HOW THE BEATLES RUINED EVERYTHING
by Jonny Whiteside

Just a year or two ago, as the Red and Blue album reissues enabled you to buy the same songs for the fourth or fifth time, news of a BBC documentary reuniting three Beatles in a studio made headlines. The media gusher celebrating their Sullivan debut's 30th anniversary further primed the market for the upcoming ex-Beatle Stu Sutcliffe biopic, Backbeat (and its alt-rock remake soundtrack). The frenzy peaks with the canned reformation of all four playing to an unreleased Lennon vocal track. The Beatles are rock's sacred cow, everything from their suit-and-tie dopey pop to their '68 high-concept indulgence ballyhooed as "perfect rock" marked by "consistent artistic" growth and "emotional maturity."

YEAH, YEAH, YEAH.

All the Beatles most distinctive moments were hijacked. "Day Tripper"'s guitar lead was copped from Vee-Jay bluesman Bobby Parker; "I Feel Fine" and "She's a Woman" spotlight riffs were heisted from Bakersfield Buckaroo Don Rich and Merle Haggard sideman James Burton; McCartney acknowledged Pet Sounds as sole competitive motivation for Sgt. Pepper.
Lyrically, the Beatle' were always shallow and puerile ("Yesterday"? "Michelle"?). Their albums bubble with juvenile doggerel, from "Norwegian Wood" to "Yellow Submarine" to White Album masterworks like "Bungalow Bill," "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Rocky Raccoon."
Why uphold this delusion any longer? Look at what we lost: in 1963, while Vee-Jay released the first three Beatles singles to little notice, America reverberated with a kustom kulture of garish and fabulous proportions. It was the hour of the Hot Rod and Rat Fink, Martians a-Go-Go, the Mojo hand, the Irresistable Beast; the hour of the Sonics, Kingsmen, Link Wray, Arthur Alexander, Gary "U.S." Bonds, Dick Dale--here was the bi-racial Beatnik Bandit life, enjoyed by most of those who operated independently.
When "I Want To Hold You Hand" reached No.1 on the Billboard chart, the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" was just beneath it. "After that went down,"Ed "Big Daddy" Roth said, "the cars I built always had a big hole in the dash where a radio should've been, but never was." There was another significant event that week: opening arguments were heard in Jack Ruby's Dallas, Texas, murder trial.
In the months following JFK's assasination, America underwent a national process of disassociation, burying its head in the bloody Texas sand. Only then, in that state of shock, did the Beatles' Caucasoid, sugarcoated solipsisms make sense. No Oswald, no domestic success for the Fabs. The music industry has aggressively futhered the myth of Beatles dominance ever since. (Remember: there were 11,000 empty seats at the Beatles' final Shea Stadium appearance.)
The strongest argument against the Beatles' purported genius lies in their solo work. Think Wings; more revealing are Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"/"He's So Fine" plagiarism rap and Lennon's bald rewrite of George Jones' "A Picture of Me Without You," which he retitled "Imagine." Ringo? He's 16, he's beautiful and he's all yours.
Veneration of the Beatles, as slick and wily a rock & roll ever suffered, has gone on long enough. So, as mop-top McCartney recently suggested, "Give your regards to Broad Street" and let the mess die quietly.