How Did The Beatles Conquered America Without Assessing The Materialization Of Beatlema

It is nearly impossible to outline how The Beatles conquered America without assessing the materialization of Beatlemania, the post-war media explosion of music that dominated popular culture. A crucial target audience and intelligent musical modernization were by no means the only idea why these rebellious artists were cherished. This essay investigates why the joint forces of newly-developed technology and demographical timing drove Beatlemania, and in essence, were the perpetrators to conquering America.

The Beatles were clever with their music; the vast majority of it subversive. The Beatles managed to be things for all people...they appealed to all musical senses during Beatlemania. Songs such as “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were the types

When Beatlemania swept across the country, “it was made clear...that this was not just another act launched by the London-based star machinery” (Makela 43). The Beatles simply would not have been as big if this were the case. “Just another case” is alternately “just as everyone else,” and the counter-culture that developed in the baby boomer era was prickling irritably for a change that soon became a sort of social revolution. The Beatles were characteristically recognized with Liverpool, an “isolated” region of the United Kingdom. They were not ashamed from where they came from. After the Beatlemania phenomenon, John Lennon stated “the first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness to the world, and say ‘It’s all right to come from Liverpool and talk like this’” (Makela 45). Daring ideas put forth by The Beatles’ music such as image, aggression, and sex were both feared and fascinating. This remedy of fear and fascination provided the means for people to wonder, and with wonderment, came the questioning of authority that initiated the start of a social rebellion. Teenagers saw in The Beatles’ “sartorial style a break from the expectations of their parents and teachers” (Kozinn 81). The Beatles were not a product of this counter-culture, they were part of it – because the counter-culture existed, they existed. The Beatles were just as eager as their surrounding

The deep roots of Beatlemania were growing before the 60s, when the advanced technology (i.e. television, portable cameras, radios, tape recorders) developed during WWII began to entertain the baby boomers. The baby boomers acquired the industrial tools for a different type of uproar that was the new dynamic of music. The underlying groundwork of Beatlemania was not psychological, it was technological. Screaming women and musical innovation were embedded into Beatlemania society, but if not for the rise of technological advancement, the psychological hysteria would not be so prevalent. The Beatles crucially became the focus of public interest and the product of media. New technology was influencing all parts of the entertainment business, “and the fruition of these technologies coincided with the demographic movements of the postwar boom” (Creasy 137). In this era of progressive rock, commercial television networks were the escape methods of social control (Hirsch 376). It is understandable why The Beatles conquered America – they only learned to dominate the very culture that allowed them to exist. Manager Brian Epstein definitely had an instinct “for timing. Not only did he feel the moment was right, he knew how to synchronize it” (Spitz 433). Epstein systemically placed his band dead center of voracious consumers of new