Rock N Roll Society

Few bands have completely changed the landscape of popular music quite like The Beatles. Emerging from Liverpool in the early 1960s, the Fab Four challenged the public’s perception of popular music, amassing a legion of devoted fans unlike anyone else before. Beatlemania swept the nation, quickly reaching other areas of the globe, with young fans screaming so loud during concerts that their music was barely audible. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were dedicated to experimenting with new genres and recording techniques, and by the end of the 1960s, they’d released 12 acclaimed studio albums. Their first record, Please Please Me, contained multiple rhythm and blues covers and easily accessible pop songs, like ‘Chains’ and ‘Love Me Do’. However, within a ...

The Surrealism movement was led by Andre Breton, who sought to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality”. Inspired by Freudian psychoanalysis and the prominence of the unconscious mind, various forms of Surrealist art emerged during this period, beginning in the 1920s, from writing to painting. Although music was never a primary focus of Surrealism – Breton even wrote negatively about the medium in Silence is Golden – the movement still inspired many musicians. Composers like Erik Satie and Edgard Varèse drew inspiration from Surrealist methods, such as dreams, as reflected in the latter’s piece Arcana. After the initial wave of Surrealism ended, its influence remained, and it continues to inspire artists, filmmaker...

In April 1970, The Beatles finally split up, leaving the music world to mourn the divorce of rock’s most influential luminaries. For some fans, this news came as a shock. In retrospect, we know tensions were reaching a boiling point in the late 1960s, but at the time, public word of such friction was limited and subject to conjecture. Over the years since, some fans blamed the all-consuming nature of the relationship between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, while others blamed overcrowding of talent and a battle of the ego. As Paul McCartney claimed in a recent interview with Conan O’Brien at the Tribeca Festival, Lennon “had a really tragic life” and cited a number of extremely personal events that shaped the budding musician’s own personality traits. McCartney continued: “As a kid, his m...

Widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Paul McCartney has written his fair share of hits, both for his own projects and for others. From Cilla Black to Rod Stewart to Charlotte Gainsbourg, the Beatles legend has generously contributed his talents to other musicians throughout the years. But McCartney also gifted songs closer to home, including one to his bandmate, Ringo Starr. In 1973, three years after the Beatles broke up, Starr released his third full-length solo effort, the self-titled LP Ringo. The record featured some of his biggest hits as a solo artist, including lead single ‘Photograph’. But the album also included a song penned by McCartney and his wife, Linda, titled ‘Six O’Clock’. The song pairs bold piano with soft guitar strums and quirky synt...

It was always difficult for George Harrison to get a word in throughout The Beatles’ tenure. After being labelled as the ‘Quiet One’ for the majority of his career, Harrison was always more reserved about showing his talents as a songwriter, often having to fight against the songwriting machine of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. As he started to delve into his songs later in their career, there was one in which Harrison decided he didn’t need the rest of the Fab Four. Once The Beatles decided to leave the touring life behind after 1966, they were in limbo, wondering where to go next. By the time Lennon came back with the beginnings of the song ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, a new era for the group had begun, with them perfecting their material and becoming lab rats in the studio working w...