It is 1984 out.
Not in any Orwellian sense; it actually is 1984. I am on vacation crossing the English Channel on a high-speed ferry. There is a group of us at the front of the ferry, getting sprayed with salt water, and as we approach Calais my friend, Glen Zazove, is becoming inexplicably annoyed at French History circa WWII. In some acknowledgement of the German occupation, he keeps muttering, “Hey France, way to play the good defense, way to play the D.”
I ignore him, as I am trying to explain to this British guy my new theory on the Beatles and why they got so insanely popular in the U.S. I thought he’d be interested.
My theory had come to me the prior evening as I was watching television with no sound at the hotel back in London. There was this black-and-white footage I’d never seen before of the Beatles getting off a jetliner, old school style, actually walking down a big jet-way staircase, waving like mad.
As I watched that grainy footage, I quickly realized that I was wrong and I wasn’t seeing some forgotten Beatle clip — I was seeing the Kennedy boys landing at a campaign stop. Together, Jack, Robert, and Ted disembarked wearing narrow, dark suits with skinny ties, big, non-Brylcreemed hair, waving to adoring fans. They looked like a band. From a distance they looked like the Beatles. More to the point, the Beatles looked like them.
I happen to love the Beatles. From the Ed Sullivan trifecta to seeing them live at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1965 through Sgt. Pepper, the Beatles were a hugely important part of my life. Looking back at February 1964 specifically, it is very hard to describe what they meant to me —as well as to a country that was still digesting Dealey Plaza — which is what I am trying to explain to this Brit.
When JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963 — by Lee Harvey Oswald, Samuel Traficante, Castro, the Mafia, the CIA, or the CIA and the Mafia (please select only one) — the incredible shock felt in this country is hard to describe. Forgetting the mathematics of how you calculate the loss of human life, it was even worse somehow than 9/11. Your President had just been killed. It was unimaginable. What’s that? Your future was just shot in the head?
But I can tell you this: If LBJ had been the fallen President and JFK was aboard Air Force One being sworn in, it would have gone down just a tad easier. The country would have still been shaken to the core with the vulnerability of its President and its government, with the Banana Republic-ness of it all, but still: here’s Jackie! The weeping and gnashing of teeth, the “I remember where I was when I heard” even decades later, would have been dialed way down. Right or wrong, that is a fact.
The reason, of course, is that John Kennedy was quick-witted, happening, good-looking, sexy and young. Did I mention young? Plus he had the good hair. Going from JFK to Lyndon Baines Johnson overnight was like the Wizard of Oz in reverse, color jump-cuts to black-and-white and stays there. Brylcreem is back. I was only eleven at the time and it was still brutal.
With everything now in 1950’s-LBJ-black-and-white, the country is still in shock when… the Beatles show up. Thanks to Ed Sullivan, they are mainlined into the national consciousness exactly seventy-seven days after Dealey Plaza. Two and a half months.
They are quick-witted, happening, good-looking, sexy and young. Did I mention young? Plus they have the good hair. They are wearing narrow dark suits, skinny ties, and they are waving to adoring fans.
On some national subconscious level the Beatles manifested as the perfect LBJ antidote. The music was central, no question; but the music did not invoke the mania. It was the visual. The music created a multi-billion dollar industry — but it was their collective image that created Beatlemania. On a family trip to Iowa in January 1964, a mere two weeks before the Sullivan show aired, I heard the Beatles on a car radio. The music made not a dent. You had to see them.
So I’m on the Ferry pitching my premise to this increasingly wet Brit. He shakes his head. “Are you saying that if Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated the Beatles would not have been huge in the US?”
“They would have been successful, they were great. I mean, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons can take you only so far. But yes, Beatlemania would not have happened like it did. No national fixation. To America they were the sexy-dead-President surrogate — which kind of requires a sexy dead President.”
“I have to tell you, mate, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life, I’ll give you that.”
Ah, dissed and dismissed by an Englishman. Somehow it was easier to take with an accent.
John Trimble / 2007