It's hard to believe that just over sixty years have passed since The Beatles released their debut single 'Love-Me-Do', with the song reaching number 17 in the charts upon its release on the 5th of October 1962. In the six decades that followed, the four young lads from Liverpool have been able to cement their names in music history, arguably becoming the most famous and influential boyband of all time.
They were a cultural force that changed the landscape of music for years to come
The single itself was the first original song that really took off for the group, as up until this point The Beatles were exclusively performing covers with great success. It was certainly a risk for the boys to start performing their own stuff, as Lennon said himself “it was the first one we dared to do of our own. This was quite a traumatic thing because we were doing such great numbers of other people, of Ray Charles and [Little] Richard and all of them.” However, despite their previous success performing at the Cavern Club of Liverpool, or the madness that were The Beatle's Hamburg shows, it could be said that 'Love-Me-Do' was what really propelled the band into stardom, finally giving them the respect they deserved from their record label EMI.
In the years that followed 'Love-Me-Do’s' release, the band were able to release an incredible twelve studio albums and perform thousands of shows internationally, squeezing all of this into a rather intensive nine-year period. And to be honest, a mere 700 words will barely scratch the surface in explaining how influential the Beatles were during this period, and the years that followed after their eventual break-up in 1970. But I’ll give it my best shot.
To highlight a few examples, The Beatles were one of the first mainstream bands who tried to incorporate a variety of different genres into their own music. From the all-out rock and roll tracks such as ‘I Me Mine’, to the more psychedelic songs like ‘Without You Without You’, the band really set the bar for musical experimentation at the time, subsequently inspiring the likes of Nirvana and The Beach Boys to follow suit.
More famously, The Beatles inspired the aptly named fan phenomenon “Beatlemania”, whereby extreme enthusiasm for the band was reflected in the insane behaviour of some of their fans, much like the hysteria that can be seen in fans of modern day bands such as One Direction. In an interview with the Guardian, one Beatlemaniac summed up the movement perfectly, saying she “...didn’t understand why you had to scream”, going on to say “it was mandatory” and there was a “cult-like element to it”.
However, I would go as far as to say that the band’s most notable contribution moved beyond music entriely. Its well documented that Beatlemania spread to the far corners of the world, and even helped to change attitudes about Western culture and ideals such as freedom and expression, especially among the young in communist bloc countries during the Cold War. Influential social historian Arthur Marwick even went as far as to say that The Beatles helped change attitudes about how the young could behave and introduced a “mini-renaissance in the rights of individual expression”, persuading a generation that “all we needed was love”.
The band's most notable contribution moved beyond music entirely
People can argue all they want about who the most influential band of all time are, whether that be the Kinks, Nirvana, The Beach Boys, Queen or The Rolling Stones to name a few. But I think the fact that Paul Mccartney was able to headline the Pyramid stage of Glastonbury at age 80, almost 60 years after The Beatles first single came out, says all you need to know about the extent to which Paul, John, George and Ringo have been able to influence music of the past, present, and for the foreseeable future.