And in the End

The Beatles split up officialy on December 31st 1970 however that was not the end of each band member,

Paul McCartney




started Wings with his wife Linda McCartney who died in 1998, Paul is as popular as ever, in fact his 2nd last album memory almost full has been one of his most celebrated works, in fact it was used to advertise Apple Itunes!


John Lennon


Was shot and killed outside his home on new york in December 1980. He was killed by Mark Chapman a fan of Lennon's who earlier in the day he killed him got him to sign his latest album Double fantasy, Chapman is still in prison, he was found to have the catcher in the rye on his which is said to have inspired him to kill Lennon.




Like McCartney Lennon was still making music and trying to change the world though his music at the time of his death he and Paul were back being close friends and the possibility of making music was closer than it had been in more than 8 years.

George Harrison


Geoge lik John Lennon suffered an attack by a intruder to his house, sadley he Died in november 2001 from cancer.



he like his fellow beatles continued to make music and is still aknowlaged to be one of the best guitar players in the world.

Ringo Starr


Ringo might have been the one who took not being in the band the hardest, he wasnt a singer he was a drummer, he went on to be the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine in the UK, his son is also the drummer for Oasis and the Rolling Stones! Ringo still works with Paul Mccartney as the two surviging members of the group most recently on this amazing song


where he not only plays drums but at the end he sings!

the beatles are just as important now as they were 30 years ago, so much so that in september this year there whole back catologue is being remasterd and re-relased t0 co-inside with a beatles rock star game. there are as influencial socialy as they have been and with new generations discovering the music it says amazing things for the authentisity of music in the UK

Sarah Thornton vs the Beatles

Sarah Thornton's theory about Sub cultures is very relevent to the Beatles.

basic theory outline (quoting from my 2nd essay for this unit)

Thornton’s work is based on that of Bourdieu in many ways contradicts Bourdieu’s theory of culture capital. She saw that there was an inequality within club culture and not society as a whole, Bourdieu argued that there were different forms of culture capital i.e. economic, social and cultural capital however, Thornton however took this idea and developed it and was able to introduce a concept what she called ‘sub cultural capital’ which can be used to gain economic capital, she gives an example that if you are a DJ within a club your value is to provide status to the clubber by playing music.

Sub cultures are privileged and as a consequence the mainstream culture is ‘devalued’ and considered to be everything that an exciting sub-culture is not the mainstream is made normal and conventional.
According to Thornton young people have sub ‘cultural capital’ which is a concept she has taken from Bourdieu’s work, in her 1995 book she argues that sub cultural capital offers status on its owner and in the eye of the relevant beholder. she goes on to state that sub cultural capital can be objectified by a hair cut (lets look at the beatle hair cuts and being able to buy a wig. many young girls had beatle haircuts, in the early 1960s that was how you could tell beatle fans from shaddows or rolling stones fans.

but i hear you ask how does sub cultural capital link to the beatles, well thornton published a book with Ken Glder called ' the sub cultures reader published in 1997' this book has a chapter devoted to beatle mania which is defined as "intense fan frenzy particularly demonstrated by young teen girls directed toward The Beatles during the early years of their success" the term is still in use now.

this book argues that the beatles created a whole host of sub cultures amongst there fans, and even now it is still looked upon as cool to be a fan, you just have to look at who they have unfluenced i.e. oasis, the rolling stones, the BeeGees, U2, the last shaddow puppets to name a few. they have cultural capital.

Barbara Ehrenreich et al argues that one of the main subcultures was that of "beatlemania a sexualy defiant consumer subculture." she argued that this subculture was pre or earlt adolscent girls, who were using pent upo sexual emotiuns not to riot but to see the beatles, making them a focus for there emotions and actions. of course there was more to the beatles than fans, bit it was one of the main reasons that they stopped touring they discoverd that allthough they were making money, tours and albums were selling out. when they played live no one heard them, they were just ther to screen and be rebellious and they werent for that. after the events of the the beatles are bigger than jesus fiasco and the death threats that followed they stopped touring and became more popular and there cultural capital increased as the tecnical ability and concent of there music increased this can be heard in sargent peper there first album since they stopped touring.

The Beatles and Commodity Fetishism

The concept of commodity fetishism was originally formed by Marx. It is a process by which “people conceive there social relations as if they were natural things” (Abercrombie Et al, 2000, p61) commodity fetishism and false needs are two concepts that more or less go hand in hand together. Adorno argued that the cost of tickets to a concert or the price of a CD defines the social impact and worth. Marx argued that “fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.” (Marx 1963,183, cited in Strinati, 2004)

A prime example of just what Commodity Fetishism is is the Apple Ipod (apple as in apple mac computers not Apple as int he Beatles record label) going off on a tangent about this for a second, there is if you notice on itunes NO Beatles music, there is some McCartney solo music but no Beatles music on Itunes, this is due to contract negotiations, and the problems both apple companies have (both symbol's are an apple) but i digress, Ipods, one of the greatest technology's of this decade, everyone seems to have one, or everyone wants one. this is an example of Commodity Fetishism (Social relationships between objects and material interaction).

with the Beatles they were one of the first bands to have merchandise availabnle to fdans to buy at concerts of through there fan club.

you could get anything you could possibly think of with the Beatles on it,

some photographic examples,



Would you like a Beatles wig? so you can look like your fave beatle?



How about a Beatles lunch box?



A tie pin? just like Ringo Wears?



Books are common place now, but the beatle fan club also got songs especially for them wishing them merry Christmas and things.


and for the baby in us all how about Beatles baby clothes

i would like to stress this is only a few examples. the Beatles have many websites selling official merchandise, even now 3 odd years after they split up. the beatles whether they would like it or not are part of the commodity fetishism machine!

so commodity fetishism is all around us, another example is high school musical or hannah montana of which you can get music, clothes and kitchen roll, there is a demand for products with this on it.


reference:

Abercrombie, N, Hill, S & Turner, B (2000). The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. 4th ed. London: Penguin.

Strinati, Dominic (2004). An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. 2nd ed. London: Routledge Available online: http://www.myilibrary.com/Browse/open.asp?ID=5694

Moral Panics

the term moral panic was created by stanley cohen, the beatles can be classed as one. a moral panic is "A sudden increase in public perception of the possible threat to societal values and interests because of exposure to media texts." (http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article565.html)

During the 1950s and 1960's there was widespread concern over the influence of rock 'n' roll music with fears that it led to promiscuity and anti-social behaviour.

If a moral panic is a sort of hysterical mass paranoia, then its opposite might be a mass hysterical enthusiasm. the bealtes caused teenagers (and some adults) to simply loose control, if you look at video footage from beatles concerts in the early 1960s you will see that you can hardley hear the band all you can hear is screeming fans.

tomorow never knows


has been called to most socialy influenced song that they had released - it is all based around A lsd trip that john lennon took - listen to the lyrics "turn of your mind and float downstreem" this song reflects the drug culture at the time. the beatles were at the front of this, they had songs banned by the BBC because they mentioned sex, it is amazing that the BBC did not ban this song.

a defining moment of seeing the beatles as a moral panic took place in america, in 1969 John Lennon gave an interview in which he appears to have been misquotes but he did say that at that moment the beatles were bigger than god/jesus. this created a backlash against the group. not so much in the UK but in america there were mass beatles burnings of records, books, posters and everthing with there faces.
ringo starr said about the incident on the beatles anothologgy that people were buying beatle records to burn or burnt them and bought them again so in many ways it worked out ok for them. but lennon has death threats to him self and his young son julian because of it, the media took it and used it as a way to bring them down. america being a relgious country used it to say see we were right they are nothing more than ordinary. nothing can challenge the authority of religion.

Adorno

Adorno argued that popular music is just a simpulification of the older musical idioms of the classical and romantic style. Adorno argued that “capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic.” (theory.org.2008) Emerging mass culture of popular music weekend the critical consciousness and manipulated the working classes”. (Maconis&Plummer, 2002, p116) According to Adorno, the people who listened to popular music showed infantile characteristics, he argued that people needed to listen to what he called real music but were unable to as the continued to listen to popular music. Adorno argued that the” popular music produced by the culture industry is dominated by two processes: standardisation and pseudo-individualisation” (Strinati, 2004) He argued that the culture industries “shaped the tastes and preferences of the masses, thereby moulding their consciousness by instilling the desire for false needs” (IBID)

Sociological studies of the beatles songs follow adornos theory. many dissmiss there music as just simply popular music with no meaning. however those that listen to there music will discover that there music places them at the top of the musical elite of the 20th centuary.

Adorno had nothing to do with the Beatles and was horrified by their repetitious and over-simplified songs

A random piece of internet rumor found on the internet was that Adorno from the frankfurt school wrote the beatles music untill his death in 1969 which can be seen in the below video



of course this isnt true 99% of beatles songs were written by john lennon and paul mccartney under the northen songs production company,