What I mean is that a craftsman is happy
to repeat to repeat the same construction principle over and
over again.
There's nothing that seems more absurd than somebody
who builds, say, tables for a living saying
oh well, I have built a beautiful, well-constructed
table, couldn't possibly build that table a second time.
I'd just be repeating myself.
No, once you figure out a good way to build a quality t, table or whatever
it is, woodworking, whatever, you repeat that, because
it assures a certain sort of consistency of quality.
That's, there's an element of craft there.
And being able to promise that quality and
provide it is the mark of a good craftsman.
In fact, that's the way most popular music was, was, was thought of, you know?
It was, as, as kind of a craft.
It wasn't artsy and, and and high folutant like that.
You, you try to put out a good pop product that you hoped people would buy.
And if you have success doing it one way,
you just kept doing it until people stopped buying it.
On the other hand, you have the idea of an artist.
In classical music study, the worst thing you can say about a classical composer
is, oh, that composer is just writing the same piece over and over again.
It means that that person is so lacking in originality and creativity that they're,
they, they just keep doing this, going back to the same formulas again and again.
It's a sign of weakness, it's may, maybe even
a kind of hint of a certain lack of competency.
So an artist always wants to be pushing forward,
always trying something new.
Well, you can see that these are, these are very opposed kinds of approaches.
The craftsman finds the best way to do something and repeats it, the artist
does something and then doesn't want to
repeat that, if they're going to go back to
it, a similar kind of artistic problem, they need to solve it in a different
way, or, or do it in a way so they're not repeating a past success.
And so this idea of moving from the craft model,
which is where the Beatles were 63 into 64, into the
art model, which is the more 65, 66,
67 model, is exactly what we're watching happen here.
Where we find individual solutions to musical problems,
to songwriting problems, and topics these kinds of things.
And I'll be picking these out as we go through the music.
You'll also see the Beatles pushing
the envelope, using other styles, instrumentation,
this kind of thing, all to create something that, that is seemingly new
every time you get it.
During this period, you know, when you got Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sergeant Pepper.
It seemed like you were getting a, an album where the Beatles
were doing an entirely different kinds of things than what they've done before.
Now looking back in retrospect, we can see the continuity but at the time.
It seemed like they were really going in all kinds of crazy directions.
I mean, if you look at an album like Sergeant Pepper, that's
an album that never, according to industry wisdom, would never have been released,
because one of the, sort of, basic laws of, of pop music
at the time was every, every band has to have a trademark sound.
But on Sergeant Pepper it sounds like a different band on every track.
That's exactly what you don't want to do,
but that's exactly what The Beatles were doing.
So we're on the road to that kind of thing, and on
the artist going, moving from the craftsperson model to the artist model.
One thing I'll come back to time again is
whenever The Beatles need a hit single, there are a couple places where, in
their career where they need to come back, and they need to top the charts.
They know how to plug in that craft model again, and
crank out, you know, a big hit when they need it.
And what you'll find is that they often go back to the AABA forms, and
some of the stuff from earlier in their career to be able to make that happen.
So now having talked a bit about this idea of
the move, movement from craftsman to artist and this idea
of rock and pop authenticity.
Let's move on to the music itself and discuss the album Help.
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