Check it Out, Vol. 6: You matter more than you realize, not for much longer

By: Ruben Casas

Posted: 12/5/08

There was a time (not that long ago, actually), when you had to wait for music (gasp!) to be released. Most of us are so used to knowing that the music we want is just there - even before the artist "officially" releases it - we just have to download it.

Our parents' generation hasn't had it so good: a lot of the artists and bands they listened (still listen?) to have had a harder time crossing the digital divide. Think Led Zeppelin, Metallica, The Who, The Eagles and yes, The Beatles. In most cases, these bands have slowly but recently made the switch, none more notoriously than The Beatles.

For decades, the digital rights to The Beatles' music was some of the hardest artistic real estate to come by, so that not even monolithic corporate entities like Fox's "American Idol" could touch it. This changed when Martin "Marty" N. Bandier, the top executive at the music publishing company that owns the John Lennon-Paul McCartney copyrights, took over last year. Since then Sony/ATV Music Publishing has loosened its constraints so much that a two-part episode of "American Idol" last March featured nothing but Beatles music.

The reason for the change is simple: allowing "American Idol" to feature The Beatles' music over two nights is "a wonderful way to get this legendary music in front of an audience of 30 million people in an exciting way," Bandier said. But it's not just any 30 million people we're talking about here; it's not the 30 million people wishing they could download Led Zeppelin's IV from iTunes, for example. It's a very special 30 million people.

It's you.

It's entirely possible that (when the new season rolls around) you'll get a text message from your mom asking you who you're going to vote for on whatever week's episode of "American Idol" (or if you have that mom, telling you who you should vote for), or that you'll both chat about the performances the morning after, but we all know that the "American Idol" producers, who ironically enough are probably your mom's age - maybe they even went to school together - aren't putting the show on for her. This show's all for you, baby.

The "American Idol" audience looks like the "American Idol" contestants. And so the 30 million people Bandier hopes to bring this "legendary music" to is a bunch of David Archuletas and Jordin Sparks.

It's no surprise then that Sony/ATV has come to an agreement to license the Beatles' music to Activision for a dedicated version of "Guitar Hero." It makes all the sense in the world. And much to your parents' chagrin, they won't be able to download it from iTunes (yet).

I first heard about the agreement on Chicago Public Radio's "Sound Opinions," which is supposedly the only rock criticism podcast available. Like all middle-aged critics who consume and think entirely too much about pop culture, Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot sound a little bit nerdy when they discuss the (de)merits of The Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. Okay, they sound very nerdy, actually, but if you can get past it you can glean some fascinating insight into the nature of denial.

The week after DeRogatis and Kot decried The Beatles' decision to give away their digital virginity to a video game, "Sound Opinions" aired a show exclusively dedicated to bubblegum pop. Let's you and I just call it "pop" though - we're not middle-aged yet. Fascinating stuff, this musical genre. It drives teens crazy! They run, they scream, they chase, they cry, they swoon, they mob, they storm - all to get a glimpse of Zac Efron. That's pop for you.

Now look at The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (Lester, 1964), a mockumentary of the band at the height of its fame, which shows the cheeky fellows in a similar crazed-fan frenzy over the course of four days. The quartet can't do anything without being chased through the streets of London, it seems. Later that year, with the U.S. release of I Want to Hold Your Hand, the Beatles' had similar or bigger receptions in New York, where, in a single hour, the band's single sold over 10,000 copies. And you know who wasn't buying any of it? The parents.

The Beatles' music is, has been and always will be pop music, and so it's fitting that their first modern distribution venture be in a format familiar to those consuming pop music most readily. I mean what business do The Beatles have sitting in your parents' Rhapsody account tucked in neatly between Burt Bacharach and Celine Dion? As the inventors of pop as we know it, The Beatles' rightful place is in a simulation of what's its like to be in a rock band if you actually didn't know how to play any instruments.

So enjoy it while you've got it. You're not going to be 13 to 27 forever.

Ruben Casas

diversions@dailybarometer.com