Originality often finds itself built upon the ideas well-cemented, after all, without those to draw inspiration from, new and exciting music may never see the light of day. Following the innate stardom of Elvis Presley and adjacent figures in the mid-to-late 1950s, the idea of rock ‘n’ roll found refuge in an entirely new stage of musical history.
Four of the United Kingdom’s most fabulous. A British pop group, almost viewed in America as an unattainable novelty, pioneered early fan culture and a surge of creativity to a genre suffering at the expense of cliches and something described as “baroque.” The Beatles were a fresh new take on an established style and had singlehandedly rewritten the history of performance with their undeniable musicality and enthusiasm.
With this new era of rock music came an air of seriousness and trust between artist and press. Where rock ‘n’ roll artists formerly had not known the courtesy of sincerity from music critics and their harsh standpoints upon the genre’s morality, the Beatles’ musical repertoire had already solidified themselves as genuine, determined artists in the eyes of the average critic.
In the 1963 article “What Songs the Beatles Sang…,” music critic William Mann drew parallels between the intricacies of the Beatles’ music and the application of classical music theory.
“The virtue of The Beatles’ repertory is that, apparently, they do it themselves; three of the four are composers, they are versatile instrumentalists,” said Mann.
Using this comparison, even referring to Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison as composers within the context of their music, Mann cemented the idea of a more vast musical seriousness in the Beatles’ catalog. His writing is littered with admiration for these skills and is amplified by his ample knowledge of music theory. This opinion and critique style is echoed only one year later in American music critic Theodore Strongin’s article “Musicologically…” originally published in The New York Times.
“You can tell right away it’s the Beatles and not anyone else,” said a 15-year-old viewer of the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.
While still pulling from the early idea of rock ‘n’ roll, the Elvis-coined rockabilly, and a heavy dose of “trad” jazz (a form of New Orleans style jazz adapted by Britain), the Beatles fresh creation from these styles shifted the ultimate perception of popular music to mainstream media.
The band had not only dominated popular music charts with their continuous stream of hit singles and full-length albums but had dipped their toes into the world of film. This decision, and the entirely original composition of their album, and later film, titled A Hard Day’s Night, thrust the Beatles into an entirely new domain of popularity and ultra-consumption. The jukebox musical enthralled a newer and more vast audience, later resulting in the surge of recognition.
American film critic Andrew Sarris detailed the intricacies and revolutionary musical choices in A Hard Day’s Night, all while tying in outlying factors to their quick success in his 1964 review, “Bravo Beatles!”
With their earnest public support and continuing widespread popularity, the idea of fanfare had begun to become second nature to the Fab Four. In every location the Beatles travelled to, the band was met with what can only be described as a violent mob of young women, reported on average ages 10 to 14.
“The Beatles represented the freedom the girls wished they could have, even as these girls celebrated their power in creating Beatlemania,” said Sarris.
Even in the critique of film, Sarris provided critical analysis given their musical history and their personal message, described as “everyone is ‘people.’” His writing, while primarily focused on the visual aspect of musicality, remained intensely descriptive of the media at hand and offered the reader an introspective look at his ideals and characteristics.
In previous articles, by the words of Mann, Strongin and Sarris, the audience reaction to the Beatles’ performances was described as ‘hysterical,’ ‘adolescent’ and often framed within a female perspective (as the idea of hysteria lied with ideas of femininity in the theories of Sigmund Freud). Novelists Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs pushed back upon the cultural implications of this idea of the female psyche, and offered genuine firsthand perspective in their 1987 novel, “Beatlemania: Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
In what appeared to be adjacent to a public demonstration only proved to be mass gatherings for their favorite British boy band. In today’s terms this could be described as “fangirl culture,” and what is now widely recognized proved deeply worrying in the mid-1960s.
“Beatlemania was the first mass outburst of the sixties to feature women- in this case girls, who would not reach full adulthood until the seventies and the emergence of a genuinely political movement for women’s liberation.”
Rock ‘n’ roll came with its own heavy cultural baggage: in implications of race in music, the idea of repressed and expressive sexuality (especially among women) and musical authenticity. It was entirely taboo for young women to speak outright about sexuality and attraction, two ideas that became regular teenage conversation when speaking about the Beatles.
In this novel, Ehrenreich, Hess and Jacobs tied band popularity and ‘hysteria’ with the beginnings of a liberating movement for women, as they continued to embrace their sexuality and interests within the public eye. They utilized firsthand accounts from young women to exemplify the minds of the time, all while providing the reader with real-time media examples of the characterization of those afflicted with ‘Beatlemania.’
As the sixties continued with the widespread integration of rock ‘n’ roll into popular music, the Beatles, while maintaining extreme popularity, were not the sole breakout artists of the decade. The “British Invasion,” a term coined with the newfound flow of foreign artists, set out to entirely alter the face of music history.
This phenomenon brought forward a plethora of UK acts, including but not limited to: the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones. In a 1964 sit-down interview with lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, music manager and writer Giorgio Gomelsky pried into the self-proclaimed r&b roots of the Rolling Stones in his article, “The Rolling Stones Stake a Claim in the R&B Race.”
Jagger and his bandmates laid the groundwork for their inspirations, laying claim to their own unique style of music.
“I never really liked “official” rock, you know,” said Jagger. “After a while we’ve absorbed so much it becomes “natural” to us.” He went on to describe the origin of their style, a combination of a more Chuck Berry r&b interspersed with Little Richard style rock ‘n’ roll. Wild, delinquent and almost the complete opposite of what the public attributed to the Beatles. In “Records: Rock, Etc.- the Big Ones,” American journalist Ellen Willis spoke of how the Stones were scrutinized against the heaving popularity and overall ‘clean’ image the Beatles put forth. Both Willis and Gonelsky shed light upon the significant band differences, and how each drew inspiration from the other when reaching their peak cultural significance.
In a politically pressing time in American history, from race riots and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the searing antiwar movement, the 1960s gave way to an entirely new evolutionary standard for rock music.
The interweaving of musical hysteria between cultural unease and controversial politics opened the door for what a genre like rock ‘n’ roll thrives upon: originality.
