It is with some trepidation that I begin my latest
round of incoherent ramblings on something of a pretentious note with a quote
from Karl Marx.
In his ‘18th Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte’, Marx wrote;
“Men make their own history, but they
do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and
transmitted from the past.”
Now, I can hear those of you tempted to read this
on the strength of the Beatles reference in the title saying “what the f**k has
Karl Marx got to do with The Beatles.”
It was, of course, Marx who George Martin drafted
in to play drums on ‘Love me Do’. Or that might have been Andy White.
Anyway, enough of this nonsense and on to the point
of this article, and yes there is a point to it.
What Marx is saying is that while people, to be not
as gender specific as our chum Karl, do make history it is the circumstances
that they encounter along the way that really defines how they shape history.
Few people, I would hope, would dispute the
influence that The Beatles have had not just on popular music but on society
and cultural in general. The rise in the popularity of The Beatles in the US in
the wake of the assaination of President Kennedy is another subject for another
time but is an example of how events elsewhere can allow others, not directly
related to it, to make history.
Sticking, sort of, to this theme could The Beatles
have come from anywhere other than Liverpool?
Liverpool was a busy shipping port with strong
links to the USA. It wasn’t just goods though that were transported between the
US and Liverpool. Travelling from the States to the Liverpool docks came
American popular culture, in particular rock and roll.
It is unquestionable that rock and roll had a
massive influence on four young lads from Liverpool in the 1950s. Had they not
been exposed to this music it is inconceivable that they would have gone on and
formed their own rock and roll band.
Yet they weren’t the only four teenagers in
Liverpool enthralled by rock and roll. Or the only four talented musicians that
wanted to form their own band. Why then did John, Paul, George and Ringo become
such a phenomom?
The dynamic that existed between the four lads was obviously pivotal to
their success. For example, there has been no greater song writing partnership
than the one that existed between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. How would
that partnership had developed had they not both had unconventional childhoods?
Paul losing his mother at a young age and John too having to deal with the
tragic consequences of his mother’s untimely death after previously been abandoned
by his father.
The truth of the matter is that it was a fortunate (or perhaps more
accurately, misfortune) set of circumstances that threw unarguably the greatest
ever pop group together and we should all be grateful for that.
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