Michael Gerber
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[Folks: I found this in Drafts, re-read it, and liked it. I don’t know why I didn’t post it before, maybe because i didn’t come to A Grand Conclusion. Anyway, enjoy.—MG]

 

Commenter D.N. just coined a phrase that I really love: “Beatles folk memory,” which I took to mean “how the Beatles phenomenon, and the experience of being a fan of theirs, was experienced by fans.” I think it’s a tremendously useful concept.

The folk memory of first-generation fans is easiest to track, not only because it left huge traces in the mainstream monoculture, but because it was a truly generational experience. We’ve all seen the wonderful “Sprout of a New Generation” clip above—according to this blog, the lady’s name is Bonnie Von Lobenstein; when I think of first-generation fans, I think of Bonnie. They were young, and utterly unironic in their love of the group. And just as they threw themselves behind the moptop era Fabs as something Big and Important, they did the same with the Psychedelic Fabs, and the post-68 Hairy Fabs. The Fabs are theirs, and they are the Fabs, in a way that the rest of us—okay, I’ll just speak for myself—can find a little much at times. When you talk to a lot of Baby Boomers, it’s as if liking The Beatles conferred some hand in making The Beatles special. It doesn’t matter how cool you grew up to be, it seems like everyone who was between 8 and 20 in February 1964 has written about watching the Fabs on Ed Sullivan. And there are even collections of these memories, in books like Beatleness by Candy Leonard (who I met once at Beatlefest and thought was just tops).

But one of the most interesting things about The Beatles phenomenon is how it has persisted over generations, something that really hadn’t happened before. Teen crazes burned bright, then flamed out; The Beatles themselves expected this fate. The Rudy Valentino cult was burned out by 1930; Frank Sinatra’s bobby sox phase was done by the end of the war. Even Elvis, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, really only lasted three years. If you were a kid during those times, Valentino or Sinatra or Elvis imprinted on you for good…but it was a rare kid from the next generation or two who became really passionate about those faded icons.

The Beatles have proved themselves to be different, and that’s really remarkable. It’s what makes me think their music is indeed better than the usual high-points of pop culture, and what makes me think that they will last. That’s also why it offends me when Twitter assholes characterize them as “a boy band” or a Sixties relic, because that’s simply not shown by the historical record. It’s great to love [contemporary artist], but it’s simply highly unlikely they will be spawning massive cultural interest fifty and sixty years after their demise. Possible? Sure. But unlikely.

The Beatles’ weird persistence has given rise to eras of fandom, and this is where folk memory comes in. I’m particularly fascinated by two things:

  1. When new fans seemed to appear, their commercial power creating new Beatle content aimed at their particular emotional needs/interests, and that content fundamentally reshaping the canon; and
  2. How the eras overlap, or not. My beloved aunt, a fiercely devoted first-generation fan, never understood my 80s-era obsession with bootlegs. I, similarly, do not understand the obsession with McLennon, choosing sides between John and Paul (which is just the flipside of McLennon), or PID. When Dullblog has really cooked, it been a conversation of

Being a Beatles fan in 1964, 1974, 1984, 1994, 2004 and so on seems to be a distinct experience. It attracted different people for different reasons and meant something different to them.

July 1976.

Since 1979-1986 was my deepest period of Beatle obsession, I can comment definitively only on that period. Having grown up saturated with Beatles- and Beatles-related music, I caught the end of a period of Seventies Beatle nostalgia. This had hit fever pitch around 1976, with the re-release of some Beatle material by EMI, Paul’s tour, and persistent Beatle reunion talk after the dissolution of the partnership. Its first glimmers can be seen in the first Beatlefest in 1974, but you can see it’s mainstream by July 1976, when it made the cover of Rolling Stone. That burst gave us “Beatlemania,” “Sgt. Pepper,” etc — including the Star-Club tapes in 1977. And it was all with the hope that the Beatles would reunite.

February 1984.

Then, after Lennon’s murder, fandom changed overnight. The Beatles became historical, and loving them became a kind of scholarship, or at least a rejection, implicit or explicit, of the present. I’d date that period from 1980 until, I guess, the release of the catalog on CD (1987). I’d put The Compleat Beatles in that period; Rolling Stone’s endless books and special issues; and the John Barrett Tapes/Sessions/EMI’s Rarities. It also encompasses “Here Today” from Tug of War, “All Those Years Ago,” Milk and Honey, and a bunch of other things. It’s a summation period. It’s much more elegiac than the Seventies period was. Beatlefest ’84 was wonderful, but…I recognize it now as post-coital sadness.:-)

The next period is kicked off by the release of various troves of bootleg material, with CD-quality sound. It all came in a rush: Yellow Dog’s “Unsurpassed Masters” set (beginning in 1990); Artifacts (1993); and Great Dane’s Complete BBC Sessions (1993). The success of these compilations (and Harrison’s need for money after being bilked by Denis O’Brien) practically forced the Anthology project in 1995.

After that, my own life accelerated to the point that I can’t track it. What do you guys think?

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