coincidences (or it causes-ities?) of the almanac, which tells him: 60 years ago, in the same week, two cultural export products emerged from Great Britain that were difficult to match due to the effect and popular consumption they would have had …
Some banged-up guys, better known as The Beatles released love mehis first single (as was said before we said to separate or the first cut). And at the same time, the most famous spy in pop culture began his journey: It was released drAgent 007’s first film, starring Sean Connery.
Journalist Piri Halasz, correspondent for the magazineTimeso described the nascent zeitgeist: “In a decade dominated by youth, London has flourished …
“The city is full of girls and Beatles, teeming with toy cars and TV stars … London does not keep the good news to itself; London is exporting its plays, its films, its fashions, its styles, its people. “
pop icons
“The Beatles and James Bond: Two great pop culture phenomena would help redefine Britain and Britishness for a receptive global audience,” writes British essayist Mark Allison on the iconic BBC website.
As Ian MacDonald wrote Revolution in the headits seminal history of the Beatles records and the 60s, with the release of love me “blew a hilarious autumn breeze through a nervous pop scene, heralding a postwar change of tone.”
John Higgs, author of Love and let die: Bond, the Beatles and the British psyche. “At that time, Britain needed a new history and a new way of understanding each other”the author told the BBC in a statement.
“Over the past two centuries, we knew what we were: a global empire. The story we told each other was a Britain ruling the seas … And suddenly, it seemed our sense of identity was gone. A new one was needed. This is where Bond and the Beatles come in, and the embrace of the modern. They gave us examples of who we wanted to be“.
As Northern England working class musicians with little formal training – read Liverpool – The Beatles challenged all preconceptions about where great art could come from. Their looks were surprisingly androgynous, their accents weren’t diluted, their fans loved them.
“The band’s unique sound and image suggested to young audiences that success didn’t mean following a prescribed path,” Christine Feldman-Barrett, author of A female story of the Beatles. “The Beatles proved that trying something new and channeling your talents, no matter where you came from or who you were, could be a winning combination.
“For 1962 it was a very powerful message: it foreshadowed the future. And since it brought a devoted female fan base, it was a future that also included women as protagonists. In this vibrant new world that the Beatles symbolized and implied, everyone mattered and everyone was welcome to join in the fun. “
love me peaked at number 17 in the UK charts, the first step in a meteoric rise to unprecedented stardom. Much of the British establishment had no idea what hit them.
Conservative politician Ted Heaththen Lord Privy Seal and future Prime Minister, in 1963 commented on him snobbish he found it difficult to recognize the Beatles’ Liverpool accents as “the Queen’s English”.
Lennon replied: “We will not vote for Ted.” Two years later, Heath’s group had been duly ousted from office and the Beatles were at Buckingham Palace to be declared Members of the Order of the British Empire.
The affinity between Bond and the Beatles
Like the Beatles, the James Bond film set a new model for British life. The novels of Ian Fleming, starting with Royal casino 1953, he had portrayed Bond as a largely reactionary figure.
It was the casting of Sean Connery, a working-class actor and former bodybuilder from Edinburgh, that transformed the Bond. of the big screen in a dynamic and modern hero, fit for the 60s.
As producer Albert Broccoli reflects in his autobiography: “Physically, and in his overall personality, he was too rough to be a replica of Fleming’s high-class agent. Wider.”
Consequentially, the modern action hero was born, combining a sense of classic English style with harsh transatlantic nonchalance; something completely detached from the traditional “gentleman heroes” of England.
Some viewers were as confused by Connery’s regional accent as Ted Heath by the Beatles. “If you look at the American criticisms of dr They can’t recognize his accent, they think he’s Irish. “Llewella Chapman, author of James Bond fashion.
The Beatles also got a piece of Bond’s cake. just review Help! (his 1965 film) to see it as a parody of the Universe 007.
The influence of the Fab Four has inoculated none other than the Rolling Stones from the very beginning. In the recent BBC documentary, My life as a Rolling Stoneso much Mick Jagger and Keith Richards acknowledge the influence of the early Beatles records, and in particular of love meto inspire them to write their own songs.
Source BBC.com
CJL
Source: Clarin
