The world end­ed in the nine­teen-six­ties. Or rather, one world end­ed in the nine­teen-six­ties and gave way to anoth­er, a tran­si­tion per­son­i­fied by no human beings more clear­ly than the Bea­t­les. “They are light­ning rods for so much that makes the six­ties a rev­o­lu­tion­ary decade,” says The Rest Is His­to­ry pod­cast co-host Tom Hol­land in the video above. “In all kinds of ways, in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, we’re liv­ing in the after­math of what hap­pened in the six­ties, rather like peo­ple in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry were liv­ing in the after­math of what hap­pened in the fif­teen-twen­ties.” Many of the show’s reg­u­lar lis­ten­ers will grasp that anal­o­gy imme­di­ate­ly, though per­haps few­er of those who’ve tuned in to this espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar episode, in which Hol­land recounts the com­plete his­to­ry of the Bea­t­les with Conan O’Brien.

O’Brien has nev­er made a secret of his Bea­t­les obses­sion, but here he demon­strates it defin­i­tive­ly by sup­ply­ing most of the details of the band’s sto­ry him­self. (That goes even for rel­a­tive­ly obscure ones: he men­tions, for exam­ple, the score Paul McCart­ney com­posed for the film The Fam­i­ly Way, fea­tured ear­li­er this year on Open Cul­ture.) He also man­ages to win the triv­ia con­test against Hol­land at Abbey Road Stu­dios in the video just above, but then, he’d been study­ing in one sense or anoth­er for quite some time. A decade ago, he held his own in con­ver­sa­tion with Mark Lewisohn, the first vol­ume of whose painstak­ing three-part Bea­t­les biog­ra­phy comes to near­ly a thou­sand pages in the abridged edi­tion. That was on his YouTube inter­view series Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber, the pre­de­ces­sor to his cur­rent pod­cast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

Hol­land and his co-host Dominic Sand­brook appeared on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend last fall. They may have seemed an odd choice in a guest ros­ter con­sist­ing most­ly of come­di­ans, actors, and musi­cians, but O’Brien him­self has declared The Rest Is His­to­ry “the best pod­cast in the world,” and their shows’ fan bases turn out not to be mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. That wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion went stim­u­lat­ing­ly enough to inspire a com­ple­tion of the crossover just a few months there­after, when Hol­land brought O’Brien to Abbey Road for an hour and a half of noth­ing but talk about the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the Bea­t­les, whom O’Brien declares “a com­plete break from what hap­pened before.” (Sand­brook, the rare non-appre­ci­a­tor of the Fab Four, absent­ed him­self from the dis­cus­sion.)

O’Brien prais­es books like Lewisohn’s, as well as Ian Leslie’s more recent John & Paul: A Love Sto­ry in Songs, but his under­stand­ing of the group as a his­tor­i­cal phe­nom­e­non sug­gests that he’s also read the work of crit­ic Ian Mac­Don­ald. After Revolver, “it seemed to West­ern youth that The Bea­t­les knew — that they had the key to cur­rent events and were some­how orches­trat­ing them through their records.” So Mac­Don­ald writes in his book Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head: The Bea­t­les’ Records and the Six­ties, whose title refers to “the true rev­o­lu­tion of the Six­ties”: an uncon­scious men­tal adap­ta­tion to the pas­sage from a local real­i­ty of “con­sen­sus, hier­ar­chy, and fixed val­ues” to a glob­al one of indi­vid­u­al­ism, sen­sa­tion­al­ism, and “jeal­ous­ly lev­eled stan­dards.” The Bea­t­les did­n’t cause those changes, as they them­selves well under­stood. But they accept­ed the roles of its avatars, and more than 60 years after the rise of Beat­le­ma­nia, we still live in the world they rep­re­sent­ed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 17-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bea­t­les Songs: 338 Tracks Let You Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of the Icon­ic Band

How the Bea­t­les Made their Most Acclaimed Album, Revolver, Released 60 Years Ago This Month

How the Bea­t­les Wrote Their Songs: From Ear­ly Demos to Final Record­ings

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Conan O’Brien Writes Chica­go Blues Songs With School Kids

Conan O’Brien Plays Char­lie Rose, Talks Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry with Edmund Mor­ris

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Among Bea­t­les con­nois­seurs, it’s fair game to claim any­thing from Rub­ber Soul to Abbey Road as one’s favorite album. But even with­in that span of the cat­a­log, a hier­ar­chy of acclaim exists, and that hier­ar­chy has been rearranged over the decades. The ecsta­t­ic recep­tion of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band last­ed at least a decade. By the turn of the nine­teen-eight­ies, its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor Revolver had joined it at the top spot of crit­i­cal regard; twen­ty years after that, Abbey Road had dis­placed Sgt. Pep­per. Now, a full 60 years after it first came out, Revolver is the sin­gle Bea­t­les album held in the high­est esteem — which, nat­u­ral­ly, makes it a seri­ous con­tender for the great­est album ever record­ed.

In his new video above, music YouTu­ber David Hart­ley explains what makes Revolver so beloved by recount­ing the his­to­ry of its pro­duc­tion. As in his pre­vi­ous Bea­t­les videos, he draws on the library of stu­dio out­takes that make audi­ble the evo­lu­tion of each song, as well as on con­tem­po­rary inter­views with the Bea­t­les and their col­lab­o­ra­tors.

Among his most illu­mi­nat­ing sources is engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick­’s mem­oir Here, There, and Every­where — titled, inci­den­tal­ly after one of the songs on this very album, the chal­lenge of whose record­ing he took on at just twen­ty years old. In the event, his youth proved an asset, grant­i­ng him as it did the will­ing­ness not just to exe­cute the Bea­t­les’ “far-out” son­ic ideas, but also to vio­late EMI Stu­dios’ poli­cies against exper­i­men­tal use of its hard­ware in the process.

Indeed, if it was pos­si­ble in 1966, it seems to have been tried in the mak­ing of Revolver. As Hart­ley reveals, “I’m Only Sleep­ing” once fea­tured a vibra­phone, “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” once began with a spo­ken-word intro, and “And Your Bird Can Sing” once kept get­ting inter­rupt­ed by uncon­trol­lable and quite pos­si­bly sub­stance-induced laugh­ter. Nei­ther these nor any of the album’s oth­er now-famil­iar, much-scru­ti­nized songs took straight paths to their final forms. Into a run­time of only 35 min­utes, the Bea­t­les man­aged to put every­thing from “a chil­dren’s sin­ga­long song” to “a song com­plain­ing about all the mon­ey they were pay­ing in tax­es” to “a song about lone­li­ness” to “a song about lazi­ness” — while also trans­mit­ting the “great feel­ing of joy” for which their oeu­vre is known. Revolver’s place in the canon of albums is secure, but will it still be con­sid­ered the band’s best work on its 70th anniver­sary? Tomor­row, as they say, nev­er knows.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Bea­t­les Wrote Their Songs: From Ear­ly Demos to Final Record­ings

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows: How The Bea­t­les Invent­ed the Future With Stu­dio Mag­ic, Tape Loops & LSD

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

The World’s Great­est Song That Sim­ply Shouldn’t Exist: The Mak­ing of The Bea­t­les’ “A Day in the Life”

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

The Kinks’ Ray Davies Reviews the Bea­t­les’ 1966 Album Revolver; Calls It “A Load of Rub­bish”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Cast your mind back to the dis­tant year 2021 and recall, if you will, its music, its fash­ions, the obses­sions of its youth. This prob­a­bly won’t be a dif­fi­cult task, since in most respects — the damp­en­ing effects of the pan­dem­ic notwith­stand­ing — none of those aspects of pop­u­lar cul­ture seem any dif­fer­ent today. Yet rough­ly the same time span sep­a­rat­ed Scott McKen­zie’s “San Fran­cis­co (Be Sure to Wear Flow­ers in Your Hair)” and David Bowie’s “Star­man.” 1967 was the year of the Sum­mer of Love; by 1972, accord­ing to most reck­on­ings, the cul­tur­al era known as the Six­ties was, if not quite over, then at least clear­ly in its final days. The hip­pies were on their way down, and glam rock­ers had arisen to take their place with a vengeance.

In less than half an hour, the new video from Band­splain­ing tells the whole sto­ry of glam rock, “the gen­der-bend­ing pro­to-punk move­ment that was hat­ed by the press and crim­i­nal­ly under­played in the U.S.” It begins in the 1970s, a time when the mar­ket for long-play­ing records was robust, but sin­gles had fall­en behind as a youth-ori­ent­ed pop-cul­tur­al form.

Into that vac­u­um stepped T. Rex, a one­time avant-garde folk duo rein­vent­ed as a straight-ahead rock band bent on reviv­ing that genre as it row­di­ly was before the Bea­t­les came along. When they hit it big, oth­er acts imi­tat­ed not just their bluesy sound, but the androg­y­nous, brazen­ly fab­ri­ca­tion-for­ward image of front­man Marc Bolan. Prac­ti­cal­ly overnight, the name of the game changed from earnest self-expres­sion to out­landish self-cre­ation.

Oth­er bands reshaped by this glam rock move­ment, as it was soon dubbed in the British media, includ­ed Slade, The Sweet, and Mott the Hoople. “My broth­er’s back at home with his Bea­t­les and his Stones,” sang that last out­fit in their break­out hit. “We nev­er got it off on that rev­o­lu­tion stuff.” That song, “All the Young Dudes,” had been writ­ten by the sin­gle most defin­ing glam-rock fig­ure: David Bowie, who him­self shot to promi­nence in the thor­ough­ly anti-Six­ties guise of Zig­gy Star­dust, the bisex­u­al, syn­thet­ics-clad rock­er from out­er space who swag­gered as if already famous across the uni­verse. With­in a few years, Bowie’s anten­na for the zeit­geist would have him retir­ing Zig­gy Star­dust and ditch­ing glam rock, a genre whose flame burned as bril­liant­ly — and indeed gar­ish­ly — as it did briefly. But in pop music, its char­ac­ter­is­tic lack of sociopo­lit­i­cal ideals, obses­sion with fame, and casu­al rela­tion­ship with real­i­ty were here to stay.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Zig­gy Star­dust Turns 50: Cel­e­brate David Bowie’s Sig­na­ture Char­ac­ter with a New­ly Released Ver­sion of “Star­man”

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Star­man” on Top of the Pops: Vot­ed the Great­est Music Per­for­mance Ever on the BBC (1972)

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

Fred­die Mer­cury: The Untold Sto­ry of the Singer’s Jour­ney From Zanz­ibar to Star­dom

Meet the Char­ac­ters Immor­tal­ized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Rights Icons from Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry Scene

The His­to­ry of Rock Told in a Whirl­wind 15-Minute Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.