Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of the Beatles cult
Last week I had the misfortune to read a true journalistic atrocity. Here are but two paragraphs, awful enough to make a baby die were you to read this tripe within earshot of the aforementioned innocent:
Luckily Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the widows of George Harrison and John Lennon, seem to understand that the Beatles are not a museum piece, that the band and its message ought never be encased in amber.
The Beatles: Rock Band is nothing less than a cultural watershed, one that may prove only slightly less influential than the band’s famous appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative entertainment experience. In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made. Never before has a video game had such intergenerational cultural resonance.
And this piece of awesome awfulness appeared in the supposedly quality the New York Times. I know they’re in financial trouble over there, but have they no money to pay even one editor to stop this drivel from seeing print? Read the whole article and weep. For lo, it truly is an awful piece of writing, awful in every aspect of its essence, awful with that special pompous, self-regarding and yet lacking in any kind of self-awareness awfulness that the New York Times excels at. It literally caused me to bleed internally over its awfulness. It is quite possibly the worst article ever written in this universe or any other. And yet still the folks at the NYT blame the Internet for why they are losing money hand over fist! Oh you naïve children….
Of course although this is the worst article ever written, the demented sentiment that lurks behind it is not all that rare. The Beatles cult is one of the truly baffling phenomena of our times. I mean it’s not that the Beatles are bad, they’re just not very important — they wrote some pretty melodies, wore stupid haircuts, descended into a howling maelstrom of pretentiousness and then died in order of quality (Paul will go last). And that’s all that needs to be said. Future generations will look back in astonishment that so much energy and attention was lavished on something so modest — that is if they look back on the Fab Four at all. After all nobody is much interested today in why the Dutch went crazy for tulips in the 17th century or why audiences in the 1950s believed Jerry Lewis was funny. It’s just what one author of times past referred to as an Extraordinary Popular Delusion.
And yet just when you think you have surely fulfilled your quota of egregious Beatles lunacy for the year, somebody comes along and tops it with a new absurdity. Mere weeks after the New York Times committed that particular crime against humanity I stumbled upon this in the London Times — apparently a researcher named Kevin Roach recently discovered a fifty year old essay written by the band’s most untalented member while still a schoolboy. It was about the Queen. According to Roach this is interesting because:
It shows his handwriting at that age and shows how Paul was thinking at the time. His handwriting is well advanced — you would say it was written by someone who was older than a ten-year-old, more like 14 or 15.
More amazing still:
‘McCartney was marked down for his grammar in the project, using the word “but” at the start of a sentence. Instead of joining the examiner in criticism, however, Roach believes that the decorative “B” hints at the musician’s future.
“The interesting thing is that it is the same ‘B’ as on the early Beatles drum-kit logo in 1961 and 1962,” he said.’
Of course newspapers and researchers only plumb such depths of triviality when the topic in hand is beyond exhausted and reached that state a very long time ago. That anyone should care about this kind of detail is truly beyond the realm of the ‘rational’, we have now entered the world of pseudo-religious quests — the tracking down of holy relics, the veneration of a saint’s toenail or a piece of the True Cross.
If it brings Mr. Roach happiness, then Paul bless him, although I can’t help thinking his no doubt prodigious energies could be channelled more fruitfully elsewhere. But for a major newspaper to give this nothingness prominent coverage in its arts section shows a total loss of perspective, a form of derangement as bad as the NYT hacks, only more subtle.
Repeat after me world: the Beatles are just a pop group. There, there. Now turn out the light and go to sleep. You’re safe now.
Hat tip: Alex Massie
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This is NOT a comment; NOT a reply; Not an answer; NOT a contestation; NOT an argument!
It IS a reminder to all you wise folk out there who have not visited this site to NEVER EVER answer a fool according to his folly, especially if the fool’s name is Daniel Kalder and he makes his dry crust and gruel by criticising talent whose toejam he’s not worthy to eat!
The Beatles were a pretty good band, but they couldn’t hold a candle to musicians of genius (and their musical aggregations) like Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Artie Shaw.
Actually, Ido ponder over why people found Jerry Lewis funny. Go Kalder go!!!
Nice to see one of the Fab Four’s Moonie-esque followers getting the first word in on the thread, but no surprise- like Scientologists, Beatles cultists are constantly scanning the web for slights to the founders of their faith.
I could add to your of superior talents for a very long time, Parsifal.
the missing word in that sentence is ‘roster’
Though I like all kinds of rock ‘n’ roll, its musicianship in an overwhelmingly majority of cases is terribly thin. There has been a steady decline in the complexity and inventiveness of popular music since the Big Band era, until we are left with the see-saw, two-note sambas of today’s hip-hop and rap.
Oh, I don’t know, I think that Big Band whipper-snapperism is just as overrated as The Beatles, them mop-haired hippie freaks. Gilbert & Sullivan, now, that’s when they knew how to write music.
Daniel K, Parsifal, and Jericho mostly agreeing on something? I’m afraid…
The end is nigh.
“It literally caused me to bleed internally over its awfulness.” Wasn’t there an article in the original WFTC book, maybe by Scott Stein, about what “a true journalistic atrocity” such an egregious misuse of the word “literally” is? Of course, forgive me if you literally found yourself in the hospital later that night, having internal wounds cauterized and receiving transfusions of packed red cells and platelets.
I’ll agree with you that there’s a cultishness surrounding a large percentage of Beatles fans, folks who act as if the Fab Four were not mere musicians but rather gods on Earth. These people can be true obsessives (my parents once took me as a teen to Beatlefest- like Comic-Con for the Beatles- so I’ve definitely seen it firsthand.)
But to state as Daniel does that “I mean it’s not that the Beatles are bad, they’re just not very important — they wrote some pretty melodies, wore stupid haircuts, descended into a howling maelstrom of pretentiousness and then died in order of quality (Paul will go last).” is even more laughable, and marks Daniel as one of those who was just never able to himself get into the Beatles’ music, assumes that everyone who adores them are the crazy ones, and who has managed to ignore the fact that more musicians in the forty years since the Beatles peaked have cited that collaboration of John, Paul, George, and Ringo as their number one musical influence than anyone else. To ignore the fact that they have managed to maintain a fan base among the teen population all that time (a group that normally won’t be caught dead enjoying the things their parents thought were cool growing up). To ignore the development of rock music throughout the sixties and watching as the Beatles fused the simple, rhythmic beats of early rock and roll with melody, harmony, and depth that everyone around them scrambled to imitate.
To quote Chuck Klostermann, pop culture journalist for just about every major magazine at one point or another, speaking about the top ten rock bands which are historically least overrated or underrated: “The Beatles are generally seen as the single most important rock band of all time, allegedly because they wrote all the best songs. Since both of these facts are true, the Beatles are rated properly.”
yeah. At a gathering recently I was chastised and accused of lying and posturing for saying that I didn’t like the beatles when in actual fact what I’d said was that they were mediocre and overrrated. Granted, they created a formidable body of catchy pop tunes with some nice harmonies. But artistically or musically or whatever, they didn’t break any new ground whatsoever; only at first copying the likes of Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent and then later some of the psychedalia that came out of California in the late 60’s.
Well-marketed, you gotta give them that.
Sorry kids- Rock n Roll is an American phenomenon of which the Beatles are, dare I say, a pale imitation
Wow Chuck Klosterman said it, so it must be true! After all pop music journalism is a serious and profound area indeed.
I believe that The Duke, and Ella, and Frankie, and Tony, ALL did covers of Beatles songs….!
I never ever heard John, Paul, George and Ringo do “Jazz” standards…!
So there we are…