A few years ago while suffering from insomnia in the solitude of my apartment, I gave a late night soliloquy about the Beatles. I’d been reading some books about the band, and it was the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road so I had Beatles on the brain. I recorded my musings on my iPhone, and ended up with this 5000-word discourse focusing on five of their top albums in my own reckoning, which I transcribe below. Over the past two days, I edited the recording and added some visuals to make a video for YouTube and a podcast of sorts. So, here goes:

So, introducing the Beatles, which came out on VJ Records in July 1963, and there's the UK version, and the US, I guess this is the US version. I'm thinking it has I Saw Her Standing There, Misery Anna, Chains, Boys, Love Me Do, Baby, it's You, Do You Want to Know a Secret, A Taste of Honey, There's a Place, Twist and Shout. So, there's that album, which really started their career.

Now, there's the UK version, which is basically, Please, Please Me. So, it has, I Saw Her Standing There, Misery, Anna, Chains, Boys, Ask Me Why, Please Please Me, Love Me Do. P.S. I love You, Baby, it's You, Do you Want to Know a Secret, A Taste of Honey, There's a Place, Twist and Shout. So, it's quite interesting that the American version didn't have the song Please Please Me. I can talk about the two different versions, the one with and without Please Please Me. And then talk about all of their influences as they were forming their band and forming their sound and their style. And I think it just reflects how the Beatles were like sponges absorbing all these various influences in music without prejudice. You know, they were taking from so many different sources, so many different musical genres. It was borrowing so much and then integrating it into this, evolving into our style that they had, which made the Beatles so fascinating that, in 1959, in the 60s, and these were, you know, more sophisticated, much more sophisticated, much more imaginative.

Much more, you know, sophisticated, much more imaginative, creative, lyrical musicians. And obviously, their story has been told again and again. There are dozens of books that you can read to get a sense of their story and how they develop their sound and everything that was going on in their lives. And I think as part of this project, I'm not so interested in telling their own life stories or retelling all the anecdotes that surround their songs, except when really necessary. Because I think the principle of art is that art is transcendent. So it's important to, in a way, detach the artwork from the artist. Of course, it helps to know the lives of the artists. But I find that a lot of the analysis of the Beatles gets too caught up in the details of their lives and the anecdotes that they use to explain their art.

I remember in high school, we learned about this fallacy of taking the artist at their word. I think great art transcends the artist. So you have to take it out of the context of the artist and what he was going through because great art tells a much deeper story. It delivers a deeper message. And that's the power of great art. It's transcendent. It's not caught up in the detail. It's not like a diary of that specific person's life or what was going on at that moment. Although some of the Beatles’ songs are kind of like diaries, journals, journaling their life story.

But I think what makes these albums great is that they're archetypal. Each of those albums represents a different stage of human development and also some of the fundamental themes of the human experience. So going back to the beginning when they're still kind of coming out of their teenage years and discovering love and sex and kind of the freedom of being dependent on their parents to being these young adults in the process of discovering their own power. And those songs are very thrilling. They're very happy and energetic, not that original because a lot of their songs as I said were covers. So the Beatles were, they started out like most bands. They started out as great cover artists. They became masters at covering other people's songs. And they had a couple of their own. But even their own original songs were pretty derivative. Like they sounded like the artists that they were admiring at the time.

So for example, Please Please Me sounded like Roy Orbison, maybe a sped up version of a Roy Orbison song, whom they deeply admired. But obviously they were showing their creative powers with that first album. But anyway, that album, Please Please Me or Introducing the Beatles, I think that represents the energy, the excitement of youth. Obviously, you know, it's about falling in love. There's, there are a lot of sexual themes in the songs. It's just about kind of libidinous energy dancing. They were coming out of, you know, playing in Hamburg, coming out of playing in the cavern club in Liverpool. So it's really, these are dance tunes. They're meant to get an audience shaking. They're, you know, it's the kind of music that they eventually got whole stadiums of young, especially girls screaming at the top of their lungs. That kind of libidinous youthful energy. So that's album, you know, that’s the last album that we're going to, so we're going to go backwards. So, you know, we're going to go backwards from, from their, their last album to their, to their earliest.

So, but the first stage is youth and pleasure and fun and thrill and kind of all the things that, you know, young people, young people get into. Not too much thought. There's not a lot of, you know, reflection and thought and it's just a very kind of energetic, energetic album.

But then, you know, Rubber Soul is probably, [the next breakthrough album] you know, because, you know, the next albums, I think, kind of continued in that line. But then they were getting more creative. They were, they were making their own songs, but they were still kind of sounding, you know, sounding quite similar. The love songs that they became so famous for in the early 60s. But then Rubber Soul represents another stage of their development where they're starting to get much more reflective.

They're starting to really think about life and art and music and, you know, they were at that point hanging out with people like Bob Dylan and starting to see music as something where you could really express yourself lyrically, poetically. So, they're getting beyond the kind of love songs that they had been famous for, you know, in the early stage of their career. So, this is like 1965. So, you can kind of see their development, this rapid development within the span of a couple of years. So, Rubber Soul. I originally grew up with the American version, which starts out with, I've Just Seen a Face. And then it goes into Norwegian Wood, You Won't See Me, Think for Yourself, The Word, Michelle. And then side two is It's Only Love, Girl, I'm Looking Through You,In My life, Wait and Run For Your Life. So, that was the album that I grew up familiar with as, you know, because I grew up in, in the USA. So, that was the album that that we had. But then there's the British album, which I discovered much later, which starts with Drive My Car. And that song had been put on to another album that was, that was released in the US. So, Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood, You Won't See Me. Nowhere Man, Think for Yourself, The Word, Michelle, What goes on? Girl, I'm Looking Through you, In My Life, Wait, If I Needed Someone and Run For Your Life. So, two slightly different albums. I really associated Rubber Soul with that song, I've Just Seen a Face. I just feel like Rubber Soul is not complete without that song. I think that was the better choice than Drive My Car, to be honest. So, I'm going to focus on the American version. And, hey, you know, the US was their biggest fan base. So, I think the albums that sold in the US were in a sense more important, at least in terms of their overall popularity than the original British albums.

So, that album came out in December 1965. And, you know, I think it represents, as I said, more, obviously, much greater maturity. They're telling stories now. Norwegian Wood is one of the iconic songs. But, You Won't See Me is a really interesting song too. And, there's a lot you can say about that song. And, they're starting to develop a sense of time. Time becomes very important. So, it's kind of, you can see it as, like, there's a lot of loss on this album. There's a sense of the fleeting, you know, they're starting to come out of their youthful periods. So, life is fleeting. Love is transient. You know, that kind of young love. Time marches on. All of these themes that are, you know, people can be deceptive. Oh, my God, my life, you know, in my life. So, run for your life. There's starting to think of the bigger picture of life. So, it's kind of represents a phase of awareness, a heightened awareness, growing awareness of the temporality of life, you know, from when you're a teenager and you kind of feel like you can live forever to, oh, God, things are going by so fast, getting much more reflective. But still within the idiom of, you know, popular music as they knew it.

But then, you know, 1966, Revolver was then another new, another breakthrough album. And much, much deeper than, than rubber soul, much more cynical, you know, starting with Tax Man, and then Eleanor Rigby, which I think I would argue was their first masterpiece. That was, that song is just, lyrically, it's musically, it's rather simple. But lyrically, it just took them to another level entirely.

And then, you know, some going back to kind of, but some more like mature love songs, like Here There and Everywhere. She Said, She Said, again, kind of communication, but there's some drug motifs there that you could talk about. Good Day Sunshine in the British version And Your Bird Can Sing, which is a lovely, a lovely song. Dr. Robert, again, kind of referencing the drug culture they were now a part of. I Want to Tell You, Got to Get You into My Life. And then, of course, Tomorrow Never Knows, which was another kind of breakthrough in popular music, much more psychedelic than anything. And, you know, referencing religion, they were starting to get into kind of mysticism and starting to move towards, you know, more focused on religion.And on that, what's the deeper meaning of life? In other words, they're starting to get interesting. It's kind of, they're going to college now, you know. For guys who never went to college, who never had a higher education, so to speak, they're kind of, now they're going to college. They're studying, they're reading, they're learning, they're kind of getting much more philosophical. So that's, yeah, that's Revolver.

And then, of course, 1967, the great Sergeant Peppers. There's obviously, you know, Sergeant Peppers is still considered one of the greatest popular music albums ever made. It's often ranked as their greatest album. I'm not sure I agree, but that came out in June 1967. And it has the theme, kind of, they've disguised themselves as another band, kind of referencing an earlier age, maybe a Victorian era. They are, you know, experimenting with sounds and styles and, you know, continuing this experimentation that started with Revolver.

And getting more, more lyrical, somewhat more, yeah, more reflective and philosophical with, like A Day in the Life, more imaginative with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. But also, yeah, philosophical, mystical Within Without You. Now they're kind of thinking way forward to, you know, When I'm 64, so they're like projecting themselves way into the future.

And then there's just a lot of fun songs about kind of daily life. So it's like, how do we find the deeper meaning in our daily lives and in the places that we happen to be, you know, have grown up in or are living in kind of the life of the city or of a small town or going to the park or, you know, and most Beatles historians would argue that the two songs, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields kind of belong with this album, even though they were not on the album. So getting very whimsical and nostalgic about the place where they grew up. So it's kind of like they know they're leaving home. So like She’s Leaving Home. And the she could be them, you know, they're leaving home. They're never going to be liverpudlians again, you know, they're leaving. They're, they've gone out into the world. But they're still grounded. They're deeply grounded in their childhoods in the memories that they have of growing up there.

And not just that, but they then ground themselves even further in the history of popular music and popular culture and entertainment in their country. So, you know, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, referencing a circus poster that goes back to maybe the late Victorian age. So, and the, the style of the music as well, they're referencing music, all music from the 1920s and, you know, they're referencing even earlier stuff, folk tunes that probably go back centuries. So they're kind of getting ready to depart, but they're deeply grounding themselves in the past. So it's like they're setting off on this much bigger journey, mystical kind of search, but anchoring themselves in, you know, who they are. And what culture that they came from, the people that they grew up with and so forth. So that's Sergeant Pepper.

And then, of course, they, they went even further with that, with the Magical Mystery Tour, which had, you know, some pretty cool songs like Fool on the Hill. Of course, I Am the Walrus, really, you know, it was Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane. I mean, some pretty amazing songs on there. But I think overall the album was, it was just too heavy-handed. They kind of, rather than giving a subtler message, they kind of put it front and center. Like, we're going on a magical mystery tour and, and look at us, you know, how clever we are. We're going on a bus. And, you know, it kind of parodied. It was like a parody of itself. And so it didn't quite work. Whereas Sergeant Pepper, people could kind of indulge in the project because they disguised themselves. They put on these costumes on the cover and they kind of turned themselves into something different. Whereas, you know, Magical Mystery Tour just didn't quite work as a concept.

So we're going to skip that one. And then, go on to, you know, let's skip over 1968. And we're going to skip over the White Album and, you know, like I said, that was, I mean, there were some great songs that came out from this period, but, but let's move on to what was their last and perhaps greatest album, which is, which is Abbey Road.

Why is it the greatest? Well, here's my theory of Abbey Road. You know, a lot of people who analyze this album will put it in the context of they were breaking up, but it was a happy album. They wanted to create something happy before they departed. And there's some truth to that. It was the final studio album, which George Martin produced. It did represent a collective effort. So they've kind of brought their bits and bobs of songs that they were working on. Here are some reasons why I think this was their best creation.

Conceptually, it holds together extremely well. It's the sequence of the songs, the themes that they, the musical themes within the songs are very coherent. And there's a classic element to the music. This is by far their most classical album. It's an album that has resonances with Bach and Mozart and Beethoven.

So they're digging even deeper into the wellspring of music. Paul found a poem written for a play in like 1600. So going way back in history, Golden Slumbers, which I think is really the keystone to understanding this album. It's that song. And this was my revelation with this album. I won't tell you what I was on, but I remember one day, just I guess listening or thinking about this album. And it just occurred to me that that's a song about death.

The golden slumbers is the slumber of death. That's it. And so it's, you know, smiles awake you when you rise. Sleep pretty darling. Do not cry. It's kind of like a laying down to death. It's the death of the Beatles. It's an acceptance. I will sing a lullaby. I think what is saying is we have to accept death. And we have to tell ourselves kind of the myth that we continue to live on after we die. We need to tell ourselves that myth. And that's what all religion tells us that our souls continue to live or that we're reborn.

But it's a myth. You die, you die. You're gone. And I think they kind of understood that. And that was deeply embedded into this album. They knew that after this album, the Beatles would be gone. There would be no more Beatles. They would live on as individuals, but the magic that they had woven together as four musicians would never exist again.

Would it be transcendent? Would it stand the test of time? You know, I'm sure that they were wondering, you know, how long are we, we were, we were this incredible band, but are we just a product of the 60s or will this last on? And what will we do as individuals.

So I think all that's woven into this album. And I liken this album to Dante. The first side is the Inferno. That's the hell. Maybe it's the hell that they were going through as they as they broke up. Terrible fights, fights over money, over artistry. They were probably going through a kind of a personal hell because, you know, they, they were very sad that this couldn't last. And I think they all, you know, they were, they had gone through so much together. So it was kind of like a divorce in a way. The band breaking up as they went on with their lives. And like a divorce, it was pretty messy. It was, there was a lot of anger and a lot of resentment and negative feelings and, you know, that really comes out on the first side of the album.

With like, you know, I Want You. She's so Heavy. Oh, Darling. I mean, there's a lot of screaming. There's a lot of, you know, emotions, a lot of pent up emotions and anger on this first side. Maxwell's Silver Hammer, you know, that's an interesting one was, is this, I don't think that that song can be taken literally. I think it has to be, I think this, the hammer is figurative. I think it's, it's a metaphor, you know, the hammer of justice, the hammer of freedom. It was, they're, they're smashing a relationship in order to gain their freedom, their artistic and personal freedom. They're breaking up what was the greatest band on earth in order to attain their own freedom and peace of mind. So, you know, I think if you analyze that song, it's all about smashing authority figures. It's kind of a cultural revolution. The aspect to it. I can even kind of see a cultural revolution poster in my mind of a, of a young revolutionary with a hammer trying to smash all the olds [in 1960s China]. And maybe that's what it's referencing. Just smashing, you know, teachers, old girlfriends or judges, the kind of people who are holding you back. So, I think it has to be taken figuratively. I don't think it's literally a story about a serial killer. And especially because it's told and sung in such a whimsical way. Obviously, it's not, this is not a dark, this is not a Peter Gabriel-like serial killer kind of song.

So, yeah, so the whole first side just has this, you know, there's, it's dark, it's, it's, it's earthy, it's fair, it's the inferno. Here come ol’ flat top, you know, it's Come Together, a song, which is about as creepy a song as you can get as bluesy and dark and, you know, from the earth, from the ground up. And Octopus's Garden thrown in there is kind of an underwater, underworld sort of adventure with caves and darkness and something primordial. And, you know, an octopus is kind of a fearful, fearsome creature, you know, you don't really want to, you know, be swimming and kind of come across an octopus all suddenly without warning. So, you know, it's, that's a dark, that's the dark side of the album. And, it represents kind of the winter of their discontent and their aggression and anger.

And then you turn the side over and it's, and you're, and it's the Paradise. Now they're ascending to heaven. So, the flip side is, you know, Here Comes the Sun, one of the most joyful popular songs ever made. It's, every winter, it's a song that you sing in March when the flowers start to bloom again after a long cold, lonely winter. So, that was George Harrison and that was his kind of sense of freedom and happiness that he was no longer a Beatle, he could go, he could find his own destiny now. He had so much to share that had been suppressed by the Beatles and now he was going to let it all out.

You know, then, You Never Give Me Your Money which is such a deep song, such a, it's a sad, but it's also about freedom about, you know, crossing bridges. And, you know, leaving a place that you know you'll never go back to and so you're sad about that, but you're now finding your freedom and you're kind of finding yourself, a self that had been lost.

And then the whole, the whole medley, of course, which is just a brilliant concoction of these old bits that they had kind of, you know, scraps of songs that they, that they had been working on that had never really jelled into full songs and they put them together in this medley. And somehow it worked. And so it ends the album with this, and it's very kind of dreamlike, it's, like I said, it's very heavenly, the Sun King, a lot of themes of sun and light and joy.

And, you know, then you, you kind of go back to these mundane characters, but they're very, you know, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, kind of the people that you might see on the streets and Liverpool or in the clubs, but they're very iconic, very archetypal figures. And, and then She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. I mean, that song, I think you can only understand by knowing the anecdote about the Apple Scrufs and Paul and kind of the end of Apple Records, but you could also see it as kind of, I guess it's their relationship to their fans in general that their fans are just invading their private space and they're kind of sick of that. They're ready to move on. An then of course, Golden Slumbers, which I had explained is kind of, it's a poem ancient, not ancient, but, you know, several hundred years old poem, which I think was about death. And, kind of the myth, the mythology of rebirth that, you know, that we're told like a, a bedtime story. And then finally, The End, it's the end. And that's where they all come together for this jam session, which is quite amazing and really, and then of course, Paul's statement about the love you take is equal to the love you make. And what are you saying is, life is finite. We don't know what's going to happen after we die. We don't know what, of that we produce will be remembered or cherished. But at the end, it all equals out. What you take is equal to what you make. So, whatever you consume or enjoy ultimately is, it's going to be equal to what you produce in the world. If you're loved by people, it means that you loved them. You can't get anything for free. You have to put in as much as you get out.

So, it's an interesting way. It's a final message. And then there, of course, there's that the final final thing tacked on, which was just a kind of a whimsical mistake that they decided to keep, which was the little, the little bit Her Majesty, which I think it's such an unfinished little, I mean, it sounds almost like a jazz song from the 1920s. It's very kind of classic early, early 1920s popular song in its structure. And it could have been something much, much bigger and much more joyous, but they just kind of just tacked it on at the very, at the very end of the album as kind of a little surprise, very folksy little bit.

But, you know, all their songs can be played in so many different ways. But what I really, so there's the Heaven and the Hell motif, you know, the Dante's Inferno to the Paradise. And kind of ascending, I think in the, you know, they're ascending to the heavenly Pantheon. They'll always be known as this great band, seminal band. And they kind of, I think they recognize that the band would outlive them. They would go on as individuals, but nothing would ever be as important as the Beatles in their lives. Even though it was so short, so fleeting, it just passed by in like six, eight years, you know, and then they get there, they get to live the rest of their lives.

So, I think structurally and musically that album really came together. There are so many recurring motifs and themes. And I think in a way, it was kind of like their Ninth Symphony. You know, when you listen to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it encapsulates pretty much everything that he was known for musically. And just takes it all to greater and greater heights. And it's about joy and about the beauty of humankind and about art and love.

And I think that that was the message of Abbey Road as well. It was kind of continuing on from just that, so love in a way is kind of the message that love is transcendent. You know, it started out with the childish, it starts out with the teenage love, which is kind of a lusty, lusty love, but kind of a zest for life. And then, and then they got more reflective over time and, and more imaginative and lyrical and transcendent, and then finally, but it's always cycling back to that message about love. And that kind of never, that never left, you know, so it's, so love was always the message that, in a way, very Christian, as opposed, that you have to, you have to love the world. You have to love the people in the world, even though they'll let you down, even though there will be nasty breakups, there will be wars, there will be death, there will be struggle. The only way for us to keep going on is to have just believe in the power of love, believe that there's a some kind of greater power, and, and that love is coursing through the universe. And that was kind of the deepest message, I think, that resonated through their music.