Cultural impact of the Beatles

[9] In such a phenomenon, he continued, "The surface of daily life (walk, talk, dress, symbolism, heroes, family affairs) is affected with such force that deep and substantive changes in the way large numbers of people think and act take place.

[39] Like many Liverpool bands, the Beatles formed their sound from skiffle and a combination of American influences, especially rhythm and blues and girl groups,[40] and honed their live act through seasons performing in the red-light district of Hamburg in West Germany.

[58] In their 1965 book Generation X, Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson said the Beatles had supplied British youth culture with a unifying and liberating influence that departed from the usual American-inspired model and, together with other groups from outside London, had fostered a sense of celebration of provincial England.

[84] The word was first widely used following the band's 13 October appearance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium; amid reports of wild crowd scenes outside the venue, and after 15 million viewers watched the broadcast, Britain was said to be "in the grip of Beatlemania".

[94] In their book Encyclopedia of Classic Rock, David Luhrssen and Michael Larson write that while boy bands such as One Direction have continued to attract audiences of screaming girls, no act has "moved pop culture forward or achieved the breadth and depth of the Beatles' fandom".

[107][108][109][110] A teenage New Yorker in early 1964, author Nicholas Schaffner later wrote that the Kennedy link was "an exaggeration, perhaps", but the Beatles "more than filled the energy gap" left by the demise of 1950s rock 'n' roll for an audience accustomed to the "vacuous" music that had replaced it.

With their uncanny clone-like similarity and by all talking chattily at once, The Beatles introduced to the cultural lexicon several key Sixties motifs in one go: "mass"-ness, "working class" informality, cheery street scepticism, and – most challenging to the status quo – a simultaneity which subverted conventions of precedence in every way.

[5] Lennon and McCartney also supplied hit songs for several other artists up to 1966, including Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, the Fourmost and the Rolling Stones,[188] and they opened up opportunities in the US that were previously unavailable for non-performing British songwriters, such as Tony Hatch.

[198] Principally through McCartney's melody writing, the Beatles created many songs that became the most widely recorded of all time, including "And I Love Her", "Yesterday", "Michelle", "Eleanor Rigby", "Here, There and Everywhere", "The Fool on the Hill", "Hey Jude", "Blackbird",[199][200] "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road".

[201] According to Doggett, these mainly McCartney-written songs provided contemporary relevance for "light orchestras and crooners" in the easy listening category, persuaded adults that the new generation's musical tastes had merit, and "ensured that Lennon and McCartney would become the highest-earning composers in history".

Comparing its effect on 1960s popular music to Charlie Chaplin's on 1920s filmmaking, Gould credits the Beatles' increasing ambition "to write better songs" with inspiring "intense creative rivalries" between themselves and other acts who "felt a need to validate their success by experimenting with songwriting and record-making in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years before.

[257] Simonelli writes of the Beatles' emergence and its impact on 1960s youth: "British young people experimented with music, art, politics, sexual morality, fashion and the like, and the rest of the Western world watched, absorbed the changes and contributed to the process.

[262][nb 12] According to documentary filmmaker Leslie Woodhead, a former Cold War spy, the Beatles' music helped persuade young Russians to defy communist ideology and begin the process that led to the fall of communism throughout Eastern Europe.

[185] Marwick writes that while American folk singers Dylan and Joan Baez were more identifiable with civil rights issues, in Beatles songs, "it was a case of music and lyrics together constructing – constantly changing – moods which never failed, it seemed, to evoke responses in large numbers of listeners of the day.

[305][306] In the lead-up to the Beatles' concerts in Tokyo the following year, the visit was the subject of national debate as traditionalists were opposed to the group's influence and the decision to allow them to perform at the Nippon Budokan,[306][307] a venue reserved for martial arts and a shrine to Japan's war dead.

[88] There, the Beatles' nonattendance at an official function organised by Imelda Marcos was perceived as an insult to the nation's first family; it led to recrimination in the local press, the band's security detail being withdrawn,[310] and mob violence against them as they attempted to leave the country.

[citation needed] Of "Tomorrow Never Knows", Lennon's evocation of an LSD trip, MacDonald writes that the song's message "launched the till-then élite-preserved concept of mind-expansion into pop, simultaneously drawing attention to consciousness-enhancing drugs and the ancient religious philosophies of the Orient, utterly alien to Western thought in their anti-materialism, rapt passivity, and world-sceptical focus on visionary consciousness".

[366] MacDonald cites Manson's Helter Skelter scenario as an example of the many "crackpot fixations" that the Beatles inspired in their drug-influenced audience, and a dangerous escalation of the otherwise harmless obsession that encouraged rumours such as the "Paul is dead" conspiracy theory.

[366] Its escalation in 1969, particularly in the US, was informed by the counterculture's disillusionment with society and, according to American broadcaster Vin Scelsa, indicative of how songs by the Beatles, Dylan and the Rolling Stones were received as "personal message[s], worthy of endless scrutiny" and "guidelines on how to live your life".

[292][386][nb 20] Leary, an LSD advocate whose text The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead Lennon had used in his lyrics for "Tomorrow Never Knows",[388] declared the Beatles to be "the wisest, holiest, most effective avatars (Divine Incarnate, God Agents) that the human race has ever produced".

[391] In early 1967, the Beatles' elevated status as MBEs ensured that Harrison and his wife, English model Pattie Boyd, were allowed to leave a party in Sussex before Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones were arrested on drugs charges.

[403] As part of an escalating national debate that had triggered an investigation by the US Congress,[404] Vice-president Spiro Agnew launched a campaign in 1970[405] to address the issue of American youth being "brainwashed" into taking drugs through the music of the Beatles and other rock artists.

Tillery writes that, while the influence of Indian gurus such as Vivekananda, Yogananda, the Maharishi and Prabhupada was well established by the late 1960s, it was the Beatles' endorsement of their respective philosophies that most contributed to yoga and meditation centres becoming ubiquitous in Western cities and towns over subsequent decades.

[421] According to author Andrew Grant Jackson: The Beats had promoted Buddhism since the 1950s, but it was George Harrison's songs espousing Hindu philosophy and featuring Indian musicians, and the Beatles' study of Transcendental Meditation, that truly kick-started the human potential movement of the 1970s (rebranded New Age in the 1980s).

[452][453] In the line drawings, Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley,[451] who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time.

[475] Both avoided performance of the song in response to the 1966 Musicians' Union's ban on miming on TV;[158][476] in the case of "Strawberry Fields Forever", the clip employs abstract imagery and features reverse film effects, stop motion animation, jump-cuts from day- to night-time, superimposition and close-up shots.

[477] Referring to the 1968 clip for "Hey Jude" and the sight of the Beatles engulfed by a crowd made up of "young, old, male, female, black, brown, and white" fans, Hertsgaard describes it as "a quintessential sixties moment, a touching tableau of contentment and togetherness".

[567][568] Together with the resonant tone of Starr's drums, the cello arrangement on "Strawberry Fields Forever" (as with "I Am the Walrus" from Magical Mystery Tour) was much admired by other musicians and producers, and proved highly influential on 1970s bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (along with Pet Sounds) is largely viewed as originating the progressive rock genre due to the album's lyrical unity, extended structure, complexity, eclecticism, experimentalism and influences derived from classical music forms.

[603] Harris says that in addition to anticipating similar revival recordings by the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, "Lady Madonna" ensured that Berry and Little Richard returned to "the rarified pedestals where the British Invasion groups had originally placed them".