The success of the Beatles. An anti-revolutionary Band

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Academic Paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1, 7, University of Osnabrück (Institut für Anglistik), course: Anglo American Studies, language: English, abstract: The Beatles with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are one of the most influential rock bands the world has ever seen. The American author Richie Unterberger successfully manged to describe The Beatles as "the greatest and most influential act of the rock era" and a rock band that "introduced more innovations into popular music than any other band of the 20th century". No rock band had such an incalculable impact on western culture before and introduced such a wide range of different harmonics and sounds to rock & roll. One of the most fascinating things to know about The Beatles is a feature which is not widely common. Although they are often described as a revolutionary Rock band (Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn: "The Beatles revolutionised everything") they never intended to be that revolutionary. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that they had an enormous success which has never been achieved by any band before. However, the more striking question is how they brought this cultural and musical revolution into being, although they somehow refused this revolutionary mind-set. Alongside several innovations in the music scene, The Beatles left an imprint in innumerable parts of popular culture and influenced generations with their music and lifestyle. When it comes to their musical heritage, they introduced numerous alterations like the use of 12 string guitars and "perfectionist studio extravaganzas" influenced by various musical genres, i.e. Indian music. This paper aims at pointing out the main factors for the success of The Beatles in that many areas and how a rock band with an non-revolutionary appeal became the trigger for a "revolution". Furthermore, I will take a closer look at the "White album" and the songs "Revolution 1" and "Revolution 9" to demonstrate the cultural appeal of their musical work.