In the end, the “free love” of those sunlit days came at a price...

The Beatles and the Dawning of a New Age

By K. V. Turley

On its 50th anniversary, A Hard Days Night has been released in a newly restored digital version to universal critical acclaim. A precious cinematic artifact of social history, even a catalyst of cultural change, the first Beatles movie is now looked upon as more than just a piece of filmmaking, with its four heroes praised for their natural charm, energy and unalloyed youthful optimism.

If only it was that simple.

The Beatles came to prominence with a string of hit singles, arriving to lead a generation from the grim black-and-white post-War World era into the technicolor dream of The Sixties—or that’s how the story goes. Two men played Svengali to the phenomenon that had materialized. The band’s manager, Brian Epstein, emerged from the obscurity of suburban Liverpool to mastermind the various image changes that made the group attractive to mainstream tastes. Out went the grease and leathers of anarchic rebels, and in came the fashionably suited smiling young men. The public image of four “innocents abroad in the big city” à la A Hard Days Nightwas far removed from the reality of the men who had returned to England after years playing the clubs of Hamburg’s notorious Red Light district. Formed by such experiences, the Beatles’ presentation may have changed, their underlying attitudes hadn’t. The other Svengali was the music producer, George Martin. With Martin at the helm, the Beatles’ combined abilities were crafted in such a way that rapidly moved them from being just another Beat group to rock music luminaries, becoming, by the end of the decade, the musical touchstone for a generation.

The Beatles’ rise to world superstardom has been well documented. By early 1964, on spiritual recoil from the gunshots heard at Dealey Plaza only months earlier, America enthusiastically welcomed the band—the hysteria that followed was not, however, solely about music. Beatle hairstyles, clothing and, more importantly, their musings immediately became the preoccupation of global youth. It was no longer a case of the band catching the Zeitgeist—they had become it.

By 1966, however, there appeared a change in the Beatles and, as the mask invented for them began to slip, things began to grow darker.

American audiences noticed it first. The US music label, Capitol, released Yesterday and Today with the album’s cover showing the Fab Four dressed as butchers with decapitated baby dolls and pieces of meat strewn around them. After a public outcry, copies of the record were hastily recalled and a more palatable cover was swiftly inserted. The original artwork was supposed to be social comment. It was; but what no one realized then was just how much—for that year marks the start of more liberal abortion laws in some US States; and in less than a year, the procedure became legal in Great Britain. In hindsight, one can see that the cover revealed, subconsciously perhaps, one aspect of where the Zeitgeist of the times was ultimately leading: Roe v. Wade.

That year also marked another unveiling. On a trip to India George Harrison had been introduced to diverse musical influences, and to a spiritual one, namely Hinduism, something he was later to promote with proselytizing zeal. He was not alone in this, though, as, from the start of the decade, the “wisdom of the East” had once again become fashionable. As the Beatles were seen to embrace this trend then, inevitably, so too did many others. There was, however, something more sinister here than the fad of “tuning in and dropping out”; instead, it was an opening up to systems of beliefs, to spiritual powers and influences, that from the outset were seldom understood by eager initiates. Quickly, assorted Eastern meditation techniques gave way to non-Christian mysticism; in turn, the voguish The Tibetan Book of the Dead became an introduction to the occult, especially the Black MagicianAleister Crowley. As that self-proclaimed magus’ corpus was exhumed, the maxim: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” became a softly whispered mantra for much of what was now about to occur.

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