The love that the Beatles made

MANILA, Philippines - The Beatles delivered their “mini-Renaissance” as George Harrison described the Fab Four’s musical revolution through a relentless barrage of song discourses about love.

Out of the 213 songs officially released by the Beatles in the UK, 163 or about three-fourths of their total song output, are about love: Romantic love, illicit love, gay love, kindred love, materialistic love, universal love, love for music and love for animals — practically all permutations of normal and sometimes aberrant love.

Rock ’n roll was the race music which the older generation of American Whites disliked because it was initially considered as Black music and had strong associations with lovemaking.

Sun Records head Sam Phillips produced for Elvis Presley That’s All Right, a country song popularized by Black man Arthur Crudup, giving it the rougher idiom of rhythm and blues. Disc jockey Alan Freed gave this hybrid music a name: Rock ’n roll. It means to dance and have sex (roll was an abbreviated form of jelly-roll, a Black euphemism for sexual intercourse).

All the wiggling and writhing with the song repelled parents and church leaders — but not the White youth, the target market of Presley’s albums.

From 1958 to 1962, rock ’n roll stars kept the greater part of the globe shaking and rolling with their raucous songs. Their free-wheeling attitude, however, got them involved in various incidents.

Jerry Lee Lewis committed bigamy by marrying his 14-year-old second cousin. In a terrible twist of fate, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were all killed when their rented plane crashed minutes after take-off. Little Richard became a gospel singer after surviving an airplane’s engine fire. Chuck Berry served a three-year conviction for transporting a 14-year-old female Apache Indian from Texas to Louisiana to work in his club.

Tin Pan Alley vested interests and politicians charged Freed for accepting illegal payments to play records known as payola. The US Army drafted Presley, removing him from the rock ’n roll mainstream for two years. After he was released from duty, he abandoned rock ’n roll to wallow in the sentimentality of the ballads.

As a tell-tale sign that rock ’n roll had been subverted, Frankie Avalon pinch-hit for Holly in the aborted singing engagement by Valens and The Big Bopper. Paul Anka began to dominate the musical charts with maudlin ballads. Connie Francis released the patriotic song God Bless America in the year rock ’n roll suffered its worst turmoil. Mitch Miller, producer of Easy-Listening artists like Ray Conniff, became rock ’n roll’s avowed enemy.

Sentimentality ruled the American airwaves, leading to the conclusion that decency and order had returned among the youth. It became apparent that the conspiracy to kill rock ’n roll had succeeded.

But not for long. By reinventing rock ’n roll, the Beatles helped pave the way for the creation of rock ’n roll and then rock, saving its most favored and valued subject — love.

The Beatles released its first song, Paul McCartney’s Love Me Do, a teen’s elementary expression of romantic love. McCartney positively rated it in retrospect as the group’s “greatest philosophical song.”

She Loves You, the first song released as a Lennon-McCartney composition, is about a peer group’s support to a member’s budding love subject, the Beatles’ final stroke in their reinvention of rock ’n roll. The Beatles removed the anti-social element, making it a sanitized form, becoming a safe form of music known as rock ’n roll.

Yesterday, a melancholic solo recording by McCartney of his own composition about the break-up of a romantic relationship, is the world’s most covered song with 2,200 covers to date. BCC, MTV and Rolling Stone magazine voted by as the No. 1 pop song of all time.

Lennon’s The Word which refers to love as freedom’s redeeming value anticipated the coming of the Love Generation. Before anybody could declare it, he beat the rest by proclaiming “the word is love.” Lennon did not deal with personal but universal affection, preaching “Say the word and you’ll be free,” an early indication that he was going into anthem-like songs.

Lennon came up with All You Need Is Love, a popular catchphrase of the ‘60s anti-war movement that conveys the message that love is the universal solution. Perfect for the theme of Our World, the first live global television link, the Beatles rush-released it to take advantage of the sales demand it created.

Lennon considered Harrison’s Something as Abbey Road album’s best song. The same with McCartney who passed the judgment, “For me, I think it’s the best he’s written.” For sure, these statements were self-corrections of the long years they dismissed Harrison as a second-class songsmith.

After Lennon, McCartney and Harrison engage in a grand guitar battle for the first and last time and Ringo Starr delivers his only drum solo in a Beatle song, the Beatles convey their final love message with McCartney’s The End.

“And in the end,

the love you take

is equal to the love you make.”