“They Didn’t Ask Permission — They Changed the Rules Instead.” In a quiet reflection that reframes everything we thought we knew about the Beatles, Paul McCartney looks back on the moment pop music stopped playing it safe and began listening to the unfamiliar. There were no guarantees, no roadmap, and no certainty the audience would follow — only tape loops, strange lectures, radical ideas, and a shared belief that listeners could be trusted with more than a conventional melody. What emerged wasn’t just experimentation for its own sake, but a turning point where popular music crossed an invisible line, carrying millions with it before anyone realized how far they’d gone.
“We decided that our audiences would come along with us, rather than it being down to us to feed them a conventional diet”: Paul McCartney on how the ’60s avant-garde influenced the Beatles (Image credit: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)) Paul McCartney has been talking about how exposure to avant-garde music enhanced the Beatles in the late ’60s and … Read more