How did The Beatles get to Carnegie Hall?
Was 10,000 hours practice really the key?
‘Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.’ Malcolm Gladwell Outliers (2008)
Genius has to be founded on major talent but it adds a raging ambition… an ability to not only astonish your audience but yourself. Jan Swafford Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (2014)
What is the secret sauce shared by those mavens whose achievements leave a lasting impression on the world. Gladwell’s thesisthesis is essentially an reboot of the old formula: genius is 98% perspiration, 2% innate talent.
And Malcolm has crunched the numbers or rather Anders Ericsson has. These suggest that the minimum entry requirement for the top table is 10,000 hours preparation.
It’s a pleasing idea, an affirmation of the sermon preached in ten thousand classrooms. Grafters will get their reward and slackers their comeuppance. Want to get to Carnegie Hall? Then put down the playstation and apply yourself to those scales.
Only what about The Beatles, sir? They didn’t even bother taking lessons.
Mr Gladwell smiles serenely. The Fab Four are his star exhibit.
The Star Club
The Beatles undoubtedly did the hard yards, performing live in Hamburg, over 1,200 times in just two years 1960-1962. Most of these sets were long, many all night but this punishing schedule paid off.
Before the Reeperbahn boot camp The Beatles were raw and shambolic playing an hour here and another there. They were barely distinguishable from other local bands in an overcrowded market but
by the time they returned to England , they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.
In practical terms they re-entered Liverpool as local headliners with an (import) single credit (albeit to The Beat Brothers).
The marathon session clearly contributed to this transformation. But were they the decisive factor in their world conquering success? If so, why was Pete Best working in a meat factory in the late 1960s? Yes, he was a little less reliable than the others — any Ringo sick note always came from a hospital bed — but Best still comfortably cleared the 10,000 hour barrier.
As did Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the biggest group in Liverpool and Hamburg at the time when Ringo left them. Lasting fame remained out of reach for their aspirant star (born Alan Caldwell). And how do you explain the downward trajectory of Tony ‘the teacher’ Sheridan’s career? The more gigs he played, the further he slithered away from his initial Oh Boy TV triumph.
It is also important to clarify the definition of ‘practice’ here. For a classical musician this would combine the study of theory and the controlled, solitary exercises in playing pieces tailored to the level of attaiment. Progress would be measured by scores mastered, exams passed and other formal assessment mechanisms.
That wasn’t how The Beatles rolled. None of them read music or had any desire to. They didn’t sign up for the music classes at school and only had a handful of private lessons between them
Nor were they especially dedicated as a gigging group. One (Lennon) that rehearsing stage performance was not an activity for ‘grown men’.
Another (R Starr) had a similar attitude to ‘practicing on my own’ and ‘almost never did it’. An only child he had no desire to retreat even further into solitude. Music has always been communal for him
George did put in the long hours to learning the guitar — a literally painful process in his case. But his approach was pragmatic enerally practised with a specific purpose in mind — for an instrumental break perhaps or, more broadly, to master new forms of instrumentation, most notably the sitar.
Paul was acknowledged by the others as the most technically accomplished all-round musician — a source of admiration and perhaps slight resentment. But his technical skills were always applied judiciously. George was the lead guitarist on most Beatles records because his meticulous, understated approach was usually the ideal fit for them.
Apprenticeship
Hamburg was, therefore, a musical apprenticeship — minus those boring theory bits or the need to pitch up at a college once a week. It was on-the-job training, and a crash-course in how to be a professional musician. They they did have a tutor of sorts (Tony Sheridan) albeit one that tended to think with his fists. He became an anti-role model in this respect — fighting with audience members you imagine are ‘looking at your bird’ is not good for business.
The Sheridan Academy curriculum — stagecraft, how to get paid, how not to deal with fame etc — was a vital grounding. It left them with more options — but still light years from where they would end up in less than two years
So what did turn the tide? Multiple factors including talent, context and making the right choices (employing Bryan, being one). He was an outstanding personal mentor while George Martin was an unbeatable master when it came to their training in studio recording.
Luck also played a major part. Norman’s comment that they ‘sounded like no one else’ was less to do with their number of practice hours than the idiosyncratic way that they played.
The two left-handers (Paul and Ringo) had both adapted right-handed instruments. Lennon leaned towards open rather than barre chord shapes having started on banjo. Their chord progressions were also distinctive, particularly on their own compositions. Their extraordinary harmonic compatability was a gift from the gods.
A higgedly-piggedly musical training also lead them to explore rule-breaking options others didn’t consider — something noted by Bernstein. Ironically, Beatles tribute bands (a prospect they certainly never envisaged) are now obliged treat their arrangements as sacrosanct.
Roll over Beethoven
Perhaps most crucial of all is something also noted by Gladwell:
a kind of foolish, adolescent self-belief; an ignorant, intuitive certainty that your way is the right way — is the root of all great art
On the set of Help, George Harrison was irritated his bandmate endlessly fiddling with a new song called Yesterday. “Who does he think he is?” he muttered sotto voce, “Beethoven?”
Harrison was inadvertently onto something. What all super-achieving-big dogs share is an indestructible self-belief when it come to their talent. Beethoven never doubted his music, whatever the wreckage in the rest of his life. The Beatles knew they had what it took to make it, even when they were still playing church halls.
Most of us could do a million hours practice and still not get to Carnegie Hall. The Beatles performed two 35 minute concerts there between the first and second Ed Sullivan shows.
They were too big to ever play there again.
