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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast AM. I'm your host,

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Speaker 2: Rich Parer. This evening, our guest is Mark Break and

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Speaker 2: I think it's great that we have Mark Break on

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Speaker 2: because I know that in my years of playing out

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Speaker 2: with bands, whenever we've finished, I know a lot of musicians,

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Speaker 2: a lot of touring musicians, and people gig and they

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Speaker 2: get off of their shows and they listen to Coast

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Speaker 2: to Coast AM. I always thought there was a great

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Speaker 2: connection between music and Coast to Coast Maybe it's the

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Speaker 2: mystery of magic from music that brings it all together.

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Speaker 2: But I think this is going to be really cool tonight.

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Speaker 2: But let's talk about Mark Break and let's bring him on.

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Speaker 2: He's communicating science through film, television, print and radio on

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Speaker 2: five continents, including for NASA, Seattle Science Fiction Museum, the BBC,

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Speaker 2: the Royal Institution in Sky Movies. His books include the

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Speaker 2: Science of series, namely The Science of Harry Potter, The

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Speaker 2: Science of Star Wars, The Science of Superheroes in now

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Speaker 2: the Science of the Beatles. I'm very excited to talk

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Speaker 2: to our guests. Let's welcome Mark break to the show.

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Speaker 2: Hey Mark, nice to meet you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah you too, Ritch, Good morning.

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Speaker 2: Good morning. I'm wondering as we talk, why do we

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Speaker 2: even like music? Is there a science behind that?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Well, that's an excellent question as to why music evolved.

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Speaker 3: Scientists haven't quite yet worked that out because we're the

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Speaker 3: only species of all the animals on the earth that

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Speaker 3: actually listen to music in the way that we do.

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Speaker 3: There are a number of different theories, but it remains

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Speaker 3: a mystery to some extent that there are some theories,

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Speaker 3: but there's no perfect explanation, which I think is quite

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Speaker 3: neat in the way.

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Speaker 2: Don't you think I did too.

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Speaker 3: Two.

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Speaker 2: I've spent many hours in studios as a musician myself,

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Speaker 2: and some of my favorite musicians that I sit with

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Speaker 2: we talk about, well, nobody really even knows where music

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Speaker 2: comes from. So are you really when you say you

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Speaker 2: wrote a song, did you really write it? Or is

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Speaker 2: it already there and you're just you're just pulling it

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Speaker 2: out of the ether. Because you hear that all the

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Speaker 2: time with artists. In fact, you hear Paul McCartney talk

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Speaker 2: about how yesterday it just came to him in a

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Speaker 2: dream and he thought it was maybe somebody else's song.

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Speaker 2: Now I personally do that too, where i'll I'll come

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Speaker 2: up with something I'm like, well, did I write that?

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Speaker 2: Or did I write somebody else's song that they already

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Speaker 2: wrote that I heard and forgot about. But I mean

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Speaker 2: the Beatles, if they were doing that, they were doing

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Speaker 2: it at a level that nobody else in the history

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Speaker 2: of the world. Besides maybe js Bach has accomplished.

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Speaker 3: Well, you just made me think about the deja vu

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Speaker 3: when somebody has deja vu code the scientists what deja

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Speaker 3: vu actually is. It's not you remembering the same memory again.

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Speaker 3: It's you being consciously aware of a memory as it's

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Speaker 3: been laid down. Okay, so you're actually you're actually conscious

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Speaker 3: of a memory track being set down in your mind

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Speaker 3: as it's happening, rather than remembering something else. And I'm

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Speaker 3: wondering if a song like Yesterday by Paul McCartney is

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Speaker 3: actually McCartney being aware of the memory of a song

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Speaker 3: as he's creating it, rather than remembering an old one.

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Speaker 3: That makes any sense?

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Speaker 2: Well it does, But that is quite a brain trick,

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Speaker 2: isn't it. Yeah, absolutely, And that's really that's an obscene

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Speaker 2: amount of talent to come up with that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember, I mean when he was awarded with

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Speaker 3: the what was it called it, It was called the Library

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Speaker 3: of Congress Juichemin Price for Popular Music. When McCartney was

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Speaker 3: awarded for that in twenty ten by President Obama, Obama

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Speaker 3: pointed out that McCartney had composed almost two hundred songs

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Speaker 3: that had made the charts, two hundred and those songs

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Speaker 3: had stayed on the charts for a cumulative total of

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Speaker 3: thirty two years, which I thought was stunning.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there is something about the staying power that Beatles.

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Speaker 2: I was thinking about this a lot because we've had

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Speaker 2: you on our list for I mean probably booked for

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Speaker 2: about a month and a half now. So I really

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Speaker 2: did enjoy reading your book, The Science of the Beatles,

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Speaker 2: and it is linked up at coast to coast to

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Speaker 2: am by the way, and even if you don't fancy

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Speaker 2: yourself a Beatles fan, which I don't know why you wouldn't,

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Speaker 2: but if you're not, but you you can't argue with

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Speaker 2: the fact that those are some of the catchiest songs

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Speaker 2: of all time. They're played the best. That's why you

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Speaker 2: don't hear a ton of people trying to do Beatles

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Speaker 2: covers albums because there's the originals are so good it's

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Speaker 2: kind of hard to top them and to bring something different.

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Speaker 2: They're so complete. And what kind of fascinates me, and

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Speaker 2: you cover this in your book that a lot of

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Speaker 2: those those tracks in the early days were first takes.

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Speaker 2: They just went in and did it tell people about

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Speaker 2: how rare that is in the recording world?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's the first album, Please Please Meet

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Speaker 3: was recorded in twenty four hours, wasn't it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, basically the first take. They'd go back and like

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Speaker 2: Paul had add like a slide guitar on something, and

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Speaker 2: they add sound good, the first one sounds better, and

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Speaker 2: they ended up putting the lot of the first ones

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Speaker 2: on the album.

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Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, And so twenty four hours for the first

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Speaker 3: album and then of course much later in their career

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Speaker 3: they spend that amount of time on a single song.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well sure, and and well we'll get into that a

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Speaker 2: little bit as we unpack this, But I want to

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Speaker 2: I want to kind of go back to sort of

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Speaker 2: the beginning because I know that kind of growing up

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Speaker 2: in the I'm a I'm a gen X kid, so

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Speaker 2: kind of growing up in the eighties, I would hear

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Speaker 2: a lot of these shows. In fact, a shout out

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Speaker 2: to Rockline hosted by Bob Koburn. I used to listen

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Speaker 2: to it every Monday night and they'd have on, you know,

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Speaker 2: back back in this day, it would be bands like

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Speaker 2: Cheap Trick, Brian Adams, Hart and Toto and these bands

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Speaker 2: pretty much would all say there was a seismic boom

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Speaker 2: the night that they saw the Beatles on the Ed

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Speaker 2: Sullivan Show, and all these you know, three, four, five, six, seven,

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Speaker 2: eight year olds were captivated, and a lot of them

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Speaker 2: that you hear about said, well, that's what.

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Speaker 1: I want to do.

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Speaker 2: I mean, we would not have a lot of that

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Speaker 2: music if it weren't for that appearance on that show.

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Speaker 2: That that sort of changed everything. Can you take me back

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Speaker 2: to that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I've looked at a number of different reasons why

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Speaker 3: that was such an impact. I mean, I think one

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Speaker 3: of the things you have to realize is in the

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifties the idea of youth and youth culture was

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Speaker 3: certainly on the up. I remember reading that about in

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Speaker 3: the fifties about thirty five percent of the buying culture

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Speaker 3: in the United States was actually youth. So the young

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Speaker 3: people actually had money, and they had a budget to spend.

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Speaker 3: It's all with regard to the impact. Of course, it

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Speaker 3: has to be to do with the charisma of the

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Speaker 3: group themselves and the music. But it's also allegedly, according

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Speaker 3: to a lot of people, associated with the death of

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Speaker 3: Jaf Kennedy in November previous then the Beatles make an

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Speaker 3: appearance on Ed Sullivan in February of sixty four. Of course,

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Speaker 3: Gorsese has made that recent documentary about that. The Beatles

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Speaker 3: in sixty four documentary goes into all this kind of stuff,

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Speaker 3: and I think it's a combination of different factors that

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Speaker 3: made the impact so great. And of course we're talking

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Speaker 3: about seventy three million people.

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Speaker 2: Well it's really truly seventy three million people. Now you

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Speaker 2: you have a hit show. If a half a million

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Speaker 2: people watch it, I guess no. Streaming has changed everything,

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Speaker 2: of course, but those kind of numbers are just astounding.

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Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's almost Super Bowl numbers, isn't it.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and when you talked about in your intro,

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Speaker 3: when you were talking about record sales, I was listening

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Speaker 3: to you, and I made me think that the advanced

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Speaker 3: sales for Hey Jude was eight hundred thousand, so it's

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Speaker 3: so late hundred thousand before the records are released released.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that's quite impressive even heard it yet, Is that

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Speaker 2: what you say? Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Okay, so I

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Speaker 2: want to go let's go back to the beginning, because

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Speaker 2: you chose to write about things like Harry Potter and

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Speaker 2: Star Wars. But I'm trying to get a little sense

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Speaker 2: of your Mark Brigg is our guest, and he's written

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Speaker 2: the book The Science of the Beatles. Now, what was

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Speaker 2: your first exposure? It sounds like you might be from England,

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Speaker 2: so maybe maybe you were around back then kind of

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Speaker 2: hearing things for the first time too. When did you

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Speaker 2: first find yourself into the Beatles?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I mean I remember seeing the Beatles on

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Speaker 3: top of the Pops, which is a British program, British

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Speaker 3: music program, quite a long standing one. So I remember

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Speaker 3: seeing on top of the Pops. I was recently rooting

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Speaker 3: through some stuff in my attic and I found a

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Speaker 3: news book from primary school as we call it in England,

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Speaker 3: you know, kindergarten. I must have been about five years also,

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Speaker 3: this news book is from nineteen sixty five and in

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Speaker 3: the book, the kid has to write whatever's been on

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Speaker 3: the news. And I've actually got put this in the

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Speaker 3: in the Science of Beatles book at the front of

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Speaker 3: the book. The drawing that I did at the age

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Speaker 3: of about five or six all the Beatles on stage.

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Speaker 3: My drawing wasn't particularly good, to be honest, nor was

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Speaker 3: my spelling, but nonetheless it made such an impact on

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Speaker 3: everybody the year there was a kid drawing the Beatles

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Speaker 3: on stage and pleased to say that I had Paul

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Speaker 3: McCartney down as left handed. So I obviously I.

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Speaker 2: See that I'm looking at it right now that you

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Speaker 2: got the guitar facing the right way.

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Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. Yeah, as you can see as rather poor,

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Speaker 3: but you know what I mean. It's obviously made an

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Speaker 3: impression on my life very early, and I remember having

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Speaker 3: you could buy a Beatles wick made of plastic believer

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Speaker 3: or not, which is just basically a scale cap you

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Speaker 3: put on your head, and there's all sorts of things

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Speaker 3: you could that was the impact was so big. There's

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Speaker 3: all these things that were you know, you could buy.

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Speaker 2: And so that sort of got you interested. Now, why

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Speaker 2: did you choose to write a book about the science

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Speaker 2: of the Beatles?

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Speaker 3: Oh, A couple of things. First of all, I had

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Speaker 3: family members kept on saying to me they didn't really

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Speaker 3: understand what the fuss of the Beatles was about.

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Speaker 2: So I hear that every now and then, even from

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Speaker 2: musicians they're like, I don't know, if you know, like

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Speaker 2: they're such a big deal to me. And normally what

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Speaker 2: I think about when I hear that is that I

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Speaker 2: guess for most of us, we've heard that music our

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Speaker 2: entire lives, and we've heard it a lot. But at

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Speaker 2: some point you come to a spot where you're like, Hey,

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Speaker 2: I'm rediscovering that and that's pretty that's pretty great. That's

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Speaker 2: a great song, and you almost absolutely we forget to

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Speaker 2: give it credit.

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Speaker 3: I think they need to think about context in some senses.

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Speaker 3: I mean, without sounding a bit preachy to people like that.

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Speaker 3: If you think of a song like, oh, there's so

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Speaker 3: many of them, but a song like I Am the

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Speaker 3: Walrus or Tomorrow Never Knows or being for the benefit

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Speaker 3: of mister Kite on Sergeant Peppa. The sounds are so

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Speaker 3: complex and so and yet they made in nineteen sixty

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Speaker 3: seven with four tracks, two years ago.

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Speaker 2: With these four different tracks, right, so they keep on

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Speaker 2: bouncing things over and over again.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, very primitive technology, but hugely accomplished given

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Speaker 3: what they were actually using in the lab, and so

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Speaker 3: I called it the lab, which is often what I

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Speaker 3: do in the recording studio, which is like a lab.

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Speaker 2: Really sure, now it's it's one of my favorite. I

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Speaker 2: don't know if you've heard recently that Jill's Martin, George

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Speaker 2: Martin's son went and remastered some of the very first recordings.

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Speaker 2: They basically redid the Red album and the Blue Beatles album,

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Speaker 2: the two you know, double disc best ofs and it

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Speaker 2: sounds so good. When I'm listening to it, it's almost

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Speaker 2: like you're hearing it for the first time and you think, well,

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Speaker 2: I go see that band right now. They are tight.

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Speaker 2: They sound really good. There's something about the way he

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Speaker 2: put it in his lab, as you say, and the

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Speaker 2: way it came out. Well, things are more pronounced, they

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Speaker 2: sound more emotional. I think maybe is the word I'm

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Speaker 2: looking for. I don't know if you heard much of that,

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Speaker 2: but it's really pretty great.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the thing about the songs. There've been a couple

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Speaker 3: of documentaries recently, was one called McCartney CE two one

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Speaker 3: I think with a guy with a record bouse called

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Speaker 3: Rick Rubin. Yeah, I was talking to McCartney asking him

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Speaker 3: about all the songs being so memorable, and McCartney said,

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Speaker 3: he thinks it's to do with the lack of technology.

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Speaker 3: So when the band, when the Beatles are on tour

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Speaker 3: in the early days, and they don't have the wherewithal

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Speaker 3: like smartphone to be able to record something that's just

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Speaker 3: come into their minds. What you could record into a

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Speaker 3: smartphone may or may not be rather throwaway in terms

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Speaker 3: of an idea in terms of melody and tune. But

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Speaker 3: what McCartney said is because we didn't even have an

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Speaker 3: old fashioned taper or we had to make the memories memorable. Sorry,

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Speaker 3: we had to make the melodies memorable, so they're stuck

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Speaker 3: in the mind so you could set them down on

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Speaker 3: paper the following day, because you may not be in

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Speaker 3: a position to write this stuff down, so you have

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Speaker 3: to remember it. So I thought that was kind of interested.

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Speaker 3: The lack of technology is very interesting and more memorable.

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Speaker 2: So he would he would keep the melodies even almost

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Speaker 2: simple in the chord progression simple because they were they're

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Speaker 2: basically playing it on the on the bus on the

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Speaker 2: way back from Hamburger, Germany. Yeah, so they were playing

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Speaker 2: it on the bus on the way back. They're like, well,

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Speaker 2: we don't want to forget it, so we'll keep the

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Speaker 2: chord changes and the verses and the chorus is nice

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Speaker 2: and tight and easy to remember and repeatable. And then

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Speaker 2: little did they know that they were creating songs that

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Speaker 2: would just get stuck at everybody's head and be memorable

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Speaker 2: for everybody, not just them, for the next day. Which

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Speaker 2: you keep on wondering about all these happy accidents that

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Speaker 2: cause this just sort of a explosion of pop. And

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Speaker 2: then I think too that something probably had to come

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Speaker 2: along to take out the do woptness of the fifties, right,

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Speaker 2: We couldn't just keep doing that forever. Something was going

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Speaker 2: to come along.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very true. There's a great quote by David

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Speaker 3: Bowie when he was asked about the British doing music,

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Speaker 3: and he says the British are often quite smug about

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Speaker 3: the things that they do, which is undoubtedly true. And

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Speaker 3: bands like the Beatles knew that rock music's American. It

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Speaker 3: comes from the American soul, so what they do is

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Speaker 3: kind of they do it but with a British twist.

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Speaker 2: Not well, there's the magic right there.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but it's a lot to do with the

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Speaker 3: kind of sense of humor about it. They're not Rick Biato,

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Speaker 3: the record producer's got a great YouTube channel. YouTube channel

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Speaker 3: talks about the fact that there's a lot of goofing

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Speaker 3: about when you watch the Beatles on Get Back Yeah,

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Speaker 3: on that documentary, there's an awful lot of good thing

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Speaker 3: about and that is a lot to do with the creativity.

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Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of fun in it, but

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Speaker 3: there's a lot to do with the British making that

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Speaker 3: that they go along a little bit of party in it.

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Speaker 3: So when they do when they go yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: or they're going ooh, you know, like kind of like

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Speaker 3: a girl band and shaking their heads. And there's the

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Speaker 3: early days.

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Speaker 2: You're talking about the you're talking you're talking about the

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Speaker 2: documentary that was on Apple TV UH and it's Get

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Speaker 2: Back And Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings Fame

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Speaker 2: went and found a lot of footage from UH from

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Speaker 2: what what album was it was after Abbey Road, right,

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Speaker 2: it was recording let It Be Yes, Thank You, and

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Speaker 2: they're in the studio and there's these just there is

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Speaker 2: quite a bit of them just being goofy and you know,

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Speaker 2: playing songs that they've heard on the radio, and then

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Speaker 2: literally you see Paul McCartney just kind of plunking away

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Speaker 2: on his base and boom, get back happens like that.

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Speaker 2: It's just like, you know, like rolls through him and

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Speaker 2: you're watching something that's just beautiful piece of history. But

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Speaker 2: I think what I learned from that is I kind

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Speaker 2: of thought that that album was a struggle to record

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Speaker 2: because I thought they had broken up and that Yuga

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Speaker 2: had broken up the band, and there's a little bit

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Speaker 2: of tension, but mostly they're goofballs. They're they're having great

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Speaker 2: And to think that they recorded all of that stuff.

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Speaker 2: Those eight albums, those six hundred million albums sold, are

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Speaker 2: only eight albums, and they achieved all of that before

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Speaker 2: they were like twenty eight or twenty nine, all of them.

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Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. It's also worth remembering that before he

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Speaker 3: became the producer of the Beatles, George Martin mostly worked

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Speaker 3: on comedy records and novelty records. Oh wow, part of them. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So in Britain there's a comedy group called the Goons

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Speaker 3: who were precursors of Monty Python, and George Martin was

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Speaker 3: the guy who produced the goons, and there's a lot

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Speaker 3: of sound effects. Kind of sound college is in those

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Speaker 3: novelty records and in those comedy records, which he then

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Speaker 3: brought to very very many of the Beatles's tracks, including

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Speaker 3: things like Yellow Submarine. To talk about all the sound

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Speaker 3: effects in Yellow Submarine, George Martin was well versed in

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Speaker 3: that kind of stuff, you know, to produce a kind

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Speaker 3: of texture and a fabric that the song sits in.

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