Mike Evans - The Beatles

In 1957, the painter Richard Hamilton (who later designed the collage insert in the Beatles White Album) famously defined all things Pop as popular, transient, expendable, low cost, mass produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big business. This description was particularly applicable to pop music. Yet as pop artists such as Hamilton appropriated the transient imagery of comic books and advertising, rendering them permanent, so the attention of critics and writers signalled a point at which pop music began to be taken seriously. This radical change in attitude was catalysed by the Beatles.

Before the Beatles, at the beginning of the Sixties, no one in the serious press paid attention to rocknroll. There were no books tracing its (admittedly very short) history, and music critics never gave the popular mass-market a second thought. The weekly music press in England was divided, between the throwaway pop coverage of the New Musical Express and the jazz-dominated Melody Maker. In America, likewise, the jazz fraternity had Downbeat magazine, but there was no contemporary equivalent of the later Rolling Stone. In the space of one decade, the advent of the Beatles would change all this.

It seemed to me that pop had come of age, wrote critic George Melly on first hearing Paul McCartneys Eleanor Rigby. As the Beatles began to transcend the traditional confines of pop music, so an ostensibly more cultured and literate audience sat up and took notice. There were other forces in play, of course. Bob Dylans lyrics had become progressively more poetic since his first albums in the early Sixties. Indeed, by the time of the Beatles 1966 Revolver album (where Eleanor Rigby first appeared), John Lennon, in particular, had clearly come under his influence. Dylan, however, was first and foremost an albums artist. However significant the changes he brought to rock music, he couldnt impact upon the mainstream in the way that the overtly populist Beatles did.

Populism was the sign of the times not only in music, but in the popular and commercial arts generally. Nineteen-sixties Britain saw a democratisation of culture. Painting, fashion, photography, journalism and filmmaking all gave rise to a new generation who displaced the old elite. David Hockney, Michael Caine and David Bailey all came, like the Beatles, from modest backgrounds. These were the new movers and shakers who, in turn, informed the new opinion makers.

So it was that highbrow met lowbrow, as one American commentator put it. For the groups unprecedented influence on the other side of the Atlantic not just on the US charts, but on the American psyche ensured that of the many thousands of column inches devoted to the Beatles throughout the world, a vast number originated in the United States. And it wasnt just the music journalists who had them in their spotlight. Fashion gurus, film critics, sociologists, psychologists and political commentators all got in on the act.

During the eight short years that marked their career as a recording group, however, only a couple of biographies of the group saw publication: Michael Brauns Love Me Do: The Beatles Progress the only serious account written during the first year of Beatlemania and the authorised (but inevitably sanitised) biography by Hunter Davies. There were also two literary efforts by John Lennon In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works which immediately made him the toast of that social group the English call the chattering classes.

But, after the Beatles break-up, the trickle of books became a flood. From the familiar story of their progress from Hamburg cellars to superstardom to in-depth musical analyses, every possible angle was covered. For every straight biography there was a score of I was there recollections by friends and family, ex-colleagues, or even fans; for every realistic assessment of them as a rocknroll band, there was some pretentious highbrow critic trying to justify his liking for the Beatles.

Within these pages is a cross section of the very many words written about the Beatles over the years. They range from contemporary reviews to considered retrospective accounts, from thought-provoking challenges to our popular perception of John, Paul, George and Ringo to cynical put-downs by shortsighted pundits. The Beatles often courted controversy Were more popular than Jesus now, John blithely claimed but they also stimulated debate (particularly in their candid admissions of drug use), faced the very real physical dangers of Beatlemania and ultimately, in Johns case, suffered an untimely death. (As did original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, and manager Brian Epstein.)

The significance of the Beatles not only in terms of their effect on popular music, but also in their impact upon social mores and attitudes cannot be overestimated. They emerged from an austere post-war Britain, completely under the shadow of US popular culture. British youth had found a necessary escape from drab surroundings in American movies, street fashion and rocknroll. Less than a decade on, the Beatles had turned the tables: an affluent Britain began to dominate pop culture across the globe, and directly triggered a youth revolution whose impact is still felt over 30 years later.

Mike Evans
London