Is it wrong to praise the Beatles?

Under the subject line, “Enough with the Beatles already,” Matthew H. writes:

It is ironic that you should express enthusiasm for the Beatles and quote their lyrics in your posts. While the album Rubber Soul has a certain period charm it should be considered in the context of the band’s overall cultural effect which was enormous and, on balance, awful. This record is from the period when these performers went from being a fun teen diversion to being pied pipers of drugs and dissipation. Was it not on their next record that they sang, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream,” amidst a druggie cacophony. Now there’s good advice for young people! And was it not shortly thereafter that they were screaming, “Why don’t we do it in the road?” And on and on through the LSD proselitization and the heroin and marijuana busts to “Imagine no religion…” They inspired numerous members of their own and succeeding generations to use drugs and adopt ideas totally counter to the foundational principles of our society. They remind me of the man Tom Lehrer once sang about who “liked to burn down houses just to watch the glow,” except in this case it was not a house they burned down, but the minds of what was thankfully only a significant minority of the intelligent, middle-class youth of the English-speaking world.

Even at their best the Beatles were harbingers of our current celebrity-cult which worships personalities far more than is warranted by the quality of the artistic products with which they are associated. They themselves were some of the early products of the huge engines of hype which have so badly distorted our culture since then and which have distracted the minds of countless young people from their proper business of learning and preparing for life. I know few adults whose youths were not to some extent blighted by an infatuation with this sort of nonsense. The legacy of “Rock ‘n’ Roll” is one of, at best silliness, and far too often filth and degradation. Music, far from being the best thing about the sixties, was the primary vector by which so many of the other cultural pathogens of that decade infected the minds of the young. This was a disaster which was not, as the Australian philosopher David Stove remarked in another context, of the passive variety like a flood or an earthquake, but of the active sort, like a badly leaking nuclear reactor.

There is a further irony in the fact that at the very moment the Beatles were nostalgically singing about Penny Lane, they and the rest of their socialist and druggie compadres were working to drive it out of existence. They were not the only ones, but they were perhaps the most prominent and well respected, for which reason their influence was all the more pernicious.

LA replies:

I have not praised the Beatles’ drug songs, or praised other things about them that were harmful. I praised and quoted a particular song and album. But by Matthew’s reasoning, one could never approve of anything the Beatles did, no matter how marvelous or praiseworthy or apposite, because the Beatles’ overall activity and influence were harmful. By this reasoning, one could never quote a witticism of Oscar Wilde’s, because he was a sodomite; one could never quote a brilliant observation of Ayn Rand’s, because she hated religion. One could never quote Wordsworth, or Nietzsche, or Shaw, and on and so on until no one was left. I reject this attitude completely. While I think Savanarola has gotten a bum rap in history, I do not have a Savanarola program. We are intelligent beings and capable of discriminating between the things we approve and the things we disapprove. We’re capable of reading books, and listening to music, selectively.

Finally, Matthew is so censorious that he doesn’t even note the qualification contained in my repeated quotation of Sonny Bono’s line, “The Sixties were great, but only musically.” That statement clearly means that anything beyond good music in itself, such as songs promoting drugs or free love, was not part of what was great.

Matthew replies:

Let us compare the Beatles to some of those who you say I, by my censoriousness, would write out of our cultural legacy. But first I would ask the question: At what point does an artist’s or even an individual’s crimes or bad conduct render him categorically suspect if not entirely beyond the pale. Felons lose the right to vote, speeders do not. Can we draw a similar distinction with regard to the peccadilloes of prominent artist and performers in proportion to their influence on society.

Instead of an all or nothing evaluation, it might be helpful to adopt a graded system, like the Terror Alerts or the one to five star rating system movie critics use. Suppose five stars means you are an artist of the finest caliber and your sins are so negligible as to be hardly worth noting. Shakespeare, J.S. Bach and maybe a few other greats belong here. Zero stars puts you in the same camp as, say, William S. Burroughs.

Here we go:

Oscar Wilde: A truly accomplished artist whose books and witticisms have brought joy to vast numbers. Exerted a negative influence by making sodomy chic and by inspiring the Bloomsbury group who went on to exert an even worse influence on British society. Not for the children. He gets a 3.

Ayn Rand: A brave and brilliant thinker whose writings served as a bracing tonic in the midst of what must have seemed an inexorable totalitarian slide during the twentieth century. She forthrightly hoped to change men’s minds and alter the direction of society and bears full responsibility for her effect on our culture. She was a militant atheist and, hypocritically, an adulteress. For her stalwart defense of individual freedom, responsibility and a decent, if godless, society: With some caution. She gets a 3.5.

William Wordsworth: I am not too familiar with his work but I will take it as given that he is worthy of his exalted literary reputation. No great sins that I know of other than youthful support for the French Revolution (“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive…”) and, I think, fathering a child out of wedlock, both of which he seems later to have repented of. Take some No-Doze and read away. 4 stars.

Friedrich Nietzsche: The tension between his stunning intellectual achievement and his horrible influence is almost enough to tear our scale apart. His x-ray insights occasionally verged on the sublime. Was the spiritual father of H.L. Mencken, whose corrosive, though often amusing, influence on Twentieth Century American life can hardly be over-stated. Would the world be a better place had he never lived? Probably. 1 star. [LA notes: It is unfair to judge an author by the influence he had on another author.]

In the interest of saving time, let me jump to the artists in question.

The Beatles: OK, the greatest rock band ever. Rock Band, that is. Stratospherically hyped into positions of previously undreamed of cultural influence. As National Lampoon once asked, “Were the Beatles really that great or were we just too stoned to know the difference?” All right, they wrote many, many fun songs. And exerted a strongly negative influence through their widely emulated drug use and support of violent political movements (Lennon particularly). Not as great or as wicked as Nietzsche but their extremes balance at around the same point: 1 star. [LA notes: Gosh, Matthew can’t even acknowledge the quality of Beatles’ creations; he thinks’ it was just a matter of the “hyping” of “fun” songs.]

As for the music being the best thing about the Sixties I would direct you to Ayn Rand’s essay, Apollo and Dionysus, though I’m sure you are familiar with it.

LA replies:

This is an interesting and worthwhile exercise, but when you give Nietzsche and the Beatles a score of one, just a notch above William Burroughs, to me that is excessively censorious.

My inclusion of Wordsworth in the list of examples was less thought out than the others. I was thinking of Irving Babbitt’s criticism of Romanticism.

* * *

Stephen F. writes:

Here are some thoughts on the Beatles. My answer is that of course it’s OK to praise the Beatles. But it raises some very interesting cultural issues.

There is little in post-1950s culture that is free of liberalism in some form. As someone who liked everything from the Beatles to The Clash—sensibilities running from liberal to radical, if you will—before becoming conservative, I find the need to identify and affirm *that which was good* about this music that made me like it prior to identifying, conceptually, things that were wrong about it.

In the Beatles, there is plenty to affirm. To borrow a phrase from Ayn Rand, they have a wonderful “sense of life.” Their music is full of joy, optimism, poignancy, and pathos. They took various forms of music prevalent in the 1950s and reworked them in fresh and ingenious ways. The individual members of the group projected their personalities into the music to create a wonderful, harmonious totality. There is something eternally youthful about their work.

Now, one objection to the Beatles would be that they just were not all that sophisticated, that they were limited by the restrictions of their genre and by their lack of higher education. In other words, their music was “low culture.” Indeed, it may be that from a traditionalist point of view, “high culture” (high church, higher education, traditional theater, classical music) is the most important—and is in the worst condition at present. But “low culture” (including pop/folk/rock music) is perfectly valid, filling its own role complementary to the high, as comedy complements tragedy. I see the Beatles as low culture par excellence. I do not criticize them for not being Mozart, though I would strongly criticize the idea that we only need them and not Mozart.

In Matthew H’s posting I see two main issues. The first is their promotion of drugs and promiscuity. It is indisputable that the Beatles did much damage in this way, in both their music and in their public personas. But that does not necessarily mean that we need to listen to their songs *now* as promoting drug use. I do not think that the promotion of drugs is *central* to most of their work, though obviously there are allusions and we also know what they were doing in their private lives while creating their music. Think of the three songs Larry has mentioned on his site. There is nothing there that calls for drug use or that one must be a drug user to appreciate. Granted, the term “get high” is obviously a ‘60s drug term, but there used to express a feeling about a woman.

Next, there is Matthew’s objection to the hero-worship they evoked. I don’t really have a good response to that. How could they be appealing personalities and not inspire hero-worship? I agree that there is something strange about phenomenon of rock stars, who are neither merely musicians, nor actors playing a part, but presenting *themselves* as sexual objects available to the audience (John Lennon admitted this explicitly). I don’t see how we could ever completely do away with this phenomenon in the performing arts, though.

Having defended the Beatles, I agree that there was something insidious about them as a cultural influence. They were accepted by young and old alike as “nice, clean boys,” but turned on a whole generation to drug use and shamelessly used female fans as sexual playthings. In a way, they were worse than, say, the Rolling Stones, because the latter were understood to be “bad” while the Beatles attained full respectability. As I think of it, this is precisely what is disturbing about them—that they really were very ordinary young Englishmen, raised with middle/working-class English values, who, presented with unlimited temptations, did not hesitate to grab everything they could, and they were never condemned for this, and never repented of it. To their credit, they didn’t boast about their activities and the press did not expose them, but this was the way the culture was at the time. I suppose I see them as reflecting the trends of the times, rather than as aggressively promoting them (i.e. like Ken Kesey or Allen Ginsberg).

They are certainly not for everyone. I think if someone grew up long before the 1960s, or in a very traditional religious setting, they might not be able to appreciate the Beatles, because the counterculture aspects of their art are too intrusive. My father was such a person. He couldn’t stand 60s music. One could argue with him, and point out what was brilliant about a certain song, but that didn’t make him like it. And I can’t fault him for this.

Anyway, let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Long live the Beatles!

LA adds:

Think of the multi-part TV documentary “The Beatles Anthology” that came out some years ago, focusing on their earlier years, with much concert footage from 1963-64. Watching that program was a sheer delight. The Beatles were bringers of happiness and joy. Whatever negative influences the Beatles later had, either through their own agency, or through people’s responses to them, have already occurred and are water under the bridge. The good things about the Beatles are still there, to be enjoyed. I agree that we should not throw out the baby with the bath water.

And on the question of pop culture, all cultures have a popular culture. The question is not whether pop culture per se is good or bad, but (1) whether particular pop cultural manifestations are good or bad, and (2) whether the pop culture has become in effect the only culture, with no higher standards to keep the pop culture in perspective and in check. The latter certainly happened in the Sixties, but that was not the Beatles’ fault. The Beatles for the most part were just doing what they were doing, creating marvelous songs and performances, though clearly when they began to create songs invoking psychedelia, that is something for which they can be severely criticized.

Russell W. writes:

I liked your response to the correspondent upset over your references to the Beatles. It hits the right note of reasonableness and avoids the long slide into rigid dogma, which (at least for myself) I consider a constant danger for someone with a moral/philosophical disposition so at odds with the dominant society.

I’m 26, and grew up listening to the music of my parents’ generation, and there was a short (very short!) time while a teenager when I was seduced by the romanticism for rebellion that suffuses and surrounds the music of that era. By the time I was about 17 though I had become rather cynical about the whole thing. As a result, I started to appreciate much more pieces of music from that era more properly interpreted as rejections of the arrogant revolutionary and anarchic attitude that predominated at the time.

For instance, one of the reasons I enjoy the Kinks is the downright traditionalist bent in many of their songs.

For instance, “Two Sisters” holds up the much maligned “drudgery” of married domestic life as superior to cosmopolitan singlehood:

Sylvilla looked into her mirror
Percilla looked into the washing machine
And the drudgery of being wed
She was so jealous of her sister
And her liberty, and her smart young friends
She was so jealous of her sister

Sylvilla looked into the wardrobe
Percilla looked into the frying pan
And the bacon and eggs
And the breakfast is served
She was so jealous of her sister
And her way of life, and her luxury flat
She was so jealous of her sister

She threw away her dirty dishes just to be free again
Her women’s weekly magazines just to be free again
And put the children in the nursery just to be free again
Percilla saw her little children
And then decided she was better off
Than the wayward lass that her sister had been
No longer jealous of her sister
So she ran ‘round the house with her curlers on
No longer jealous of her sister

What’s more traditional than that? Also, the song “Village Green” reveals a common theme for Davies, their songwriter—the nostalgia for traditional small town/rural English life:

Out in the country,
Far from all the soot and noise of the city,
There’s a village green.
Its been a long time
Since I last set eyes on the church with the steeple
Down by the village green.
twas there I met a girl called Daisy
And kissed her by the old oak tree.
Although I loved my daisy, I saw fame,
And so I left the village green.

I miss the village green,
And all the simple people.
I miss the village green,
The church, the clock, the steeple.
I miss the morning dew, fresh air and Sunday school.

And now all the houses
Are rare antiquities.
American tourists flock to see the village green.
They snap their photographs and say gawd darn it,
Isn’t it a pretty scene?
And daisy’s married tom the grocer boy,
And now he owns a grocery.

I miss the village green,
And all the simple people.
I miss the village green,
The church, the clock, the steeple.
I miss the morning dew, fresh air and Sunday school.

And I will return there,
And I’ll [?] Daisy,
And we’ll sip tea, laugh,
And talk about the village green.
We will laugh and talk about the village green.

LA replies:

Russell wrote: “It hits the right note of reasonableness and avoids the long slide into rigid dogma, which (at least for myself) I consider a constant danger for someone with a moral/philosophical disposition so at odds with the dominant society.”

That’s a very important point. Traditionalists are already dissidents from the current culture, deeply critical of all the prevailing opinions and attitudes. If we were to go so far as to find no good at all in the existing culture, that would not only be wrong in itself, it would mean we no longer had anything in common with the culture, which would end our ability to have any influence on it. That is what has happened with those paleocons who hate contemporary America so much that they can’t take its side even when it is attacked by enemies. (See my discussion of Thomas Fleming’s response to the 9/11 attack.) I’ve often said that traditionalists need to stand on separate ground from the prevailing culture. That is not the same as leaving the continent of our culture altogether.

Kidist writes from Canada:

Regarding the Beatles: A famous musician once commented that Mozart’s music is always full of the unexpected. One always thinks his melodies (ideas, etc…) will go in one direction but they always surprise us by doing something completely unanticipated.

I would venture to say that that is also where the genius of the Beatles lies. With their unexpected turn of melody, words, arrangements and even beat (meter), we are constantly surprised, and charmed.

Like you said, there are some extraordinary things in modern art and music (and architecture). It is incorrect to assume that it is all useless. Also, modern art is the (present) culmination of Western culture, and denying it would also be to deny the history of this culture.

LA replies:

Yes, there’s that sense of an intelligence unfolding from moment to moment, with constant surprises, yet each surprise feels exactly “right.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 22, 2006 02:03 PM | Send