By Eliot Wilder / There's a scene in the movie "Help" in which the Beatles arrive at what appears to be four separate residences in a modest London suburb. They emerge on the inside into one extravagant apartment, where together John, Paul, George and Ringo share their music and their lives. Four into one.

The Marxist concept that individuals can come together and create something greater than the sum of their parts reached an apogee of sorts in the 1960s, when the utopian spirit of cooperation and communal living seemed within reach.

Unfortunately, this era is often clouded in the worst type of nostalgia - a yearning to live in a place and time that never truly existed. And yet, if you remove the rose-colored, psychedelic sunglasses, what emerges are viable ideals still worth clinging to.

The Beatles certainly set the bar by which many have since striven to measure up. The group's freewheeling and experimental approach contributed profoundly to music, ideology and culture, stretching the limits of what had been thought possible. Because they were mainstream, the Beatles managed to be perhaps unwittingly subversive - whatever they said or did was sacrosanct. The fact is, unlike many of today's pop idols, the Fab Foursome actually had something to say about life and the way one could live it, and their impact was undeniable. People didn't grow their hair long as a fashion statement so much as personal proclamation of freedom.

Mostly - and this is something I believe is often forgotten - the Beatles demonstrated that if you stick with your band of brothers (or sisters), you could create something infinitely superior to what you could do on your own. As separate musicians the Beatles were, with the exception of Paul McCartney, no virtuosos, and each had foibles that were subsumed by an overriding vision. As an example, a song like "Honey Pie" is spoonful of saccharine that only gets its tang by being placed the context of the classic "White Album." On his own McCartney's tendency for twee has remained, with rare exception, unchecked, and his solo work has consistently suffered. The post-Beatles recordings, although not entirely without merit, miss the magic that they created as a unit.

Which begs a question: What undoes a unit? As much as we human beings strive for altruism, selflessness runs counter to our desire for recognition as an individual. That is to say, our egos are frequently much too large to allow us to hand over our singular endeavors even for a greater good. Because I've been in several groups myself, I can speak to this directly. When I formed my very first garage band with the three boys that lived across the street on which I grew up, I felt the raw thrill of being part of something greater. Even as a kid, being in a "band" felt, well, noble. But I've also witnessed, both in myself and in others, what occurs when you pour your ideas into a collective hat, only to later feel threatened or betrayed as you watch your good work subtly sublimated into or blatantly misappropriated by the ego of another. When you start to think in terms of, "Hey, that's my lyric" or "Hey, that's my melody" or "Hey, that's my arrangement," the delicate spirit of creative collaboration is lost and is likely not to be retrieved.

The thing is, most artists - hell, most everyone - have agendas, motives and neuroses that frequently interfere with their ability to interact selflessly. What can start as an enterprise in which one person's expressions feed on another's until a unique piece of work is forged that could not have existed without cooperation, often devolves into pettiness, resentment and bad faith. Taken globally, this is a paradigm for the times we live in: Hey, this is my land.

The Beatles wound up their career with John Lennon singing, "Come together ... over me," which despite its intended relativistic stance ultimately led the way for the Me Generation. Personally, I prefer Paul McCartney's sentiments that closed out "Abbey Road," the Beatles career as well as an entire epoch: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

From Amplifier magazine