Forty years after their breakup, The Beatles remain the most popular band in history. Their fans range from kids to old-timers; their complete recordings will be reissued in September as lavish box sets; and their style is imitated and echoed by musicians around the world. But is that entirely a good thing?

There’s no arguing with the Beatles’ talent, or the fact that they created an amazing body of work. But their success also sparked fundamental changes in American popular music, including the triumph of records over live performance and a racial split that’s never been mended.

Neither of those changes could have been predicted by their early success. The Beatles’ live TV appearances and their witty interviews had as much to do with their American achievements as their hit records did. Plus, they were outspoken about their admiration for African-American musicians, from Muddy Waters to the Miracles.

By 1966, though, they had retired to the recording studio to mix their electric guitars with sitar and classical orchestrations, singing poetic lyrics about psychedelic submarines and the loneliness of urban life. Critics hailed them for elevating the teenage rowdiness of rock ‘n’ roll into a mature art form. But most of those critics had never much liked rock ‘n’ roll in the first place, and cared more about listening than dancing.

Up to that time, virtually all the defining shifts in American pop music had been linked to new dance rhythms. The perky syncopation of ragtime gave way to the wilder drums of jazz, the streamlined swing of the big bands and the electrified beat of rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock historians often claim that beat was silenced in the late 1950s, as Elvis entered the army, Chuck Berry went to jail and Little Richard got religion — and that The Beatles rescued American teens from the vapidity of Fabian and Frankie Avalon. But the dancers tell a different story: In the early ’60s, the twist arrived, and with it the rocking Latin-gospel fusions of the Isley Brothers and Booker T. and the MGs.

By 1963, rock ‘n’ roll had become the most racially integrated style in American history. Motown was sweeping the country, Ray Charles and James Brown had cracked the pop LP charts, and “girl groups” from the Shirelles to the Shangri-Las were breaking the color line in both directions. That year, Billboard magazine stopped publishing separate R&B and Pop charts because white and black tastes were so thoroughly overlapping.

The Beatles and their British Invasion peers loved African-American music, and at first they tried to keep up with the current styles. But polyrhythmic complexity was not their strong suit, and they soon realized that it made more sense to go in another direction. So, as Brown signaled yet another rhythmic shift with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” The Beatles recorded “Yesterday.”

It was the dawn of a new kind of rock, which replaced dance rhythms with innovative harmonies, instrumentation and songwriting. And as a generation of white rockers followed the Beatles’ model, American pop became more segregated than ever before. Within a year of their US debut, Billboard brought back the R&B chart, recognizing that the integrated world of rock ‘n’ roll was splitting into separate worlds of rock and soul.

Many black artists did their best to maintain the interchange that had existed since the ragtime era, recording songs by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, and even the Archies. But the pop world that had fostered that interchange was disappearing.

As long as dance clubs had relied on live music, any working band had to be able to play all the current styles. Even the squarest white dance bands had learned to play swing — and, later on, some kind of twist — and even the hippest black orchestras played at least a few waltzes and pop ballads.

The Beatles themselves had started out in that world, playing a repertoire that ranged from old pop standards to rumbas, rockabilly and Motown hits. But when their music moved beyond anything they (or anyone else) could perform at gigs, and they quit touring forever, signaling that records, rather than live shows, now defined the pop mainstream.

In hindsight, it’s hard to understand what a huge shift that was. Virtually all present-day pop fans would rather dance to their favorite records than to versions of the same songs played by a “cover” band. But before the later Beatles era, pretty much everyone considered records a second-rate substitute for live musicians.

As that changed, rock performers stopped playing dance gigs, and their live shows essentially became promotional events for their latest album. By the ’70s, no one expected a rock band to keep up with what was happening in black music, or on the racially integrated disco dance floors. And the people making dance records found that they could be equally ignorant of what was happening in rock.

That is the world we’ve lived in ever since. No one in the early ’60s could have imagined American pop becoming so segregated that 40 years of rock would include barely a half-dozen successful black players, or that 30 years of hip-hop could attract a huge interracial audience without producing more than two or three white stars. Nor could they have foreseen a future in which pop fans, instead of flocking to concerts, shut themselves up in a private world of earphones and MP3s.

The Beatles are not to blame for all of that. But they have become symbols of an era that a lot of people look back on as a golden age of musical revolution. And if they’re going to get credit for their triumphs, they should also bear at least some of the responsibility for what was lost.

Elijah Wald is a musician and writer. His new book is “How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music.”

http://nypost.com/2009/07/12/how-the-beatles-destroyed-rock-n-roll/

Yeah it's too bad the 50s couldn't go on forever.

I think some of the cultural shifts he's talking about did happen but they would have happened with or without the Beatles at the top of the record industry heap. Records replacing live performance happenned as the nation got more prosperous in the post war era, people could buy records and record players, and you have the birth of teen culture. Segregated playlists started to happen as the marketing people took over the record biz. Innovative harmonies, the Beach Boys were already way ahead of the Beatles in 64. And I don't see evidence that the integrated pop scene is disintegrating by the time Beatles break up, you still have white groups playing blues and R&B covers, you still have black artists covering white pop songs in 1969. Off the top of my head that's the year the Sones do Love In Vain, the Who do Eyesight to the Blind and Zeppelin do about 10 old blues songs. But the Beatles get blamed for "a racial split that's never been mended"? Seriously? Like racial things were a lot better in 1962?

Respectfull, I disagree with the piece, but it was an interesting point of view, thanks for posting.

I'd say it was the Beatles fans that destroyed Rock N Roll.

I think that Elvis himself destroyed Rock'n'Roll when he started to sing things like "It's now or never" and became an Hollywood safe clown.