Cronkite and the Beatles

Ace newsman Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) was praised recently for introducing the Beatles to Americans on a CBS news clip even before Ed Sullivan (1964). Al Doshna reflects on the meaning of such pop culture phenomenona.

An almost unknown singing group named “The Beatles” appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show” on the otherwise ordinary Sunday night in 1964. A global hurricane called “Beatlemania”, swept the world soon after, with strong gusts still felt everytime Paul McCartney performs. Last week Duarte, Calif. sponsored a Beatles band for their bi-weekly Picnic in the Park. This is all too typical.

But why? What is the appeal of such pop phenomenon? Michael Jackson's recent demise brings this question to the fore.

Timing is Everything

In his best-selling book, "Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation," author Philip Norman wrote: “Their music, that vast, nonchalant treasury, pours out in undiminished strength on record, on radio, in supermarkets, elevators; is hummed on the unconscious breath; is drummed by the fingertips of two continents” (p. 13).

How could four popular musicians from England have wielded such a powerful impact even being given MBE (Membership of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) medals by Queen Elizabeth? Let’s look at some of the factors involved.

The world “needed” the Beatles because of the time in which they appeared. The assassination of President Kennedy cast a pall across the United States – and the world. Political assassination was virtually unheard of in the USA for decades. Suddenly Camelot was over. In the absence of the President’s dynamic energy, charisma and leadership, all that was left in the minds of the public was bewilderment, despair, and a vacuum.

Author Norman vividly contrasts this expectation with the nervous anticipation of the Beatles’ first manager, the late Brian Epstein, concerning their Ed Sullivan appearance. If Brian had only known it, America fell to him on the morning in Dallas that the Presidential motorcade set off on its route, supremely confident and open to the sunshine. This was Nov. 22, the day the Beatles’ second album went on sale in Britain” (p. 104).

The world was quite a different place in 1963-1964. Vietnam had not yet come to a head. The drug and hippie movement, the sexual revolution were all in the future, as were the race riots and other violence that characterized the latter 1960’s. Women’s liberation was then virtually unheard of.

Although, for that time, they were completely different from anything that anyone had ever seen or heard before, the Four Mopheads largely refelcted the basic values of that time. The article “George, Paul, Ringo and John” in Newsweek, Feb. 24, 1964 states: “They have even evolved a peculiar sort of sexless appeal: cute and safe. The most they ask is ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ (p. 54). Their songs were devoid of innuendo, controversy and drugs which later crept into their  music. The Beatles seemed to compensate for the grief and growing problems for which there seemed to be no solution.

The God-Shaped Blank

The world needed the Beatles because human beings have a basic lack within themselves that needs to be fulfilled from an outside source. The public frenzy that surrounded them originated neither with them, nor in popular music. “Musical hysteria is as old as music. Women shrieked, fainted and fought when Franz Liszt sat down at the piano: the German poet, Heine, to account for the frenzy turned to ‘magnetism, galvanism and electricity…of histrionic epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other unmentionable matters’” (Newsweek). This same effect could later be seen in the influence of such entertainers as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, in Michael Jackson and even  found in “Gospel” music. (Ask Aretha Franklin and Jennifer Hudson.)

The world needed the Beatles because they touched a responsive chord common to most human beings – the desire to be “set apart” from others, to be considered unique, and appreciated for that uniqueness. This is a need especially acute in the young, young people, facing sometimes contradictory parental supervision, anonymity among peers, and characterized by and represented as stereotypes even in the mass media. A pretty, 14-year-old girl scout, nurse’s aide and daughter of a Chicago lawyer put it this way at the time: “They’re tough…Tough is like when you don’t conform. It’s not hoodlum…Jimmy Dean was in the same class as the Beatles because he was tough. You’re tumultuous when you’re young and each generation has to have it’s idols” (ibid, p. 54).

Christian thinker Blaise Pascal said it three centuries ago. There is a God-shaped blank in all of us that need filling and a spirit that reached beyond the mundane and the everyday.

Bring us Together

Thus the then-outlandish hairdos, overall “look” and “cheeky”-type humor caught on. By 1963 popular singing groups had developed a nondescript, stagnant, canned quality about them. Nationally known cartoonist and commentator on popular culture Fred Hembeck, in his publication "Bah!", put it this way: “When the Beatles conquered America in 1964, they did it with a fresh sound, a fresh look, and a fresh approach to a musical idiom that couldn’t sustain tedium for long”.

The world needed the Beatles because they created a unity among people. Brian Epstein, in his 1964 autobiography, "A Cellarful of Noise," put it this way: “By 1964 it had become fashionable to be a Beatle fan. There were no longer any barriers of any sort. Grandmothers and tiny children joined the middle and teen age ranks…By the summer of this year, practically every senior citizen, king of commerce, aristocrat or charity organizer was clamouring to illuminate his name, or his industry or his promotion with the name ‘Beatle’. It became clear that if you had a Beatle at a party, you were made socially” (pp. 76-77).

It was exciting and satisfying to see so many people equally excited and enthusiastic. It created its own momentum.

The world needed the Beatles because 1964 seems more like a utopia compared to 2009, and those who wanted them to reunite actually seemed to want them as they first appeared in 1964, as though they could bring back the relative sanity of that society. Fred Hembeck opines: “…their earliest music was so joyful, so vibrant, so fresh! Yet it took ‘Sgt. Pepper’ (their first album to openly refer to drugs and controversial subjects) to make them truly respectable in the eyes of the music world. Years after the fact, ‘Sgt. Pepper’ doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as it once did, while it’s the Beatles’ earliest work that remains the most timeless” (p. 23).  An excellent point as the 60-year old fans at the Duarte picnic would attest.

A Cultural, Generational Shift

Although the Beatles actually didn’t initiate drug abuse, shoulder length hair, and beyond on men, outlandish clothing and dabbling in Eastern religion and the occult, the factors mentioned above, combined with their actual musical talent, made them representatives of a lifestyle of change and experimentation, which has reached into every area of society. An Englishman sent to mange a printing press in Pasadena, Calif., in 1972 was mocked for his longish hair. "Don't worry, you'll soon catch on," was his reply.

Years after the Beatles  themselves had toned down, a new generation of rock performers took their innovations to new extremes. Twenty years after the Beatles arrived in the U.S., Newsweek magazine ran a cover story entitled “Britain Rocks America – Again”, with transvestite “Boy George” of the band “Culture Club” and Annie Lennox, with short orange hair and masculine attire, lead singer for the band “The Eurythmics.”

The article describes the “look” of 1980s rock stars: “…lined up, they would form an improbable parade of ghouls, transvestites, bikers with spiked dog collars, mercenaries in battle fatigues, tie-dyed tramps and dapper young squires” (p. 50). Whereas everyone seemed to look the same in the 1960’s, now everyone seemed to look the same by looking different.

The article concludes by describing this new, cynical, shock-value rock and roll culture this way: “Their pop scene can be empty, contrived, flippantly trendy. Its emphasis on irony makes it hard to produce heartfelt music…So roll over America. Forget about nostalgia for the earnest pop optimism of the ‘60’s and face the era of cramped hopes and wild style. Here comes the rock and roll of 1984” (p. 57).

Restless Visionaries

America, however, and other parts of the world seem unwilling to “roll over” and play dead. Seemingly even more true today, author Philip Norman wrote : “A decade after their partnership officially ended and the magic entity split into four all-too-human fragments, rumors of a second coming persisted – even strengthened. In 1980, even more than in 1963, the world seemed to be waiting for the Beatles” (Shout, p. 12). This week's anniverary of the Moon landings, of farewell to Walter Cronkite coming ironically the same week, our world is still digesting the epic events of the 1960s. Just two years ago the movie "Across the Universe" tried to digest the experience in a movie montage of the Sixties funneled through the soundtrack of the Beatles. A conservative church magazine, Odyssey, from Grace Communion International (sponsors of this website), runs a cover story on death headlined with Lennon-McCartney's "Hello/Goodbye."

The Beatles  are still very much around. The restless spirituality enshrined in such songs as “Imagine”  where John Lennon envisioned a world that he believed that man could bring about, where all people could live their live in peace is a haunting part of the ex-Beatle canon. How shrewd of Walter Cronkite to sense that something new was coming, before Ed Sullivan made it official. The Beatles were part of that rambunctious decade where some at least of the movers and shakers were asking the right questions even if they fell short on the right answers.