The Beatles Live on into the 21st Century

I suppose it had to happen despite my prayers. But it is happening, and The Beatles tunes are now being used to hawk everything from diapers to cell phones, and being recorded and blended into genres not even conceived in the middle of the twentieth century.

I had a gut wrenching feeling back in 1985 when Michael Jackson purchased the copyrights to the music, primarily written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and recorded as The Beatles. Somehow, I knew that the music would become the playground of endless radio and television commercials, the lyrics bastardized into trite and banal means of promotional venues.

What you couldn't have foreseen was how rabidly his business partnership with Sony/ATV would pursue selling off the music that changed the rock scene, and to whom and for what purposes it would be used. Television commercials embedding lyrics slightly mutated to fit a marketing campaign. They subtly weave melodies made famous by the quartet from Liverpool into the background music selling you a car, or shouting at you about violence in 'da hood.'

Rappers and hip-hop artists have started a massive infusion of Beatles riffs within their music, knowing full well the recognition factor of the signature guitar riffs and melodies written by the boys responsible for the British invasion in the 1960s. And some think, being intentionally infiltrated into the shouting lyrics of rappers to garner acceptance of a genre that has received little tolerance within the single largest demographic in the United States, the Baby Boomers.

The good news in all of this is that the original recordings are not up for sale in such a wholesale slaughter of the sound of the greatest rock and roll band to ever hit the airwaves, hearts, and minds of three generations. Those are kept under tight wraps by Apple Records, owned by the estates of Lennon and John Harrison, as well as the surviving two band members, McCartney and Ringo Starr. No, sales of the actual soundtracks are carefully guarded, and their use strictly controlled. What we hear being used by rappers and ad-men are shadowy imitators of the originals.

So, when you feel yourself humming along to a familiar strain, or tapping your foot along with a commercial, remember the mop-topped boys in The Beatles, and how John, Paul, Ringo, and George helped change the world. And how the twenty-first century musicians are seemingly incapable of doing anything but imitating them.