What can we learn from The Beatles?
Rodrigo Machado Tavares, BEng, CEng, PhD
Technical Director (Head - Fire Safety) at Arcadis
What can we potentially learn from The Beatles focusing on business taking the soft (human) skills as an angle?
I wrote this text last year in December 2021 when I finished watching the third and last episode of The Beatles: Get Back. I thought to share some of my reflections here as they are related with work as well and can be insightful.
I was a massive Beatles fan during my childhood and as a teenager. Probably from the day I heard this iconic LP from my father when I was about 6 years old in the 80’s, I got mesmerized by the tunes. Decades later in life, I was working just few meters away from the old Emi House where they took this iconic photo.
There is no question The Beatles as a rock (pop) band were (are) brilliant; we don’t need to be a musician neither an expert in music to recognize their work, overall, is good material. Most of their songs are art: timeless. It is also interesting to recognize they have also influenced (probably even started as well) counterculture and had an important role in diplomacy and geopolitics… it was not by chance they got their MBE’s back in 1965… and all these just happened naturally. (I wrote back in 2020 about these aspects of Beatlemania in my personal blog). People can argue these statements might be slightly over the top and we might tend to overrate them, but the truth (and we are not talking about the four individuals themselves, their personal lives, their behaviors etc.), their work is top quality, and this is their main legacy.
Within this context, last year in December, I finished watching the documentary series of three episodes The Beatles: Get Back. As a Beatles fan, it was superb to see some unseen scenes, discussions, arguments and the most important: to see how they composed their songs, their creativity, how they collaborated and produced all together their songs, how they used to deal with the constant “fakenews” from the press (i.e., calumnies, defamation etc), and how they dealt with the pressure of deadlines for achieving their final product (the album Let It Be). Considering all the challenges, they achieved their goal, recording one of their best albums of their successful career and innovated with an improvised concert in the rooftop* of their Apple Corps Limited, which was based in Savile Road, London. (In terms of business, it is interesting to research more about the initial “battle” between Apple Corps v. Apple Computer, now Apple Inc. We can now, funnily enough, read about this battle listening to a Beatles' song via iTunes). (*It is also interesting to reflect, from our perspective today, about the health and safety and other aspects of risk assessments regarding the “The Beatles rooftop concert”. More about this iconic “gig”, which is considered to be their last one: https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/beatles-famous-rooftop-concert-15-things-you-didnt-know-58342/ ).
This documentary is amazing (even though I am biased), and focusing on a teamwork perspective, I would recommend to everyone to watch it as the documentary, overall, provides some interesting insights, which I will share some here in the next paragraphs.
Source: Disney Corp.
1)????Teamwork:
The death of Brian Epstein, their manager, in 1967 had a huge negative impact on the Fab4 journey. And if it were not all the good efforts and teamwork from John, Paul, George and Ringo together with other key-colleagues and people (e.g., the fifth Beatle, the great George Martin (the true fifth Beatle), Mall Evans, Freda Kelly, Neil Aspinall, Dereck Taylor), the band would have collapsed straight away in 1967. In the cold winter of January 1969, they defined a project which the concept was to produce a film showing the behind the scenes when recording the new album, Let It Be which would culminate in a live show. The concept was great. They had constraints such as: deadlines and financials. Despite all the direct and indirect challenges imposed by the constraints, they did manage to achieve their goal successfully as the album was recorded on time, great songs were composed (e.g., Let it Be, Get Back, The Long and Winding Road, Across the Universe) and a live concert was indeed performed by them. There were some changes from the original plan, but the goal was achieved. (It is also relevant to mention the teamwork motivated them, and in a collaborative way as they even started working on some of their solo songs there. During those sessions, songs from John, George and Paul’s first solo albums were either created or improved there. I would also like to point out that the most beautiful song from the Beatles, which is a Harrison song, “Something” started to be recorded there. It was then released in their another great and iconic album “Abbey Road. Frank Sinatra supported my view on Something when he said: “the greatest love song of the past 50 years”, please see link: https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/something.html )
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2)?????Resilience:
This word “Resilience” has become worldwide spread and like many other words such as tension, stress, friction, it comes also from Physics. Resilience can be defined as the ability to deal with the challenges and overcome them. There is no question that we all need to be resilient as professionals in a competitive planet and all businesses need to be resilient considering our dynamic fourth industrial revolution: the digital era. ?Having said that, taking the example from The Beatles back in 1969 when recording Let It Be, we can categorically say: those folks were resilient. They had several challenges to deal with, which obligated them to make some changes in the original plan; but even though they not only achieved their goal (successfully: the great album itself already justifies my statement here), but they have also innovated with the live concert and the concept of the documentary itself. Some of the challenges they faced when recording Let It Be are listed below:
A)???They had to record all the songs from scratch in January and decide where the final concert would be, organise all that, rehearse and perform the final concert as the grand finale for the film;
B)???Several arguments and some classic hostile disagreements between Mr. Harrison and Macca due to guitar arrangements for some tunes. These have also contributed for George to “leave The Beatles” temporarily;
C)???George decided to literally leave the band and didn’t come for the sessions for few days (as a side note, in my view he had good reasons and support Mr. Harrison on that);
D)???The constant presence (actually, on a daily basis) of John’s new partner: Yoko Ono. The Beatles had an unwritten rule of not bringing their partners/wives during their recording sessions. Perhaps one visit here and there, eventually during other sessions, but Yoko was there every day like a working colleague. This was something new for the other three. They got used to that and managed to move on and crack on with the work;
E)???They decided to stop recording the album in the Twickenham studios in Richmond in Southwest London (almost Surrey) and record it in an improvised recording studio in the basement of their Apple Corps office in Savile Road, near to Oxford Street, central London. The logistics to move things, including heavy equipment, musical instruments etc. and then create an entire adequate new studio already imposes massive difficulties. The team managed to do all these in couple of days, including working on weekends;
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F)????The amount and nature of attacks they used to get from the press were just horrendous. In despite of these, they dealt with them and did not these fakenews impact their good work.
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3)????How they used to deal with the “Fakenews”:
The expression “Fakenews” became very popular in (geo)politics in the last years, particularly considering our digital era, where information and misinformation is spread out almost instantaneously. Fakenews is not something new. Pragmatically speaking, fakenews is a lie: calumny (i.e., defamation, slander, offence, insult, denigration). Unfortunately, those folks who were only on their 20’s actually faced all of these on a weekly basis. As mentioned previously here, despite all these fakenews about them, The Beatles dealt with these calumnies very maturely as they used to ignore most of them and concentrate on their work. Yes, people might argue that they were “celebrities” and once you are in the public eye, you are on the spotlight and will likely to be the next target. But even though, their approach in dealing with these fakenews (which are crime) was a good example. They used to be ironic (especially John and George) about the fakenews and did not allow these to let them down. This became clear in the documentary. (Having said that as an important side note, we as professionals can also be victims of fakenews (i.e., calumny, defamation, slander, offence, insult, denigration, libel). Fakenews is a crime and especially in the workplace. In the UK, the following links are relevant to be aware of: https://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/court/reporting-defamation.htm
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4)????Collaboration:
Most of the recorded songs from The Beatles during their short and productive career in the 60’s were by Lennon & McCartney, nevertheless, in most cases Harrison and Starkey have contributed during the composing process. George Martin has also definitely contributed immensely (I don’t think St. Peppers would ever exist without Martin’s input). In the documentary, this collaboration is very clear and inspiring. It goes back to the teamwork as well.
Nevertheless, another angle which I would also point out is that The Beatles during their career did not collaborate much with other artists during the recordings. Yes, Erick Clapton, who was a good friend of George, recorded the solo guitar of “While my guitar gently weeps” in the White Album from 1968., they had few colleagues like Mick Jagger during the live recording session of “All we need is love” in 1967. However, apart from these examples, The Beatles had all their albums recorded mainly by themselves and no other fellow artist/musician being part of them.
It was good to see during the documentary the presence of talented musician, Billy Preston who added immensely to this iconic record. Billy not only collaborated with great songs in this album as he became part of it. (I find difficult to see Let It Be without the great inputs from Preston). Having said that, The Beatles had the humility to recognize they needed an extra-help for the album, and they broke their own rules and paradigms, they were flexible and work collaboratively with another fellow musician and the result is: Let It Be!
(The Beatles have always supported and collaborated with other fellow musicians. For instance, they have always supported fellow Liverpudlian Cilla Black with songs here and there; they “gave” a song to The Rolling Stones, which became The Stones’ first hit (i.e., “I wanna be your man” then later recorded by The Beatles with Ringo leading the vocal in their second album “With The Beatles” in 1963) and supported The Stones to their first recording studio).
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The list could be longer; but these are just some of the aspects I would point out.
Let It Be and it will be… and we can work it out…
Be safe, Rodrigo