ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

There is lots of nostalgia in
pop music circles, and there
always has been. There will
always be an audience for
the Andrews Sisters, The Big Bopper,
the Beach Boys, and countless other
artists of the day before yesteryear.
That is to say, their enduring popularity
goes beyond their original musical
significance.
The Beatles are something else.
Since they first arrived on the pop
scene nearly half a century ago, and since
they disappeared again over 40 years ago,
we’ve been asking the same questions.
Why? How did it happen? How can four
adolescents from a working class town
with no formal musical training upend
not only the hit parade, but all of the
arts? How could they have had such a
massive and immediate impact on society?
That they did is beyond question.
As we shall see, these young musicians,
taken in hand by classical music
producer George Martin, struggled to
render credible versions of the rock’n’roll
Software
The Beatles
Forever!
hits of their day, but once they began
writing their own songs the result,
worldwide, was electrifying.
The pop music world had of course
seen other hit-making machines, from
Frank Sinatra to Elvis. But no one could
have predicted the results, not even
George Martin, who had a front-row
seat.
Since we last wrote about the Fab
Four in UHF No. 63, the Beatles phenomenon
has only grown. We’ll get to
that shortly, but let us begin at the very
beginning.
Welcome to Liverpool
This typical industrial and port
city, located where the Mersey meets
the Irish Sea, would seem ill-suited as
a tourist magnet, but this is the birthplace
of the Beatles. Each year hundred
of thousands of nostalgic visitors take
pleasure in walking its streets to search
by Reine Lessard
and Gerard Rejskind
out the places where the Beatles began,
perhaps to catch a whiff of the joyous
madness of the 60’s. Liverpool’s avenues
are immortalized in Beatle songs. There
is a statue of the Beatles at the Cavern
Club, there is a Beatles museum, there
is an official Beatles tour, and there are
countless boutiques hawking Beatles
souvenirs and memorabilia. Once known
only as the UK’s second largest port,
Liverpool is now and forever the city of
the Beatles.
In the beginning…
These wunderkinder of modern popular
music were barely out of childhood
when they took their first steps toward
glory. These four lads who shook the
world have lost nothing of their appeal.
Look at their pictures on countless
remastered LP’s and CD’s, in attire that
was almost formal at first, much less so
later. Look at those adolescent faces,
listen to their songs, which continue to
sell to millions of the grandchildren of
their original fans.
It all begins in the little church of
Woolton, in their native Liverpool.
There, in the summer of 1957,
a youth of 17 named John Winston
Lennon leads a skiffle group of six, The
Quarrymen, who play for special events.
At a July concert at another church, he is
introduced to another youth, James Paul
McCartney. Impressed with Paul’s musical
talent, John hires him, beginning an
unequalled musical partnership. Within
a few weeks, John fires the weaker
member of his group and adds a pickup
musician, already a talented guitarist,
even younger than himself. His name is
George Harrison.
Poorly dressed, working without
a drum mer, using instruments and
amplifiers of the crudest quality, the
aspiring stars can get gigs only in the
most rundown clubs. In 1959, at a new
club called the Casbah, they finally meet
a drummer who will add the missing
ingredient, Peter Best.
In 1960 John persuades his best
friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who had attended
the Liverpool Fine Arts School with
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 61