three hours in the morning a break for lunch and three hours in the afternoon and that was it that was your recording day when Rubber Soul came along they had enough clout to say we want a bit more flexibility than that we might want to stay on and record Into the Night they invented the idea of treating a record album as if it were a work of art it takes time to do anything that's worthwhile so you had this this new idea the idea of the recording studio was compositional laboratory this was this incredible real Revolution not just how to make records but how to make music foreign [Music] [Music] looks like the moment when pop music could become popular art the whole album had a sense of being an artistic statement Brian Wilson himself of the Beach Boys said when I heard Rubber Soul I knew that's how good pop records could be they could be a whole artistic world that's how good Rubber Soul was [Music] girl you want so much it makes you sorry still you don't regret a single day [Music] girl girl [Music] John Lennon is suddenly writing lyrics like was she told when she was young the pain would lead to pleasure did she understand it when they said that a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure will she still believe it when he's dead I mean that's in a song called girl those aren't pop song lyrics that gave Rubber Soul just a very different feel [Music] [Applause] [Music] be like me you could hear that they were actually writing songs as artists not just as Pop performers so you had songs like the word which is a an extraordinary song for 1965. say the word and that word is love you know this is two years before the summer of love the despair of Beetles for sale and there they are now reaching out for something that they've picked up on something else and just as Rubber Soul re-established the band's musical superiority the four young Northern radicals were officially recognized by the British establishment having already received the highest accolades from the entertainment World in October 1965 they were invited to Buckingham Palace to meet the queen here they would be anointed as members of the most excellent order of the British Empire or mbes this has been one of the talents of the establishment for a very long time in fact this is what the mbes and and knighthoods and all sorts of things like that were all about at a certain point Renegades need to be brought into the fold but as if that very moment that they now because they were always importing musical influences but they also become a conduit for imported American influences in these other fields that they're getting interested in miles is turning them on to ginsburg's poetry Robert Frazier is turning them on to American pop artists things like this they've become citizens of the world and so it's it's perfectly appropriate that at that very moment the British establishment should say time for you to come to Buckingham Palace and be certified as Representatives as members of the British Empire John had you met the queen before uh no first time what did you think of you in the flesh did you tell you no she's not going to say either way you know but she's seemed Pleasant enough to us no made us relaxed oh now now you've got this do you feel that you're becoming part of the establishment as it's so called no don't feel any different I still feel like before you feel exactly the same you feel exactly the same it was a recognition that the pop world had come of age they were the aristocracy of the pop world of pop culture of working-class culture and so it was sort of inevitable in a way that they would be rewarded in the spirit of the new sort of democracy but also it closed the chapter because from then on they went off and did it their way which wasn't the establishment's way in fact it was the beginning of a period of great antagonism with the establishment and pop culture and the Beatles as usual were pretty much at the center of that The Beatles position at the center of these new developments in youth culture was crucial to their evolution over the next two years with McCartney now closely affiliated with key players in London's underground artistic scene and with similar movements in both New York and Los Angeles influencing American musicians stage was now set for more radical ideas to enter the mainstream and as these were developing a new drug and a new figurehead were gaining prominence on both sides of the Atlantic six words tune in psychologist Timothy Leary had emerged in the U.S as a prominent spokesman for the hallucinogen LSD or acid having LED psychedelic experiments at Harvard University since the turn of the 60s and we've beat poet Alan Ginsburg a key early supporter by 1965 Leary was becoming a major counter-cultural figure Tim Leary was a psychiatrist psychoanalyst psychotherapist he claimed I think to have something like seven phds he was a professor at Harvard who began working originally with psilocybin before he got on to LSD as a way of treating prisoners and treating mental illness I mean the thing is Leary was very much part of the establishment he'd worked right across the normal lines of Psychiatry but of course when he started to take all these things he contacted his own self on a cellular level when he realized that the lawful lot of this was game playing and rubbish and so he basically felt that this was in fact a spiritual key that he'd been handed and that his message really should be to encourage people to leave the establish and find themselves creatively or spiritually and the newly appointed mbes The Beatles were already on their way to leaving the establishment and rediscovering themselves through hallucinogens John Lennon and George Harrison had been introduced to LSD in early 1965 and had been joined by Ringo Starr for their second experience with the drug later that year combined with Paul McCartney's Newfound interest in experimental art through his London Social Circle the world's most commercial band were ready to take a very unexpected detour they wanted to discover who they were they had no real sense of who they were I think anymore so they're picking up the pieces putting it together again how how do they make sense of the Goldfish Bowl life that they've been thrown into from playing at the Casbah in Liverpool and the cavern to being fated all around the world and just seeing themselves reflected back people getting pieces of them everywhere not knowing really who they were and I think that was the engagement of Pop Culture represented by The Beatles with the counterculture which was growing growing in confidence and the fact that the two started to join forces in London in San Francisco They sparked off each other and it was at the close of 1965 that McCartney drew the ever skeptical Lenin out of his Surrey sanctuary and introduced him to the underground world of miles and the Indica Bookshop and gallery one day very shortly after we opened Paul McCartney showed up with John Lennon and I think it was the first time John was ever in the shop and he was looking for a book by nitska and I didn't I just did not know who he meant it took me maybe half a minute to figure out it was Nietzsche and that was just enough time for him to get quite irritated and think I was being this middle class University type putting him down and then Paul had to do his usual role of sort of calming every minute and said no no he went to Art School just like you and it's just because you didn't know how to say it did you you know but in the meantime I remembered we had only just the day before I had a big shipment of the Psychedelic experience by Tim Leary John curled up on the settee with it and literally in Tim Leary's introduction before you even get to the text it says turn off your mind and you know relax and drift Downstream or however the lines are that finally showed up in uh only about a month later in in Tomorrow Never Knows this song would be the most Innovative composition of the band's career to date alongside Lennon's leery inspired lyrics Paul McCartney's contributions to the track were equally radical having joined miles at a number of avant-garde electronic music events the beatle had begun enthusiastically working on his own experimental compositions using Loops of recorded tape as the Beatles entered the studio to begin producing Tomorrow Never Knows George Martin invited McCartney to bring these to the sessions he had produced a whole load of them and brought them into the studio just in a plastic bag they arranged the studio so that there were different tape recorders in different parts of the Abbey Road Studio complex and I was in a room with Peter Asher and we were playing quite a long Loop which entailed [Music] holding a jam jar and the loop went around the temperature and then passed the playback head and then over to we had to keep it in tension and I think there were eight or maybe even 10 of us around the building or standing holding pencils or gem tires and all of this information was going into the deck and George Martin was just sitting there with his headphones and he whatever he did of course it's impossible to ever reproduce that was it that was the master as soon as he pressed record went and heard the playback I mean it was astonishing actually I thought good God you know this is this is the future foreign [Music] the studio was an instrument once upon a time it was just this almost invisible console that was just there to absorb what was being played on the floor now it was actually being used as an instrument and it was more important than individual instruments in a way [Applause] foreign this was unprecedented and the other interesting thing about Tomorrow Never Knows It was the first recording for revolver it was done in April 66. I mean this extraordinary Tomorrow Never Knows is undoubtedly the most psychedelic song recorded at that period there's nothing else like it I mean the word psychedelic wasn't really in popular parlance at all it was the title of a book that Jordan got from Indica Gallery Tomorrow Never Knows is definitely the world's first psychedelic track the interesting thing is of course the Beatles were not only the world's most commercial band but at that point they were also the world's most experimental band which is very unusual that became clear when the Beatles follow up to Rubber Soul revolver was issued in August 1966. alongside Tomorrow Never Knows the album's tracks were brimming with invention and originality if Rubber Soul had suggested that pop music could be art revolver confirmed it revolver really was the Beatles moving towards the Fifth Dimension she said she said I know what it's like to be dead The Beatles Lennon singing about I know what it's like to be dead what the hell is going on well they've been partying with birds in the west coast and dropping acid by then drugs we have a very negative view on them now and that you can be imprisoned by them but in the mid 60s I think people felt it was the opposite it was to loosen the chains of imprisonment this single view of who you were and then suddenly you had perspectives and revolver you can hear it with all the different production sounds it was all Altered States and perspectives the idea was basically to turn rock and roll into a legitimate art form and I think they did it so many of the things they tried from feedback and reverse tapes and sitars whatever they did all over the world other bands immediately tried out I mean they were tremendous leaders Brian Epstein was concerned that they were going too far ahead of their fan base but they were very very sensible and they always wanted to bring the fans along with them they didn't want to become some kind of wild I'm not guard band that only you know 150 people have heard of Epstein's fears that the band would start to lose some of their audience were unfounded regarding their musical output but would prove accurate in terms of their politics with the Beatles compositions expressing a more complex world view journalists began to ask the more significant questions in a series of landmark interviews for British newspaper the evening standard the individual band members were quizzed over their thoughts on current affairs Lenin's Frank opinions on Christianity proved uncontroversial upon their publication in Britain yet when they were reprinted in America the first Scandal of The Beatles career erupted with a single quote becoming instantly infamous we're more popular than Jesus now first time anybody had asked John Lennon questions about his life and his philosophy and it just passed without but months later when those teenage magazines just printed that it were bigger than Jesus which caused a lot of problems and lots of problems in death threats and records being burnt and broke and especially a cute looks Clan and conscious being canceled and it was a very unpleasant for everyone well originally I was on I was pointed out that fact in reference to England that we meant more to kids than Jesus did or religion at that time I wasn't knocking it or putting it down I was just saying it but the fact Lenin's uh you know the Beatles are more popular than Jesus line which even to me as a kid I could see what he was saying you know I mean it wasn't saying I mean it's what he said in his quote unquote apology like I was just saying we're better than Jesus I wasn't saying it's good or it's bad it's just it's true and to me it was absolutely true it was unquestionable that there was such a backlash against them it made you aware of some of the fault lines in American culture or made you aware once again that what seemed maybe like a unified culture really wasn't and it was harsh you know it was scary these fault lines in American society had been growing since the early 1960s and where the Civil Rights campaigns for racial equality have most clearly exposed these divisions earlier in the decade by the mid-1960s there was no issue more pressing or more polarizing than the Vietnam War since the U.S entered into the conflict in 1962 it had provoked widespread public opposition and organized protests both in the U.S and across Europe the underground movement McCartney had become involved in had itself emerged from the early 60s pacifist movement in the UK and by the time of their 1966 U.S tour privately both he and his bandmates were opponents of the war as they traveled across America already battling controversy the ever honest liver pudlians came under Fire once again when they made this position absolutely clear to the Press in 1966 the war was without any question much more on people's minds in America Than the Beatles 1966 was the year the war exploded in 1966 was the year that the number of draftees more than doubled in this country 1966 was also the year in which the war really got terrible in Vietnam itself it wasn't just you know it was a bigger bigger deal all the time there was more destruction going on at the height of American involvement in Vietnam they had 550 000 troops in that country I mean that's a lot of young people you know there was a draft in the United States the war had come home in a big way it wasn't an abstract issue in any regard and youth Representatives you know like the Beatles you know people who are part of youth culture were expected to take a stand on it it seems we've always been successful because you've been outspoken and direct and forthright and all this sort of thing doesn't seem a bit hard to you that people are now knocking you for this very thing it seems hard it seems hard you know Free Speech but it's impossible just to say what you think all the time what about 14 year old teenagers who think you're absolutely marvelous and can't bear to be hurt you see we're we're not when we say anything like that we don't say it as older people seem to think uh to be offensive we mean it helpfully you know and if it's wrong what we say okay it's wrong and people can say you know you're wrong about that one but in many cases we believe it's right you know we're quite serious about it but do you mind being asked questions for example in America people keep asking a question about Vietnam does this seem useful well I don't know you know if you can say that war is not good and a few people believe you then it may be good I don't know you can't say too much though that's the trouble seems a bit silly to be in America and for none of them to mention Vietnam as if nothing was happening they were the first band to be asked about politics about Vietnam about a whole number of social issues and in fact I mean although Dylan came a little bit before as far as I know he never once ever came out in public against the Vietnam War so maybe the Beatles were the first there in terms of a very well-known band well it cost them a lot they were then teenage girls in the south in the midwest who didn't like the Beatles anymore I think the Beatles are a real talented group but I think that they need to watch what they say because they're in such a position that a lot of teenagers that really think of them as something really big and and when they say things like that some teenagers are going to just believe anything they said in 1965 The Beatles were universally beloved nobody didn't like them they were just wonderful and funny and creative and unthreatening as they became more involved in The Counter Culture and more representative of it they lost a lot of that belovedness they helped to move a lot of people who might not otherwise have gone along with the stuff that happened in 66 and 67 and 68. without any question they were inspirational and influential in that way but they also lost a lot of people they became part of what many many people in America probably a majority of people in America regarded as a disturbing uh loosening of values and morals uh and uh political threat and at exactly this point the Beatles ceased operating as a traditional band upon their return from the U.S they announced that they were abandoning live performance with the final show of the American tour their last ever paid gig and then the most photographed celebrities in the world simply disappeared from the public eye altogether [Music] their own ways in 1967. they couldn't be out you know on our owners together we're always involved with each other whatever we're doing did you ever see a time when in fact you weren't working together I could see us working not together for a period but we'd always get together for one reason or other like I mean if you need other people for ideas as well but you know um we all get along fine would you rumors of a breakup began to circulate yet away from the spotlight the four liver pudlians were hard at work on their most ambitious production to date the public would have to wait for months before the Beatles reappeared and when in February 1967 they finally did both their image and their sound had undergone a startling transformation Strawberry Fields because was originally intended as part of the sergeant pepper sessions but the Press kept on saying you know are The Beatles finished they disappeared you know they've run out of ideas not realizing of course that they were working on one of their greatest achievements and to me obviously it wasn't uh unexpected because well because I was at some of the sessions that I think to the public it came as quite a shock let me take you down cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields strawberry feels forever with something else again it was the Beatles had gone weird I mean that was basically what people felt what is wrong with them that's let me take you guys I'm going to Strawberry Fields And The Voice it didn't sound like Leonard that's because they'd slowed the voice down nothing sounded normal on that record the whole production everything was kind of up in the air put through effects and then there was a video that was made at the time as well shot in Seven Oaks or somewhere and it was the strangest thing you had Ringo as if he was disembodied they were falling out of trees there was nothing like that at all easy with eyes closed misunderstanding all you see [Music] it's getting hard to be someone but it all works out it doesn't matter much to me it had more in common with Salvador Dali and the surrealists and Dada all these highfalutin art kind of ideas which was once The Preserve really mainly of the educated Elite but this is the Beatles now bringing it to everybody this short film for Strawberry Fields had a seismic impact because it showed that they had traveled the distance that well you know I I felt it kind of incumbent on me to then travel as as a young person who believed in that it was like wow okay this is what's being asked of me now you know was it just oh that's yeah they look cool it was all right this is the path and that path became even clearer as the year progressed by the turn of 1967 the counterculture was gaining momentum with huge numbers of Youth gravitating towards its New Mecca San Francisco's hate Ashbury District from here a strong musical scene was developing headed by psychedelic bands The Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane and word spread of a new phenomenon the hippie in the UK the underground influence expanded with its own newspaper the international times a live music Club UFO and emerging Stars the Pink Floyd and the American Jimi Hendrix into this blooming scene of peace love and mind-expanding drugs came The Beatles most ambitious work to date one which would not only capture the essence of this new sensibility but also transform the record industry once again Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band presented as a work of art with a single concept unifying the album as a whole it announced that the age of the traditional pop single and the pop band was over Sergeant Pepper revolutionized the record industry all of a sudden albums sold as much as singles Sergeant Pepper sold in the Millions on pure business terms it was a revolutionary release but also it was revolutionary in in terms of letting the record industry know precisely what it could sell what you could do is invest in the finest artistic minds of a generation and give them the freedom to make their art package it up as an album and sell it in the millions Paul had this idea of we want to get away from being the form of tops and The Fab Four so we create this new name for ourselves we're going to be a different group and that'll give us the freedom to do what the hell we want that is the basic concept of the songs many of those songs could have been on any of the other albums it didn't really you know they weren't specific to that particular one but the influence of it was was staggering The Beatles were forced to be reckoned with I mean even the stones were badly affected by them at that point everyone just had to deal with them they were like a roadblock you know if you were in the music business you just have to deal with this great big thing in front of you and get around it the best you could Sky would die in the Sky with Diamonds [Music] Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band I mean it just the title itself was a piece of art and something that mystified people Peter Blake did the cover and Peter Blake was the father of British pop art everything about Sergeant Pepper was an enigma the fact that they were pretending to not be the Beatles but to be another band the lock Groove at the end of side two Lucy and the sky but diamonds are LSD secret messages all the way through it was like a work of literature you know it's like a Ulysses or something where people were just thinking I didn't quite understand this but there's definitely something really going on this combination of imagination and mystery proved irresistible with Sergeant Pepper The Beatles transformed from pop culture icons into Mystics of the Modern Age when the Beatles came out with a new song people started pondering it these are people that you're looking to for meaning by 67 I think the release of Sergeant Pepper in America established the Beatles basically as the leaders of The Counter Culture along with a few other people like our lincolnsburg Timothy Leary but the Beatles were the the musical leaders right across the board I mean they were seen as yes as Gods I mean Leary himself said a lot of silly things about them as the type of new superheroes you know leaders of men and all this stuff I'm not convinced that the youth culture in the mid-60s were terribly aware of LSD and Timothy Leary and even counter-culture attitudes if it hadn't have been for that conduit that was the Beatles this sort of stuff might have just stayed in San Francisco in California The Counter Culture wasn't called The Underground for no reason not many people knew about it yet The Beatles were determined to spread the word even further at the end of June 1967 less than a month after the release of Sergeant Pepper's the band were invited to represent Britain in the first ever International satellite television broadcast across the U.S Canada and Europe the youthful optimism of the counterculture was reaching its peak during the summer of love with thousands flocking to large public events with their historic contribution to the One World broadcast The Beatles delivered the scene's definitive Anthem to an audience of over 500 million viewers worldwide The Beatles true to form National Representatives representing their country they start with the national anthem the only problem is it's the French national anthem you know I mean That's a classic that is total Beetle humor [Music] it was fun I was at that one it was like a party they'd invited a load of their friends you know there's more faces and the Rolling Stones and everybody was there all in our psychedelic finery sitting on the floor there it just looked like it might all explode at some point but and there was an awful lot of sort of frantic waving and people rushing around holding onto their headphones and talking to people that was mostly to do with the international link up though because no one had ever done that before it really did go out live all around the world it was fantastic only me this love forever [Music] weeks after the release of Sergeant Pepper every other band would choose to use that moment to promote Sergeant Pepper by doing a couple of tracks from it right it just makes total business sense but they took the opportunity to send a message to the world that all you need is love they'd already been saying it on Rubber Soul the word is love but this was the time they could tell the whole world all at the same time the Beatles are clearly leading the way I think there's a great significance in the idea of them sitting on those high chairs with the Beautiful People of London including Mick Jagger sitting at their feet looking up at them and singing along to a song they've only just heard you know that's powerful All You Need Is Love was an Anthem of Hope from a youth movement certain that the old order was about to crumble The Beatles were steering an entire generation into Uncharted Territory yet it would not take the establishment long to respond to these peaceful revolutionaries in the UK the police were mobilized and began to make a number of drug busts arresting not only prominent figures on the Underground scene but also Mick Jagger Keith Richards and later Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones these high-profile cases didn't phase Paul McCartney however following the arrests he not only paid for but also put his name to a national press advert calling for the legalization of marijuana weeks later he admitted to a journalist that he had taken LSD and repeated this in a television interview much to the shock of Brian Epstein Brian didn't like things being made public in the use of any private person you know obviously because of his way of life the thing is about drug series wasn't anything being good or bad it was just it was it was illegal [Music] often have you taken LSD foreign times and where did you get it from oh yeah I mean if I was to say where I got it from you know it's illegal and everything it's silly to say that don't you believe that this was a matter which you should have kept private but the thing is you know that I was asked a question by a newspaper and the decision was whether to tell a lie or to uh tell them the truth you know I decided to tell him the truth but uh I really didn't want to say anything you know because if I had my decision uh you know I've had it my way I wouldn't have told anyone you know because I'm not trying to spread the word about this but the man from the newspaper is the man from the mass medium you know I'll keep it a personal thing if he does too you know if he keeps it quiet but he wanted to spread it so it's his responsibility you know for spreading it not mine the thing is Paul is always honest if a reporter asked him have you taken LSD he's going to say yes you wouldn't lie why should he uh if they're going to ask that question they get an honest answer it was a risky thing for him to say and I probably gave Brian Epstein a conniption but basically although the Beatles had made a you know a lot of money they were never really in it for the money once they had enough to really live well that was it I think that was a very good sign of them that they paid their tax and they they said what they wanted The Beatles sense of security was about to be challenged however in late August the band was shocked to receive the news that their manager Brian Epstein had died their most trusted accomplice in his absence they were suddenly left without his stabilizing influence at the same time their quest for personal and spiritual growth continued George Harrison had become fascinated by Indian music in 1965 and as he immersed himself in its techniques he became increasingly drawn to its spiritual foundations this led him to discover the Indian Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his technique of Transcendental Meditation by mid-1967 Harrison was introducing his bandmates to the maharishi's ideas and soon The Beatles had a new spiritual advisor when they first got involved with him I wrote and asked Allen Ginsburg what the story was on the Maharishi in India because Ginsburg had lived there for a number of years and he knew a lot of the the gurus and the teachers and everything and he wrote back saying that the Maharishi was very commercial and that he was under a lot of criticism in India for taking disciples money because in fact the teaching should be free so I reported this to John Lennon who came out with a wonderful line of uh ain't no ethnic bastard gonna get any golden castles out of me despite his initial reservations in February 1968 Lennon and his bandmates traveled to India for an extended retreat with the guru joined by their various wives and girlfriends their departure to the east for Spiritual fulfillment made headlines worldwide the Press swarmed around the perimeter of the maharishi's 14-acre compound both intrigued and baffled by this latest chapter in The Beatles unpredictable Journey this exposure brought Eastern religion to the attention of an enormous audience sometimes I can get in January it was suddenly like right we're off to Maharishi and we're living a holiday camp in India you know have a good time but they did write a heck of a lot of songs while they were there you know churning them out The Beatles introduced the world especially the Young World to things that they would never have stumbled upon had the Beatles not been there the philosophy behind Transcendental Meditation Buddhism they were looking outwards meditation was at the center of it that's actually really all that matters it's the soul the reality is here not many people have really thought about that before and if the Beatles the most popular band in the world the most popular cultural phenomena in the world were talking earnestly about this stuff obviously as much as a lot of the elders might laugh at least as many young people went along with them and you know sales of texts of Eastern wisdom they went through the roof in the late 60s people flocked to see the Maharishi The Beatles were this gateway to a kind of another world although the band emerged from India both spiritually and creatively refreshed this sense of calm would be short-lived in February 1968 they set up their own Corporation Apple this multifaceted company was developed to broaden The Beatles activities and to retain full control over their output yet it would prove the first of many over-ambitious projects for the band and as they entered the studio in the summer to work on their follow-up to Sergeant Pepper for the first time creative and personal disputes crept into the recording sessions a particular source of tension was the daily presence of an outsider in the Beatles inner Sanctum the conceptual artist Yoko Ono with whom John Lennon had fallen deeply in love it was a relationship that had been blossoming in private for more than a year while McCartney had been growing in confidence through his underground activities Lennon's sense of isolation in rural Surrey had increased initially finding a release through LSD it was Yoko Ono who offered him a means of Escape a relatively unknown artist when she had traveled to London with husband Tony Cox in 1966. it was through the Indica gallery that she came into contact with Lennon its owner John Dunbar provided the space for Ono's first UK exhibition and it was he who invited his Beetle friend to attend this unusual show plainly a kind of interesting powerful woman I I didn't show ordinary you know pictures on the wall at all really and so you know she had some good ideas and I like them she wanted to do a show so I kind of we managed to find a couple of weeks where we didn't have something on ryoko is reluctant to have anybody look at it until she totally finished everything you know and labeled everything and everything so we were still doing that but me and Tony had to sort of tell her that look this guy might buy something you never know he's you know he came around and uh he did like the the ladder and then you know I've been looking through the magnifying glass and it says yes so he liked that the relationship that developed across the following two years would be consummated in May 1968 just before the Beatles began work on the White Album Lennon emerged a changed man released from an unhappy marriage and liberated as an artist the arrival of Yoko Ono into John's life transformed Lenin completely she was the mother lover teacher she was kind of everything really as John he needed that when he met yokoshi was basically a mother figure I mean he used to call her mother she for her own reasons took him on and saved him actually [Applause] as Ono's presence made an impact on both Lennon and the bond between the Beatles the world outside of the band began to darken as the war in Vietnam spiraled further out of control with no apparent end to the conflict in sight across the West the cultural movement so inspired by The Beatles no longer believed love is all you need the progressive liberal core of the counterculture came under Fire with the assassinations of first civil rights leader Martin Luther King and then Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy increasing tensions both in the U.S and Britain once peaceful anti-war demonstrations descended into violence student riots brought Paris to a standstill and images of Street skirmishes and police brutality became commonplace as the authorities LED an unforgiving onslaught on the counterculture Revolution replaced love as the new objective in 68 it all exploded you know you had assassinations in the states the threat of Civil War Riots of the democratic convention riots in Paris in London violence on the streets actually there was a sort of a fight power you don't really get power it won't trickle down it has to be sort of forced and if you look at history that tends to be the case The Beatles Revolution was a benign one through ART and love but by 68 the bricks were flying all over the place it wasn't just the kind of sweet utopianism of the summer of love but really days of Rage the demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 you know was a kind of dividing line you saw the police out there like clubbing kids and there really was a sense of you know we're kind of at War now just as this unrestrained police brutality tore through Chicago in August 1968. the Beatles issued the single Revolution addressing the struggles of a youth culture under threat yet unlike All You Need Is Love the previous year John Lennon's composition refused to express the voice of this disillusioned movement or to accept the call to Arms of the radical left for the first time this saw the Beatles turned upon by their own peers yet Lennon's reluctance to commit to violence not only led to two different versions of the track but also reflected the inner struggles that many young people were dealing with the song Revolution there are two versions of it 11 goes back and forth on don't you know that you can count me out in as far as Revolution is concerned you know exactly where you were supposed to stand was difficult all young people were feeling that you know go to a protest yeah sure go to a protest that maybe occupies a building or maybe you know burning that building down do you draw the line there [Music] [Music] [Music] if you're talking about destruction Lenin saying count me out then he's saying Count Me In he doesn't know he's on the fence at that point Lennon as much as he could be a bit handy was seduced by this idea of peace and love he'd just written the anthem of the previous year there always was a kind of inherent optimism in the Beatles somehow whereas that wasn't true of Dylan it wasn't true of the stones it was almost like Martin Luther King you know people don't say this now but there was a sense in which you know a lot of the black radicals who were emerging seemed more of the moment Dr King seemed like kind of part of the protest establishment and in a certain way the Beatles seemed a little bit like that too if the band were losing some of their relevance as a cultural Force Through Yoko Ona's influence John Lennon ensured that they remained musical pioneers where revolution had pulled its punches politically an experimental collage that he created with his new partner captured the chaos of 1968 simply through sound itself when it was issued on the band's self-titled LP at the close of the year the track Revolution 9 became the most widely heard avant-garde composition ever released it was a startling statement from a man who had been heralding in the Summer of Love only a year beforehand he went from one extreme to the other Lenin suddenly saw it's all gone wrong he turned to the flip side and the flip side was Revolution number nine Revolution 9 which was a very very different view of the future [Music] number nine number nine number nine number nine number nine Revolution nine was the sound really of not just the riots in number nine Paris on the streets of Chicago this is the sound of the Apocalypse today [Music] this is his incredibly honest depiction of the worst fear of all which is a society in a world in sort of global turmoil is an extraordinary piece and one of the scariest pieces of music that you could ever hear in the 21st century Revolution 9 is far more relevant than it ever was I think in 68. having delivered the most extreme composition in the Beatles catalog Lenin's further experimental activities continued outside of the band by the end of 1968 the first of a Trilogy of albums with Yoko owner was issued two virgins with a cover depicting the couple naked still a member of the most popular and commercially successful act in the world Lenin was now breaking every rule imaginable yet the anger in some quarters of the counterculture toward the song Revolution also led him into a greater political role and in 1969 as Richard Nixon was sworn in as the new president of America John Lennon and Yoko Ono emerged as the world's most prominent activists when Lennon came out and he said if you're talking about destruction count me out he was terribly criticized by the hard left and it seems to me that his reaction to that was not to change his mind about destruction but actually to say no I really don't think the answer is destruction I think the answer actually is peace in March 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono were married with their honeymoon the couple embarked on a high-profile campaign for peace presented as a series of conceptual art events in the spirit of The Beatles initial attitude to the press the first of these took place in their hotel Bridal Suite in which they invited journalists to discuss politics openly and frankly this is what a world peace is it and we're thinking that instead of going out and fight and make war or something like that we should just stay in bed everyone should just stay in bed and enjoy the spring you know he put his career right on the line there for his beliefs and you have to applaud him for that of course it brought him an awful lot of harassment and uh and trouble while you're in bed and you're giving your press conferences in pillowcases are you laughing at us you know I mean we have a laugh we think it's funny that the fact that the front page news should be the fact that two people went to bed on the honeymoon we see the funny side of it and that in Vienna which is pretty Square place there's all these beautiful photographs of microphones being held to a bag you know to wait for the bag to speak but we're serious about the the peace bit you know Brave foolhardy they were all of that but who else would have done that then it would be front page news if they're in bed talking about peace John didn't know necessarily the ins and outs of the whole Vietnam thing he and Yoko knew that it was wrong to be dropping Napalm on Villages and stripping the skin off children I mean he wasn't wrong in that thinking he really wasn't wrong as the couple's honeymoon moved from Europe to Canada they were joined in their hotel room by Timothy Leary Alan Ginsburg and a variety of counter-culture figures to record an Anthem for their campaign and where their experimental records and their public appearances had left many confused this song managed to bring their message to a global audience Give Peace a chance was his attempt to do something in his own terms that was actually useful and I think it proved to be so he wrote an Anthem it's a simplistic Anthem but it's an Anthem that has a good heart and a good message and that people have been singing ever since foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] he's moved further and further away from the elegant combination of artistic musical choices and resonant text into records that only have a message he had that ability to distill something down to its Bare Essence make it communicative make it Unforgettable and it still resonates to this day while Lenin pressed on campaigning for peace the close of the Decades saw the first major casualties of the youth movement with the death of Rolling Stone Brian Jones and permanent narcotics damage on both Beach Boy Brian Wilson and the Pink Floyd Sid Barrett the utopian vision of a Brave New World was crumbling and this was reflected within the Beatles Camp itself the tensions that had previously Arisen in the studio now spread into the bandmate's own relationships with each other and when McCartney married his new partner Linda Eastman in 1969 none of his fellow Beatles attended the ceremony as the world moved into the 1970s Paul issued his debut solo record along with a press release which announced that he was quitting the band it was official The Beatles were no more the demise of the band shocked their fans worldwide yet those close to the Musicians had watched them gradually drift apart over a two-year period there was no cohesion the old Liverpool bubble that they all used to live in and see each other all the time and love each other and be tolerant of each other's foibles and differences had gone so now they were spinning off in different directions with new ideas new families new girlfriends new children it just wasn't working anymore it was obvious really that the Beatles as a group had pretty much come to an end has a multi-million dollar entertainment act ever broken up because it wasn't fun anymore well we know actually because so many groups from that same period continued and continued and continued when it most definitely wasn't fun anymore The Beatles ended it because the reasons that they had gotten into doing it ceased to have have value for them so they said let's not do this anymore that's a that's as powerful a statement about their integrity and their intentions and their values as as anything that I can think of in the Beatles wake youth culture became more divided rock music got heavier and more self-indulgent and pop turned its attention to glamor as for the band members themselves despite Lennon's continued activism and string of hit singles McCartney's mainstream Triumph through his band wings and Harrison's successful emergence as an artist in his own right their impact as individuals could never match that of their Beatles Glory Days yet although their vision of Utopia had failed to materialize the world was still forever changed by The Beatles Innovations and the values that they represented even if no one has ever managed to compete with that impact with every successive generation of musicians The Beatles remain The Benchmark for how popular entertainers can interact with the wider world did the cultural and musical changes to which they were without any doubt the largest contributors have a permanent effect on how rock and roll conceived itself yeah permanent effect on how rock and roll perceived itself so that there's even now in this kind of glitzy pop era pop stars see it as an option that they have to accept or refuse to be conscious controversial and some choose one and others really deny it and some are extremely Bland but it's there on the table always there on the table for everybody and as the band's astonishing achievements continue to make an impact half a century later the legacy of The Beatles and of the remarkable decade in which they flourished remains unrivaled the unique story of four working-class liver puddlians who changed the world Lennon said something along the lines of we weren't leaders in this world we were just the guys on the Mast saying land ahoy we were letting you know what we could see and without the Beatles understanding the 60s would have been a completely different experience they touched everything The Beatles covered it all if you want to know what the 60s are about you listen to Beatles records it tells you the story is there it sounds like a cliche but it's really impossible to overstate The Beatles impact it sounds like you're exaggerating into younger people who aren't there you know it just sounds ridiculous you know but it was true you know they changed everything

Channel: Amplified - Music & Pop Culture Documentaries

Views: 983,406

Keywords: pop culture documentary, Amplified, music documentaries, art documentaries, documentary movies - topic, music documentary, full documentary, TV Shows - Topic, full length documentary 2022, old school music, Educational, the beatles lennon mccartney documentary, best of lennon and mccartney beatles, composing outside the beatles documentary, rock icon legend untold story documentary, amplified the beatles rock and roll doc, john lennon paul mccartney icon legend visionary lyricist

Id: z4ED8AU9XxQ

Length: 108min 47sec (6527 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 16 2023