Yes, The Beatles could afford a bigger orchestra than every one else. Spector just overdubbed loads of musicians, but the idea was the same.
You don't think Spector and Meek used the studio as an instrument?
You think Rubber Soul was the first album to have an eclectic collection of styles? Dylans March 1965 Bring It All Back Home (as just one example)has an eclectic collection of styles. I'm sure I could dig up more. Again, people noticed when The Beatles did it because they were famous.
And Bob Dylan wasn't famous? Didn't he say the Beatles were leading the direction of where music had to go. The Beatles partially influenced Bob Dylan to go electric in the first place. You think people noticed the Beatles just because they were famous. Read this.
What sparked that original creative spark that
became prog rock?
Bill Buford:
The Beatles. They broke down every barrier that ever existed. Suddenly you could do anything after The Beatles. You could write your own music, make it ninety yards long, put it in 7/4, whatever you wanted.
Robert Fripp on Sgt Pepper
Robert Fripp- "When I was 20, I worked at a hotel in a dance orchestra, playing weddings, bar-mitzvahs, dancing, cabaret. I drove home and I was also at college at the time. Then I put on the radio (Radio Luxemburg) and I heard this music. It was terrifying. I had no idea what it was. Then it kept going. Then there was this enormous whine note of strings. Then there was this colossal piano chord. I discovered later that I'd come in half-way through Sgt. Pepper, played continuously. My life was never the same again".
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys
"Upon first hearing Rubber Soul in December of 1965, Brian Wilson said, “I really wasn’t quite ready for the unity. It felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was a collection of songs…that somehow went together like no album ever made before".
Pete Townshend of the Who
"In a 1967 interview Pete Townshend of the Who commented "I think "Eleanor Rigby" was a very important musical move forward. It certainly inspired me to write and listen to things in that vein
I never said that Spector and Joe Meek didn't use the studio as an instrument. The Beatles version of it which was different than both of them influenced many musicians. Are you crazy Dylan Bring It All Back Home musically was still steeped in traditional popular forms of music and how it was recorded. Rubber Soul was an album musically, lyrically and the studio was as one. The music they actually were experimenting with was going beyond the conventions of the normal pop music at the time. Take "Norwegian Wood" it uses non blue modality the verse is written in E Mixolydian and the bridge is written E Dorian.
From a musicology standpoint, a lot of their music actually is quite interesting and complex in terms of the pop idiom. How many bands do you know that can make a pop song with crazy time changes like 11/8 to 4/4 to 7/8 without anybody noticing? ("Here Comes the Sun") Or the clever harmonization of the refrain of "Eight Days a Week" where the first half is in parallel fourths/fifth (giving it a kind of weird, haunting, open sound), while the second half resolves to the more usual sixths? Or the subtle changes in the drum rhythm of "Ticket to Ride" where Ringo goes from triplets against the beat in the first couple of verses to straight eights towards the end? Or that beautiful, crazy chord that opens "A Hard Day's Night?" I mean, in almost every single original song of theirs, I can find some interesting and original that plays against the expectation of the pop songwriting idiom. And the most beautiful thing about it is that they do it so naturally, you don't even notice.