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Rocky Road From Classic Rock to Progessive to hip hop to today's hot new tunes! |
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Rocky Road From Classic Rock to Progessive to hip hop to today's hot new tunes! |
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In Reply to: why are the beatles untouchable? posted by TA on July 16, 2002 at 21:37:22:
If the book "Shout! The Beatles In Their Generation" is to be considered credible at all, there's a story that I find fascinating. It involves the merchandising of the all the Beatles items that were produced in the USA beginning in 1964. Brian Epstein was not known as being a very savvy businessman, and he somehow decided that accepting 10% of the revenue generated by Beatles merchandise was sufficient. He gave away 90% to a group of businessmen who formed a company called Seltaeb. In this story there is a hint that Brian Epstein was murdered, which sounds kinda silly, but think about this: when the Beatles first came to America, there were tons & tons of merchandise--wigs & books & mags & lunchboxes & dolls & all kinds of stuff. The cynic in me says that if the people licensing the stuff weren't making as much money as they were on the stuff, there might not have been as much of it around. Now, a lot of acts could've reached that level of fame that the Beatles found themselves on in early & mid 1964. But once they were there, they were good enough to stay there. Not only did they turn out top notch work under tremendous pressure, but they maintained their popularity for years due to the quality of their material. They were good enough that as the teenyboppers grew, they didn't stop listening to the Beatles--not the older records, or the ones they continued to release. Now, the Spice Girls could come over here, have a huge hit, play on SNL (not today's equivalent of the Ed Sullivan show, perhaps, but close), and sell tons of stuff to teenyboppers--but they, and every other Bay City Rollers that's come along in the past 35 years, simply faded away. Are young adolescent girls, say 18-21 years old, listening to the Spice Girls now? And will today's 13-year-old girls be listening to Britney Spears in 5 years? Don't get me wrong, I'm not that interested in what teenage girls listen to. But, generally speaking, the acts that grab the attention of girls (and boys) that age do fade, in spite of dolls & lunchboxes & T-shirts & posters. The Beatles didn't. Maybe Brian Epstein knew what he was doing all along?
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Follow Ups
- A rarely mentioned, very important factor that should be considered - J 22:43:44 07/17/02 (2)
- They grew up. - 3LockBox 12:38:50 07/18/02 (0)
- J...... - BeatleFred 23:50:29 07/17/02 (0)
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