American Literature:
Exploring Our Literary Heritage
The Beatles as Postmodern Poets Click the Doc for Directions
Happiness is a warm gun
"Across the Universe" was likely written in response to what the Beatles discovered through their drug use: that true depth of experience could not be attained through drugs. Drugs pretend to deepen experience, but they really mask experience with addictive false happiness.
They went to India to meet a yogi and learn to meditate - so doing, they were able to reach a deeper sense of self and of reality ("How the Beatles Learned Transcendental Mediatation - and what they thought about it").
As Postmodern poets, the Beatles were a powerful cultural force. The sense that there were hidden truths in their lyrics had a generation listening to their records forwards and backwards, deconstructing the work and deepening the experience. Postmodern concepts like time bending and altered states of reality permeate their work, but it was increasingly more philosophical than hippie culture memes would have us believe. Let's take a brief tour through some of their famous poetry/music and the highs and lows of their cultural influence.
The Beatles became inspired by a new, raw sound artists like Peter Townshend introduced to the scene. Paul McCartney wrote "Helter Skelter" about an amusement park ride in Brighton, England in a distinct effort to write a "really screaming record" in response to criticism of his ballads (qtd in "Helter Skelter (song).").
Cult leader Charles Manson thought the song was a call to war. He envisioned himself as the second coming of Christ, leader of the new world, and the Beatles as his trumpeters. He convinced his Family that they would rule a new world arising after an inevitable race war, concluding with the re-enslavement of African-Americans. He called the war "Helter Skelter".
A group of his Manson Family followers viciously murdered Sharon Tate and her house-guests in hopes that African Americans would be blamed, and that the war would thus begin with an African-American uprising that Anglo-Americans would immediately defeat. Manson hoped to release an album at that moment that would propel him into power.
He is still in prison.
(MichaelsBackporch)
(SourceFed)
Released the year before, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is suggestive of the problems the Beatles had with what they considered a vast majority of people: the love in them was "sleeping" while they went on with their daily lives as though existence had no deeper meaning and connection with others did not matter.
(Karipr88)
(Eating Peaches)
Despite the trouble with crazies like Manson, their own struggles to find inner peace and to transcend wordly problems by experiementing with drugs (which didn't work), then experimenting with Eastern religions intermingled with the more Western religions we are (and they were) used to, the Beatles are mostly known for their songs of peace and love and appreciation for beauty and spirituality. Above all, LOVE. Love, not war. Openness, not bigotry. Innocence. The fleeting sense of now and a focus on the eternal.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (which is also about drugs, but not only about drugs) focuses on what the spirit hopes to do that the body cannot.
"Strawberry Fields Forever" walks listeners to a place from John Lennon's childhood - a place of happy but fleeting memories. It urges us to know that our spirits can still live in those happy, innocent places, even if our bodies must be in the problems of now. All we need is love.
("Strawberry Fields NYC")
Works Cited
"Beatlemania." Beatlemania. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
Eating Peaches. "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - # 24." Eating Peaches RSS. N.p., Apr.
2010. Web. 04 May 2016.
"Helter Skelter (song)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
"How the Beatles Learned Transcendental Meditation - and what they thought about it". Transcendental Meditation. TMHome, 10 Dec. 2014. Web. 4 May 2016.
Karipr88. "The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps Lyrics." SongMeanings.
SongMeanings, 03 Feb. 2911. Web. 04 May 2016.
Kooarwas09. "The Beatles - Happiness Is a Warm Gun Lyrics |
SongMeanings." SongMeanings. SongMeanings, 02 Oct. 2009. Web. 04 May 2016.
MichaelsBackporch. "Charles Manson in Court Statement to Press Helter Skelter Trials
1970 Backporch Tapes Collections." YouTube. YouTube, 27 Aug. 2011. Web. 04 May
2016.
"Strawberry Fields NYC." Pictures of Strawberry. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.
SourceFed. "Charles Manson Is Getting Married!" YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.