The Beatles' Revolution of Popular Music and Culture

A new generation blossomed amidst the smoldering embers of destitution and desecration of the years following World War II. To the elderly this generation was the most perplexing of enigmas, for never before had there existed a "middle ground" in the aging process of Western society. One held the status of "child" until he or she aged sixteen years. The full responsibilities of adulthood were anticipated to take an ominous hold shortly thereafter, as when "boys put on tweed jackets like their fathers' and girls turned into matrons with twinsets and perms" (Norman 31). Accordingly, the Victorian world had never made an attempt to acknowledge the existence of teenagers in their society. Contrarily, encouraging such qualities as respect, maturity, and reverence were the focal point of every adult's active moral curriculum. Evolving in the mid-1950s, however, was an innovative new attitude to be brandished by the overtly oppressed adolescent population. In England "there now stalked the streets... young men in clothes as outlandish as they were sinister... They seemed utterly freakish" (Norman 31-32). The music industry quickly became the most apparent sign of the growing social and economic power of youth. Though scoffed and degraded to that of a lowly pubescent rebellion at the beginning of the decade, this sector of business soon profited nations thousands of dollars a year.

The American rocker Elvis Presley, who had hastily emerged upon the music scene in the early part of 1956, began this new and exhilarating trend towards the modernistic genre of popular music. He was "the first to hit the new teenage market, long before anyone had started to call it the teenage market, or even realized it was there" (Davies 19). Rock 'n' Roll, as it was called, inevitably took the world and its teenagers by storm. It was "the music which excited all kids" (Davies 19) and, simultaneously, terrified all adults. Elvis, the ringleader of this enriched trend (alongside Bill Haley and the Comets as well as Lonnie Donegan), "was the exciting singer singing the exciting songs" (Davies 19). From this framework, of exciting and provocative songs to sexy and thrilling performers, the demands of the popular teenage market arose - and they knew exactly what they wanted.

John Lennon, merely an angst filled teenager growing up in the small, British port city of Liverpool during the tumultuous pop culture of the 1950s, had, nearly a decade later, become a world renowned, household name (alongside his three other bandmates: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr). Inspired by Elvis Presley, but quickly surmounting the King's own ability and success, this musical group blended together their musical talent and fun-loving image into an unforgettable and endlessly influential commercial package. This band, forever immortalized as the Beatles, may owe to Elvis Presley their own initial inspiration. However, to the Beatles, modern popular culture owes everything - from the commercial side of music creation, production, and packaging, to the cultural side of high fashion, style, language, appearance, and behavior. Their inevitably enormous impact has forever changed the framework for music and musicians, society, and the popular perception of such.

In the early 1960s, teenagers were no longer interested in the "phony, slushy ballads, with a nice smile and a quiet cry" (Davies 19) that had been produced hardly a decade before. The young Beatles, in this circle both as the teenage consumers and the new age of musicians, "had to keep current by working up versions of the latest hits, both rockers and crooners" (Kozinn 34). Nevertheless, in the late 1950s the band was like any of the other skiffle groups that had sprouted about in Liverpool. They lifelessly played short sets, with few and far between performance dates. A four-month trip to Hamburg, Germany in summer of 1960, however, decisively assisted in their "transition from musical hobbyists to full-time musicians... Their sound was truly crystallized by some 500 hours of all-night performing" (Kozinn 34). The group had immensely improved - and not only musically. Endless stamina and exhilarating, fun performances became a trademark of the band (and future entertainers) - as opposed to the standstill performances popular among performers in years previous. They had developed a "kinetic, electrifying stage show" (Kozinn 36) and "audiences were responding with signs of the ecstatic frenzy that... would be called Beatlemania" (Kozinn 36).

The trips to Hamburg not only influenced the musicianship of the Beatles, but also the image that they projected to their adoring audiences in the years to come. Ex-bassist of the band, Stuart Sutcliffe, adopted the forward-brushed hairstyle which later became known as the famous 'Beatle' cut, as well as introducing "another early Beatles visual trademark, the collarless jacket" (Kozinn 27). As early as 1963, this aspect of the Beatles had become a commercial exploit of both British and American manufacturers alike. Producers everywhere were "competing to get a concession to use the word Beatle on their products" (Davies 184). Beatles jackets, as well as Beatle wigs, went on sale everywhere - and the demand was perpetual. Young school boys and even full-grown men began growing out their own hair to meet the length of a Beatle fringe. Said John Lennon of this mass popularity and hysteria:
To a degree we can make a trend popular - we don't usually invent clothes, we wear something we like and then maybe people follow us... The Beatles have tried to change Britain's image. We changed the hairstyles and clothes of the world, including America - they were a very sorry lot when we went over. (qtd. in Taylor et al. 64)
Additionally, during the 1966 filming of How I Won the War, Lennon adopted round, thin-rimmed glasses, which went on to become a signature element of his look. This popular style of eyewear is still known today, often referred to as "John Lennon glasses."

As the 1960s rolled on the Beatles rolled with it, forever changing popular music as the went. John Lennon wrote "A Hard Day's Night" when he was only twenty-three years old. Musically, The Lennon/McCartney duo was "flushed with inspiration and fueled by ambition and adrenaline" (Hertsgaard 73). They were living, so it seemed, in a "state of artistic grace" (Hertsgaard 73) - creating without even being aware of how it was happening. The most significant improvement on A Hard Day's Night was in the songwriting. "The album marked a major advance.... not only because it was the first album to consist solely of original compositions but because so many of these compositions were of such high quality" (Hertsgaard 75). The Beatles, however, were always too bored by what they had just done to ever consider repeating it. As a group, they were under continual development. They remained curious about all types of music, and endlessly reinvented their own music by injecting it with fresh influences from multiple cultures (George Harrison, for example, introduced the Indian sitar to the song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"). This experimentation added a dimension to their work that separated it from their contemporaries'. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released during the summer of 1967, and received widespread acclaim. As stated by Paul McCartney:
Later, when we made Sgt. Pepper, I remember taking it round to Dylan at the Mayfair Hotel in London, and I went round as if I were going on a pilgrimage... It was a little bit like an audience with the Pope. I remember playing him some of Sgt. Pepper and he said, 'Oh I get it - you dont want to be cute anymore.' (qtd. in Taylor et al. 197)

The Beatles' commercial success started an almost immediate wave of change in the modern world. The United States no longer dominated the rock 'n' roll scene or the fashion scene, group performers prevailed over solo acts, and rock and roll became a repertoire of self-pinned songs and original music. As a testament to their success and standing legacy, the Beatles compilation ablum 1, released in November 2000, sold 3.6 million units in its first week and more than 12 million in three weeks worldwide, becoming the fastest selling album of all time and the biggest selling of 2000. Forty years later, and the world is still fascinated by the Fab Four.

"Beatles Album Tops the Chart." BBC News Online. 19 Nov. 2000. BBC News. 14 Apr. 2007.

Craske, Oliver, Roman Milsic, Julian Quance, Brian Roylance, and Derek Taylor, eds. The Beatles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC, 2000.

Davies, Hunter. The Beatles. New York: McGraw Hill, 1985.

Hertsgaard, Mark. A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1995.

Kozinn, Allan. The Beatles. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1995.

Norman, Philip. Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1996.