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John Whitehead's Commentary

The Beatles Were the Vanguard of Change

John Whitehead
A hundred years from now, people will listen to the music of the Beatles the same way we listen to Mozart.--Paul McCartney
The Beatles did not just come to America forty years ago, they invaded it. On February 7, 1964, the group arrived at Kennedy International Airport and was met by 3,000 screaming fans, mostly teenage girls. The Fab Four required the help of 200 policemen to get through the crowds.

For a month, the Beatles performed to shrieking, squealing audiences as the "Beatlemania" that had gripped Great Britain in 1963 enthralled America. When the Beatles made their American television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, the program received the highest ratings in history.

Beatlemania was an instant fad, and soon many of the sixties generation abandoned crew cuts for long bangs and black boots. The Beatles initially seemed innocuous. When "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was released on December 26, 1963, the number one hit on the pop chart was "Dominique" by Sister Sourire, the Singing Nun. Many who first heard the wisecracking Beatles with their mushroom haircuts and matching slim-cut, lapel-less jackets assumed they were just another musical novelty.

However, the Beatles quickly proved they were more than a fad. By April 1964, they held the five top spots on the Hot 100 Billboard Chart ("Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," "She Loves You," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me"). No artist has since achieved this.

Even as the Beatles began their unprecedented run, there were those who looked upon the group as a fad. "When will the bubble burst?" was a question rolling off some critics' tongues.

However, by 1967 with the release of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles had raised rock music to a new level and become artists in their own right. Sgt. Pepper "changed the recording art from something that merely made amusing sounds," notes Beatle engineer George Martin, "into something which will stand the test of time as a valid art form: sculpture in music, if you like."

The four young men who had affected everything from haircuts and fashion to the political and spiritual beliefs of a generation had now conquered western culture. This is truly amazing when one realizes that the Beatles' career lasted only eight years, with a mere ten and a half hours of recorded music (22 singles and 14 albums).

Beatle history, however, mirrors not only the culture of their time but also impacts the present. This is seen in the phenomenal success of the group's number one hits album, which was released several years ago, as well as the success of Let It Be...Naked, released in November 2003.

The charge laid against the Beatles by the older generation of the sixties, including my parents, was that they corrupted the American youth. However, the Beatles' popularity rose just as their culture's youth were expressing their own values. When the Beatles landed in the United States, traditional moral codes were already disintegrating. "We've discarded the idea that the loss of virginity is related to degeneracy," an Ohio State senior at the time explained. "Premarital sex doesn't mean the downfall of society, at least not the kind of society that we're going to build."

The Beatles symbolized the rejection of the 1950s morality, a revolt against authority and estrangement from parents for many young Americans. "My mother hates them, my father hates them, my teacher hates them," a young fan said. "Can you think of three better reasons why I love them?"

Despite an apparently harmless façade, the Beatles introduced a very subtle generational revolt. A 1965 article in Newsweek magazine noted the alienation on college campuses: "The young successfully 'Beatle-ized' the nation, and many think they may be about to 'Berkeley-ize' it as well." In fact, "the Beatles and their music constituted arguably the single most important agent of cultural revolution in their time," writes Professor Henry W. Sullivan in his book on the group.

The point is that unlike their predecessors, the Beatles were more than just entertainers. As cultural icons and modernists, they were willing to challenge traditions--especially John Lennon. The defining moment came in 1966 with a remark made by Lennon at a time when public demand for the Beatles seemed insatiable. Lennon took aim at Christianity in an interview with a British journalist: "Christianity will go," Lennon said. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right, and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus Christ right now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was alright, but the disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

The importance of this statement cannot be underestimated, for it challenged the basic fabric of western society. The gauntlet was thrown down by the biggest pop icons of the age.

The Beatles were the spokesmen for a generation that had been raised on Leave It to Beaver, anti-communism and the fear of God. Men routinely dressed for work in hats and ties, and women were expected to nurture their children on Christian morals and have dinner ready when their husbands came home from work. Lennon's statement challenged all of this.

Furthermore, and what may be more important, it provoked one of the last real stands for Christian fundamentalism. The failed attempt by fundamentalist groups to ban the Beatles, including burn-ins to torch Beatle records, meant that the old-time religion had lost its 200-year-old grip on American culture.

Therefore, more than four boys emerged from that airplane forty years ago in New York. The vanguard of a generational shift stepped onto American soil, and the world was forever changed.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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