February 7, 2015

"The full house was made up largely of upper-middle-class young ladies, stylishly dressed, carefully made up, brought into town by private cars or suburban buses..."

"... for their night to howl, to let go, scream, bump, twist and clutch themselves ecstatically out there in the floodlights for everyone to see; and with the full blessings of all Authority: indulgent parents, profiteering businessmen, gleeful national media, even the police.... The spectacle of all those anguished young girls at Carnegie Hall, trying to follow 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,' seems awfully vapid compared to the young men and women who sing 'I Woke Up This Mornin’ With My Mind (…Stayed on Freedom).' The Beatles themselves are lively and not without charm. Perhaps their greatest virtue is their sense of humor and self-caricature. But Beatlemania as a phenomenon is manna for dull minds."

Such was the opinion in The Nation magazine in March 1964.

17 comments:

chuck said...

Anguished? You would think the Nation could feel their pain, but no, they seem to hold them in contempt.

Gary Rosen said...

Fucking leftists, always trying to take the fun out of everything.

Michael K said...

I agree. The Beatles were never my thing.

Mark said...

The Left, dull as dishwater and just as tasty.

Ann Althouse said...

"Fucking leftists, always trying to take the fun out of everything."

They even make you want to think ill of 'I Woke Up This Mornin’ With My Mind (…Stayed on Freedom).' That's not fair to 'I Woke Up This Mornin’ With My Mind (…Stayed on Freedom).'

Bob R said...

How did those uptight prigs ever hire Calvin Trillin?

ron winkleheimer said...

The early Beatles were basically a boy band.

And the Rolling Stones are a far byetter rock band than the Beatles.

See Sympathy for the Devil vs Any Beatles Song.

Yeah, I went there.

William said...

Has the Nation been right about anything in the last one hundred years? You'd think that what with the law of averages they would get something right.

wildswan said...

Back then you could like the Beatles and the Freedom Singers at different times for different reasons. Back then there was having fun and there was doing work and there was serving a cause. All separate and sequential in in time and in a person's activities. But now - you watch the Super Bowl and there's an ad about the death of a child which is trying to SELL A PRODUCT. You can't say football without someone saying concussion or rape and pretending to be serious while there's an ad about the death of a child which is trying to SELL A PRODUCT. The whole country has gotten to be like this Nation writer and everything is "serious" and yet nothing is when someone makes an ad about the death of a child in order to SELL A PRODUCT.

By the way Brian Williams is hiding out at my house. I will be doing a book about how that came about but it all started with that puppy he rescued which I adopted.

ron winkleheimer said...

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=a+mighty+wind&qpvt=a+mighty+wind&FORM=VDRE#view=detail&mid=C23EE3DD6607B28E2FA7C23EE3DD6607B28E2FA7

wildswan said...

I never agreed with Garage about anything but when he put Brian in touch with me again and said Brian wanted to go back to his roots and see the puppy and live quietly I said "certainly." Though the puppy is dead. Brian was disappointed about that but liked the audio I had where I'd trained the puppy to sort of bark "Brian is the man." He listens to that all day long, he says it isn't boring, it's exactly like his regular day in New York.

wildswan said...

Oh God, this so amazing! Brian came back from a walk and turns out he saved a woman from being raped! by diving under the ice in Milwaukee harbor! and pulling her away from the some villain who has an ice house there. !!!

Sebastian said...

At least the original article did condescension right.

Manna for dull minds -- seems pretty accurate.

Revenant said...

And the Rolling Stones are a far byetter rock band than the Beatles.

On the other hand, the Beatles had the sense to break up before they ran out of ideas.

traditionalguy said...

"...to clutch themselves." That's Laslo bait from the 60s.

The liberals are the Puritans in disguise.

Anonymous said...

1964?

The Nation would have been in that dark dank transition period between Saint Woodie and Saint Arlo Gurthrie

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

I forgive The Nation. The Beatles wasn't really the Beatles yet; this was before the best Beatles songs were conceived. The Rolling Stones is still teh suck.