Yesterday (the movie)

[mrcbass]

I watched "Yesterday" on Amazon prime a few nights ago. It's an interesting premise, with lot's of logic holes if you're like me and need even suspended reality to make some sort of sense.

The story line (this is not a spoiler, it's the trailer): What if you woke up one day to find that the Beatles never existed and only you have ever heard their music?

I'll not comment on the way the production handled the situation (it was hit and miss for me), but I did find myself pondering the premise of what if that happened to me?

Would I try to pawn off Beatles music as my own?

Would I want to risk the fishbowl life the Beatles had?

Do I know their music well enough to recreate it at a level that it would be successful? (For this premise, there are not even any recordings to lean on, just your memory.)

If their music was released today, in the style that it was originally performed, would it go over well?

Not necessarily looking for discussion, I just found it interesting how deep in thought I was while watching the movie.

 

[hrodbert696]

I remember seeing that movie a few years ago. It was interesting, if not persuasive. I think the thing to me, to answer that last question, is no, I don't think someone dropped into a Beatle-less world knowing the whole repertoire would be able to become a big hit today. There are a couple of reasons:

One is that a huge amount of the Beatles' success was the interplay between them, both musically and personally. It was enormously important that John was John, Paul was Paul, Ringo was Ringo and George was George, that they came out of a town like Liverpool and had played in a place like Hamburg, and so on. It was important that they looked the way they did and talked to each other and to the press the way they did. 90s boy bands tried to put that sort of thing in a can and mass produce it - X is the "cute" one, Y is the "goofy" one, Z is the "smart" one, etc., but it was always obviously fake.

Another is what I call the "classic" dynamic. In any creative form, there's a chapter-two moment, when the genre has been pioneered by trailblazers, and then a "classic" creator appears who actualizes its full potential for the first time and produces a corpus of work that sets the standard by which all subsequent work is judged. Plato would be the example in philosophy, or Shakespeare in drama. You could be smarter than Plato or a better writer than Shakespeare, and maybe some people have been, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still the classics, the benchmarks by which you're judged, because they did WHAT they did AT THE MOMENT they did. The Beatles are the "classic" rock band: Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry etc. had paved the way, and then they took all that in and synthesized the form. If they had never existed, rock and roll would either have sputtered out as a late-50s teenagers' fad, or someone else would have become the "classic" (maybe the Stones), and nobody would care the same about Beatles songs 50 years later, as good as they are.

A third is context. The Beatles exploded like they did because British (and then American) society in 1963 or so was primed to react to someone like them. Wartime rationing and austerity were giving way to prosperity, teenagers were starting to have the means and the interest in flexing their independence, the sexual revolution was ramping up, a huge amount of repressed anxiety and energy was waiting for someone to bust the lock and scream, "twist and shout," and unleash it all. The Beatles had a shocked response to Beatlemania because it wasn't even really about them; nobody could hear the music at live shows over all the screaming and carrying on. They were just the pretext to trigger it all. Now it's a different era: youth revolution and sexual liberation are all institutionalized and industrialized and commoditized (they were always consumer commodities, but now it's pat formula) and there's nothing to get excited about in anything the Beatles did.

 

[friskinator]

I enjoyed it, but "Wonderwall" wouldn't have existed in the "no Beatles" world. That was one thing I couldn't get around.

 

[hrodbert696]

I enjoyed it, but "Wonderwall" wouldn't have existed in the "no Beatles" world. That was one thing I couldn't get around.

LOL I remember a guy telling me that Oasis wrote pretty good John Lennon songs...

 

[Gorn]

If presented with the opportunity he had to make lots of money and have Lily James be in love with me, I think I'd go for it.

 

[Michedelic]

I remember seeing that movie a few years ago. It was interesting, if not persuasive. I think the thing to me, to answer that last question, is no, I don't think someone dropped into a Beatle-less world knowing the whole repertoire would be able to become a big hit today. There are a couple of reasons:

One is that a huge amount of the Beatles' success was the interplay between them, both musically and personally. It was enormously important that John was John, Paul was Paul, Ringo was Ringo and George was George, that they came out of a town like Liverpool and had played in a place like Hamburg, and so on. It was important that they looked the way they did and talked to each other and to the press the way they did. 90s boy bands tried to put that sort of thing in a can and mass produce it - X is the "cute" one, Y is the "goofy" one, Z is the "smart" one, etc., but it was always obviously fake.

Another is what I call the "classic" dynamic. In any creative form, there's a chapter-two moment, when the genre has been pioneered by trailblazers, and then a "classic" creator appears who actualizes its full potential for the first time and produces a corpus of work that sets the standard by which all subsequent work is judged. Plato would be the example in philosophy, or Shakespeare in drama. You could be smarter than Plato or a better writer than Shakespeare, and maybe some people have been, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still the classics, the benchmarks by which you're judged, because they did WHAT they did AT THE MOMENT they did. The Beatles are the "classic" rock band: Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry etc. had paved the way, and then they took all that in and synthesized the form. If they had never existed, rock and roll would either have sputtered out as a late-50s teenagers' fad, or someone else would have become the "classic" (maybe the Stones), and nobody would care the same about Beatles songs 50 years later, as good as they are.

A third is context. The Beatles exploded like they did because British (and then American) society in 1963 or so was primed to react to someone like them. Wartime rationing and austerity were giving way to prosperity, teenagers were starting to have the means and the interest in flexing their independence, the sexual revolution was ramping up, a huge amount of repressed anxiety and energy was waiting for someone to bust the lock and scream, "twist and shout," and unleash it all. The Beatles had a shocked response to Beatlemania because it wasn't even really about them; nobody could hear the music at live shows over all the screaming and carrying on. They were just the pretext to trigger it all. Now it's a different era: youth revolution and sexual liberation are all institutionalized and industrialized and commoditized (they were always consumer commodities, but now it's pat formula) and there's nothing to get excited about in anything the Beatles did.

You overlooked the fact that JFK’s assassination at the end of November,’63 was not only a kick in the gut for the country, but it dashed the hopes for the future for an emerging youthful population. Going on into a winter of discontent, when they arrived in February(in the US)it was a massive explosion of relief, of positivity and possibilty, and marked the beginning of a new era, culturally and artistically. They were generational grief counselors.
But 11/22/63 was also a loss of innocence, and a wakeup call. While the Fabs played the cheerful show-biz game for awhile, they started to speak their minds on subjects otherwise avoided by those in “entertainment”, save for maybe Harry Belafonte. People like Lenny Bruce or Bob Dylan were too far underground.

 

[WI Short Scaler]

If I was the character in the movie's premise I think I'd give it a shot. I doubt I'd have their level of success for a couple reasons.

-I doubt that I have enough musical knowledge and talent to recreate the songs from memory
-I think, as has been said, a huge part of their success came from timing. They came along at the right time where young girls has teen heart-throbs and here was a band of young relatively good looking guys they could latch on to.

 

[mrcbass]

I remember seeing that movie a few years ago. It was interesting, if not persuasive. I think the thing to me, to answer that last question, is no, I don't think someone dropped into a Beatle-less world knowing the whole repertoire would be able to become a big hit today. There are a couple of reasons:

One is that a huge amount of the Beatles' success was the interplay between them, both musically and personally. It was enormously important that John was John, Paul was Paul, Ringo was Ringo and George was George, that they came out of a town like Liverpool and had played in a place like Hamburg, and so on. It was important that they looked the way they did and talked to each other and to the press the way they did. 90s boy bands tried to put that sort of thing in a can and mass produce it - X is the "cute" one, Y is the "goofy" one, Z is the "smart" one, etc., but it was always obviously fake.

Another is what I call the "classic" dynamic. In any creative form, there's a chapter-two moment, when the genre has been pioneered by trailblazers, and then a "classic" creator appears who actualizes its full potential for the first time and produces a corpus of work that sets the standard by which all subsequent work is judged. Plato would be the example in philosophy, or Shakespeare in drama. You could be smarter than Plato or a better writer than Shakespeare, and maybe some people have been, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still the classics, the benchmarks by which you're judged, because they did WHAT they did AT THE MOMENT they did. The Beatles are the "classic" rock band: Elvis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry etc. had paved the way, and then they took all that in and synthesized the form. If they had never existed, rock and roll would either have sputtered out as a late-50s teenagers' fad, or someone else would have become the "classic" (maybe the Stones), and nobody would care the same about Beatles songs 50 years later, as good as they are.

A third is context. The Beatles exploded like they did because British (and then American) society in 1963 or so was primed to react to someone like them. Wartime rationing and austerity were giving way to prosperity, teenagers were starting to have the means and the interest in flexing their independence, the sexual revolution was ramping up, a huge amount of repressed anxiety and energy was waiting for someone to bust the lock and scream, "twist and shout," and unleash it all. The Beatles had a shocked response to Beatlemania because it wasn't even really about them; nobody could hear the music at live shows over all the screaming and carrying on. They were just the pretext to trigger it all. Now it's a different era: youth revolution and sexual liberation are all institutionalized and industrialized and commoditized (they were always consumer commodities, but now it's pat formula) and there's nothing to get excited about in anything the Beatles did.

That was pretty much my gut on that as well.

 

[mrcbass]

If I was the character in the movie's premise I think I'd give it a shot. I doubt I'd have their level of success for a couple reasons.

-I doubt that I have enough musical knowledge and talent to recreate the songs from memory
-I think, as has been said, a huge part of their success came from timing. They came along at the right time where young girls has teen heart-throbs and here was a band of young relatively good looking guys they could latch on to.

Yeah, that's exactly what I felt as well. Sure I "know" all of their songs, but I doubt I could recreate more than 5 or 6 from memory, at least no properly.

The guy in the movie was a talented musician, but being a singer-song writer, I can't imagine he could have plucked as many songs as he did with such detail. If he'd have been a cover band guy, it would have been more possible to have