All You Need is Love (and the Beatles)
It’s shaping up to be a good, if expensive, week for survey researchers (and others) who are also Beatles fans. This Wednesday, Harmonix Music Systems will release the greatly anticipated The Beatles: Rock Band , a video game which will allow users to jam along with the Beatles interactively on the game’s electronic instruments. That same day, digitally remastered versions of all Beatles studio albums will be released . Serious aficionados will no doubt snap up the box set featuring 14 of these remastered CDs along with brief documentaries detailing the making of each CD.
In a nine page article in the New York Times describing the making of The Beatles: Rock Band, author Daniel Radosh describes the extensive involvement of surviving Beatles Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney as well as Yoko Ono and Olivia and Dhani Harrison in imagining, creating, refining, and publicizing the game. On the decision to place the Beatles in the center of the interactive video game cultural phenomenon, McCartney comments that “I think it reflects where the Beatles are at.. we are halfway between reality and mythology.” McCartney is also a fan of the game’s interactive nature, noting that “you want people to get engaged… [now people can feel as if] they possess or own the song, that they’ve been in it.”
Meanwhile, some pollsters are hard at work confirming hypotheses that will come as little surprise to Beatles fans: more than forty years after their last group recording, the Beatles are judged to be the most liked musical group in America, and their fans are found in every generation. Pew reports that 49% of those surveyed claimed they liked the Beatles “a lot”, and 81% like the Beatles overall. This is the highest favorability percentage for any of the 20 musical groups or artists included in Pew’s survey. The biggest fans are those between 50 and 64, with 65% of this age group liking the Beatles “a lot”, but fans are found in all age groups: 45% of those between 16 and 25 also like the Beatles “a lot”.
Are you a Beatles fan? Do you think any musical group will ever have a cultural or musical impact equal to the Beatles? Do you plan to purchase or play any of the Beatles-related music or games released this week?
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What a great post, Katy. I really don’t respond to blogs but this one is irresistible. Yes, I am a Beatles fan — always have been since the age of 15. There were so many moving parts in 1963 and 1964 — the huge funk and loss of American innocence following the JFK assassination and a generation of Boomers (I call us Woodstockers) just coming into our own challenging authority. The social history of civil rights, race riots, campus protests,and so has been told — but of equal importance was the challenge to Rock and Roll. This music genre had its roots in the black community but became the anthem of youth protest and culture. For a while, the music industry tried to sanitize with the likes of Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, and Fabian Forte — but it was a music that at its core was an anti-establishment statement of a growing worldwide phenomenon. Enter the Beatles: brash, comical, no crew cuts or bouffant hair styles, irreverant. Plus the music was simply infectious. And more importantly, as we Boomers grew with each global movement — the war in Vietnam, Black Power, student rights, growing awareness of the Third World anti-colonial movements, the Beatles grew with us. They changed their styles, became even more anti-establishment, studied music and eastern religion in India. And their music grew and grew. They experimented with music and life just as we were doing.
It was a perfect meshing of the right guys at the right time. There were so many moving parts and we and the Beatles were feeding each other.
And now to see my kids fans and experts on the Beatles. Can it possibly get better. Actually, “it’s getting better all the time”.
Will someone come along like them? Sure. This is a period of great change and a new cultural phenemonon will capture all the changing parts — a First Global, someone from the East, someone riding the change as quickly as it happens.
Will the Beatles be replaced? Never. Never.
John Zogby
I agree that our generation (the “Boomers”) grew up with the Beatles. I was 16 when they appeared on Ed Sullivan, and was a crazed “Beatlemaniac” from then on. The Beatles became iconoclastic, but in the beginning, were so VERY innocent (”I Want to Hold Your Hand.”)
Their experimentation with illicit drugs and Eastern religions, drew us all into the milieu; “but Mom – the Beatles are doing it!” John’s clalming that they were “More popular than Jesus” didn’t sit well with the born-again’s, but in a sense, to us, they were.
The marriages of both John and Paul helped to end the Beatle reign. John had his Yoko, and Paul had his bride. Our generation started to get married and have kids, too. With the tragic, all-too-soon murder of John, and the cancer that took George, decimated any thought of a reunion.
We grew a LOT after the deaths. Though Paul continues to play his music, we will NEVER see their like again. They postulated a generation; I have my doubts that any present or future musical group will ever attain the legend of the Beatles.
Are you a Beatles fan? Yes. I grew up on the Beatles. Do you think any musical group will ever have a cultural or musical impact equal to the Beatles? Since 1989, Garth Brooks has sold over 11 million more albums more than the Beatles. That’s quite an impact.
definitely looking forward to this….Beatles Rock Band..nice!!
As soon as the Beatles started doing drugs they lost me.
By the way, name the musical composition that has been performed every year in the past 400 years. Hint (but not a very good one): He was a German.
Am I a Beatles fan? To the core. Introduced by my “Boomer” parents. I am approaching my mid-30s, and I think no one will ever come close to replacing the Beatles! However, I will not fall victim to this week’s marketing ploy, as I bought the entire Beatles Anthology in the 1990s, which contains nearly every song they ever wrote, sang, or did not release.
I only wish there could have been a Beatles reunion in this millennium. Damn you Mark Lindsay Chapman…hope you never are paroled! Damn you cancer…you stole George Harrison from us!
Okay, Okay…before I get attacked and booed off my soapbox…I got the middle name wrong. It was Mark David Chapman. Hey, give me a break. I was only 5 when John Lennon was killed…