MONDAY, 4 AUGUST 2003
Why were the Beatles “larger than life”? Because they did what they liked and what they believed in. And because they spent most of their productive time on it, their abilities were exponentially sharpened.
The fact that their creations – their particular type of music – was in demand at the time certainly helped. But the fact remains that they engaged themselves, on a full-time basis, with that which they felt most strongly about, that in which they truly believed. As a result, they reached a level of artistic ability any talented, creative person can achieve if he or she busy themselves with what they like most, for the greater part of what is considered a normal workday.
Proper marketing and the talents of other people also played a pivotal role in their commercial success. But if the individual members of the group had to put in eight hours a day at some factory in Liverpool and then work on their music in the evenings – after dinner and a little TV, not even the best wizards of marketing would have been able to sell their necessarily more mediocre work to the masses.
The Beatles were thus as extraordinary as they had become because they succeeded in an ideal synthesis – creative excellence and commercial success.
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[For readers who insist on technical accuracy it should again be emphasised that the Beatles’ story worked as well as it did because what they had spent most of their time on with such passion and enthusiasm had commercial value.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for everyone to spend the biggest part of a “working day” on that for which we save our greatest passion and conviction because we still need money. And if what we spend most of our time on – masterpiece or no masterpiece – cannot occasionally be traded for cash, we still need to do something else for the sake of physical survival.]
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