So I’ve been playing a lot of TNO mod lately and it has a mode with American Music from the 60’s. For those of you out of the loop, TNO mod is a scenario where the Axis kind of won WW2. In this world the Germans successfully invaded and conquered all of the British Isles with the exception of Scotland. In this world America is still independent and a world superpower however since England is a puppet of the Reich the British Invasion doesn’t happen and all this got me thinking. What would a timeline where the Beatles never formed look like. This timeline would be like OTL up until around 1959 where the Band officially started.
What would a world without the Beatles actually look like?
- Thread starter Railmotive
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But in Yesterday the entire world where the Beatles never existed was glossed over. Basically everything was the same, just the Beatles weren't there.
Yesterday (2019 film) - Wikipedia
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No because (in my opinion) Yesterday was a way to cash in on the biopics that were very popular around that time (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman). They wanted to make a Beatles biopic without making an actual Beatles biopic. This would've been a VERY creative and fun film if they had done it right.
First, I should note I know very little about music, so anything I write is an uneducated guess, and I'll try not to get too speculative. I guess we could look at which singer or band got the biggest at the same time as the Beatles, and see what their style was like before they started to incorporate Beatles staples, and guess that that style would be the most influential. I also wonder if it would take slightly longer before English rock becomes a big influence on the rest of the world's rock, and probably not as big an influence as it was before. I imagine that before the 60s were over, there would still be international influence in mainstream rock all over the world. However, it wouldn't necessary English people incorporating a little bit of Indian style into their music. Maybe the first international music would come from American rockers imitating styles from cultures their familiar with. It seems to me the most likely cultures for rockers to imitate would be Latin American music, since that was already imitated by American musicians.
I haven't seen that "Yesterday" movie, so I can't comment on that. But as youth culture generally was a thing emerging in the 1950s, I'd say that at least musically, developments would be similar up until the mid-1960s. Beat probably also develops like in OTL, maybe with The Searchers becoming the biggest beat group in the UK. The musical development in the UK would be roughly similar, albeit with a smaller cultural impact on a wider and global scale. You'd still have the youth cultural craze, you'd still have bands like the Stones, Animals, Kinks, Hollies, The Who, Manfred Mann et al, but without the Beatles kicking in the door, they would be nothing more than just music groups in the average person's mindset. Maybe it'd be more like OTL punk - a huge cultural movement with distinct music, clothing styles and attitude, but with the average man or woman just thinking "those crazy young kids, they just make noise".
In America, pre-British invasion styles like surf, rock'n'roll or blues would hold out a bit longer than OTL, and without the Beatles as the driving force behind the British invasion, the US charts would be dominated by Tamla-Motown, garage rock and folk.
Two distinct things come into my mind when it comes to the early musical impact of the Beatles:
1) At that time it was quite unusual for bands to write their own songs and perform and release them. In America, this was changed by the advent of singer-songwriters like Dylan, but in the UK it was the Beatles that paved the way for bands writing most of their own material. So I guess without the Beatles, the songwriter/performer-division would remain for a longer period of time - possibly with singer-songwriters being seen as a bit strange.
2) In the Fifties and early Sixties, bands used to have names like "Bill Haley and the Comets", with a band leader and his backing band. That changed with the Beatles becoming successful. So maybe we'd see band names like "Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones" or "Eric Byrdon and the Animals".
I guess we'd see more divergence from the mid-1960s onwards, maybe with newly forming bands being much more influence by the Stones, the Byrds and the Who, therefore setting the template for blues rock, folk and mod as the sound for the pop charts. But honestly, it already gets too butterflied at that point.
In America, pre-British invasion styles like surf, rock'n'roll or blues would hold out a bit longer than OTL, and without the Beatles as the driving force behind the British invasion, the US charts would be dominated by Tamla-Motown, garage rock and folk.
Two distinct things come into my mind when it comes to the early musical impact of the Beatles:
1) At that time it was quite unusual for bands to write their own songs and perform and release them. In America, this was changed by the advent of singer-songwriters like Dylan, but in the UK it was the Beatles that paved the way for bands writing most of their own material. So I guess without the Beatles, the songwriter/performer-division would remain for a longer period of time - possibly with singer-songwriters being seen as a bit strange.
2) In the Fifties and early Sixties, bands used to have names like "Bill Haley and the Comets", with a band leader and his backing band. That changed with the Beatles becoming successful. So maybe we'd see band names like "Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones" or "Eric Byrdon and the Animals".
I guess we'd see more divergence from the mid-1960s onwards, maybe with newly forming bands being much more influence by the Stones, the Byrds and the Who, therefore setting the template for blues rock, folk and mod as the sound for the pop charts. But honestly, it already gets too butterflied at that point.
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Funny thing is today I was thinking about making this same thread! There would obviously be a ton of huge butterflies and music as we know it may very well be different. However, it seems like the groundwork was set for a group to rise. As the rockers of the 50’s began to fade away or die, the Beatles came on to the scene, without them there’d be a vacuum I believe. Who’d fill it is the question? Part of me wants to say The Beach Boys could fill the void, they were popular both in the US and the UK all the way back to early 1963. But, without Rubber Soul will Brian unleash his creativity we saw on Pet Sounds and what would have been Smile? Will it be a British blues rock band, the Stones? The Beatles were sorta what prompted them to try and write their own material, so without them they may remain a blues cover band. A lot of questions that I simply don’t know enough to answer definitely.
If JFK still dies, you still have a British Invasion, but as said above it wouldn't have been as successful without the Beatles.
Honestly, I feel like the Beatles' biggest contribution to pop music was popularising the idea that pop albums could be more than disconnected collections of songs, that they could be codified and connected pieces of work. Sure, Sinatra demonstrated that first in 1955 with In The Wee Small Hours, followed ten years later by Dylan on Bringing It All Back Home, but it wasn't until Rubber Soul that the pop album became more than the sum of its parts in the public eye. We generally don't talk about A Hard Day's Night or Help as we talk about everything from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road, and it's because their later albums felt like albums rather than playlists, if that makes any sense. I feel like Rubber Soul was a significant catalyst for bands to produce pop albums as discrete works of art, not least because Pet Sounds wouldn't be the way it was if Brian Wilson hadn't tried to ape the Beatles' success.
To be clear, the pop album as a discrete artform would absolutely come into vogue, as Dylan would likely pave the way for it with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited regardless of the Beatles' presence, but it would have been a bit slower to break through to the public consciousness. Heck, butterflies ITTL might mean that Freak Out! or even The Velvet Underground & Nico could become the runaway successes that legitimise the pop album as art in the absence of the Beatles. (Probably not the latter, but heck, if garage rock still has a significant audience in 1967, it's not impossible. Just unlikely.)
Honestly, I feel like the Beatles' biggest contribution to pop music was popularising the idea that pop albums could be more than disconnected collections of songs, that they could be codified and connected pieces of work. Sure, Sinatra demonstrated that first in 1955 with In The Wee Small Hours, followed ten years later by Dylan on Bringing It All Back Home, but it wasn't until Rubber Soul that the pop album became more than the sum of its parts in the public eye. We generally don't talk about A Hard Day's Night or Help as we talk about everything from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road, and it's because their later albums felt like albums rather than playlists, if that makes any sense. I feel like Rubber Soul was a significant catalyst for bands to produce pop albums as discrete works of art, not least because Pet Sounds wouldn't be the way it was if Brian Wilson hadn't tried to ape the Beatles' success.
To be clear, the pop album as a discrete artform would absolutely come into vogue, as Dylan would likely pave the way for it with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited regardless of the Beatles' presence, but it would have been a bit slower to break through to the public consciousness. Heck, butterflies ITTL might mean that Freak Out! or even The Velvet Underground & Nico could become the runaway successes that legitimise the pop album as art in the absence of the Beatles. (Probably not the latter, but heck, if garage rock still has a significant audience in 1967, it's not impossible. Just unlikely.)
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You'd see the Beatles' innovations in the music industry being spearheaded by different sections. As has been said, the singer-songwriter would be the exception, not the norm, for longer; Bob Dylan would be its biggest champion and without a clear champion across the Atlantic things would look different.
The Beach Boys would likely be the ones to bridge pop music and the more experimental music scene in this scenario, and one wonders if they would flirt with the heavier forms of rock music the Fabs did OTL.
Finally, you'd see the concept of a "studio-only band" probably not exist TTL - the Beatles were one of the few artists who literally quit touring and still sold like hotcakes.
The Beach Boys would likely be the ones to bridge pop music and the more experimental music scene in this scenario, and one wonders if they would flirt with the heavier forms of rock music the Fabs did OTL.
Finally, you'd see the concept of a "studio-only band" probably not exist TTL - the Beatles were one of the few artists who literally quit touring and still sold like hotcakes.
Would any other British band be willing to stand up against segregation in the USA? Leaning towards probably
www.express.co.uk
How The Beatles defied Deep South racism in US
The Beatles played a key role in helping to stamp out racial segregation in the US, a new documentary reveals.
www.express.co.uk
For me, the math is 1946 + 18 years old = 1964. Some youth group or youth music was primed to explode in the early 60s just because of Baby Boomer demographics.
The Beatles definitely brought an experimental bent to pop music that other bands copied - without them on the scene, pop music might very well continue down the "Twist and Shout" track for a while rather than the "Eleanor Rigby" one. But as far as popularity and influence, someone (or even a couple bands) are going to be there to fill that vacuum. The demand was there to be met.
The Beatles definitely brought an experimental bent to pop music that other bands copied - without them on the scene, pop music might very well continue down the "Twist and Shout" track for a while rather than the "Eleanor Rigby" one. But as far as popularity and influence, someone (or even a couple bands) are going to be there to fill that vacuum. The demand was there to be met.
Psychedelia and the counterculture movement would be fairly heavily affected, since the British contributions to the movement were spearheaded by the Beatles. I suppose it’s the Beach Boys and garage rock acts like the 13th Floor Elevators that stay the primary musical faces of the late 60s even more than IOTL.
Music is very important. It's much easier to talk/sing than to paint let alone write
No this is how the world would've been had disco never came into being.