The Beatles: Nothing is Real

Clinton Van Inman gets back to the psychedelic Sixties.

- Clinton Van Inman

“It was more than sixty years ago today when Sgt Pepper taught the band to play.” Well, that’s not quite right. Sgt Pepper wasn’t the band’s first album, and it even came a few years after the Beatles’ breakthrough U.S. appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Still, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band marked a turn for John Lennon and Paul McCartney towards a more philosophical style of songwriting. The world has never been the same since. Their songs still reverberate throughout the ages like no others, with lyrics laced with profound thoughts on

themes of peace, freedom, authenticity, alienation, protest, and love. Most people have never read or even heard of Kant or Hegel, but most know some Beatles slogans, like 'Let it Be' or 'All you need is Love'. Though not deemed philosophers in the traditional sense, their ideas contribute much to popular thought especially popular existentialism. Their songs are an attempt to crawl out of our modern dead end of absurdity, meaningless, and doubt, to perhaps find something more than 'misunderstanding all you see' (Strawberry Fields Forever).

Almost every Beatles song can be interpreted philosophically, but my favourite album (along with millions of other fans) has always been Magical Mystery Tour (1967). This album has been banned, criticized, ridiculed, and censored so much it’s amazing that it has survived.

Like its name, it remains a most baffling album. It’s about a tour bus travelling about England, and it provides a delightful odyssey – but not like Homer, more like Monty Python!