What's the big deal about Beatles songs and albums showing up on iTunes? It's the last bit of the old music business giving in to the new digital reality. Strangely enough, it was the Beatles' music and ethos that changed our entire culture back in the sixties. The album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band changed the technology of recording and made studio recording the way to go with multi-track recording and many other innovations. The Beatles have made the long, winding trip from obscure cover band, to teenie bopper hit makers, to arena rock stars, to reclusive artists and innovators, to broken up band and solo artists, to music industry commodity sold back and forth for profit, to obscure old band, to re-emergent cool band again, and finally to availability as a digital download. Whew!
What's really going on here is the final baton pass from old music corporate system (think: Baby Boomers and LP records) to new music digital system(think: Millennials and iPods). This is also a cultural shift from the groupthink of the Boomers and the sixties to the wild individualism of the new digital generations. The Beatles opened the door to garage bands, Eastern mysticism, Utopian visions of grandeur, and experimentation with open systems of living(yeah, that's a nice way to say it). Their musical legacy is awesome, but their cultural legacy is lacking, but will likely be their true long term effect. The Magical Mystery Tour is finally over, and the kids can now listen safely to the digital memory of the band that was the most idealized and idolized music group in history.
"And in the end...
they sold their souls...
they gave their lives...
for the big... bank... roll."
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