The Beach Boys and The Beatles in the Psychedelic Movement

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The psychedelic movement of the 1960s was marked by people’s attempts to achieve higher consciousness. Music was one way to reach higher consciousness by serving as an “aesthetic drug” (Covach and Flory 252). Therefore, the psychedelic movement was distinguished by various experimentations in music. The Beach Boys and the Beatles were among the most prominent bands performing during that time, and their work influenced the psychedelic movement.

The Beach Boys’ career during the psychedelic movement was distinguished by the creation of the song “Good Vibrations” and the work on the album SMiLE that was never released. The Beatles’ career at that time was focused on working on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and releasing a double-A-sided single of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.” Both bands experimented with the used musical instruments and the forms of their songs. For example, the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” does not follow any conventional song pattern since it consists of contrasting sections recorded separately and then spliced together (Covach and Flory 253). In the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life,” they used various musical instruments, including string, brass, and even the sound of the alarm clock, and utilized strings in an avant-garde manner (Covach and Flory 257). Such use of forms and sounds was not typical for music at the time, so the bands contributed to the psychedelic movement by introducing their musical experiments.

The relationship between these bands can be described as a warm rivalry. The bands competed with each other not only for public attention but also for the attention of the record company since they both belonged to the same label – Capitol (Covach and Flory 252). At the same time, they admired each other’s works. Wilson from the Beach Boys liked how the songs in Rubber Soul were arranged around a common topic, while Paul McCartney from the Beatles praised the songwriting and production of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (Covach and Flory 253). The bands were connected to the psychedelic movement because they showed that rock music could be valued on its own and should not be merely dance music (Covach and Flory 260). Moreover, the bands’ success gave them freedom for experimentation. When their experiments turned out to be hit songs and albums, it enabled other, less popular musicians to engage in experiments as well.

Work Cited

Covach, John, and Andrew Flory. What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History. 5th ed., W. W. Norton and Company, 2018.

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