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“Here, There and Everywhere”: The Beatles, America, and Cultural Globalization, 1964–1968

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2016

SAM LEBOVIC
SAM LEBOVIC*
Affiliation:
History Department, George Mason University. Email: slebovic@gmu.edu.
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Abstract

This article explores the Beatles’ invasion of America as a moment of cultural globalization. Paying attention to the political economy underpinning the Beatles’ success, the international hybridity at the heart of their cultural work, and the diverse ways in which Americans interpreted the Beatles, the article argues that the band was a primary vector of pop culture's increasing globality in the 1960s. More broadly, the article argues that the Beatles’ trajectory reveals that cultural globalization cannot be understood as a process either of homogenization or of creolization. Rather, the Beatles represented an increasingly unified and commodified culture that simultaneously served to reproduce cultural differences when different social formations projected their own meanings onto the hybridized group. The article therefore provides new perspectives on the historical significance of the iconic band and on the intersections between global and domestic cultural history in the 1960s, as well as suggesting a new framework for thinking about both the history and the contradictions of cultural globalization.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 43 - 65
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2016 

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References

1 “An Invasion of British Beatles! Now They're in the United States,” Christian Science Monitor, 8 Feb. 1964, 15.

2 Jack Maher and Tom Noonan, “Chart Crawls with Beatles,” Billboard, 4 April 1964, 1, 6; “Redcoats Revisiting: 19 British Disks on Charts,” Billboard, 4 April 1964, 3; “Beatlemania Doesn't Stop with Disk, Mops up with Fancy $2 Fan Club Too,” Variety, 27 May 1964, 49.

3 “Beatlemania and the Fast Buck,” Christian Century, 25 Feb. 1964, 230; “Beatles’ $1,000,000 U.S. Tour: 24 1-Niters Hit Peak Coin,” Variety, 19 Aug. 1964, 47, 49; Herm Schoenfeld, “Beatles Batter All B. O records; Parlay N. Y. Fan Hysteria into $150,000 Gross,” Variety, 2 Sept. 1964, 41, 47. On merchandising see “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”, Saturday Evening Post, 21 March 1964, 34; “Brace Yourself, They're Back,” Business Week, 22 Aug. 1964, 28.

4 Gail Cameron, “Yeah-Yeah-Yeah! Beatlemania Becomes a Part of U.S. History,” Life, 21 Feb. 1964, 34b; “Britain's $64 Question: Will Rocking Redcoats Consolidate U.S. Beachhead?”, Variety, 29 April 1964, 171; “Redcoats Still Rocking U.S. But Is Trend Nearing End?”, Variety, 10 June 1964, 49; Roger Watkins, “Redcoats Tapping Residuals: British Oldies Clicking in U.S.”, Variety, 5 Aug. 1964, 43; Sanford Markey, “Beatles Rap Cleveland Cops for Stopping Show,” Variety, 23 Sept. 1964, 85.

5 For instance, see Andre Millard, “America on Record: Recorded Sound as an Agent of Americanisation,” in Jon Roper and Philip Melling, eds., Americanisation and the Transformation of World Cultures: Melting Pot or Cultural Chernobyl? (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), 155–71, 174. Michael Watts, “The Call and Response of Popular Music: The Impact of American Pop Music in Europe,” in C.W. E. Bigsby, ed., Superculture: American Popular Culture and Europe (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975), 123–39, 131–33; Cooper, Laura E. and Cooper, B. Lee, “The Pendulum of Cultural Imperialism: Popular Music Interchanges between the United States and Britain, 1943–1967,” Journal of Popular Culture, 27 (1993), 61 Google Scholar; Seago, Alex, “‘Where Hamburgers Sizzle on an Open Grill Night and Day’(?)! Global Pop Music and Americanization in the Year 2000,” American Studies, 41(2000), 119–36, 123Google Scholar; Frith, Simon, “Euro-Pop,” Cultural Studies, 3 (1989), 166–72, 167Google Scholar.

6 Classic statements seeing globalization as domination are Herbert Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992); and Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic (New York: International General, 1975). The inadequate attention they pay to the processes of cultural reception has been effectively critiqued; see Fejes, Fred, “Media Imperialism: An Assessment,” Media, Culture and Society, 3 (1981), 281–89Google Scholar; Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz, The Export of Meaning: Cross-cultural Readings of Dallas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Hannerz, Ulf, “The World in Creolisation,” Africa 57 (1987), 546–59Google Scholar. But simply emphasizing reception ignores important power dynamics – see Jan Nederveen Pieterse, “Globalization as Hybridization,” in Mike Feathersone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, eds., Global Modernities (London: Sage Publications, 1995), 45–68; John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (London: Pinter Publishers, 1991).

7 Erlmann, Veit: “The Aesthetics of the Global Imagination: Reflections on World Music in the 1990s,” Public Culture, 8 (1996), 467–87Google Scholar; Andrew Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

8 That is, as an exchange-value, culture becomes interchangeable; as a use-value, culture remains distinct. See Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (London: Penguin, 1991), 125–31.

9 For the explicitly spatial emphases of globalization studies see Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, “Globalization, Modernity and the Spatialization of Social Theory,” in Featherstone, Lash, and Robertson, 1–24, 1. Many scholars of globalization have traced the alternative, nonnational spaces of cultural flows and scapes. For two influential theorizations of the spaces of globalization see Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1996), 27–47. Cooper, Frederick has called attention to the need to historicize the creation of global connections in “What Is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian's Perspective,” African Affairs, 100 (2001), 189–213 Google Scholar.

10 For important work that focusses on the export of American culture see Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Rob Kroes, If You've Seen One, You've Seen the Mall: European and American Mass Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996). Work on the US importation of culture includes Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997); Rieger, Bernhard, “From People's Car to New Beetle: The Transatlantic Journeys of the Volkswagen Beetle”, Journal of American History, 97 (2010), 91–115 Google Scholar; Hoganson, Kristin, “Cosmopolitan Domesticity: Importing the American Dream, 1865–1920,” American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 55–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 On the 1960s as a transitional moment in the history of cultural globalization see Tomlinson, 175; Pells, 319.

12 Bob Spitz, The Beatles: The Biography (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), 41, 132; James E. Perone, Mods, Rockers, and the Music of the British Invasion (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2009), 34; Price, Charles Gower, “Sources of American Styles in the Music of the Beatles,” American Music, 15 (1997), 208–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jonathan Gould, Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America (New York: Harmony Books, 2007), 58.

13 Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, 2008), 47–51; Price; Gould, 78–107; Spitz, 201–51; Perone, 4.

14 Gould, 96; Spitz, 243–45 and 267.

15 Adrian Horn, Juke Box Britain: Americanisation and Youth Culture, 1945–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Perone; Poiger.

16 Pekka Gronow and Ilpo Saunio, An International History of the Recording Industry (London: Cassell, 1998), 95, 120, 135, 138.

17 Herm Schoenfeld, “Britannia Rules Airwaves: Beatles Stir Home Carbons,” Variety, 12 Feb. 1964, 63.

18 “Beatles Gross 17 Mil. Plus in 6 Months,” Billboard, 29 Feb. 1964, 1, 8; “Beatles in Joint Film Operation,” Billboard, 15 Aug. 1964, 3; “Tokyo Is Girding for the Beatles,” New York Times, 22 May 1966, 12; Gould, 57–60.

19 Nick Biro, “Beatles Law Wrangles Go on in Chicago & N. Y.,” Billboard, 1 Feb. 1964, 1, 4; “Beatles a Sellout at Carnegie Hall 2-Wks. in Front,” Variety, 5 Feb. 1964, 45; “Beatles Heat Flares in Court,” Billboard, 25 Jan. 1964, 1, 4; “Beatles’ Tifts in Court Still Blazing Wildly,” Billboard, 8 Feb. 1964, 6; “Capitol Wins First Round in Battle over Beatles; Disk Orders Top 1-Mil,” Variety, 22 Jan. 1964, 69; “Legalmania over Beatlemania,” Cash Box, 25 Jan. 1964, 7.

20 Jack Maher, “Liverpool Waves,” Billboard, 15 Jan. 1964, 4; “Beethoven Nixed; Next Beatles, ‘Buy Me Love’,” Billboard, 14 March 1964, 1; “Chart Crawls with Beatles,” Billboard, 4 April 1964, 1.

21 “British Beatles Hottest Capitol Singles Ever,” Billboard, 18 Jan. 1964, 8; Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1977), 49–53; “Disk Biz Flips after’63 Flop: Beatles Click Sparks Industry,” Variety, 19 Feb. 1964, 49.

22 John Hughes, “Beatles Test Ties – Yeah!” Christian Science Monitor, 11 Feb, 1964, 1; Pells, Not Like Us, 199–201, 212–19.

23 Chris Hutchins, “Britons Put Yanks in the Horsecollar,” Billboard, 1 Feb. 1964, 29; “British Disks Take Top 10 Positions at Home,” Billboard, 21 March 1964, 1; “Aussies Look to Britons as U.S. Influence Fades,” Billboard, 22 Feb. 1964, 4; “Beatles Don't ‘Bug’ Kenin but He Wants Anglo–U.S. Tooter Balance Enforced,” Variety, 15 April 1964, 51; “U.S. Diskeries’ Target: England's Radio Formats,” Billboard, 30 May 1964, 3; “Visa Problems in Both Britain & U.S. Again Hit 2-Way Flow of Disk Artists,” Variety, June 16, 1965, 49.

24 Herm Schoenfeld, “Britannia Rules Airwaves: Beatles Stir Home Carbons,” Variety, 12 Feb. 1964, 63.

25 Gould, 273.

26 Ibid., 316, 430, 433.

27 My account is drawn from ibid., 396, 452, 426–429.

28 Gail Cameron, “The Cool Brain behind the Beatle Bonfire,” Life, 24 Aug. 1964, 8.

29 “Beatle Hair Ban Upheld by Court,” Toledo Blade, 7 Dec. 1965, 29; “Beatle Haircut Ban Tossed out,” Eugene Register-Guard, 13 Nov. 1966, 25; Nick Biro, “Beatlemania Hits Juke Boxes,” Billboard, 22 Feb. 1964, 44.

30 John Osmundsen, “4 Beatles and How They Grew Peoplewise,” New York Times, 17 Feb. 1964, 20; Alan Brien, “The’64 Beat: Afterthoughts on the Beatles,” Mademoiselle, Aug. 1964, 348; “What the Beatles Prove about Teen-Agers,” US News and World Report, 24 Feb. 1964, 88.

31 My analysis is broadly compatible with Michael Frontani's extensive exploration of the evolving image of the Beatles, though he attributes greater agency to the Beatles than I do. Moreover, whereas Frontani, borrowing from semiotics, treats the complexity of the Beatles public image as a function of the complexity of all cultural signs, I emphasize the increasingly diverse ways that the public was able to project meanings onto the group and see that as a by-product of the hybridized, global cultural circuits that produced the Beatles. See Michael R. Frontani, The Beatles: Image and the Media (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007).

32 “The New Madness,” Time, 15 Nov. 1963, 64; “No Soul in Beatlesville,” The Nation, 2 March 1964, 222; Alfred G. Aronowitz, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Music's Gold Bugs: The Beatles,” Saturday Evening Post, 21 March 1964, 34; Jack Gould, “TV: It's the Beatles (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah): Paar Presents British Singers on Film,” New York Times, 4 Jan. 1964, 47; Gould, “TV: The Beatles and Their Audience: Quartet Continues to Agitate the Faithful,” New York Times, 10 Feb. 1964, 53.

33 Bill Adler, ed., Love Letters to the Beatles (New York: Putnam, 1964); Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs, Re-making Love: The Feminization of Sex (New York: Anchor Press, 1986), 12–35; Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994), 112–21.

34 James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 75; Michael Bertrand, Race, Rock, and Elvis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 125–57; Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave, Anti-rock: The Opposition to Rock ‘n’ Roll (New York: Archon Books, 1993), 7–64; Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (London: UCL Press, 1998), 90–122; “U.S. Rocks and Reels from Beatles’ Invasion,” Billboard, 15 Feb. 1964, 1; Roger Watkins, “‘Beatlemania’ Bites Britain as Four from Liverpool Become a Show Biz Phenomenon; Press Clips Top Queen's,” Variety, 8 Jan. 1964, 194; “Teen-Agers (Mostly Female) and Police Greet Beatles,” New York Times, 14 Aug. 1965, 11.

35 Bill Whitworth, “And 150 Years Ago They Burned down Washington,” New York Herald Tribune, 10 Feb. 1964, 24; “The Unbarbershopped Quarter,” Time (South Pacific edn), 21 Feb. 1964, 46–47; Vance Packard, “Building the Beatle Image,” Saturday Evening Post, 21 March 1964; “The New Madness,” Time, 15 Nov. 1963, 64; Gould, Can't Buy Me Love, 6.

36 “What the Beatles Prove about Teenagers,” U.S. News and World Report, 24 Feb. 1964, 88.

37 Bertrand, 125–57; George Lipsitz, “Land of a Thousand Dances: Youth, Minorities and the Rise of Rock and Roll,” in Lary May, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 267–84; Ward, Just my Soul Responding, 90–122.

38 Gould, Can't Buy Me Love, 125; Price, “Sources of American Styles in the Music of the Beatles.”

39 Louie Robinson, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Becomes Respectable,” Ebony, Nov. 1965, 49; Dave Hepburn, “In the Wings,” New York Amsterdam News, 18 April 1964; Lerone Bennett Jr., “Stokely Carmichael, Architect of Black Power,” Ebony, Sept. 1966, 30.

40 Jeffrey S. Miller, Something Completely Different: British Television and American Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 18–24; Ehrenreich, Hess, and Jacobs, Re-making Love, 34; Adler; Harry Gilroy, “End Papers,” New York Times, 24 April 1964, 31; “George, Paul, Ringo, and John,” Newsweek, 24 Feb. 1964, 39; James Morris, “The Monarchs of the Beatle Empire,” Saturday Evening Post, 27 Aug. 1966, 23; Lewis Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 146–75.

41 “Beatles Manager Here to Quell Storm over Remark on Jesus,” New York Times, 6 Aug. 1966, 20; Ray Coleman, Lennon: The Definitive Biography (London: Harper, 2000), 426–27; Maureen Cleave, “Old Beatles: A Study in Paradox,” New York Times Magazine, 3 July 1966, 30; “Comment on Jesus Spurs a Radio Ban against the Beatles,” New York Times, 5 Aug. 1966, 20; “According to John,” Time, 12 Aug. 1966, 40; Martin Cloonan, “You Can't Do That: The Beatles, Artistic Freedom and Censorship,” in Ian Inglis, ed., The Beatles, Popular Music and Society: A Thousand Voices (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2000), 126–49, 134–35; “Beware the Red Beatles,” Newsweek, 15 Feb. 1965, 43; Sullivan, Mark, “‘More Popular than Jesus’: The Beatles and the Religious Far Right,” Popular Music, 6 (1987), 314–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alfred G. Aronowitz, “The Return of the Beatles,” Saturday Evening Post, 8 Aug. 1964, 28; “Beatlemania and the Fast Buck,” Christian Century, 24 Feb. 1964, 230; Ward, Brian, “‘The “C” is for Christ’: Arthur Unger, Datebook Magazine and the Beatles,” Popular Music and Society, 35 (Oct. 2012), 541–60Google Scholar.

42 Devin Mckinney, Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History (London: Harvard University Press, 2003), 158.

43 Gould, Can't Buy Me Love, 356–57, McKinney, 49–50, 177.

44 Platoff, John, “John Lennon, ‘Revolution,’ and the Politics of Musical Reception,” Journal of Musicology, 22 (2005), 241–67Google Scholar; McKinney, 214–16.

45 Gould, Can't Buy Me Love, 356–57, McKinney, 49–50, 177.

46 Peter Lyne, “Beatles … Ahem … a Secret Weapon,” Christian Science Monitor, 21 Feb. 1964, 1; Anthony Lewis, “Queens Honors List Includes the Beatles,” New York Times, 12 June 1965, 1, 9.

47 McKinney, 127–33; “Jakarta to Burn Beatle Music,” New York Times, 9 Aug. 1965, 8.