Beatlemania revisited

For some unaccountable reason this weekend was a Beatles retrospective, and it was interesting to watch that footage when girls wore skirts and boy wore ties and suits. Beatlemania was a phenomenon. There had been nothing like it on this scale before and by comparison Frank Sinatra's "bobby-soxers" would have appeared no more shrill than a Women's Institute outing.

What was it about The Beatles that drew such a response? At the time I would have answered that it was their musical brilliance and I think I would make the same assessment today. Most of the performers of the day were largely ordinary - some had talent, some had sex appeal, some had a gimmick - much like any generation. The Beatles rose above all this because they were musically advanced and I put this down to the genius of John Lennon.

Yes, be careful with the word genius but without his drive and creative energy I doubt that the group would have become the phenomenon it did. Paul McCartney wrote some sublime songs during this period - all I think attributable to his vying with Lennon. And even George Harrison and Ringo were energized to raise their game. Each made important contributions as well as Brian Epstein and George Martin, but the two latter were only able to work with what was there. Lennon was the prime mover, the leader and the core.

People respond to genius even when they don't know what it is. No ordinary people in Einstein's time understood his theory of relativity but they responded warmly to him when he appeared on American television. Stephen Hawking in our time is universally admired without any understanding of his contribution to physics. Bob Dylan had one of the worst singing voices ever, but became astoundingly popular because people at the time instinctively acknowledged the genius of his music and lyrics.

So too with The Beatles. Musicologists may analyse the shift from major to minor key and the falling cadences, but the impressionable young minds of the 1960s heard original music which married instinctively with the lyrics. There was nothing else quite like it. Genius!