Breaking down Presley and Beatlemania |
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In a very stimulating commentary, likethebike presents his case for Presleymania and Beatlemania. Elvis.ie recommends this very thoughtful and cogent commentary to all readers. With themes including sexual tension, civil rights, backlash by society's cultural arbiters, r&b integration and realising the American dream.......this is a powerful exposition! |
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In the late 20th century there were two great
popular culture upheavals in the rises of Elvis
Presley and the Beatles. Occurring within ten
years of one another, both marked the beginnings
of new eras not only in the world of music but
in the overall fabric of world culture. There
were many similarities between the two pop
explosions including the daring new music
produced by the artists that led the revolution
and their followers.
Both certainly could not have happened in any
other eras in US history. Unlike Frank Sinatra
who created a sensation at the New York
Paramount in 1942, Elvis and the Beatles had
access to wealthier and healthier listeners with
greater access to more forms of media. Also,
unlike the Chairman of the Board, Elvis and the
Beatles had a least temporary moment of
undivided media attention. When Sinatra made his
breakthrough the world was at war. Now there was
a lot going on when Elvis and the Beatles� hit,
like the unravelling of the US Civil Rights
movement and in the Beatles� case the first
escalation of US involvement in Viet Nam, but
many of their listeners/viewers had their minds
free at least for a moment to focus exclusively
on them.
Unlike Michael Jackson in the 1980s, the Beatles
and especially Elvis had an audience that wasn�t
used to full scale media pop phenomena. And in
Michael Jackson�s 1980s there were so many
choices in the existing media that no one artist
could ever fully grab the public�s attention as
those two artists did in their eras. It was also
impossible for Jackson to happen the way he did
without Elvis and the Beatles coming first. The
Beatles and Elvis both changed the rules on how
big you could be and who could be that big.
In retrospect, looking at the historic record,
it may be kind of tough to differentiate between
the two movements other than the fact they
marked a shift in generation. It�s tempting if
you�re baby boomer to look at Elvis as a dry run
for Beatlemania or if you�re an Elvis fan to see
Beatlemania as merely an extension of what Elvis
started.
Finding the differences though tells us a lot
and hopefully gives us an appreciation for the
achievement of both artists. I�m going to put
down some that I�ve come to through the historic
record with the hope that some readers will put
their two cents in so we can dig into an
appreciation of these two historic events.
I think an obvious difference between the two
epochs was the fact that Beatlemania was more
concentrated in the United States. Elvis�
initial impact kind of snuck up on the culture
in 1956. When he first appeared on the Dorsey
Show in January the game was not on yet. It was
only after multiple appearances, weeks of
touring and airplay for �Heartbreak Hotel�, that
Elvis was suddenly everywhere.
The Beatles by contrast, buoyed by media
coverage of the hysteria in England and airplay
on radio stations anticipating the first US
visit and television, dropped on America all at
once. Arrival at the airport, press conference,
Sullivan and then everything else. While Elvis
had his talk of the town moments- specifically
Milton Berle, and Ed Sullivan, they occurred
after he achieved stardom. For the Beatles,
there was a sense, again in the US, of being
there at the beginning. This lent a little more
steam to the hysteria part of Beatlemania.
Another difference that jumps out at me are the
niches demanded and filled by Elvis and the
Beatles in the United States. When Elvis came
along, US culture was reeling from the McCarthy
era where conformity was a national obsession.
Breaking from the norm could get you labeled an
agent of communism. To question any aspect of
the American Dream was tantamount to endorsing
the other side. To that end, many producers of
American art and culture worked to sanitize the
blood out of everything. In this country
everything was PERFECT. Only thing was� everyone
knew this idea was a fraud but no one could
actually say it. An individualist was needed,
someone Earthy, someone sexual, someone who
bled. Elvis stepped in here and acknowledged all
the people who had been left out of that dream
and also exposed the sanitized dream of
perfection. His success showed perfection to be
a bore.
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Some have commented that maybe the Beatles were
bigger than Elvis because they were a group and
could bridge more different temperaments. That
may or not be true but Elvis could not have hit
as he hit at that time as a part of a greater
whole. He had to be different. He had to stand
alone.
When the Beatles came along eight years later,
the United States needed a laugh. Only months
after the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
America�s sense of itself was lost. While in
historical retrospect the first two and half
years of the Kennedy administration may not have
been Camelot but there was general perspective
that the country could be better, could improve
itself and the world could be improved as well.
That all that could be wiped out, in a civilized
modern western country, by a gunshot was
disconcerting. People must have thought �Why
bother when everything can unravel so easily?�
The Beatles came along and answered that
question by saying in effect that �Don�t worry
about it. Life can also be fun.� If you think
back on the Mop Tops that�s their message. From
their press conferences to their harmonies to
their mostly buoyant songs, the Beatles radiated
good cheer.
And for many Americans, it was necessary to get
this message from abroad. It had to come from
somewhere else from someone with a different
perspective on the world just like it was
important in 1956 that the message come from
someone who was not living that dream of
perfection.
Perhaps the most crucial difference between
Elvis mania and Beatlemania was the timing and
extent of the backlash. While there were adults
who scratched their heads over the Beatles and
your tough guy Four Seasons/old time rock fans
who thought the Beatles were fey, there wasn�t
really a significant backlash against the
Beatles until 1965-1967 when the Beatles started
to say and do controversial things, when they
moved away from the lovable Mop Tops.
With Elvis the backlash was immediate and
intense. The guardians of the old order didn�t
scratch their heads over Elvis, they hated him.
They insulted him. His association with a
product, person or a place was a reason for a
boycott. There were a variety of reasons for
this from prejudice of Elvis� southerness,
racism over his adoption of black mannerisms,
and fear of sexuality.
Whatever the reasons, the backlash and lack
thereof, altered the revolutions that Elvis and
the Beatles led. The lack of a backlash against
the Beatles let more people in. People who had
scoffed at the Presley revolution but maybe
envied the participants part in it, were now
able to join in or at least try to join in.
After all, rock and roll was here to stay now.
The fight was over. This was what led to stuff
like the Beatles meeting with Kings and Queens
and enjoying invitations from the likes of
Leonard Bernstein and the Rat Pack (something
Elvis had to wait for until 1960). In a way this
made the gross impact of Beatlemania at least
superficially bigger. It also made everyone
realize the potential impact of popular culture.
You really could reach everyone. You can see
this idea in stuff as odd as the �Batman� TV
series which attempted to conquer the pop market
by being both hip and square at the same time.
Even more the large scale acceptance of the
Beatles by the middlebrows made pop culture
acceptable. If everyone liked it, it must have
something.
By contrast, the backlash against Elvis, while
it kept him from obtaining cultural credibility
for a very long time, was an absolute necessity
for the revolution that Elvis started
particularly the youth culture. The dissent on
Elvis and rock and roll gave youth culture an
identity. What made Elvis and rock and roll
belong to youth culture was the fact that adults
didn�t like them. It was imperative that he
belong to youth and only youth at that moment.
This was a feat that was not accomplished even
by movie stars like James Dean and Marlon Brando
who were admired by youth were co-opted by
cultural arbiters mitigating their power
somewhat. That this culture was born made the
inroads made by Dylan and the Beatles and the
youth protest movement possible.
Musically it was the same thing. It was
important that concepts that placed rhythm over
melody and separated great singing from great
voices came into play. When future generation
would define their difference from their elders,
they would largely do so by listening to even
more unconventional singers like Dylan and less
melodic bands like Led Zeppelin. Elvis and the
early rocker�s music HAD to sound like noise to
some members of the audience to prepare them for
even greater breaks and greater freedom in the
future.
Of course much of the backlash against Elvis was
based upon his sexuality and the sexuality
overtly demonstrated by his largely female
audience towards him. America�s attitude towards
sex was to basically deny its existence. Elvis�
success made it clear that sex does exist and
EVERYONE thinks about these things. What�s more,
sex did not have to be placed in the closet. It
was normal, healthy and fun. �Playboy� and
Marilyn Monroe also played their parts here with
Elvis and the early rockers but, arguably the
rockers had the greater effect by demonstrating
the commonality of sex and the fact that letting
your sexuality surface did not lead to the end
of Western civilization.
In contrast to Elvis, the early Beatles were
almost sexless in their public persona. This was
an important factor in the lack of an early
backlash but it was also an important factor in
the changes they wrought in the industry. While
I�m sure there were younger Elvis fans, the
Beatles were the first rock act to tap into the
lucrative pre-pubescent market. Little kids
liked the Beatles. You can tell this from the
fact that producers thought a Saturday morning
Beatles cartoon would be a money making venture.
John Lennon at Elvis' home in Bel Air, 27 August 1965
I�ve seen it personally in my interaction with
many first generation Beatles fans. Many times
I�ve talked with them and been amazed they
didn�t remember the original versions of songs
like �Twist and Shout�, �Baby it�s You�, �You�ve
Really Got a Hold on Me� or later British
Invasion favorites like �Do You Love Me� (pre
�Dirty Dancing�) or �I Like it Like That�
despite the fact that these songs were major POP
hits just a few years before they were remade by
the Beatles and other Brit invasion bands. The
reason these folks didn�t remember these songs
because they hooked into the Beatles and rock
and roll at a very young age. Their first
musical memories are the Beatles.
While the Beatles succeeded in crossing
generational lines in a way that Elvis never
did, Elvis crossed racial and regional barriers
in a way the Beatles never did. There is no
Beatle record that topped all three major
Billboard charts as many of Elvis original
records did.
In a sad contrast, while Elvis integrated the
pop audience, the Beatles inadvertently
re-segregated it. Perhaps because the Beatles�
music was too far removed from the original
blues/gospel/American culture and because the
British Music Hall traditions the Beatles
brought to their interpretations of American
Music did not appeal to African American
audiences, the Beatles never really gained a
black following. While many African American
performers/writers and producers recognized and
were invigorated by the quality of the Beatles�
work, the Beatles were never a mass black taste.
No Beatles song topped the R/B charts until
Earth, Wind and Fire with �Got To Get You Into
My Life� in 1978 and no Beatle made the R/B Top
40 until Paul McCartney did a duet with Stevie
Wonder in 1982. This was despite the fact that
the Beatles were steeped in American R/B. (The
same thing happened in the portion of rural
America represented by the country charts.)
This was a very important development in that it
meant that black rock oriented music and white
oriented music developed on separate paths for
the first time since rock was born in the
mid-1950s. In 1961, for instance, there was very
little difference in the rock approach of white
and black performers. Look at the white rock
titans of the Pre-Beatles era the Four Seasons
and you can see the similarities. The two paths
crossed so frequently that Billboard actually
eliminated its R/B chart in late 1963, deeming
it redundant.
After the Beatles, white rock and roll followed
the Beatles, while the black artists followed
the example set by Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and
vocal groups like the Temptations. This does not
mean though that white record buyers stopped
buying black music. In fact, with the pop
audience the revolution that started with Elvis
was more open to black sounds than it ever had
been before.
However, this was a different audience than what
became the hipper self-identified �rock�
audience. This audience with few exceptions was
not particularly interested in the pop black
music of the day. These were the folks that
wound up writing the history that wound up
placing black performers outside the music they
helped to create. It also limited black
performer�s success in the now lucrative album
market. The folks who bought and wrote about
albums just didn�t place the same premium on
Smokey Robinson as the Beatles.
Elvis� success on the other hand came in a
market that was only just beginning to accept
black and rural sounds. His records increased
acceptance and visibility for this style of
music and performer. Eventually, the barriers
would break down the point that did in
Pre-Beatles America.
Of course there was a lot more going on than
just Elvis and the Beatles. Both parties may
have been playing their part in the ongoing
struggle that was occurring in the culture as
they came to prominence. Elvis came in at a
point when the Civil Rights movement was just
beginning. People were just starting to realize
the inequities in the system. They were open to
new ideas. Beatlemania was roughly analogous to
the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement in
1964. White America may have felt fatigued, that
it had given enough. Black America may have
begun to question how much of its identity it
wanted to subsume into the greater whole and may
have been frustrated at not making further
progress.
That Elvis and the Beatles both pulled so
heavily from the R/B country and rockabilly etc
of their eras emphasizes one last similarity
between their movements. For all their
revolutionary impact, one of the very best
things that both Elvis and the Beatles did was
to make people realize all the good stuff that
was there under the surface while we were
looking the other way. Elvis did it by bringing
blues and country to the masses and emphasizing
their similarities and the fact that their
mixture was so thrilling. The Beatles reminded
everyone that rock and roll�s well was deeper
and more resilient than anyone realized. They
did this not only with rockabilly b-sides from
Carl Perkins, Buck Owens� modern rockabilly but
also all the terrific rock and roll from the
early �60s Shirelles, Isley Brothers, Motown
etc. I�ve always said the best argument for
early pre-Beatles �60s rock and roll is the
Beatles themselves. They would have been a lot
different without it.
These are my musings from looking at the
historic and sonic records. I�d love to hear the
memories of folks that were there or other
impressions.
(Let�s leave the Beatles are overrated stuff at
home.)
Source: EIN.
Posted: 30th. November 2007