Freud and the Beatles

causing cultural change, or riding along?

As you know, I have been pondering the impact of Sigmund Freud. Would our culture be substantially different if he had never lived?

The Freud legend is that he single-handedly changed the way that we view ourselves. It is argued that no matter how many of his ideas we have come to reject, enough of his framework has become embedded in our thinking that we are, like it or not, all Freudians now.

For me, one way to approach this issue is to consider a possible analogy with the Beatles. Were they important in shaping the culture of the 1960s, or were they primarily shaped by what was happening around them? The same questions can be asked about Freud.

Note that the impact of the Beatles was different post-1965 from what it was in 1963-1964. This is true both in terms of music and in terms of lifestyle. Had the Beatles remained stagnant after 1964, it is likely that they would have had less enduring significance.

Pre-1965 vs. Post-1965, Music

The Beatles dominated pop music in 1964. But although their sound was distinctive, their music up to that point was pretty basic. Their main fan base consisted of adolescents.

Starting in 1965, and especially in 1966 and 1967, the Beatles left behind the musical formula that appealed to young teenagers. In 1966, I was typical of the adolescents who could not appreciate the Beatles as they evolved that year. I switched my allegiance to other groups, who stuck closer to the Beatles’ original pop formula.

But many Beatles fans, especially older teenagers, followed them as their lyrics and music became more sophisticated. By late 1967, the rock music scene was dividing into the mild pop tunes of AM radio and the edgy “underground” music of FM radio. When the Beatles released Sergeant Pepper in 1967, they planted their musical flag in the FM territory. By that time, my tastes had progressed and I was ready to reconnect with them.

One can argue that the explosion of musical styles that took place in the mid-1960s did not depend on the Beatles. But many rock stars at the time believed that the Beatles had paved the way. Would Bob Dylan have gone electric had there been no Beatles phenomenon? Had the Beatles never broken through, would other British rock artists, like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, and Eric Clapton, have languished in obscurity?

Pre-1965 vs. Post-1965, Culture

Prior to 1965, the main cultural distinction of the Beatles was the “Beatles haircut.” Before the Beatles, men had their hair in front combed up, not down, and they kept it short. They did not have bangs.

The original Beatles haircut was relatively neat and stylish, created by a German artist who was the girlfriend of Stuart Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe was a close friend of John Lennon’s who the early Beatles (prior to having a record contract) allowed to appear on stage with them, attempting or pretending to play bass guitar.

As the 1960s rolled forward, the Beatles and others grew their hair longer, and it became less artistically trimmed and more unkempt. But I would say that if the Beatles’ impact on culture had been limited to their haircut, they would not have mattered quite so much.

If John Lennon was cheeky in 1964, his rebelliousness was more and more overt each year thereafter. His conduct became increasingly controversial, especially his antics with Yoko Ono.

George Harrison steered the Beatles in the direction of Hindu mysticism. This influenced many young people in the West and helped to shape the hippie culture.

All of the Beatles experimented with drugs. This, too, had an influence.

There were subcultures in America that experimented with drugs, exotic sexual relationships, Eastern mysticism, and rebellious posturing in the 1950s, and going back even farther. One cannot credit the Beatles with those phenomena.

But it was in the late 1960s that what came to be known as the hippie lifestyle penetrated much further into the population. Would it have become so widespread without the Beatles? Or if the Beatles had not embraced an unkempt appearance, a rebellious outlook, Eastern philosophy, and psychedelic drugs, would the hippies have been nothing more than a minor cult restricted to portions of the artist community?

As you can see, I find it relatively easy to come up with questions. I hesitate to come up with definitive answers. But I am inclined to believe that history would have been at least somewhat different without the Beatles. And I will probably lean that same way as I delve more deeply into the history of Freud’s influence.