532
RICHARD POIRIER
guidance, however much the latter did help in rescuing them from
the tawdry enslavement to Elvis Presley, an otherwise profitable
influence, in their first, fortunately hard-to-find recording of 1961
made in Hamburg with Ringo's predecessor at the drums, Peter Best.
As
is the taste of all great performers - in athletics, in politics,
in any of the
arts -
the taste of the Beatles or of Dylan is an emana–
tion of personality, of a self that is the generous master but never the
creature of its audience. Taste in such instances is inseparable from
a stubbornness of selfhood, and it doesn't matter that the self has been
invented for the theater. Any self is invented as soon as any purpose
is conceived. But the Beatles are a special case in not being
a
self at
all. They are a group, and the unmistakeable group identity exists
almost in spite of sharp individuation, each of them, except the in–
visible Martin, known to be unique in some shaggy way. There are
few other groups in which even one or two of the members are as
publicly recognizable as any of the Beatles, and this can't be explain–
ed as a difference simply in public relations. It is precisely this un–
usual individuation which explains, I think, why the Beatles are so
much stronger than any other group and why they don't need, like
the Who, to play at animosities on stage. The pretense doesn't com–
municate the presence of individual Who but rather an anxiety at
their not instinctively feeling like individuals when they are together.
The Beatles, on the other hand, enhance the individuality of one
another by the sheer elaborateness by which they arrive at a cohesive
sound and by a musical awareness of one another that isn't distin–
guishable from the multiple directions allowed in the attainment of
harmony. Like members of a great athletic team, like such partners
in dance as Nureyev and Fonteyn or like some jazz combos, the
Beatles in performance seem to draw their aspirations and theil
energy not from the audience but from one another. Their close, loyal
and affectionate personal ties are of course not irrelevant.
The incentive for what they accomplish seems to be sequestered
among them, a tensed responsiveness that encourages from Harrison,
as in "And Your Bird Can Sing," what sounds like the best guitar
playing in the world and which provokes the immense productivity
of Lennon and McCartney. The amount they have composed might
be
explained by commercial venture but not the daring and original–
ity of each new single or album. Of course the promise of "new
