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Sep 18, 2009 By Aaron Passman

After enduring a summer of forced nostalgia for the 40th anniversary of Woodstock—a cultural watershed that becomes less relevant each time the baby boomers regurgitate it with an over-inflated sense of self-importance—we've come back to a musical moment worth celebrating: Beatlemania.

 

At least as far as the media is concerned, the release of The Beatles: Rock Band video game (and new editions of the band's complete catalog) has generated the most sustained burst of modern Beatlemania since The Beatles Anthology aired on ABC in November 1995. While that documentary was roughly tied to Beatlemania's 30-year anniversary, the Rock Band frenzy is part of a much bigger and much more American ideal: capitalism.

 

The reissues and box sets will surely sell briskly—never underestimate the public's willingness to re-buy a Beatles product they already own—but it's Rock Band that's destined to be the larger phenomenon. Despite prices ranging from $50 to $250, depending upon whether you're buying the bare bones or deluxe edition, the set is destined to be the season's must-have item and the year's most un-findable holiday gift. All of which is to be expected, but it ignores the larger shift that comes with introducing the next generation of Beatles fans to the music in an entirely new way—one that makes the music secondary to the medium.

 

Like so many others, as a kid discovering the band, if I wanted more Beatles, there was basically only one way to get it: the albums. So you went out and bought them and played them over and over, and everything else you heard seemed a little less special after that, because you knew the Beatles had done it first. (To this day the proper order of Revolver still feels slightly off to me, having fallen in love with the album after purchasing it on cassette with a rearranged tracklist). And if buying an album wasn't quite scratching that itch then there were tapes of rare recordings, the Anthology set, Live at the BBC, Past Masters, and more. But generally you got the music as it was originally meant to be heard.

 

Not anymore.

 

For the tweens and teens coming at many of these songs for the first time, Rock Band alters the context of those revelatory encounters, so that rather than actually experiencing the music—poring over it, listening with headphones, marveling at the sonic tricks and innovations—it's literally a game. The Cavern Club becomes something you've got to get through before you play Shea Stadium, "Eight Days A Week" has to be mastered before you get to "I Am the Walrus," and so forth.

 

In short, interacting with the music becomes more about using than listening.

 

There's nothing wrong with approaching a band from the standpoint of its singles and best-known tracks—that's how popular music has historically been marketed, after all. But when you bought the album you got not only the songs you knew you wanted, but the stuff you didn't know you wanted—much of which was even better than the tracks you were familiar with.  

 

There's less surprise with Rock Band; the game comes pre-loaded with 45 songs from across their career, with another 31 available to download at $1.99 a pop. The game may well lead an entirely new generation to purchase Beatles discs and repeat the same experience of previous generations, but I'm not optimistic.

 

(To be fair, the entirety of Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road make up the bulk of those 31 additional downloads, but buying them that way isn't really the same as buying the album, is it?)

 

After all, The Beatles were among the first rock groups to pioneer "the album," yet as a new brood of music fans wraps their heads around this material for the first time, that format appears to be on its way out, replaced by the ubiquitous 99-cent digital single.

 

As far as authentic visceral experiences go, making music ranks fairly near the top, but there's no way a game can truly replicate that, no matter how good the technology is. Even if you get the same hair-raising thrill at moments like the bridge of "Hello Goodbye" or those ringing electric guitar notes at the close of "Strawberry Fields Forever," it's not the real thing. Call it the modern musical equivalent of a flight-simulator: sure, you may be "piloting the plane," but you're not feeling the G-force. Playing the songs as a game rather than as music takes away the mystery of "How did they do that?" and replaces it with "How do you do that?" and in turn progress to the next level.

 

Funnily, now that Beatlemania has risen again, Oasis, the Fab Four's greatest imitators, appear to have called it a day. Having ascended to fame around the same time as The Beatles Anthology, the Gallagher brothers seem to have finally given up after one fight too many and a career built on pilfering any Beatles idea they could grab.

 

Oasis make a great case against Rock Band: if Liam and Noel had had access to something similar they might not have been the band they became (whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate). If they'd been able to sit in the living room and knock back lagers while piddling around with buttons and plastic guitars, they would've merely reproduced exact copies of Beatles songs. Rather, it took using real instruments to work out the mechanics of music—the hows and whys of what makes a great pop song—for the brothers to produce almost exact copies of Beatles songs. Everyone has their own opinion on Oasis, but it's pretty hard to argue with even their latter-day highlights such as "She Is Love," let alone bona fide classics like "Live Forever" and "Wonderwall."

 

Everybody knows the old saw about the Velvet Underground—they didn't sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band. Well everybody did—and still does—buy Beatles records and, for better or worse, a hell of a lot of bands were formed because of them. But those kids played real guitars and wrote their own songs and took drugs and over time turned into the Velvets and Bowie and The Ramones and more, which in the end moved rock music to where it is today—something a video game has a scant chance of doing.

 

Tomorrow's Beatles—or at least tomorrow's Oasis—may be sitting in a basement somewhere thrashing out "Helter Skelter" on their plastic guitars, but if the game fails to move them beyond that then it will have wasted in its greatest opportunity.