Beatleness is woven into the music we listen to, the films we watch, the lifestyles we enjoy, and the fabric of the institutions we live in. Beatleness permeates.
This book is not about the Beatles. It's about Beatle fans, and their relationships with the Beatles. But more than that, it's about how those relationships, playing out across four decades and multiple generations, contribute to and perpetuate "Beatleness" throughout the culture.
I always knew I'd write about the Beatles someday -- and here it is. Though still a work in progress, I was committed to these ideas being out in the world in time to contribute to the conversations surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in America. And so I created this site. I hope you find it interesting, entertaining, and provocative.
Some of the questions and issues I explore are:
What is "Beatleness"?
Why "Beatlemania" happened and how much of it was hype.
The complex interplay between the Kennedy assassination and the Beatles' first Ed Sullivan appearance just 79 days later.
How the Sullivan appearances were a "positive trauma" to the national psyche that finally brought "the 50s era" to an end.
How the timing -- and the "subversive" content -- of A Hard Day's Night ensured the Beatles' ongoing popularity.
Why are the Beatles still so important to many baby-boomers?
Why interest in the Beatles remains so high.
Why Beatle fans are considered guilty of "two cultural sins" -- fandom and nostalgia.
Differences between the Beatle fan community and "Trekkies" or "Deadheads."
Differences between the Beatles phenomenon and the earlier adulation and idolization of Elvis and Frank Sinatra.
The transforming influence -- both positive and negative -- of the Beatles on our culture.
An overview of the entire book can be found below, and overviews of individual chapters are linked from the buttons on each page. My background and contact information can be found under the "About" button.
I'd like to close this intro by thanking the hundreds of Beatle fans who generously shared their experiences with me over the years and whose "collaboration" made this project possible.
Please email me at Beatleness@comcast.net with comments, counterpoints, corrections, or anything else you've got on your mind. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for reading!
Candy Leonard
Beatleness:
Four Decades of Personal and Cultural Transformation
by Candy Leonard
The entire Beatle experience: music, movies, interviews, wall-to-wall media coverage, the four distinct personas coalescing into a magical sum of the parts -- in a word, "Beatleness" -- became integral to who and what we are. After 40 years and 73 million of us reaching adulthood, Beatleness now informs the entire culture. How did this happen? And why?
Over 600 Beatle books can be found at Amazon, yet not one is about the fans. None of them asks fans about the role the Beatles played, and continue to play, in their lives. Indeed, there are no fan-based, big-picture, historical analyses of what is arguably the most significant mass culture phenomenon of the last century. This project fills that void.
Fandom is about finding emotional and intellectual satisfaction in a cultural product that, for the fan, resonates especially loudly. In adults, fandom is considered an immature pastime for the obsessive, the unfulfilled, and those too unsophisticated to appreciate "higher" forms of art or entertainment. But is there really much difference between Lincoln "buffs" and Lennon "fans" pouring over the minutia of the latest biography? Is fascination with Freud's diaries all that different from fascination with Lennon's?
Similar to how fans are drawn to a person they will never truly know or engage with, nostalgics are drawn to periods no longer available to their present. Both are states of "wanting." Though easily dismissed, fandom and nostalgia are complex phenomena existing at the intersection of personal biography and cultural history, and warrant closer examination.
Our language has no word for "positive trauma." But if we can imagine an event that deviates from the norm in a positive direction to the same extent wars, depressions, or earthquakes deviate from the norm in a negative direction, the Beatles' arrival in America would be such an event.
There has never been a confluence of factors that made it possible for a single cultural force to so profoundly affect millions of people -- simultaneously and continuously -- like the introduction and celebration of the Beatles. Consequently, baby boomers have a kind of relationship with the Beatles that has never existed before. There are no analogies. Comparisons with Elvis or Frank Sinatra seem trite when we look at the depth of the Beatles' impact. They reside so deep within many boomer psyches as to be part of our constitution. When we look at old pictures of the Beatles and feel overwhelmed by their familiarity, we are responding from this level.
They were a constant presence during six years of critical social, psychological, emotional, and cognitive development. A ubiquitous, joyful presence that engaged us as much if not more than family or friends. Fans recall in minute the detail the moment the Beatles entered their lives, and fan narratives help us understand the impact the Beatles had on each of them, and, by extension, all of us. Their compelling narratives are also vignettes of white, middle-class American family life in the early sixties.
Second-generation fans clearly remember when they first became aware of the Beatles and can offer "Meet The Beatles' narratives which include the same kind of vivid detail as the narratives of first-generation fans.
These young fans integrate the Beatles into their lives in a variety of ways. They are avid readers of Beatle-related books, and are intrigued by many aspects of the whole "Beatle story." They are fascinated by a mythic time called "the sixties" and enjoy learning about that period as they learn about the Beatles. Their interest in the Beatles is a springboard to studying music, writing fiction, learning more about England, and learning how to create web sites.
Forty years ago, it would have been difficult for parents to imagine the Beatles as a vehicle for connection between generations, but young fans talk about the important bond Beatle fandom creates between themselves and their parents.
It is through the thoughts and feelings of these youngest fans -- farthest away in time from the living Beatles -- that we can understand the Beatles' remarkable staying power, how they are perceived today, and how they may be regarded in the future.
On the surface, it was nothing more than a day in the life of the Beatles, with a thin plot line involving Paul's grandfather and a live television show. A fun romp with the Fab Four. But right below the surface, it was a call to young people -- and anyone else who could hear it -- to ask questions, challenge the system, and have fun doing it.
