Judging from this week’s media hype, 9/09/09 is the next coming of the Beatles. The folks at Harmonix are releasing RockBand: Beatles Edition, and all things Beatle are flooding the market. I just got back from Blockbuster, where you can pick up Bealtes Monopoly, Beatles Trivial Pursuit, and pre-order your copy of Beatles RockBand. They’re (naturally) also featuring Beatle titles including “A Hard Days Night,” “Help,” and assorted solo Beatle projects. Radio stations are going all Beatle, and record stores are going to start selling remastered Beatle albums at midnight tonight. Folks like Bob Lefsetz have praised the game, remasters, and are feeding the perpetual and presumed frenzy. The permission/excuse to focus on The Beatles allows for a promotional and sponsorship panacea. Even Rolling Stone placed the Beatles on their most recent cover. Pretty impressive for a band that broke up 39 years ago. The lesson: put The Beatles on your cover/label/t-shirt/pint glass, and people will buy them. The Beatles are good for business. And, for my purposes, they’re great for SEO…
My question is this: are we trained to go crazy for the Beatles because they’re so good, or because there’s really nothing to replace them?
It’s a tired argument at this point. Folks’re trying their damnedest to come up with the next Beatles. But no band then or now (with the possible exception of Led Zeppelin…) has had the same massive, world-rattling impact. Arguably, though no one wants to end the argument, it’s impossible to create a band in today’s world that can have that massive genre-crossing appeal. The world is too fragmented, and the current state of the recording industry would never foster talent at that level. So instead, we prefer to live in the halcyon daze of old. Life was better when we had Beatles. Or so we’d like to believe.
Perhaps, though we’re afraid to utter it, the Beatles ceased to be a band in 1970 and became a brand in the very next minute. Too bad ol’ Brian Epstein signed such crappy merch deals. The guys would’ve ended up millionaires. Irony noted.
Now go get me some funny papers…
