Inexplicable (or unexplained) wonders of The Beatles | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Mr. Moonlight said
I don’t think they had “handlers” in the sense that we would understand the word today. They had hangers-on but nobody, including Brian and George Martin, really controlled them. And the business side was not as mature as it is now; they were making it up as they went along, you might say, establishing the template for what was to come.

  

Well, rock & roll may have been new, but the business of Show Biz had already been around for more than half a century by then.  Thinking such a massive cash cow was just some guys “winging it” doesn’t seem plausible to me.

My first “wonder” isn’t really explained by your explanation.  External necessities can’t by itself produce such startlingly innovative genius.  I’m happy to chalk it up to a mystery, but it still nags me for some kind of explanation.  It just so happened — how conveniently felicitous! — that two or three members of this little band courted by managers during their early phase of conventionally early rock, then suddenly mutated into the wondrously inventive musicians we see from approximately Rubber Soul forwards (with the “forwards” itself involving startling mutations along the way, such that one can’t imagine Paul or John in 1965 creating the White Album just 3 years later — I could more easily imagine it if it had been 10 or better yet 20 years later; but 3…???).

I remain unpersuaded of their breezy freedom from the Corporate Machine (which surely was around before the 1960s). I suspect the full story has not been told.  While I think Mike Williams is mostly a snake oil salesman, he does have a point about how the “Cinderella Story” of The Beatles just doesn’t seem plausible (his way of “explaining” it, however, is unhinged).

Yes @vonbontee — that amplifies the wonder, and doubly so, since even past the alignment of two geniuses (plus a growing third, George), there’s the wonder that their inspiration & musical talents dovetailed so intimately (since they could easily have been incompatible near the beginning on).

Thanks @Ahhh Girl — I forgot I did that!  I dimly recall making comments about it, but didn’t realize I had a whole thread on it.  I guess it involved the second point addressed in this thread.

@vonbontee — more or less the “unexplained wonder” of how they got from being relatively clunky club musicians doing mostly covers to the pinnacle of all Entertainment in the World.  The “official narrative” as Williams puts it resembles a “Cinderella story” where these 4 diamonds in the rough were discovered and then their sheer talents without any machine behind them catapulted them into world fame and arguably into #1 status as pop musicians of all time. 

Of course, Williams has to tinker with the data to fit his theory into his box — in many ways, but chiefly by exaggerating their relative lack of musical talent at the beginning, then by positing that “studio musicians” moved in as the band was advancing, with shadowy figures actually composing their more daring creative stuff from 66 forward.

Though I find his argument unpersuasive (to say the least), the mystery he’s grappling with has not been adequately explained to me.

Mike Williams is that “Paul is Dead” conspiracy theorist I linked in some recent thread here.  He thinks The Beatles were manufactured by nefarious forces, some related to the “Tavistock Institute”.