Candy Leonard's ambitious 2014 book Beatleness: How the Beatles and Their Fans Remade the World, combines a wealth of interview material with fans who were there in the 1960s and offers a portrait of the group and its fans in their era. The result is a rare, insider glimpse into of one of the most historically significant fan phenomena. Since publishing Beatleness, Candy has written about why we still mourn John Lennon in the PBS magazine Next Avenue, and described the Beatles impact on baby boomers for The Huffington Post. Since I consider Beatleness an insightful model of accessible writing on music fandom, I was really pleased when she agreed to an interview.
THIS IS THE SECOND PART OF A TWO PART INTERVIEW. READ THE FIRST PART HERE.
THE
YOUNG ONES
A
recent BBC4 documentary on the British invasion portrayed the Beatles and their
UK contemporaries as people who taught younger Americans how to be 'cool':
sartorially stylish, generationally rebellious, sexually adventurous. I’m not
sure how much that translated for the children in their audience. What I found
interesting about your book was the frequent focus on younger fans. What was it
about the Beatles that made them especially appealing to younger audiences?
When we think of first-generation Beatle fans, black
and white footage of screaming teenage fans pops into mind. But it’s important
to remember—and an important source of the Beatles cultural power—that most
first-gen fans were children, between the ages of 6 and 10. And yes, boys as
young as 7 started thinking about their appearance and wanting to look cool.
Many girls adopted the style of the Beatles’ wives and girlfriends.
Being a Beatle fan allowed these children to enter an
important cultural conversation, and the music gave them early glimpses into
the teenage world of love and romance. All of this was very empowering. But,
above all else, the Beatles were fun. Everything about them was fun. I asked
fans if, at the time, they perceived the Beatles as kids or adults. What I
found was that because of the greater age gap with the younger fans, the
Beatles seemed to them more like adults (especially in their suits and ties),
but there was nothing threatening about them and they were always on your side.
They were perceived as adults, but a very different kind of adult.
I was interested to read that some younger fans
combined Mary Poppins (with its mock-Englishness
and subtext of female independence) with the coming of the Beatles. Can you say
any more about that?
A Hard Day’s Night and Mary Poppins were in theatres at the
same time, summer of 1964. American fans
were in the throes of Beatlemania, with a touch of Beatle-inspired Anglophila,
which somehow made Mary Poppins
evocative of the Beatles. Anything
British was somehow about the Beatles.
I
was interested in the idea that the eventfulness of "Beatleness" may
have drawn children and perhaps adults?) into wishing they were teenagers. To
what extent do you think the strength of teen interest in the Beatles began to
idealize teendom in wider society?
Half the population was under age twenty-five, which
is important to remember when thinking about Beatles fandom and the sixties in
general. From 1965 on, the media became obsessed with teenagers and the
generation gap, thus reinforcing the emerging themes of “us” (young people) vs.
“them” (the establishment) in the music. In their 1967 hit “The Beat Goes On,”
Sonny and Cher announce, “Teeny bopper is our newborn king,” and they were
right.
One
thing I loved about your book was the way that the fan interview quotes explained
first-hand how fans felt about each new release and whether it spoke personally
to them. I was fascinated to hear that younger fans were spooked by 'Strawberry
Fields Forever.' How was news of the band's drug use treated by different fans,
and why did some stay despite their unnerved reactions?
The “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”
promotional films (what we today would call videos) were off-putting to many
fans because of the Beatles’ facial hair, and many found “Strawberry Fields
Forever” frightening when they heard it on the radio. It was pretty straight up
psychedelic, and the lyrics were very challenging, though compelling. But fans
didn’t know with certainty that the Beatles were using drugs until McCartney
evangelized for LSD in an interview with Life
magazine, shortly after the release of
Sgt. Pepper, in June ‘67–the Summer
of Love. Parents were upset because they saw their kids looking up to the
Beatles and wanting to emulate them however they could. There’s no question
millions of baby boomers experienced LSD, just as they experienced meditation,
because of the Beatles’ example. But to
your point, as the music became more psychedelic, many fans didn’t quite know
what to make of it. Many longed for the old moptops.
I really enjoyed your short section on The Monkees and
how they captured younger audiences with a sort of pop-era Beatles tribute that
contained some more contemporary psychedelic in-jokes. How do you see the
relationship between the two bands and fan bases?
Some fans, especially younger fans, but many older
ones as well, found Revolver a little
bit too challenging or “weird.” Many put
the Beatles on a back burner for a while, and the Monkees filled that void.
Their TV show, which went on the air a month after Revolver came out, had the pop sensibilities and physical comedy of
A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, and the Monkees themselves
captured the freshness of the early Beatles, something many fans missed. But
the most important thing about the Monkees was that their output contained the
same countercultural messages that older fans were now gleaning from the
Beatles. I refer to the experience of
growing up with the Beatles as an “alternative curriculum”—the Monkees were
absolutely aligned with that curriculum and the emerging hippie ethos.
FANDOM
AND FAMILY
Can
you explain the ways in which family life was negotiated in relation to the
participants' Beatles passions?
At some point in the early days of Beatlemania parents
realized that their kids’ engagement with and passion for the Beatles was not
going away, and so it had to be managed. Beatles records and other merchandise
was used as a reward for good behaviour, and confiscating or withholding it was
used as punishment. To this day, first-generation fans can still feel their
anger over records and magazines being destroyed by parents, and they still
feel special gratitude toward the long-gone parent who allowed them to go to a
concert, or added some spare change to their allowance so an album could be
purchased.
We
have been led to believe that the Beatles reflected a generation gap, but you
show a more varied picture. How did an interest in the group help to bond
families?
Some parents liked the Beatles, and were the ones
buying the records for the whole family to enjoy. Fans recall joyful memories
of discovering Sgt. Pepper with their
parents, or family dances in the rec room, with the Beatles blaring from the
turntable. That said, as the Beatles started getting more complicated, and the
cultural turmoil called “the sixties” unfolded, many parents, along with “the
Establishment,” saw the Beatles (correctly) as fomenting young peoples’
displeasure with the status quo.
One
thing you don't discuss much in
Beatleness is the many Beatles fan clubs. Did interviewees offer anything
interesting about fan club experiences?
Many were members of the Beatles Fan Club, in England,
and received the colourful flexidisk Christmas greeting record every year,
along with monthly newsletters. There were also many local chapters. There’s an
interesting documentary film, Good Ol’
Freda, about Freda Kelly, who started out as a fan at the lunchtime Cavern
shows, then began working for Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who asked her to
run their fan club.
Sometimes
you use metaphors of the family to describe the Beatles fan base, particularly
talking about a "global siblinghood" online. Why do you think
metaphors about family relations are so prominent in popular discussions about
the experience of fandom? Is it a case of them emphasizing some things
(community, security) and neglecting others (commerce), or is something else
entirely actually at play?
A sense of community, being accepted into a community,
is a large part of the appeal of fandom, especially a large enduring fandom
like that of the Beatles. The family is a space where one is unconditionally
accepted and where one can be their authentic self. Fan communities provide a
space for that as well.
The sibling metaphor is especially appropriate because
it suggests a common set of early experiences and influences, and a shared
reverence, and that was certainly the case with baby boomers, worldwide, regarding
the Beatles. And of course part of being
in a fan community is that fans want to identify themselves as members, which
often involves consumption and commerce.
In ‘64 and ‘65, hair length on boys was another way of expressing
membership.
In
my book Understanding Fandom (2013) I
likened each individual's personal fandom to a kind of "knowing
field": a territory discovered inside each of us that we know we share.
The idea allows us to see personal fandom not simply as a "phase" but
rather something we can remain with or leave and then come back. What did you
find out about fans' reasons for leaving and returning to the Beatles' fan
base?
For the fans, mostly male, who started playing musical
instruments in the sixties and continued playing throughout their lives, the
Beatles, and music in general, has always been with them. But for many women,
active fandom was seen as incompatible with work and family responsibilities, and
so it fell by the wayside. When women did stay in touch with their love for the
Beatles, it often manifested as fan art or fan fiction. Today, of course, the
internet makes it very easy to be an active member of a fan community. Many
first-generation fans participate in the many Facebook groups with a Beatles
focus.
You
mention fans who have returned to the Beatles during their life journeys. Some
female fans seem to be developing or returning to a 'clandestine' interest that
has been rejected or disapproved of by the men in their lives - whether
fathers, boyfriends or husbands. This is interesting because 'clandestine'
makes it sounds like a form of 'closet fandom' but I guess it is more like
'open secret fandom' at times? How, as educators, do you think we can ease the
awkwardness of such situations?
As I discuss in Beatleness,
there is a history of fans being harshly judged by cultural critics, and many
of these arguments are class based. But if you look closely, everybody is a fan
of something. Why is it okay to be a Shakespeare fan or a Freud fan, or a
Lincoln fan, and not a Beatles fan? Or a Dr. Who fan? Yes, there are unstable fans, as Beatle fans
know all too well. That said, fandom is, for the most part, a benign activity
that fosters community and a sense of play. It offers social, emotional, and
intellectual engagement.
FANDOM
AND GENDER
I
was interested how much you saw Beatles fandom as a gendered activity - can you
summarize some of the general differences you found between male and female
fans?
At the most manifest level, from the age of puberty
on, female fans could not relate to or identify with the Beatles in the ways
male fans could. It’s been said that boys wanted to be them and girls wanted to
be with them, and that’s mainly true, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
Certainly there were many young men who were drawn to them in an erotic way,
just as there were many young women who didn’t want to be their girlfriends but
would have loved to be bandmates, or just hang out with them. The culture didn’t allow these feelings to be
expressed at the time.
For the youngest fans, the children, there was not
that gendered divide. The Beatles were just four cool guys who brought joy and
fun to their lives, and opened their ears to music.
Your
discussion of male fandom reminded me of Judith Butler's idea that gender is
performed through imitation. Can you explain how the Fab Four inspired some of
their male fans to shape their own masculinities?
Through their appearance, behaviour, and music, the
Beatles presented a new proposition for masculinity—softer, more emotionally
vulnerable, less macho. The Beatles were rebellious role models in A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, but unlike early film rebels
(think West Side Story, The Wild Ones, Rebel Without a Cause), they were not at all macho and there was no
hint of violence. They rebelled through their wit, charisma, and social
competence, making all the adults around them look like fools. Their way of
being, described by one male fan as “the embodiment of cool,” was widely
emulated.
Beatle lyrics often referred to women as “friends,”
and the relationship dynamics presented in their songs were more egalitarian than
other music of the day. They offered a new template for relationships. This was
a huge part of their appeal for female fans. However, this was more of an
aspirational vision than reality, if you look at their personal lives. Pop
music was so much a male province, with male voices calling all the shots, but
the Beatles seemed a little kinder and gentler. Unfortunately, the dominant relationship
template prevailed. That said, it’s clear that the Beatles’ presentation of
masculinity helped to make pop music, and then rock, a space for more fluid
gender roles. Even all the fuss about their hair was historically significant
because it started a conversation about gender, personal self-expression and
authenticity.
Did
everyone you met primarily identify as a 'Beatles fan' or did different fans
identify much more with particular members of the band (for example 'a George
fan')?
They identified as a Beatle fan, but there’s always a
favourite. Picking a favourite was an important
part of the Beatle fan experience, kind of sub-identity within the Beatle fan
identity. That said, teenage boys were less apt to pick a favourite, because it
was the band’s camaraderie and esprit de
corps that appealed to them. The Beatles presented a different, less
fraught kind of male friendship, and teen boys imagined being part of their
band of brothers.
In a sense, due to the pre-existing conventions of the
teen pop genre (notably shaped by the teen angels), the Beatles' US visits
were, to fans, almost like a giant date, as these highly adored, exotic and jovial,
powerful and popular, new potential boyfriends arrived from the UK. Do you
think that female fans behaved as if on a date when they went to see the band?
Many had very vivid fantasies about
meeting them, and many tried, in various ways, to circumvent security to try to
get closer to them. These efforts were a
safe place to misbehave in public, as was the screaming. But I don’t think
girls saw going to the show as a date, per se. They just felt thrilled and
lucky, and saw themselves as part of this huge thing that everyone was talking
about it. They were witnesses to history, and they knew it even then.
You report that some female fans discussed beforehand whether they would scream. Why did that happen?
Female fans knew screaming was the expected
behaviour, but they didn’t know if they’d have the nerve to do it. Screaming in public was pretty deviant
behaviour at the time for these girls, many of whom were wearing special
dress-up outfits, complete with white gloves. Girls just didn’t behave that way
in public. They were anticipating what the experience would be like, and
wondering if they’d dare to scream was part of it. For many, the time period
between getting the tickets in the mail and the actual show was one of enormous
excitement and joy. In general, joyful
anticipation was a very large part of the Beatle fan experience—the next
record, the next TV appearance, etc.
Anticipating a live show was a feeling of sustained ecstasy. In 2016, these same fans, in their sixties,
feel the same way when counting down to a McCartney or Ringo show.
What was the most unexpected thing you found when
interviewing fellow American Beatles fans?
I went into the project knowing how
important the experience of growing up with the Beatles was, and still is, to
first-generation fans. But to hear them talk about how special (“blessed,” privileged”)
it made them feel, then and now, and hearing the depth of emotion and gratitude
they conveyed, was really quite stunning. I don’t think we’ll see a phenomenon like this
again. It was a perfect storm.
