Francis Newton
The Beatles are an agreeable bunch of kids, quite unsinister (unlike some of the American teenage comets), with that charming combination of flamboyance and a certain hip self-mickey-taking, which is the ideal of their age group. They are in fact the 'new Elizabethans' for whom the bishops called 10 years ago. Much of their appeal has nothing to do with music at all, but with clothes, haircuts and stance. What they sell is not music, but 'the sound', a slightly modified version of the heavily accented, electronically amplified noise which has long been familiar to rock-and-rollers and could at a pinch be described as the musique concrète of the masses. Anyone can produce that sound, and practically everyone with the money for the rather expensive gear has done so…. Mersey-side—and the Beatles—emerged as the recognised Nashville of Britain about a year ago, when entrepreneurs first became aware of the size of the market for the beat groups which had grown up spontaneously in provincial cellars and halls…. There is generally only one idol and it happens that this sympathetic group of lads has been cast for the part. They are probably just about to begin their slow descent: the moment when someone thinks of making a film with a pop idol normally marks the peak of his curve. In 20 years' time nothing of them will survive. (p. 673)
Francis Newton, "Beatles and Before," in New Statesman (© 1963 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.); November 8, 1963, pp. 673-74.
This has been the Year of the BEATLES. Whatever triumphs or disasters 1963 has held for the rest of us, for countless thousands of young Britons it has been a time when the world has revolved around these four energetically nonchalant young men. The phenomenon is not, of course, new. Plenty of people in their day have caught a generation's fancy. Some of us can remember a PRINCE OF WALES who had only to sport a boater to set an instantaneous fashion….
Educationists should be thinking about them. But is that not a trite suggestion? What have educationists been doing already? Some indeed have had no option but to think about the BEATLES….
Only connect! These Liverpool boys have achieved a degree of communication overnight that all the educational pundits in being could never aspire to in a month of Sundays. We tire the years debating how we can get across to the young. They open their mouths and in a second half the youngsters in Christendom are sharing their world….
But what do we really know about them? If the BEATLES were nothing else they would still be a sobering reminder to us of what tiros we are in this business of knowing the child.
They are, in fact, much more than that. When the techniques of promotion and advertisement that surround them are stripped away they still epitomize by their very demeanour a striking quality of present-day youth. It is their complete freedom from adult hypocrisies. The young today have a candour about them, born perhaps of the Bomb, that accepts no assumptions just because they are accepted and takes over no values untried. For all their ignorance they set us an example of intellectual honesty that should make us feel ashamed. If we cannot match their integrity we shall never get on terms with them. We shall be squaring the hypotenuse or expounding the ablative absolute. They will be humming to themselves "All My Loving", "I Wanna Be Your Man" or "Hold Me Tight".
"Heroes of the Year," in The Times Educational Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1963; reproduced from The Times Educational Supplement by permission), December 27, 1963, p. 939.
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