Yesterday I was watching the Charlie Rose interview Tom Brokaw on the Charlie Rose show, and when asked what the most enduring contribution that the baby boomers gave the world was, Tom Brokaw replied that it was the music. Although he did not say so, he surely had to believe that the Beatles had a major contribution in the musical revolution that changed our musical tastes. Although folk music has long been a way to use music to speak to a cause or deliver a protest, the Beatles took issues of the day and turned them into rock and roll songs that ignited a social revolution.
While the Beatles were less known for inflammatory war protest songs, like Bob Dylan did, they did more than their part to break down the social barriers of the 50's and early 60's, so that the love-ins and other types of Woodstock style gatherings could take place, in direct response to protesting against the inhibitions of the baby boomers' parents. Between the Beatles and Bob Dylan, the music of the baby boomer generation changed more than what we listen to. They changed how we now live in greater social freedom, as well as giving us the freedom to think for ourselves, and question authority.