The Beatles song Steve Van Zandt called “the first salvo of the British invasion”
The Beatles were undoubtedly one of the most influential cultural forces of the 1960s. Despite the extensive commentary and analysis surrounding their work, revisiting their peak years continues to offer fresh insights, especially when compared to the present day. For example, while today’s pop culture evolves rapidly, it pales in comparison to the transformative and fast-paced shifts of the swinging sixties.
The idea of the pop musician as an artist was still taking shape (thanks to the Fabs’ efforts), so their industry still treated them the way they treated artists in the 1950s. At the time, calling the likes of Elvis, Cliff Richards, Chuck Berry, and other artists would have been like calling your average TikTok creator an artist today. People weren’t sure whether this whole “rock ‘n’ roll” thing was anything more than a fad, so they were a walking content mill striking while the iron was hot over anything else.
Songs were provided for them; they were given maybe a day in the studio, two at the very most, to record them, then it was off on tour. Interviews, media appearances, concerts, you name it. If you think that artists today get tired of the two-year-long, album-tour-album cycle, try doing that every three months, and you get an idea of the kind of workload these artists had. Then The Beatles added to it.
You see, The Beatles could skip the middleman, they didn’t need songs provided, they could come up with them as a group and the label wouldn’t have to pay songwriters. Of course, they weren’t going to actually give them the time to write and conceptualise their own music, why would they need that, you can just whack a few chords together in the hours between the press conference at 4:30 and the concert at six, surely? How hard can it be?!
If anyone is going to appreciate a work ethic like that, it would be one of Bruce Springsteen’s most trusted lieutenants. In an interview with Uncut, Steven Van Zandt was asked to give his essential British invasion records. At the very top of the list was, of course, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, a song he calls “the first salvo of the British invasion” for good reason. However, he also mentions that the band were consistent, “They continued to do great things all year right up to ‘I Feel Fine’.”
There was a year in between ‘…Hold Your Hand’ and ‘I Feel Fine’. A year in which the band released five albums and 14 singles in the US alone, performed multiple concert tours all over the world and found the time to write records and release A Hard Day’s Night in the middle of it all.
A work ethic that The Boss himself would be proud of, though it’s no wonder by the time they were making Get Back, they were contractually obligated not to work weekends.
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