The Beatles are well-known as a famous music group who
made one of the biggest impacts ever in world history.
My husband Ray has been a big fan of the Beatles since his childhood. ( he’s
also a big fan of another British rock group, Queen , as well.)
He remembers the word for “ apple “ in Japanese because
it’s pronounced “ Lingo “, and this sound reminds him of the name Ringo, as in “Ringo”
Starr.
At least in my generation, everyone knows all the names of
the Beatles members.
And also about their amazing popularity during 1960s to
early 1970s.
My husband and I are collectors of our favorite
things, and have many videos or DVDs of our favorite movies, TV
shows , figure skating and rock bands, so if we started watching all of them,
we may not need regular TV in our free time.
Ray has a box of The Beatles videos which has a set of 8
videos, history of the Beatles, which he purchased a long time ago.
I didn’t watch it until recently.
I knew The Beatles when I was around 10 years old, because
my brother was playing their record albums almost everyday.
I loved their music /song “ Let
it be “.
And this song is still one
of my favorite songs , this has never changed since my childhood.
I feel this song and also Billy Joel’s “ Honesty “ have kind of a similar type of music sound
and they always touch my heart.
These
are two of my top favorite songs.
For The Beatles, besides Let it be, I also love the songs Yesterday, Penny Lane, Obladi Oblada,
and there are more, and I realized that
most of my favorite Beatles songs are Paul
McCartney’s compositions.
Ray’s favorites are also Paul’s compositions as well.
His favorites are Hey Jude, Eleanor Rigby, Penny Lane, Here There and Everywhere, Let It Be, Oh Darling, Michelle, Yesterday
etc..
He also has some favorites among Lennon’s songs, like If I Fell, Girl, Revolution, Strawberry
Fields Forever, And Your Bird Can Sing
etc..
John
Lennon’s music’s lyrics may be deeper and more interesting than
many of Pauls lyrics.
However, for the music
itself, Paul’s music sounds effortlessly perfect to me and it makes me feel
good.
And also I love Paul’s singing.
While I was watching the video, I found Pauls movements
and his happy expression has big impact, sooooo cute, like a cartoon.
Paul looked like something refined, even when he was singing wildly, he looked something
graceful and refined.
John Lennon looked fun with great sense of humor.
Ringo also has great sense of humor and looked nice with
longer hair.
John and Ringo were really into fashion and so something
charming about them.
I also love some of George
Harison’s music as well, and he was so handsome.
I’ve never heard Ringo’s compositions so I can’t comment
it, but other three members, Paul and John and George’s compositions are all
unique.
Nowadays many musicians are
copycats of old music or like editing music from someone else , so I feel The
Beatles were really gifted musicians.
Anyway, Ray and I were watching The Beatles collection video recently, and even though I knew they
are like the biggest rock music group in history and legendary, but I never realized
that their popularity was sooooooooooo crazily huge !!!
In the video, they showed the times, when The Beatles first time came to New York,
in the USA, they did concert in the
baseball stadium, and the audience looked like the size of a city….
Crowds became unbelievably excited and crazy, many girls and young women fainted, some fans
were trying to rush to the stage which looked out of control and guards had to
catch them for protection.
Many fans who were sitting near the front seats were
climbing the high fenced net with their hands and their fingers almost looked
like claws and with such eager faces with screaming.
Screaming never stopped even while The Beatles started
playing their music.
I can’t believe they were not listening to their music,
but just crazily screaming or too excited so they could not focus on it
(?).
I’ve never seen that kind of thing happen.
The members of the Beatles said that at many of their
concerts they could not hear anything, because of all the screaming, so they
played and sang using their memory of the notes and just guessing.
The sound engineers for this video collection cleaned up
the sound as best they could, and it’s interesting that The Beatles sound
really great anyways, despite the fact that they couldn’t hear themselves play.
The crowds looked completely out of control. They scream, cry, run, faint, It was not only excitement, it looks like a high
fever, hysteria of emotion,
shaking, and crazy passion.
I’ve been to my
favorite musicians and singers and rock concerts many times, including Michael
Jackson’s Tokyo Dome concert, but while he was singing, and while the other
rock bands or singers that I saw were performing or singing, the audiences were
listening with excitement.
However, they were not just screaming which blocked
the sound of the performance like that.
Maybe in the early 60’s, that generation was not yet so
familiar with Rock Star concerts (?) so
no one knew the manners (? ) or it was
just out of control with their emotions ??
While watching these scenes in this video, it reminds me
of Franz Liszt’s Lisztomania’s story. ( You can check about it at the link below )
The first Superstar Franz Liszt who made crowds go crazy.
“ Lisztomania or Liszt
fever is a term used to describe the intense fan frenzy directed toward Franz
Liszt during his performances. This frenzy first occurred in Berlin in
1841.”
“The word is a portmanteau of "Liszt" and
"mania". Lisztomania was characterized by intense levels of
hysteria demonstrated by fans.”
Apparently, Lisztomania had much more of a medical
emphasis because the term "mania" was a much stronger term
in the 1840s, whereas in the 20th century "mania" could refer to
something as mild as a new popular fashion or craze.
Lisztomania began to be seen as a real medical condition that
was contagious, and critics tried to take measures to immunize the public
against the condition “
I could slightly imagine what kind of scene , what kind of
reactions Liszt fans were having whenever
they saw Liszt or during Liszt performances in concerts.
But it was not so clear, because there are no videos and
we can’t actually see it.
But now, while watching the actual Beatlemania as it happened in the video, I felt this maybe the one
!!!
But if this unbelievable fans
intense emotion was actually more
mild than Liszt’s Lisztomania’s reaction, I felt like wheeeeeeee, OMG !!!
And when the Beatles members got into a taxi, these fans
were crazily screaming with their mouths wide open through the taxi window,
touching and knocking the window.
The funny thing is, is that it almost looked like a scene
out of a scary zombie movie, because these fans looked almost like scary aggressive
zombies. Lol
John Lennon was saying that someone cut off some of
Ringo’s hair!
I guess it must have been one of the frenzied fans.
Franz Lisztz had some of his hair pulled out as well. ( It
sounds pain )
This is scary. You
can’t even walk outside.
It’s dangerous.
George Harrison said they couldn’t go anywhere, they were
stuck in the hotel room because of the enormous amount of frenzied fans.
One time they had to leave a hotel by helicopter from the
top of the hotel building, because there was no other way out.
Oceans of people were everywhere, and they were there to
see the Beatles.
Franz
Liszt, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, I don’t know who else made the same level of reaction with
such a huge number of fans since them ?
I know The Beatles members were all attractive, and their
music is wonderful, but in the same generation there were other music groups as well, right ?
So why this craziness happened only to them ?
They were not just people magnets, the fans went into
utter hysteria.
When they first toured to Australia, I think the number
mentioned was something like 300,000 people were coming to the place where The
Beatles members were staying, and the Beatles said that it felt like all of
Australia was there because when they looked outside of the building from their
top floor rooms, everywhere was filled with an ocean of people.
I’ve read about that John Lennon ‘s hero was Elvis
Presley.
So John wanted to be like Elvis ?
a superstar ? and his strong desire then became reality ??
Since The Beatles appeared, so many boys and young men admired
and wanted to be like Beatles.
In the video, the narrator said that when The Beatles
first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, that even crime stopped in New York
City, for that period of time!
From my personal experience,
I might get intense emotion from music that I love, but
from a star or superstar ?
Maybe no,
never.
The biggest fan I became
in my life so far is for the rock band The Alfee ( especially Toshihiko
Takamizawa) in the music world, and
Johnny Weir in Figure skating world.
I was excited seeing them, I screamed with passion but I
knew when to stop, it was in control.
There is always a dry part and like another
myself seeing me objectively.
I didn’t faint, I didn’t cry, I was satisfied with the
experience.
But hysteria fandom seems always not satisfied, and
feeling of wanting “ more and more and more “ whenever they see other fans get
more impressive experience with their favorite stars.
My impression of some fans was like they want to get attention from their star to boast to other fans, like for competition, their purpose looked like to win something over other fans. and it became like who was treated the best by their star.
I never felt comfortable to hear or see those type of fans competition to fulfill their satisfaction, so I didn't join these types of boasting competition, since it's not my purpose.
In Franz Liszt’s case, Allan Walker ( author ) said, Liszt’s
affairs were overwhelmingly gossiped because when one fan had a good experience
with Liszt, or an affair with Liszt, other fans got jealous of her and they started
lying and saying they also had affair with Liszt to boast to other fans or
something like that.
So, although Liszt had many affairs, the true number may
never be known because many ladies also boasted and gossiped about things that
never happened.
Fans are wonderful, and all the superstars can feel that
they are superstars because of the fans, but the point is to always make each
other happy , to the stars and to themselves and to other fans.
When this balance is not going well, it becomes like
selfish action.
When this balance is going well, it becomes joy all
around.