The Beatles were, for me, always more like anti-depressant medication than just music. Like so many other awkward, pre-teen boys on the cusp of puberty, I was often alone. My state of solitude didn’t change during my first stay at summer camp, so a single cassette of “The Beatles’ 20 Greatest Hits” served me well as a mood stabilizer. Caught in the moment right at the end of hair metal and before the explosion of grunge, I was in the throes of the often-toxic sterility of “suburban lifestyle American dream.” Their Acadian harmonies catapulted me into different worlds, modeling compassion and love I could not always find so readily around me.
Never into obscure corners of the music world, I always wanted to find out what made a mere pop group such a massive phenomenon. I believe they have something to teach us about making peace and love a reality beyond the catchphrases and beyond lip-service. Their global fame itself advanced unity among peoples. They are a helpful reminder in troubled times that pop artists can point the way forward to a better tomorrow. A closer look into their cultural matrix and the social choices they made provide some weighty evidence that makes their rhetoric ring true.
From the start, rock and roll mightily contributed to eroding the social and political divides between African and European communities in the United States, long held up via segregation and oppression. In the US, one could argue that inspired musical genius of African Americans made their civil rights an actuality in sound before the rest of reality finally caught up and on. In the 1960s, the Beatles continued this great leap forward in cultural pontooning, of creatively linking together segregated worlds, they famously were the first major group that refused to perform in front of segregated audiences. They cross-fertilized the cultures of the British Isles, and went on to add South Asian and even crossed that hardest boundary of all, that between the masculine and the feminine. Songs of peacemaking are well-known: “All You Need is Love, ” “Give Peace a Chance,” “The Word” (“Spread the word and you’ll be free…have you heard the word is love…it’s so fine, it’s sunshine”) and they speak for themselves. George Harrison once called such compositions “advertisements for God.” They even seemed to pull off the ultimate magic trick within capitalism, to elevate commercial success into something unabashedly benevolent and edifying.
They relentlessly pursued new connections in what I would like to call a modern counterphobic adventure, in other words, they were propelled toward what often inspired fear in others. The Beatles incessantly broke down walls between worlds long separated by enmity and alienation, to name just a few: the Anglo and the Irish communities of Liverpool, the British working class from the aristocracy, the gay from the straight, India from the West, and the pop world from the classical. For so many like myself, they telegraphed new discoveries, serving as a messaging depot bringing the good news of Bach, Ravi Shankar, even musique conrete to the masses.
The “color-line” in Britain was the push of indigenous Celtic inhabitants to the geographical and social fringe. The centuries of exclusion and even exploitation led to vehement division between Protestants and Catholics well into the modern period. Liverpool, the largest port in the British Empire also became its largest Irish city. The partition and division of Ireland meant that the so-called troubles would trail the Irish Diaspora wherever it went. Crossing the sectarian line, especially for pair bonding, was still taboo in Liverpool. Not only were all three principal Beatles of Irish ancestry, but in a city where confession was often geographically marked onto the city, the two chief songwriters, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were actually the scions of intermarriage. Belonging to a minority of a minority, one might say they had boundary crossing written into their DNA (Both were however raised in the faith of their mothers, Anglican and Catholic, both of whom died tragically young.) Much is made of the shared trauma of the untimely passing of their mothers, yet little has been made of the social dislocation of families that challenged norms of cultural belonging.
Otherness in Liverpool meant a local culture infused with Irishness, in the style of interaction, the startlingly rich bardic musical culture and the unique local dialect. The Celtic tradition is one where harpists carried a social prestige equal to that of physicians. The English invaders had longstanding fears that Celtic bards would sing songs of subversion and corrupt the English. With the Beatles, one might say they brought the Celtic fringe out of the shadows of periphery. (They also paved the way for scores of others with Celtic ancestry to carve out leading voices within Britain’s culture, from the Davies brothers of the Kinks, to Donovan and Van Morrison, and more recently to Elvis Costello and Morrisey and even the Gallagher brothers of Oasis.)
After their acrimonious break-up, so much of which that had been implicit in the Beatles’ sympathies became glaringly explicit. The Bloody Sunday massacre of peaceful Catholic march protestors (inspired by American Civil Rights protestors) in Derry in 1972, brought out their true colors. Even the establishment darling, McCartney, braved BBC denunciation for his single “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”. John Lennon released not one but two tracks on the subject, on his overlooked political pop concept album of 1972 Sometime in New York City. Going about as far as possible in partisanship, Lennon’s reggae march Sunday Bloody Sunday asserted:
You Anglo pigs and Scotties sent to colonize the North
You wave your bloody Union Jacks and you know what it’s worth
How dare you hold to ransom a people proud and free
Keep Ireland for the Irish and put the English back to sea
The companion song “Luck of the Irish,” marries a folk melody with even more immoderate claims. Stating that “if you had the luck of the Irish, you’d wish you was English instead,” he asks “why the hell are the English there anyway,” and sparing no subtlety that “the bastards commit genocide.” If these songs are at all aggressive, it is born out of hurt.
The Beatles are remembered for their graduation from boy-girl romance to an ethic of universal love. They clobbered the norm of hyper-masculine aggression so part and parcel of rock until that time. (Many of the first generation of rock stars, notably, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis of the 1950s ended up entangled with the law for a variety of aggressive licentious delicts often involving underage girls.) From their long hair to their porcelain, seraphic faces, and faithful emulation of the harmonies of Motown “girl groups,” the Beatles brought everything but a reinforced strict 1950s binary opposition to the world of gender and sexuality. Their rhetoric of romantic mutuality (“from me to you”), their longer hair, and the homosocial dynamic of four equal members have long been recognized as a leap to a brave new world of gender. Sadly, too many of the groups that emerged in their wake recentered the gaze upon a singular phallic, Adonis-like male lead singer. As Sasha Geffen recently put it “the Beatles didn’t look like women, they looked as though they lacked the discipline to look like men.” Their stage image, down the precise cut of their suits and boots, was thought up entirely by a gay Jewish man, who grew up in an England where same sex love was still criminalized. This is Brian Epstein who, at the age of 16, wrote a letter to his music retail mogul father explaining that he wished to become a dressmaker. As Geffen again explains, Epstein’s critical role primed “the audience to see them the way a gay man might see them.” Their final act of personal outreach as a band together is notable, and the only time an outside musician was co-credited on Beatles’ music was a gay, African-American man, the keyboard player, Billy Preston.
It was no secret that Brian Epstein was excluded from the MBE honor given to the group by the Queen in 1965 because Epstein was gay and Jewish. Often given to war heroes, the Beatles approached the honor with a knowing wariness. George Harrison quipped the MBE should be called Mr. Brian Epstein, and even suggested that those returning their medals in protest should instead be given to Epstein. Lennon was, as usual, to the point in his clear revulsion of Empire and Army officers, who received their awards for “killing people. “We received ours for entertaining. I’d say we deserve ours more,” he said. The stand against militarism and the hyper-masculinism upon which it relies, again gradually moved from subtext to text. Ultimately, Lennon would of course return the MBE “honor” in 1969, citing Britain’s role and support for post-colonial wars in Nigeria and Vietnam.
The unfulfilled infatuation of Brian Epstein for John Lennon held up the heart of the Beatles, as the group began to disintegrate with his untimely death in late 1967. There was also something almost romantic about the relationship of the two principal songwriters. The obscene acrimony that accompanied their breakup (including getting married within one week of the other during the breakup year 1969 (each to women incidentally who both spent their adolescence in Scarsdale, New York and who both attended but didn’t graduate from Sarah Lawrence College) is hardly explicable without this component. While the Beatles did not overtly embrace androgyny, that would wait for Bowie and Marc Bolan, the Beatles injected a critical component of ambiguity in the battle of the sexes aggravated by rock. How fitting therefore that a key component in their untimely demise was a battle over whether or not a woman could have a literal and equal seat at the recording studio table.
The other Beatles took deep umbrage with the feminist fact of Yoko Ono being allowed onto the floor of the studio (even at one point outfitted with a bed equipped with a microphone so her suggestions could be heard). John’s ultimate conversion to feminism, inclusive of embracing the role of house-husband in his last five years is unimaginable without Yoko’s modeling. His later performance art inspired pop happenings were mostly due to her invigoration culminating in the instructional poem word play of “Imagine.” His feminist anthem, “Woman Is the [N-word] of the World,” is as forgotten as “Imagine” is solemnized. It is startling that the rare instances when it is recalled still occasions vexation and controversy. It is a work of atonement, and the arguably shrill nature of this work cannot be understood without his effort to make amends for his history as a one-time abuser of women (well documented with regard to his first wife, Cynthia).
The Beatles modeled that peacemaking and reconciliation starts at home. Their soundtrack of retaining childlike wonder and growing mature trans-generational empathy has provided me with so many safe words when disappointment and grievance threaten to overwhelm.
Conflicts are nowhere so intense and reconciliation so elusive between families and neighbors, those with whom we have lived closest with. A pinnacle case in Beatles’ history must surely be George Harrison’s devotion to the music and religion of India. It served as his guiding light and ultimate inspiration. If John Lennon’s artistic breakthrough was thanks to Bob Dylan (later propelled further by another Dylan crib, Donovan) while McCartney’s slyly reworked first Motown and then the Beach Boys, George’s Indian turn was a “mind blower,” a less derivative, and more epochal change of direction without model. This Indian turn is all the more remarkable when considering the history of British colonialism in India which has left a legacy of division and strife apparent to this very day. For example, a common figure in terms of extraction of wealth from that former crown jewel of the Empire, is around 45 trillion.
There is something poetically fitting about descendants of the Irish Diaspora, that original case of colonialism, stepping in to forge a humble and respectful case of reconciliation. As a Brit, Harrison “returned” to India as a student, and ultimately corralled the whole group there to Rishikesh in Uttarakhand on a mission to achieve peace of mind via the practice of transcendental meditation. In private, George was explicit that this journey constituted the search for the same sacred heart that lay at the base of Irish Catholicism as well (it is striking that both Hindustani classical and traditional Celtic music both rely heavily on musical drones). Harrison’s humble dedication here carried the quality of atonement for post-colonial dialogue, and the turn to India may well yet appear as the central pivot in the story of the Beatles.
Ultimately, overcoming misogyny and the hurts of colonialism in both Ireland and India reveal that a search for healing must transpire from without for it to follow from within. This is the precious and unique legacy of a musical ensemble that radiated warmth and the search for transcendence. Here are the elements of the Beatles peacemaking algorithm: pacifism, romance beyond gender, and reconciliation beyond past enmity. Their effort at atonement required cultural bravery as they transcended the imposed battle lines of past prejudice and resentment. Their music came into my life as I struggled to come to grips with unfair privilege and resentment, which in turn easily triggered guilt and depression. Having a soundtrack of musical atonement to lean on helped me to see that making amends with the struggle to form an awakened Self counteracts depression and makes the journey all the more blissful.
Adam J. Sacks holds an MA and PhD in history from Brown University and an MS in education from the City College of the City University of New York. His first book, an interpretive listening guide to Richard Wagner's last opera, Parsifal, is coming out this fall.