How appropriate to see this commentary published on June 2 (the fortieth anniversary of the US release of Sgt Pepper:
It is 40 years since Sgt Pepper, having laboured 20 years teaching his band to play, arranged for their debut in full psychedelic regalia. He leveraged a little help from his friends, notably the vocalist Billy Shears, and a riverboat owner named Lucy who had made her fortune in the diamond business. Mitch Miller, head of A&R at Columbia, dismissed the Beatles as "the Hula Hoops of music". Will their songs continue to inspire future generations? Or will their music die along with the generation intoxicated by their wit and charisma in the mind-expanding 60s?Whenever classical musicians and rock music fans meet, the conversation turns to those four Liverpudlians and how good they really were. Do we only like the Beatles because they were "our music"? Or will they last in the way that Mozart and Beethoven have lasted?
Yes, I'm prepared to predict that they will last. As for Mitch Miller's judgment of The Beatles...well, Mitch had a similar-sounding disagreement with a certain founder of Reprise Records -- and with similar results: people still seek out the music of Frank Sinatra to this day, and The Beatles, too. For pleasure. Passionately. And Mitch Miller? Please.
To a neuroscientist, the Beatles' longevity can be explained by the fact that their music creates subtle and rewarding schematic violations of popular musical forms, causing a symphony of neural firings from the cerebellum to the prefrontal cortex.
Absolutely.