The Rest Is History - 91. The Beatles

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are live at the Chalke Valley History Festival to discuss the cultural impact of the Fab Four. What were the social conditions that led to their phenomenal success, and will their legacy endure in another hundred years? Plus, why Tom was turned away from John Lennon’s house.   A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. In February 2018, the Winter Olympics were held in South Korea. And there was obviously huge interest in the presence at these games of a North Korean team. And perhaps the most dramatic and sensational contribution to the Olympics from the North Koreans was the figure skating competition at which Ryom Tai Ok and Kim Ju Sik performed a stunning routine. And the music to which they performed this routine was A Day in the Life by The Beatles, the last track on perhaps their most famous album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. So in 2018, it was what? It was 51 years since Sgt. Pepper had taught the band to play. And yet here were figure skaters

from perhaps the most isolationist regime on the face of the planet. A state absolutely committed in its opposition to everything that the West represented. Choosing a track from a pop group that had split up many, many decades before. And I think it's a kind of stunning tribute to the enduring influence of the Beatles and a tribute that I think entirely justifies studying them, not as musicians, but as, I think, seminal figures in modern history.

And I would go so far as to say that in 100, perhaps 200 years' time, they will still be remembered when almost everyone else from post-war Britain will have been forgotten. And it's a particular thrill for me to be talking about them here because we are doing this live at the Chalk Valley History Festival just outside the village where I grew up. And so a place where I basically discovered the Beatles and listened to them for many, many years. So it's a kind of very personal for me to be here.

With me is Dominic Sandbrook, who has written a series of fantastic books on modern Britain and on the way also that modern Britain has kind of generated a global culture. And so Dominic, the Beatles have been a consistent theme of yours, but I think you might be slightly more sceptical than me about their enduring historical significance. Yeah. Hello, everybody. It's great to be here.

And such a fascinating topic. And yes, Tom, I am more sceptical. I wonder whether the Beatles will have the same cultural capital in, let's say, a century's time or two centuries' time as they still do now. We don't tend to listen to music you know, music from the Victorian era, nor do we listen to George Formby or the sort of pre-Second World War music. We don't tend to listen even to jazz, particularly from the early 20th century. It's quite a niche taste. And I do wonder whether guitar, you know, guitar music, like all kinds of music,

it dates, it comes from a particular time and place, and whether, you know know in the far future our successors will be as interested in its supreme exponents as we are but where i would agree with you is i do think you know you look back at um the period that i've written about as you say the 60s and 70s and so on you know people who seemed colossal at the time, Harold Wilson won lots of elections. Tony Benn. Tony Benn. Jim Callaghan. He's giant.

He's stored the pages of your books. Yes. People that I've spent, I've wasted far too much of my life thinking and writing about. But you're absolutely right. I mean, they have absolutely no traction now at all. I mean, anybody who's interested in Tony Benn under the age of 20, I mean, there's something not right.

But I don't say that... I realise I'm in danger of alienating my own readership, which is utter folly. But I do think, yes, culturally they mattered enormously. They defined Britain's image and the eyes of the world in a completely new way, I think, from 1964. From that moment they landed in America, Britain's image did change. And the way that Britain saw itself, I think, from 1964, from that moment they landed in America. Britain's image did change,

and the way that Britain saw itself, I think, changed as well. So should we park the issue of their kind of long-term historical significance? Because you know where I'm going to be going with that. Yeah, of course. Everybody knows where you're going with that. But should we look at the way in which they kind of serve as lightning rods for trends in post-war Britain and the way in which they change it.

Yeah. And I guess, so when I began listening to The Beatles, that was in the 70s, and their breakup seemed a very, very long time ago to me, even though this was kind of 1976. But what seemed even further removed was the Second World War. It seemed an unimaginable distance. But, of course, it wasn't at all. And all the Beatles were born during the Second World War.

And what I realise now, kind of, you know, with my age and wisdom that I've accrued... Your enormous experience and expertise. Yes, is actually that they exist in the context of the Second World War. Yes, and I think, well, not just so much of the war as of the austerity that followed it and then the relative contentment of sort of mid-50s Britain.

I mean, it's such a wonderfully telling moment that McCartney and Lennon famously meet at the church fete. Well, yes, we'll be coming back to that. You know, the Walton church fete. I don't want to give you a gift to start ranting about your book on the history of Christianity. But, yeah, I think they reflect.

You know, they obviously reflect. There's a sort of complacency and a self-satisfaction about 50s Britain that is probably quite at once reassuring but also alienating for them, particularly for John Lennon, I think. They're on the prosperous suburbs of Liverpool but Liverpool itself, even in

the 50s, even in the early 60s, is still massively bomb-scarred. Yes, it is. You're right. Lennon grew up in a house called Mendips, which tells you his position on the working-class hero. I mean, Lennon grew up in a house called Mendips, which tells you, you know, just about the sort of his position on the kind of class. The working class hero.

Yeah, the working class hero, exactly. But, I mean, Ringo and George Harrison, they both came from much more modest backgrounds. Ringo especially. I mean, he's born in Bootle, which is really in the heart of the kind of the bomb damage of Liverpool. And actually had a very poor and sort of blighted childhood, blighted by illness.

I mean, he's in and out of a hospital, Ringo. It's astonishing that Ringo, who's the one who really should be, you know, he should have a sense of himself as a victim and feel that he's being hard done by. He's incredibly jolly and... Well, because he... Yeah. He got the lottery ticket of all lottery tickets, didn't he?

He did. He did. But I guess also what I mean about the Second World War is that when the Beatles go to Hamburg, they're going to a city that even more than Liverpool bears terrible scars from the war. And I think the Beatles do recognise that because there's a famous account, the first time that they're in their minivan, driving from Liverpool

to Hamburg, and it's a trip that then takes an incredibly long time. They get to Arnhem and most of the Beatles get out to go and look at the war graves and John Lennon refuses. He doesn't want to do it. I think he goes off and nicks a harmonica, doesn't he? Oh my God, there we go.

Give peace a chance. So even then Lenin is kind of, has a I mean he's anxious and twitchy about the legacy of the war. And then they get to Hamburg and the clubs that they're working in, the Red

Light District, it's staffed by ex-Nazis, and they've all got kind of missing limbs and eyes and things, because this is the only place that they can get jobs. Yeah. I mean, I think there's another dimension to it too, which is if you think, when they get their MBEs in 1965, one of the big complaints is that the MBEs should be for people who,

the kind of people who saw action in the war. And you get lots of stories of servicemen sending back their medals in protest to Buckingham Palace or to Downing Street and complain to the Wilson government. And I think what the Beatles also are, Tom, is they're absolutely emblematic of that generation that were too young, obviously, to have fought in the war,

too young to have been massively affected by it and are sick of hearing about it. So you definitely get that. That's a very pronounced thing in 60s British youth culture. You have this generation who have basically grown up in the shadow of the war, but they didn't know it firsthand. And they're tired of being lectured about it.

They see the heroism and the sacrifice and all those stories, they see them as basically comical and oppressive. Yeah, and John Lennon's middle name is Winston, which he then famously goes on to change. I guess the other way in which the Beatles are, they have a kind of brush with the lingering militarism of Britain after the war is that they miss out on national service. Yes.

Very, very narrowly. I mean, had they gone on national service, I think their story would have obviously been utterly different. And it's impossible to imagine them, you know, having the freedom that they had to experiment, to go to Hamburg, to do all that sort of stuff. So, I mean, in terms of the youth culture generally of the 60s, the fact that national service ends is pretty fundamental, isn't it?

Yeah, I suppose so, although you could also argue that National Service creates a kind of shared humour, the sort of humour that you get with the goons and that sort of stuff that then gets picked up and made mainstream in the 60s. But you're right, I think there's a definite... The Beatles and their generation reflect a a relaxation a sense of loosening a sense of opportunities these are people as you say haven't had national service but they're also grown up in a world of full employment

where more people are in education but if you go out of education you walk into a job you can change jobs at the drop of a hat there's a a lot of money around, there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of optimism. And so, you know, great artists, they have greatness in themselves, but also they always reflect the sort of social and commercial conditions, if you like. The marketplace is there for the Beatles. There are an awful lot of young people with a lot of money, with more money than any similar generation before them. And there are a lot of promoters and so on, record companies that are very keen to separate them from that money. And that is where bands

like the Beatles come in. And Beatlemania, which, so the Beatles get together, they hone their craft in Hamburg, in Liverpool, and then they go, first they go viral nationally, and then they go viral internationally. And Beatlemania, the way in which girls particularly just kind of scream their heads off, it's kind of basically about fun, isn't it? And I guess it's one of the reasons why the memory of that lingers on decades after it happened is that it was filmed, that people could listen to the music and the conjunction of it served as a kind of emblematic display of coming out of austerity.

Yeah, I think you're right, Tom. I mean, I could spend hours sort of ranting on about this because, as you say, I've written about it. I think Beatlemania... So Beatlemania is really 1963 and 1964. And it comes at a moment when the economy was growing enormously. So Harold Macmillan's chancellor, Reginald Maudling,

had unleashed what he called his dash for growth. So there's just tons of money swilling around. The economy is actually overheating in 1963. Rock and roll had come in in the late 50s, but rock and roll had actually gone into a bit of a decline.

So a lot of record companies thought, well, that was the big fad, and now what's next? And actually, if you looked at the charts in 1962, before the Beatles come through, there's all kinds of actually, if you looked at the charts in 1962, before the Beatles come through,

there's all kinds of weird stuff. There's yodelling. There's sort of Hawaiian music. There's Ackerbilk. Well, you know, in 1987, Mrs. Thatcher was interviewed by Smash Hits and asked for her favourite Beatles track, and she said, Telstar.

Yes. Her finger on the nub of youth as ever. Yeah, no, I mean, so Beatlemania, the Beatles come through at the turn of 1963 and they come through at the moment when there's lots

of young people, exactly that. There's people at 17, 18, particularly as you say, girls, who I mean, the classic thing is a girl, teenage girls who've got money, they've either left school and they're maybe working in shops or something, or they are still

at school, but they maybe work part-time at a hairdresser's, that's what Twiggy did, Leslie Hornby. So there's thousands upon thousands of people like this. You read Rob Sheffield's book on the Beatles? I haven't. A couple of years ago and it's about

it's not so much about the Beatles but about the fans experience of the Beatles. He makes a wonderful point that the Beatles wrote their songs for girls. Yes. I mean girls are the key. They loved girls. Girls are the absolutely key driver of a lot of the sort of 60s. A lot of the kind of 60s fashion, 60s music. Girls are the most important driver of a lot of the 60s, of a lot of the 60s fashion, 60s music.

Girls are the most important part of the market. So Brian Epstein, when he's remodelling the Beatles, when he takes them from Hamburg... Gives them their suits. Gives them their suits, gets them to look clean and all this. This is all designed for teenage girls and their parents to make the Beatles acceptable for that audience. So you have that.

And then I think another element of Beatlemania is there is a thirst for sensation in 1963. It's the dog days of the Macmillan government. You've got the Profumo scandal going on. There's a sense that there's a sort of... The order of things that has existed since the war is tired. People talk of this old establishment

that's old Etonian, clapped out. So these northern, I mean it's crucial that they're northern, working class boys. They represent something new, a new Britain. And you've got the end of the Lady Chatterley band. Philip Larkin famously put it about discovering. Yeah, you've got the end of the

exactly, you've had the in recent years you've had the Chatter about discovering yeah you've got the end of the exactly you've had the in recent years you've had the Chatterley trial you've got the BBC and ITV competing

very aggressively for younger viewers so launching programmes like Ready Steady Go which some of our older listeners may remember

these sort of pop music programmes which would have been unthinkable ten years before. So in other words, the arena, the stage is ready. All that is missing are the actors. And the interesting question is, had the Beatles not met,

had Leonard McCartney not met in 1957, the Walton Church phase... Would something else have... Would something else, would there be another band that would have enjoyed similar start-up? My answer to that would be yes. But it might not have been British, I guess. No, I think it would

have been British. I think there would have been a British band, and I also think there would have been a British invasion, because the market in America in particular was sated. They were just doing the same repetitive things. Also, crucially, it took a British band,

a white British band, to re-export black American music. So we've talked about how the Beatles actually are, in terms of the transformation in Britain in the early 60s, are very significant as a cultural phenomenon in a British context. But of course, famously, they also become incredibly significant in America.

Yes. And it's a kind of explosive impact that they have when they go in 64. And it's a few months after Kennedy's been assassinated. And there is a feeling that, just as the Beatles licensed people in Britain to have fun, so in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, the Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show says

yeah, it's fine. Go and have a scream. Yeah, I think it makes a... Obviously, this is why they had to be British. They have to speak English, but they have to seem exotic. And I think what they do is they're a different kind of Englishness that American audiences are not familiar with.

So there's a lot of talk in America about their accents and people can't place them. I think you're right that there's a sort of appetite for them because America has just had this enormously traumatic episode on the 22nd of November where Kennedy has been shot. So you're literally talking about two months later. I mean, the Beatles' impact in America, it would be fun to find some sort of clever way

of undervaluing it or puncturing it, but you can't, because it's simply extraordinary. At one point, they hold the top five spots on the Billboard Hot 100, which is this coveted chart, which looms so large in American cultural life in the early 60s. The Beatles are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

I think what's extraordinary about that is basically British music was nothing before that. Ackerbilk bizarrely had had... Cliff had made appearances in America, but universal indifference. Nobody had had had... Cliff. But Cliff had made appearances in America, but universal indifference.

I mean, nobody had been interested in Cliff. And I think part of it was that Britain itself, the British brand, as it were, was so closely associated, particularly with empire. It's seen as old, it is stuffy. Tweedy. Hierarchy. Exactly, it's Tweedy. It's Harold McMillan.

And then these guys arrive from Britain and they're a completely new kind of Britishness. And I think, as well, exactly, it's Tweed, it's Harold McMillan. And then these guys arrive from Britain and they're a completely new kind of Britishness. And I think as well, Tom, I mean, I noticed the talk was billed. It was. Was that your doing? Well, we're replacing somebody who is due to talk about the British Empire.

So to persuade people to come here, I had to put in something about the British Empire for the title. So obviously, I'm sorry, we're not talking really about the British Empire but they're here now right and they're not leaving well I mean there's people leaving over there

people listening to this on the podcast it will make no sense at all no no no that's fine I mean it never makes any sense on the podcast anyway but on the British Empire angle I mean they become they become members of the British Empire well yeah members of the order of the British Empire yes they do and they wear British Imperial outfits they, yeah, members of the Order of the British Empire. Yes, they do.

And they wear British Imperial outfits. They do, yes. So Sgt Pepper is quite subversive, isn't it? In a way that I don't think I properly appreciated when I first listened to it. No, I think that's right. But they can only do that because the British Empire is already gone. I think that's the interesting thing, and that's when I saw the name of

the event. I was like, what? Because I think that's the interesting thing. And that's when I saw the name of the event. I was like, what? Because I think one of the key things to the Beatles' success is they are able to export Britishness, as it were, abroad because Britain is no longer feared, because Britain is no longer the bully. I mean, there are obviously places that have kind of memories of Britain as the bully.

But because Britain is no longer, you know, Lord Palmerston, gunboat diplomacy, throwing its weight around, and Britain is already, by the early 1960s, beginning to look a bit of a joke, that sort of carnivalesque Britishness, oh, we'll wear Union Jack pants or something. Yeah, swinging 60s. Swinging 60s sort of stuff.

Exactly, I think you can do that. So in other words, the barriers to British cultural exports are lower because Britain is not the sort of domineering military power anymore. But also, I mean, just picking up on what you said about it takes

a white British band to re-export black music to white America. I mean, they, in quite a subtle way, they do intrude on the very toxic racial politics of America in the 60s. Because, for instance, they don't play in segregated stadium. Yeah.

And they are very, very open about the huge influence that black American music had on them. They don't play in South Africa. And so there is also that sense of a kind of internationalism that will become increasingly a part of their brand moving through the 60s. Yeah, and I think actually that's there from, as you say, as soon as they make that first flight to America

at the beginning of 1964, I think even at that moment, they're not ceasing to be a British phenomenon, but the Britishness is then in tension with their kind of international phenomenon, if you like. On the racial stuff, I mean, that's even more pronounced, I think, with the Rolling Stones, because the Rolling Stones' debt to Mississippi,

Delta, Blues, is far more... But Eric. But I mean, Eric Clapton, likewise, has a massive debt to them, and that doesn't stop him having a massive racist rant at one point. Yeah, that's true. So it's not inevitable. No, so the two don't necessarily go hand in hand, but you're right.

I think the Beatles, I mean, the Beatles are by far the most popular, and also the most popular with sort of middle American girls. Yeah. So I think that's very important um but so they they do come to be seen by conservative elements in america as a threat they do well obviously so can we come on to um yeah bring it up bring it up come on so john lennon famously says that the beatles are bigger bigger than Jesus and he says that to Maureen Cleave in an interview in the Evening Standard in London

and it's run in the Evening Standard and nobody in Britain pays any attention to it at all and then it gets reprinted in America as they're going for in 66 they're going for what will turn out to be their last tour and as it were all hell breaks out and you start to get people holding public burnings yes they're organized albums but beatles wigs organized by radio stations well so um are the beatles minstrels of the antichrist asked the christian crusade in october 1966 and david a noble a tulsa pastor, said of the Beatles that the communists, through their scientists, educators and entertainers, have contrived a scientific technique

directed at rendering a generation of American youth useless through nerve jamming, mental deterioration and retardation. Yeah. Strong. Strong words. I think he has a point. Well, you know who would agree with you? Elvis. So Elvis also believed this. I have a slightly different perspective from from elvis very similar characters yeah so elvis by this point is kind of hanging out with nixon isn't he and getting well of course he's going to get a badge well elvis you're right he goes to visit richard

nixon at the white house and um yes he says he wants to volunteer to be a federal agent. Nixon gives him a badge. And he says the Beatles are importing communists. And they're very keen on drugs, which Elvis claims he's not. He never had. And he then goes off and gobbles some pills in the White House.

Yeah, but anyway, come on. Give us your theory. Give us your... Well, I think that American religious conservatives are right to be anxious about the influence of the Beatles because I do think, and this is my justification for saying that they have a kind of world

historical significance, I think that the 60s are a period of cultural transformation and convulsion in the West that I think future generations will rank alongside the 1520s. So I think that we, at the moment,

and this is a kind of huge part of what people call the culture wars, the sense of cultural dislocation and conflict that we're massively convulsed by. I think this is part of a continuous process that perhaps in, I don't know, 30, 40 years will get a name like the Reformation that will enable it to be studied in its entirety. But obviously, if you're in the 1570s, looking back,

what's happening is very confused. You don't have a sense of what's going on in quite the same way. I think we're living through something very similar, and I think that the 60s are basically the kind of the epicentre of this convulsion. And I think that the Beatles are the kind of the great minst this convulsion. And I think that the Beatles are the kind of the great minstrels of it. And so the parallel that I would make

with people of previous generations wouldn't be with musical or jazz or anything like that. It would be with the hymnists. So it would be with the Wesleys for Methodism. But above all it would be with the hymn writers in the 1520s, Luther and so on.

Because the impact of Protestantism is certainly conveyed through the pamphlets that Luther is writing. I mean, that's clear. But it is also conveyed to people who can't read through song. And I think that the Beatles and all the music of the 60s,

the impact is massive because it makes accessible and entertaining re-evaluations of fairly fundamental moral, religious, cultural principles

that now we take for granted. You're not talking about please, please me here, are you? I'm not talking... You're talking about all you need is love. I'm talking about the idea that love matters. And so I do think that, you know, please, please me or, you know, all the Beatlemania songs, the way in which love is what matters,

having fun is what matters, I think is subversive in the context. But obviously it expands out, and as we come into 1966, 1967, The Summer of Love, Sergeant Pepper and so on, All You Need Is Love, that is a very ideological

movement, I think. Tom, I would disagree with that completely. Of course you would, because I know you're now going to mention The Sound of Music. No, I'm not going to mention The Sound of Music. You're going to mention how The Sound of Music sold more albums than... Well, it did, and I'm glad you brought that up. It shows that you remember your reading, which is very pleasing. I do, I do.

But, I mean, if you look at what people were listening to in Edwardian musical, the songs that soldiers sang when they went into the trenches, I mean, they're all about love and their sweethearts and holding hands and she's holding, you know, burning a candle for me. And love has always played a part in popular song.

Absolutely. But what happens is that that sense of love as something that should properly animate society, that is more important than the strictures of parents or priests or school teachers or any of the kind of representatives of traditional hierarchy. It's the impact, I suppose because it's amplified by technology,

by TV, by radio and so on. It generates a groundswell that starts to undermine traditional structures of authority. And then in the second half of the 60s, the Beatles play a key role in rendering this an overtly ideological programme. Okay, Tom, so that raises a really interesting question,

which is how much of the Beatles, the agents of change, which you seem to suggest that they are, or how much are they reflecting... I think it's both. ...trends that would already have come to fruition? I think it's both. And I think that that would already have come to fruition? I think it's both. And I think that that's what makes them so fascinating as kind of cultural...

So what about, let's say, India? The Beatles? I mean, that's a huge thing because Western society, particularly in Britain, had always had a kind of Orientalist fascination and there'd always been this fascination with Oriental spirituality and so on. But do you think that would have come about in the 60s in the same way? I mean, the Maharishi is already there in London giving a talk, I think,

when the Beatles first discover him at one of the hotels, in one of the Mayfair or Bart Lane hotels. So all the Beatles are brought up as Christian. Lennon and McCartney meet famously, as we've said, at a church fete. George Harrison has... He's very interested in spirituality, Catholic spirituality.

And in money. He's certainly interested in money as well. Yes. Complaining about the tax man. And they come to see Christianity as boring because Christianity in 1960s Britain is boring. It's stale, it's dull, it's associated with hierarchy, it's losing its self-confidence.

This is the period where people in the church are saying they don't believe in God. Honest to God and all that stuff. And so that's why I think it's perfectly reasonable for John lennon to say that they're bigger than jesus they certainly are in um in england but i think that um they they have absorbed a lot of christian assumptions and and so they're you know the key message of you know peace and love which ring even ringo says all the time peace and love, which even Ringo says all the time, peace and love.

These are basically Christian ideals. And all you need is love. I mean, that's an enduring Christian message. And the fact that they sing all you need is love as their contribution to a global festival of culture, all these satellites around the world

joining people up from around countries around the entire globe. The Beatles singing All You Need Is Love, it's Britain's contribution to what they see as a kind of universal message. It draws on pretty fundamental Christian ideas. The problem is because Christianity's image

is so boring and dull and staid, the Beatles are not interested in that. The Maharishi kind of provides that. And the Maharishi, you know, he's packaging his message for Western tastes rather in the way that, you know, Indian food is packaged for British taste. He's the chicken tikka masala of gurus.

Yeah, he's the chicken tikka masala of mid-60s spirituality. And George Harrison is kind of, I guess, the archetype of this because he remains a very Catholic kind of Hindu. And the way in which My Sweet Lord, the smash hit that he releases after the Beatles have broken up, the chorus goes from Alleluia, Alleluia, to Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.

But it sounds exactly the same. And I think that, again, they're both representative and influential on what seems to me a pretty fundamental trend, certainly here in Britain, that the guiding assumption now of our elites is that all religions are basically the same. Surely they all teach you peace and love

and basic fundamentals. And I think the role the beatles play in that is is fairly hefty was that turning into a bit of a paul mccartney-ish impersonation there when you said i didn't notice it but if it was it may be i'm marina hyde and i'm'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

So let's talk about the Beatles and their wealth and celebrity. So I'm trying to think if there have been people... Imagine no possessions. Well, yes. John Lennon

and his massive house in, where is it, Weybridge? Yes. St George's Hill where the Diggers had started to set up their commune in the 17th century. And it's now a gated community.

Yeah. And I've tried to go and visit it so many times, and every time I get turned away by Russian bodyguards. Both Wynne Stanley and John Lennon would, you know, turn in their graves. It's strange that you have nothing else to do, Tom, than hang around outside the gates of other people's houses. Well, I do, but, you know but periodically I try and get to see it.

But I'm trying to think if there are people before the Beatles in British, certainly in British cultural history, who had either the international fame or the amount of money overnight that they did. And I think that's another, to me, that's another obvious area where they're pioneers, where it's hard to, so this is why... I mean, what they do is they do what entrepreneurs and manufacturers would have done 100 years earlier, which is they buy country houses. It's interesting that they haven't freed themselves from the shackles of their Britishness.

So their instinct is immediately... I mean, Lennon and I think George, they buy these stockbroker belt houses and then they go into the bigger sort of National Trust style. But Paul McCartney doesn't. No, that's what makes him interesting. And what's interesting is Paul McCartney, who's always seen as the more conventional of Lennon and McCartney,

is actually much more interested in the avant-garde and is at the heart of Swinging London when it's at its most swinging. Well, that's because of his association. I mean, that's an interesting thing about class because McCartney has an in with the Asher family which is a very well connected patrician culturally connected family through his relationship with Jane Asher

he basically moves in with her doesn't he and that's how he discovers Stock Housen and all this sort of business yeah but I think what's interesting about them is that they are they're a new kind of elite that Britain had not previously produced.

So Dickens wasn't unmoored from his society in the way that they are to become later on. Do you not think? Yeah, I do. And I think that that's what makes particularly John and Yoko interesting. Because obviously... The Harry and Meghan of the 1960s. The Harry and Meghan of the 60s.

It's evident that John Lennon living in his stockbroke about house is desperately unhappy because he's lonely and bored and he doesn't know what to do with it. And he is kind of deracinated, I guess. I mean, he's lost his roots. And so he's looking for something else. And his relationship with Yoko, I mean, symbolised

by his replacing Winston as his middle name with Ono. I mean, it's quite a, it's kind of wonderfully culturally symbolic. But he blazes a path that many people have followed now. And you could say that the whole, he blazes a path that is currently convulsing the nation.

I think. Yes. No, I think that's true. I mean, Lennon's an interesting one, isn't convulsing the nation, I think. Yes. No, I think that's true. I mean, Lennon's an interesting one, isn't he? Because he basically, I mean, ironically, having said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, he then decides to dress like Jesus. He does, yes. And to look like Jesus.

And his sort of role, I mean, he definitely sees himself, I mean, he would love your thesis, because your thesis is how he thinks of himself, right? As a moral prophet rather than as a musician. But do you think that sort of moral prophecy still has force all these years on? I mean, do you think young people give a damn about John Lennon now?

I don't think they give a damn about John Lennon, but I think the way in which he set himself up as a kind of holy fool, the way in which he deliberately sought to trash things that people held sacred. So I watched, Dorian Linsky was here at the festival yesterday talking about protest songs, and he made the kind of wonderful point that John Lennon's protest songs are basically lists

of things that he doesn't agree with, that he doesn't like. And there's the song God on on his first solo album where he goes through all the things that he had previously valued and now he he doesn't so he famously says i don't believe in beatles but he also says i don't believe in god i don't believe in jesus i don't believe in buddha i don't believe in yoga basically he is the way in which you get cultural capital by trashing things that people hold sacred seems to me quite significant. Yeah.

Because that's what we're living through at the moment. And he really does seem to me a trailblazer there. There's a story, isn't there? Elton John went to visit him in New York and saw John and Anna getting very cross because one of the golden doorknobs had come off in the apartment or something well and elton says elton says to him imagine no possessions john and john says it's only an effing song um quite quite but because i think that that the hypocrisy is also a crucial part of it.

And that also is a massive part of the tension that the cultural revolution that we're going through is having to wrestle with. Because you've got people who are casting down the statues but then filming it on their iPhones, which are made from materials that have been sourced by basically slaves. So the hypocrisy there is also, you know, John Lennon and Yoko Ono,

they're in their hotel room and they have to stop their protest because the chamber mate has to come in and make their bed. Yeah, I always like that detail. That's their bed in, isn't it, in Amsterdam? That's their bed in, in Amsterdam. So I think he's...

I think John Lennon in particular will be a subject of great fascination to future historians. I mean, do you not think so? Well, I've written about John Lennon. I mean, I've never had worse feedback than when I've written about John Lennon because, as you know,

I don't really hold a candle for John Lennon. Is that morally or musically? He's everything I dislike in a person. I know that's quite strong. So let's tease this out. What do you not like about him? I don't like beards. Long hair.

I don't like... I mean Long hair. I don't like... I mean, to me, the hypocrisy is incredibly glaring. The empty, self-regarding kind of moral gestures, which, you know, you love with all your holy men and all that sort of thing. I don't like that. You see, I don't think they were empty. I think he was looking around. I mean, the bed looking around for ways to fill that kind of sense of emptiness.

I think the bedding is laughable. He tried lots of things and lots of them didn't work, but he drew attention to his campaign for peace. And you may say it didn't actually work. But the idea of give peace a chance, the idea that militarism per se is wrong, the suspicion of war, of

armed forces, I think that's now a huge part of cultural life, certainly in Britain, certainly in America, in a way that it simply wasn't in the 60s. But it's not like nobody had thought of that before, Tom. Think about what a huge thing pacifism was in the 1930s when people were signing peace pledges

or the moral fervour of the Victorian era. I mean, the idea that he's the first person to popularise them. I'm not in any way saying that, but I think he popularised it in a distinctive way that becomes associated with youth culture and each generation inherits it and broadens it out. You know, he used to work at Speak Airport. He used to spit in people's sandwiches.

But it's that element of savagery. That's just bad behaviour. Of course it's bad behaviour. If I spit in your sandwich at lunch, will you say, oh, that's an interesting moral position or something? Of course you won't. No, but you didn't write Imagine. Well, that's one thing in my favour. Come on.

Right, have we got anything more to say on the subject of Beatles as epical, historical figures before we open it up to questions? I think we should open it up for questions. You'll have to shout incredibly loud. Does anyone have questions?'ll have to shout incredibly loud.

Does anyone have questions? Hold on, we'll just get you a microphone and you can twist and shout. Dylan was writing songs like With God on Our Side, Times Are Changing, sort of pre-Beatles. To what extent do you think he influenced them and maybe deserves some of the credit you're stealing for the Beatles?

Go on, Tommy. You're probably a Bob Dylan fan, aren't you? I'm not a Bob Dylan fan. No, I'm not either. But that doesn't mean I can't recognise it. I mean, I think his lyrics are terrible. I can't believe he got the Nobel Prize. I mean, you just read them out. They're absolutely gibberish. Beatles lyrics are much

better. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a kind of honesty there I mean obviously Dylan is a huge cultural figure as well and we're not saying that the Beatles are absolutely you know equivalent to the 60s the Stones and Bob Dylan

and you know these are huge figures as well but I don't think Bob Dylan had a fraction of the Beatles' global popularity. And I think it's that global popularity that makes the Beatles significant as figures of historical study. So this isn't a discussion about musical influence. And it may well be that Dylan's musical influence

has been just as great or possibly greater than that of the Beatles. But I think as figures who served as lightning rods for a convulsive period of social and cultural change, the Beatles are unrivaled. I would completely agree with that, Tom. I think the difference is that Bob Dylan appeals to a specific constituency, I would say. He's obviously got a market that, and large, I would guess, is

pretty well educated, affluent, probably sort of liberal politically and so on and so forth. Whereas I think the Beatles appeal to people who are not political, to people who are maybe not particularly well educated. It's obviously

so much greater and as you say, the Beatles are an extraordinary international reach. I mean it's hard to imagine that example that Tom gave at the beginning of the North Korean figure skaters they're unlikely to do it. I'd love to see it though like a Rolling Stone, that would be amazing wouldn't it? Yeah I would

I think also though the difference between Dylan and the Beatles and indeed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones or the Who or any is that they start the 60s and indeed the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, or the Who, or any, is that they start the 60s and they end with the 60s. And there's a kind of perfection to their story. So I remember

we did an episode on, one of the very earliest podcasts we did was on the year 1981. And so we talked about Diana, and how the story of Princess Diana, simply as a story, is kind of unbelievable. It's so perfect, the kind of the tragedy of it, the arc of it. And I think the Beatles are very similar. I think the story is one that bears endless repetition. It's kind of like the modern matter of Britain.

And the way in which they are kind of playing emblematic roles at all the key moments in the 60s. They're in Hamburg. They're in America after the assassination of Kennedy. They're there during the religious and cultural convulsions of America in the mid-60s. They're hippies. They're there when it all starts to go wrong and to sour,

and then they break up at the end of the 60s, I think makes their story just kind of perfect. It's kind of mythic, isn't it? I mean, they're mythic heroes, and I think that, exactly, they have that trajectory that nobody else has. Any other questions? We've got a couple over... Yes, hi.

I'm a big fan of the podcast, and I'd just like to congratulate Tom for getting through a whole episode without mentioning genitalia. Well, two virgins. The two virgins. Let's give that a shout out. The famous John and Yoko

full frontal nude album cover. He's absolutely incorrigible. Why do you encourage him? I think, wasn't it that that prompted the Queen to say to some EMI bigwig, the Beatles have gone very strange. Yes, you did.

Yeah. Well, didn't they go and they presented it to the head of EMI or whatever, Sir Joseph Lockwood? Yes. And he said Paul McCartney would look a lot better naked than you. Anyway. There was a question, sorry. Sorry, yes.

You set us off. Yeah, well, I just sort of wondered, I mean, from the cultural relevance of them in the last 50 years is obviously because, I mean, I have a generation probably like you where post-Beatles but grew up listening to their music and, you know, most famously, obviously, Oasis was very influenced by them as well. But I sort of wonder whether or not,

back to kind of where you started this talk, does the passing of The Last Beatle whenever Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr die mean that they kind of just go into being historical figures and whether or not they do actually have a legacy that kind of goes beyond that? I think they will. For what it's worth,

and I'm not in any way an expert on music at all but i think their music will last um and i think that even if it i i i think that the i think particularly mccartney's tunes are so strong live and let die frog chorus inevitable Frog chorus. Inevitable cry goes up. Yesterday. I think that they will endure. But in a way, that's not what I'm saying. I think that as figures who are representative of a convulsive period, not just in British, but in global history, they will be subjects of enduring historical fascination, I suspect. Dominic disagrees. I sort of agree with the implication of the question, which is that

youngsters in 2050 will be listening to very different kind of music that we can't now imagine, made with different... It's highly unlikely that it will involve guitars, I would have thought. And the Beatles will seem like a historical curiosity. They will be as remote to our successes as Victorian figures are to us. Now, that's not to say that a great Victorian like Dickens or Darwin, they haven't left a legacy, but will most people know who George Harrison was in 2070?

I think it's utterly implausible. So, you know, people who are fascinated by history will know who they were. But beyond that... That's the most I'm saying. But on the music, I do think that they seem to have a kind of, certainly so far, a degree of immortality that no other band.

But do you not think that's almost as... Not even the Stones, not even the Beach Boys, not even the Who. Do you not think that's almost as slightly... I mean, one thing that really strikes me thinking about the Beatles in my own childhood was I first encountered them at school. Now, I went to a very, very old-fashioned prep school

in the West Midlands where we sang Yellow Submarine in about 1980, 1981 or something. So very quickly, I mean remarkably quickly, they had gone from being the stuff of chart toppers to the stuff of kind of six or seven-year-olds singing as a sort of their little class hymn almost. And I think that, I can see their music surviving like that. Like nursery rhymes.

Like nursery rhymes, exactly. So I think that that will be see their music surviving like that. Like nursery rhymes. Like nursery rhymes. Like nursery rhymes, exactly. So I think that that will be, yeah. Okay, we agree. We do. Well, kind of, Dominic, kind of. Which one of us, I... Oh, I think I was right.

I think I was right. I was just wondering. No, you're John Lennon. No, I think you are. Why? In what way? Because I'm more enthusiastic. That's what people always say.

People always say you're a cynical grump. And people say that I'm wide-eyed. They do. Tiggerish. Tom was absolutely outraged because the Times ran a review of the podcast and they said he was Tigger and I was Owl. And then I had my phone. I text.

I can't believe they called you Owl. I can't believe it. Yeah. So Lennon and McCartney. I've got a question up here at the top of the hill well not the top but half way up you mentioned before that we are probably living through a cultural revolution similar to the one that our forefathers lived in the 1520s

and that Martin Luther published his pamphlets but also the songs at the time were very influential, so what the songs at the time were very influential. So what happened there? Did the singing in church move from Latin to German? Why did you say that? Because I think that profound cultural, social, dare I say religious upheavals are not just a matter of, you know,

in the context of the 16th century theology, or in the context of, you know, the second half of the 20th century, of a Grampskean ideology, or Foucault, or thinkers, all of whom obviously are very, very important. But it's the way in which it gets propagated out, so that people kind of just imbibe it. And I think that the way in which the Beatles' music and the music, the messages about the importance of love, about the importance of giving peace a chance, succeeds generation to generation, I think is kind of very important.

And it gels a lot with the kind of ideological impetus of what's going on. And that's a crucial part of why it's so potent. So the parallel is that in the Reformation, or in kind of latter iterations of Protestant reawakening, the reawakeningsings the reawokenings um music is a very very important part of it because it conveys messages that will reach people that more overtly programmatic ideological intellectual messaging simply won't yeah music and art i suppose and i see it's raining and if only only the Beatles had written a song about the rain. Are you going to start singing?

Please don't. People run and hide their heads, I think, don't they? They might as well be dead, which is a cheery thought. So have we got one more question? Clearly glutton for punishment. Yes, I do. It's somewhat tangential to the gentleman on the hill. If we assume that we are going through a cultural revolution

similar to the 1520s now, and given the context of where Britain was and where Britain is today with the existential question of whether Britain actually does exist, to what extent would you argue that Britain, the British Empire and the British Cultural Revolution was in fact British or English? Okay, that's an absolutely colossal question. My answer would be that it was British, that there was such a thing as Britishness

and indeed for a lot of people still is, that there was an identity that went beyond Englishness and that obviously that has now corroded a little bit, that the decline, because Britain is no longer able to really define itself against an other, which was always Catholic France for a long time. Once that threat receded, then Britishness itself

seemed less necessary, I suppose. And you're right that the Empire became very closely associated with Britishness. And so I think if, let's imagine a scenario in which Great Britain, as it were, did break up, then when people

look back at where that started, where that process began, actually that period, 50s, 60s, is where they would start, I think, with the decline of the British Empire, growth of Scottish and Welsh nationalism

and so on. And, yeah, the sort of questioning of icons, of sacred symbols, if you like, the sort of questioning of icons, of sacred symbols, if you like, the sort of revising of history, all that sort of stuff. I mean, that does feel like, I think Tom is right, that the 60s does feel like the epicentre of that. I mean, I think on the issue of Britishness and specifically the Beatles,

I think the fact they come from Liverpool is quite significant because famously Liverpool is open to American influence because records are coming in from America, imported by sailors and so on. And so that's how the Beatles are particularly alert to this cultural influence. But it's also massively influenced by Irish immigration. And so there's always an awareness of Ireland

as a kind of hinterland as well as England and Paul McCartney releases Give Ireland Back to the Irish Give Ireland Back to the Irish as a very sophisticated contribution to the

thorny issue. But of course he also famously sings Mull of Kintyre and one of the I mean it's quite is it a deliberate contrast to John Lennon and Yoko in their mansion singing about no possessions

that after the Beatles break up he basically retires to a farm on the Mull of Kintyre and leads quite a normal life. But that's what I would do if the rest of history breaks up. You would go to New York. I'm not John Lennon. I'm not John Lennon.

You would be the one in the bloody penthouse. I would be by the side of a lock in a farmhouse. Simple life. Writing columns for the Daily Mail. Yeah, but you've retired to the country

whereas I'm in the heart of swinging London. Okay. Jane Asher sitting there., whereas I'm in the heart of Swinging London. Okay. Jane Asher sitting there at the front. Jane Asher sitting in the corner, yeah. So casting Catherine as Yoko. Yeah. I'm sure she'd be thrilled about that.

She'd be delighted. Thank God she's not here. Yeah. Yeah. Any more questions before we all get drowned by the rain? Isn't one area of huge influence of the Beatles the fact that millions of people around the world learnt to speak English listening to Beatle lyrics,

listening to Beatle songs? I think that probably is an interesting point. I think no non-English speaking band could have had the success that they had. I think English was already something of a lingua franca. And they often, you know, they were very, I mean, obviously it's interesting

they'd gone to Hamburg in Germany, a place where people already spoke pretty good English, but obviously the British army was stationed. So there would be people with, who are even more exposed to English. But they record versions of their,

some of their early songs in German. Yes, they do. They wouldn't have broken through, I think, if they'd sung in German. No. Germany, do you? But they're versions of their early songs in German. Yes, they do. They wouldn't have broken through, I think, if they'd sung in German. No. Do you? But they're very European figures. Oh, yeah.

They're very influenced by... In France, they're called the Yeah Yeahs, aren't they? Yeah. But the German artistic elite, the Xs, as they're called, the existentialists, in turn are influenced by France. So they're very influenced by that. Well, the haircuts and all that.

Their beetle cut comes from Paris, a trip to Paris. So they are not solely British figures. They're very European, I think. But I agree about, yes, about the English language aspect of it. There's a brilliant song that was released by an Italian artist, I think in the late 60s, who didn't speak English, who sang

it in what he thought sounded like English. Which, you know, if you're an English speaker and you want to know what English sounds like to someone who doesn't speak English, it's the perfect way to do it. Because it kind of vaguely does sound like English, but it's complete gibberish. That's Danish. There's a huge sign here saying, Time's Up, in red. way to do it because it kind of vaguely does sound like English but it's complete gibberish that's Danish yeah right

there's a huge sign here saying time's up time's up in red so I think time is up yeah and in the end yeah

the love you take is equal to the love you make so on that on that bombshell on that bombshell thanks very much for listening thank you thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening