What if the Beatles played Beethoven?

Watching a YouTube video (link ) about the weirdness of the song “Helter Skelter”, I was struck by the immense energy, creativity and musicality that the Beatles brought to, what is fundamentally, a silly song.

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide

Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride

Till I get to the bottom and I see you again

Do, don't you want me to love you

I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you

Tell me, tell me, tell me, come on tell me the answer

Well, you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

Helter skelter, helter skelter

Helter skelter

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

Helter Skelter lyrics ? Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

It seems to be about a young couple on a playground slide. There is, of course, a bunch of Beatle lore about this song and many more.

My interest is in the stage of life of the Liverpool lads at that time. Paul McCarney was 26 or so in 1968 when the song was made. At 26, life seems very different than when they started the Beatles at age15 or so in 1957. Eleven years later, they had gone from “Love Me Do” to “Helter Skelter” and the White Album, which is an enormous distance, in my mind.

So I wonder if the now-adult men look at their lives and say, we’re still doing this? This thing we’ve been doing since we were kids? Shouldn’t we move away from this kids-stuff and tackle more adult topics? And of course they do, with more songs, more albums, etc.

But what if they had taken the opportunity to push away the pressure of creating everything from whole cloth and embraced the major music of the Western Classical canon? Beethoven, Bach, Hayden, Chopin, Mozart or Brahms? They were already starting to use big orchestras as backup musicians for their songs. What if George Harrison had done an acoustic version of Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Major? Maybe somebody can make an AI version of that, but the music itself is not my point. What if they had taken up the challenge to elevate their musicality into the world of more sophisticated and complicated music, arguably more “adult” music?

My thinking is less about how things would have sounded but what do people do when they have been doing their thing for a long time, maybe from a young age, and kind of grow out of it. How do you respond? How do I respond? My friend Chris McCann (link ) became a personal coach, itself a transition from a different professional career, and he helps people make these kinds of transitions. I wonder what the Beatles would have done and become if they had taken on a pivot into new territory. Was it just easier to ultimately break up, than to stay together and pivot as a group? I suppose. Certainly, each of them went in new directions individually, but what could they have continued to accomplish as a team?

I wonder the same thing about my own life and the people I know facing changes. Retirement. Business models becoming obsolete. Spouses leaving or dying. Layoffs. Getting promoted to thankless positions. Leaving school or hometown. How do we find a way forward when the old way stops working?

What are your thoughts?

/Rick Regan