The Fab Four’s impact on music is hard to overstate, but what are their best moments of on-record brilliance? We’ve picked out our top 20.
“We were just a band that made it very, very big. That’s all.” Was John Lennon’s myth-busting synopsis of The Beatles’ story, uttered during an interview with
. While the technical truth of that statement is inarguable, for millions around the world, The Beatles were – and remain – a huge deal more than just another band. From that first fabled meeting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney at the Woolton Village Fete in July 1957 to the spontaneous final rooftop performance atop Apple Corps’ Savile Row HQ at the culmination of the 1960s, The Beatles became one of the most seismic forces ever to impact popular culture.
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Narrowing down The Beatles’ greatest moments isn’t just about honing in on technical nouse; this is also a showcase of the range of experimentation the four enthusiastically pursued, to the benefit of all who listened. The Beatles moved the goalposts in terms of what a pop song could be, and proved eternally wrong one Dick Rowe of Decca Records, who airily dismissed the four, and their manager Brian Epstein, on the cusp of their success with the catastrophic misjudgement that ‘ groups are on their way out’.” Ironically, The Beatles’ shattering of pop’s parameters instead proved that ‘ groups’ could outgrow such tired labels, and shape a more musically expansive future.
title track knowingly plays on the outside speculation that their refusal to play live indicated that it wouldn’t be long before the band folded – by shrewdly morphing themselves into a completely new band in a faux-live context. Driven by McCartney’s impulsive three-note lead riff, the opening track sounds instantly beefier and rockier than anything we’ve heard before, largely due to Starr’s close-mic’d drum kit and Harrison’s chugging G-A-C-G power chord cycle. McCartney’s lead part was likely performed on either an Epiphone Casino or a Fender Esquire, with the more distorted tone provided by a gain-boosted Selmer Zodiac Twin 50 Mark II amp. McCartney was pictured overdubbing a range of Sgt Pepper solos (including the similarly-flavoured
) with that combo, cementing the fact that, by this point, The Beatles were flexible instrument switchers. It’s a self-assured, bold statement of an opener, which also introduced listeners to a brand new medium – the concept album.
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was clear evidence of the band’s hope to return to a more conventional rock sound after the genre-flitting of the previous year’s sprawling double album. Though the sound is more grounded, its opening 3/4 time signature which shifts to a 6/8 waltz for the verse, and Lennon’s philosophical lyrical wordplay are reminders of the band’s depths. The central pentatonic riff finds Lennon, Harrison and McCartney’s bass rigidly glued together, providing a hefty, Cream-esque quality. After augmenting the verse chords with some arms-length licks, Harrison’s spotlight solo was performed live on the rooftop with his custom-built rosewood Fender Telecaster, and serenely streaks across the verse chord sequence, providing succulent additional melodies that build on Lennon’s top-line with aplomb.
is actually the live version recorded during the bittersweet Savile Row rooftop performance. It concludes with a chilly Lennon stating “Thank you, brothers…My hands are getting too cold to play the chords.”
’s initially pessimistic lyric crafts a portrait of its apathetic titular character, before being guided by Lennon in the chorus to wake up to the fact that the whole world is at his command. We’re already on psychologically compelling ground, far removed from the simple romantic themes of The Beatles’ early work. Throw in some remarkable three-part harmonies and some gleaming work from Harrison, and it’s up there with
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Sir Paul remembered that George and John’s cutting tone for their in-unison break was achieved by first turning the treble on both their Vox AC-100s and Sonic Blue Fender Stratocasters to the maximum value. “It sounded pretty cool but we wanted to try and push it.” Paul remembered, After the engineers said it was already as far as it could go, Paul, John and George still wanted more, “How about you take that, and put it over to [another track on the console’s] EQs, and do it all again.” McCarney instructed, “So we’d have it going through a few channels, each time putting more and more treble on it. It’s a nice sound though.”
) that, “I decided I’d get a Strat, and John decided he’d get one too. We sent our roadie, Mal Evans, and he came back with two of them, pale blue ones. Straight away we used them on the album we were making at the time.”
, we get some tantalising glimpses of what might have been, had the band put aside the acrimony and strove onwards into the next decade. Chief among these is the eight-minute, multi-sectioned powerhouse
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, an assortment of disparate musical parts that coalesce to form one of the album’s most captivating cuts. Lennon’s composition begins in a hypnotic 6/8 time signature, with ominous arpeggios in Dm and a gloomy, descending bass part, before switching to a series of 4/4 blues-pastiche verses, rooted in Am7 – interjected by a deranged sounding E7♭9 jazz chord. It’s a swerving, pained arrangement that reflects Lennon’s dramatically psychotic vocal performance – and its love-as-obsession lyric. Most interesting is Harrison’s doubling of Lennon’s topline with a slinky lead part, which gets some more exposure after the second verse, and most influentially, the song’s final, gradual ascending/descending repeat of the opening motif, with its forceful drop-D riff gradually taking on a sense of scale that many point to as a forebear of heavy metal.
The Beatles were among the first to experiment with the sonic potential of synthesisers, and used a brand new Moog IIIP to shade various
Topping the charts for the seventh time in a row, The Beatles’s first UK single of 1965 opened a year of creative growth for the band, and
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was a considerable indication of a more matured band from both form and sound perspectives. With a continual drone on the A chord, Harrison delivers a radiant, rhythmic arpeggio around A major with his Fireglo Rickenbacker 360 12-string. Of that irresistible riff’s tone, Harrison remembered, on radio series,
That, though his first Rickenbacker had a range of controls, it was difficult to carefully wrangle tones from it. “[The Rickenbacker] had a tiny knob that never seemed to do anything. All it ever seemed was there was one sound I could get where it was bright, which was the sound you hear on
Lennon’s chord sequence, recorded with his jet-glo Rickenbacker 325 12-String, is supremely crafted – with a shift to an F♯m for the song’s refrain suggesting a hint of melancholy that counters the verse’s bright feel. The inspired tempo switch to double-time for the bridge and outro sections allowed for a more jaunty mood shift, with McCartney providing the wiry lead part with his Epiphone Casino.
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claimed the song prefigured heavy rock “It was a slightly new sound at the time, because it was pretty fucking heavy for then. It’s all happening, it’s a heavy record. And the drums are heavy, too. That’s why I like it.”
From the very outset of The Beatles recording history, it was clear that Lennon and McCartney – whether working closely together, or competitively one-upping each other – had a knack for song-craft. Case in point,
, a pulsing and romantic McCarney-penned piece that was an apt choice to be the first track performed on their debut US television appearance on
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Fitting then, that the track encapsulated the band’s developing strengths. While McCartney takes the lead with both a poetic, sweet lyric and astonishingly mobile bass line, understated in the arrangement is one of Lennon’s finest moments as a rhythm player. His frantic, unfaltering triplets tightly propel the momentum of the track’s energy and was an approach likely inspired by The Crystals’
). The song’s lead break allows George a moment to play off the topline with some country-inflected double-note runs on his Gretsch 6122 Country Gentleman. America was hooked.
The Beatles’ first movie, and their first LP of completely original tracks, is heralded by one of the most famous opening chords in pop history. The odd-sounding detonation of perplexing notes has bamboozled ists for years. Though it was confirmed by George Harrison to be the result of an Fadd9 with a G bass played on his 12-string Rickenbacker 360 in an online chat in 2001, he caveated that, “You’ll have to ask Paul about the bass note to get the proper story.” – it was later revealed (as documented by beatlesbible.com) that McCartney played a D note on the fifth fret of his A string, while Lennon plays the same Fadd9 chord using his 6-string Gibson J-160 acoustic.
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It was producer (and the oft-labelled ‘fifth Beatle’) George Martin, who added the most harmonic confusion, playing a cluster of simultaneous piano notes that resonated interestingly. It resulted in a spellbinding monster of a chord. The song-proper is a rollocking, effortless gem, and the perfect whirlwind
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