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A little help from their friends
This may come as a bit of a shock, but the Beatles split up in 1970. Alexis Petridis on the mighty machine behind the band that won’t go away
Friday January 16, 2004
The GuardianA new year and another new Beatles release. This time it’s a DVD documentary celebrating the 40th anniversary of the quartet’s first American tour. Released early next month, The Beatles First US Visit promises „exceptionally candid footage“ of a legendary event. It follows hard on the heels of last year’s Let It Be … Naked CD, which in turn followed the five-DVD Anthology box set, the Anthology book, the 1 CD compilation of „greatest hits“ and the remastered Yellow Submarine DVD and „songtrack“ CD. In fact, there has been a steady stream of Beatles product since 1994, when the Beatles‘ company Apple began a programme of reissues with the double CD set Live at the BBC.
Apple boss Neil Aspinall had spent much of the previous two decades amassing a vast collection of Beatles ephemera, buying the copyright to virtually every photograph, piece of film and television appearance worth owning. In the early 1990s, Apple decided to open its archive, and a decade on, it shows no sign of slowing down. Future projects include DVDs of the films Let It Be, Magical Mystery Tour and Help and another book, about which Apple remains tight-lipped.
In fact, it’s a little hard getting information about anything out of Apple. In the late 1960s, it was an infamously dissolute company: one former employee dubbed it „the longest cocktail party“. Today, Apple has something of the secret society about it. Part of the Beatles‘ inner circle for 44 years, Aspinall is famously publicity-shy. One journalist who recently spotted him at a party and attempted to canvass his opinion on Let It Be … Naked received only a silent shake of the head in response. Other employees prefer not to be directly quoted.
Given the current climate of gloom in the music industry, you might think that Apple would be screaming its sales figures from the rooftops – but no: it refuses to divulge how many units anything it releases has shifted. Perhaps this is the business equivalent of the faux-humility that causes Paul McCartney to continually refer to the Beatles as „a good little band“. Or perhaps, after 30 years of selling albums by the million, you begin to lose interest in bragging about numbers (although Apple will admit to being stunned by the alleged 28m sales of 1). Publicly at least, the company eschews anything as vulgar as discussing the Beatles as a brand or reinventing the Fab Four as a „sexy“ product for a younger audience, although 40% of those 28m purchasers of 1 were between 17 and 25 years old.
„You can’t promote the Beatles‘ catalogue – it’s out there,“ says Jonathan Clyde, who, like all of Apple’s employees, has no official job title: a solitary concession to the louche days of the longest cocktail party. „New technology gives the opportunity to introduce new generations to Beatles music in a modern context. These DVD releases, such as First US Visit, inevitably drive people back to the original recordings, because, of course, the music is ultimately what it’s all about.“
If the Beatles releases of the 1990s did not single-handedly create the huge „heritage rock“ market of CD reissues and classic rock magazines – MCA successfully re-released Jimi Hendrix’s back catalogue a year before Live at the BBC – they certainly took it to previously unimaginable levels of success. The Hendrix albums made the top 30 but Live at the BBC went to number one and spawned a top-10 single in Baby It’s You. The three Anthology albums of unreleased out-takes attracted an unprecedented level of media attention.
It has not been an entirely smooth ride. The surviving Beatles‘ attempts to rework the old John Lennon demos Free As a Bird and Real Love met with a decidedly mixed response, as did Let It Be … Naked, which removed Phil Spector’s syrupy orchestrations from the original album to reveal tracks that Lennon had once described as „the shittiest load of badly recorded shit“. Nevertheless, these are minor blips. The fact remains that The Beatles dominate heritage rock with the same sort of totality with which they dominated the 1960s singles chart. None of their competitors – The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley – can match the Beatles‘ commercial appeal.
It was not ever thus. For more than 20 years after their demise, no one saw the Beatles as a brand or appeared to consider their ongoing commercial potential – least of all the Beatles themselves. Their back catalogue was treated in a desultory manner. For every success – anyone in their 30s will remember the ubiquitous „red‘ and „blue“ double compilation albums The Beatles 1962-1966 and The Beatles 1967-1970 – there was a raft of disappointing releases. The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl album proved to be the ideal gift for anyone with a burning desire to hear half an hour of American teenagers squealing. There were some „themed“ collections of love songs and film music, which usually wound up on budget label Music for Pleasure – an ignominious fate for music that was supposed to have changed the world – and the Beatles Movie Medley, a belated attempt to cash-in on the early 1980s mania for „medley“ singles with a disco backbeat.
There are a variety of explanations for this. The most prosaic answer is that the Beatles had little control over what happened to their back catalogue until the late 1980s, when their contract with EMI was renegotiated vastly in their favour. However, there is also the sense that the four ex-members looked askance at their former band. All four had burgeoning solo careers, and did not take kindly to being reminded of past glory. McCartney seldom performed Beatles songs live, Lennon did everything in his power to debunk the myth of the band in songs and interviews, while journalists meeting George Harrison and Ringo Starr were tactfully advised to avoid the subject entirely. Their antipathy sank The Long and Winding Road, a proto-Anthology documentary compiled by Aspinall in the early 1970s: its release would have overshadowed the latest Wings or Lennon album and led to another round of unwanted questions about when the Beatles would reform.
In the 1990s, that ceased to be a problem. Lennon was dead and even McCartney’s solo career was waning: he last had a solo top-10 hit in 1987.
„There was a point at which they became content to acknowledge that the Beatles was the highlight of their career,“ says Paul Trynka of Mojo magazine. „It’s very different to be overshadowed by your work from five or 10 years ago than to be asked about your work from 30 years ago as if it’s an evergreen classic of the genre. One is saying ‚You were better in the old days‘ and the other is saying ‚You will continue to influence popular culture 50 years from now‘.“
And if the former Beatles were uninterested in their past, there was also the suggestion that the public were too. In 1976, the band’s singles were reissued, but only Yesterday made the top 10. A similarly muted response greeted the decision to reissue the singles again in the 1980s. This time their debut, Love Me Do, reached number four, but the rest flopped dismally. There was something rather ignoble about seeing Get Back stall at 74. It seemed to indicate diminishing returns and a fading appeal. Pop music was heading in directions that had little to do with the Beatles‘ legacy – hip-hop, dance music – and besides, the ex-Beatles had become faintly embarrassing, singing runny duets with Stevie Wonder, narrating children’s TV series or executive-producing ghastly films starring Madonna and her awful husband.
„We put the Beatles on the cover of Q in 1987 for the 20th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper, and it was seen as a real risk,“ remembers Mark Ellen, then editor of Q, now editor of Word. „They were just seen as an old group who had split up – and there were plenty of old groups who were still about.“
But in the early 1990s, with the rise of Britpop, musical tastes shifted again. As Trynka says: „People just thought, pop music is always going to be about a song, with a beat and guitar, we’re working within a defined artform rather than moving outside the confines of it. And the Beatles had been responsible for defining a lot of that.“ In recent years, magazine covers have proclaimed the Beatles as everything from The World’s Hottest Band (Rolling Stone) to the godfathers of garage rock (NME) :lol: :-o . Mojo puts them on the cover every 13 months without fail, while Word’s Beatles coverage has been so extensive that the Mail on Sunday recently came to the conclusion that McCartney was actually working for the magazine.
Apple’s programme stretches well into the future, which begs the question of whether this level of interest is sustainable. Rock music could shift away from the Beatles‘ influence once again, as it did in the 1980s. There’s also the chance that even fans will eventually have their desire for Beatles „product“ entirely satiated. It’s a question Apple is aware of, claims Clyde: „If Apple showered the market with DVDs and CD compilations and went into overdrive on merchandising, the Beatles‘ reputation for integrity would be compromised. Apple is here to protect a precious cultural legacy. Any short-term gain would be utterly self-defeating.“
But that shows no signs of happening in the foreseeable future.“There seems to be a bottomless appetite for Beatles material, not just in Britain, but globally,“ says Ellen. „I went to the premiere of the Concert for George film; Paul and Ringo were there and there were girls genuinely screaming at them, which hardly happens when a member of the Beach Boys sticks his head over the parapet. Most of the screaming girls were Americans, who seem to be genetically programmed to scream whenever a Beatle appears. The US has a very straightforward relationship with the Beatles: unconditional love.“
· The Beatles First US Visit DVD is out on EMI on February 9.
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Werbung@ dock
Frage: Machst Du das als guter Kumpel für uns viele Beatles-Fans hier im Forum? Du selber hast ja gestern selbst totalitär beschrieben, dass sie rein musikalisch nur äußerst geringe Bedeutung hätten.
Also: Was jetzte? :D
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Jetzt schon 62 Jahre Rock 'n' Roll@ dr.music
sozusagen..hab den Artikel zufällig enteckt und da sich hier viele Beatles Fans tummeln…. :D
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Dock, was ist los?
Du hast vergessen „ABZOCKE!!!!“ dazu zu schreiben. :D
Ob ich mir diese DVD holen werde, ist mir jedoch noch nicht ganz klar. Ma gucken…--
Staring at a grey sky, try to paint it blue - Teenage BlueJetzt ist die DVD ja schon seit ein paar Jahren auf dem Markt. Und? Was haltet ihr von ihr? Empfehlenswert oder eher nicht?
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Nett sich das mal anzuschauen, aber essentiell sicherlich nicht!
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Staring at a grey sky, try to paint it blue - Teenage Blue
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