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Radiohead And The Beatles

A defining album in the history of Rock music was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released by The Beatles in 1967. In fact, the album was recently ranked #1 on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” According to the editors of Rolling Stone, one of the main reasons that the album was so influential, and thus deserving of number one of all time, was that it was innovative in a number of ways. It brought new recording techniques to the forefront of popularity, it changed the way all future album covers were designed, and most importantly, it helped to transform rock music from something which people danced to, to music which was perceived publicly as a more serious art form. This more serious music appealed to listeners with a new musical attitude. This attitude is what Professor John Covach calls, the “hippie aesthetic.” The Beatle’s transformation from a mere pop band, albeit a very talented one, to a band with such a long-lasting impact on music took place once they began recording music in accordance with the “hippie aesthetic.” This change was in part facilitated by technological advances in recording. The hippie aesthetic continues in rock music today overt thirty years later with another technologically innovative British band, Radiohead.
A major underlying component of the hippie aesthetic is the idea that music should have a purpose. By 1966, the Beatles were growing tired of touring and performing the same old pop-oriented act over and over again. They were tired of being known as a mere pop band, and they were tired of fans going to concerts to see the band members and not for the music. They believed that pop could aspire to be a "better" or more sophisticated form of music. To accomplish this, they stopped touring and spent the rest of their remaining time together as a group in the recording studio. To fulfill their musical ambition, the Beatles turned to techniques and approaches commonly found in other...