Beatlemania: In the Beginning there was the Scream

“The images persist: four guys in suits or smart raincoats being chased by hundreds of fans, girls frenzied at their merest glimpse, sloping bobbies-arms linked, teeth gritted, straining to hold back the throng.”

Mark Lewisohn’s evocative description of one of the key images of the 1960s helps to focus attention on the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. While hysterical scenes had surrounded male stars before The Beatles (Valentino in the 1920s, Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, Elvis and Johnny Ray in the 1950s) and has subsequently (Rollermania and T.Rexstasy in the 1970s, boyband frenzies in the 1990s), Beatlemania remains, this paper will argue, the yardstick: an alliance between fans, the media and a cultural phenomenon unlike any other in UK pop history. The paper will argue that it is through Beatlemania that The Beatles were established as a global entity and that all that followed-their transgression of traditional expectations about the role of the male pop star, their role as men of ideas, their impact on the cultural landscape of the 1960s and their symbiotic relationship with the decade-stems from this. No Beatlemania - no Revolver or Sgt Pepper. The paper will explore the nature of Beatlemania in an attempt to explain why it remains the ultimate expression of fan worship. This includes discussion of the relationship between The Beatles and their fans, Xmas shows and flexi-discs, their appeal in terms of gender fluidity, early song lyrics as a form of communication with fans, the influence of 1960s girl groups and manager and mentor Brian Epstein’s role in creating a fan-friendly “product”. Differing perspectives on Beatlemania – from Paul Johnson’s damning Marxist critique to Barabra Ehrenreich et al’s claim that “the scream” personified second wave feminism as women found a voice in the early 1960s-will also form part of the discussion. The paper will also examine The Beatles’ first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) - which had a working title of Beatlemania - as a text through which to read both the joys and dangers of fan worship.

Martin King, Principal lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University

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Hidden Fans? Fandom and Domestic Musical Activity

Despite Joli Jenson’s (1992) contention that fandom should be conceptualised as being part of everyday concerns, there are still few studies that examine the extent to which fandom intersects with domestic activities. Utilising case studies from ethnographic research on the roles of music in the domestic lives of a group of people with learning difficulties, this paper will explore how everyday musical activities can become integral to communication and identity-formulation for people who are often precluded from engaging in the creative practices usually associated with music fandom. Such an exploration will highlight issues regarding access and opportunity to engage in ‘fan-related’ activity and raise questions about the limits of the concept of fandom.

Dr Nedim Hassan, University of Liverpool

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Critiquing the Lyrics, Critiquing the Music: Inverting the Critical Work of Fanvids

In ‘Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding,’ Francesca Coppa defines vidding as “a form of grassroots filmmaking in which clips from television shows and movies are set to music…to comment on or analyze a set of preexisting visuals.” This statement is consistent with the scholarly and popular assumption that a vid’s moving-image source is primary while its audio is lesser, used for framing its critique. It is my contention, however, that the inverse is also true. Vidders are often also fans of the music they appropriate and it is possible to see a critical reading of the audio taking place as well as the visual. To show this I will mount two close readings. The first highlights the critique of lyrics by examining how remixer, Sloanesomething, implicitly critiques the sexism of the song, ‘Too Many Dicks’ by Flight of the Concords, as well as the movie, Star Trek, in her vid, ‘…on the Dancefloor.’ Then, I will look at the melodic content of the music itself, using Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of secondness and reading Sweetestdrain’s ‘West of her Spine,’ in which soft music is laid over and contrasted with violent images from the show, Dexter.

Jack Harrison, Georgetown University, USA

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David Bowie: A Case Study of the Established Artist as Fan

“At another Bowie-organised party in Paris Kraftwerk had put in an appearance, receiving a five-minute standing ovation as they entered
blank-faced and got up in full- blown 1930s retro style, like the musical
equivalents of Gilbert and George. Bowie was enthralled: “Look how they are, they are fantastic!” he kept repeating…”

In his book on David Bowie’s Low, Hugo Wilcken recounts an oft-cited non-meeting of musical minds. What is illuminating here is the shallowness, the dumb enthusiasm of Bowie’s reaction, like a kid unable to contain his enthusiasm before a favourite sports hero. Or indeed pop star. This is because Bowie was, and remains, fundamentally a fan. This paper will use the example of David Bowie in attempting to understand the phenomenon of the established artist as fan, and the contribution that the fandom of these figures can make to the forward momentum of popular music, and it’s development as a form. In particular, it will address the usefulness of artist-fans as filters, isolating key elements of the more radical musical conceptions of their (generally less commercially successful) peers and making them suitable, by dilution or hybridization, for consumption by a mass audience; and their role as the ‘musical conscience’ of the mainstream, ensuring that the obscure but influential artists who provide their inspiration get their due.

John Harries, Recording Artist

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From Fandom to Stardom in Punk: The Female Experience

Perhaps more than any genre of popular music, early punk rock sought to blur the boundaries that separated performers from their fans and to lay claim to an inclusiveness that encouraged fans to make the transition from audience to stage. Early British spectators like Siouxsie Sioux and Sid Vicious were emboldened to take this step because of punk’s “do-it-yourself” ethos, which challenged conventional notions of musicianship and performance. In the early days of the movement, these challenges seemed to extend to existing gender barriers, and many female fans appeared to make an easy transition to the stage (for example, the Slits, the Au Pairs, the Raincoats, and Sioux). However, as punk was absorbed into mainstream popular culture in the late 1970s, the promise of gender equality quickly evaporated and the genre tended to be more strongly identified with its male participants, particularly those who had signed to major record labels (the Sex Pistols and the Clash). Looking at the portrayal of women in fanzines and album covers, and descriptions of female performances in the press, this study will examine what went awry for female fans in their quest to move from fandom to stardom.

Dr Karen Fournier, University of Michigan

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Fan Words: Towards a New Vocabulary of Fan Theory

In 1976 Raymond Williams cemented his position as a central theorist of cultural studies with Keywords, a book that used the format of the glossary as an intellectual device to start rethinking social analysis. Word-by-word musing offered Williams a platform to both summarize the terrain of cultural theory and to extend it. His writing was based on the profound truth that academic thinking primarily takes place through language. While the academic process of ‘keywording’ has continued for pedagogic reasons in subject glossaries and text books, there seems to be precious little space to explore keywords as tools to advance theory. In this paper I will use a small handful of keywords to begin rethinking how we might study popular music fandom. The emphasis will be both on deconstructing existing words and suggesting some which have the potential to take fandom theory in new directions.

Dr Mark Duffett, University of Chester

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With(in) the Band: The Queering of the Female Fan Experience

Everyone knows what a groupie is: she’s That Girl, the fan hanging around after the gig, waiting for the nod, the chance to sleep with her chosen guy in the band. Or maybe she’s more than that: she might be his girlfriend, his wife, a woman working in the music industry. Defined narrowly or broadly, she’s there, a marker of an extreme expression of the heteronormative organization of society. The general critical debate concerns itself with the scope of the definition, not the paradigm itself. But there is another possibility, a community-centric approach to sexual desire for their favourite musicians: narrative slash fiction on the internet. Slash, same-sex relationship stories written primarily by and for women, is created to make explicit the interpersonal relationships of these celebrities. In the case of ‘bandom’ – for this paper, the fannish activity around the group of bands loosely held together by one degree of separation from Pete Wentz and/or Warped Tour in America – women are writing romantic relationships within and between the members of the bands. This essay investigates the queer act this entails. These women are not passively waiting by the stage door; they are (metaphorically) taking the members of these bands into their own queer space and using them to enact their own desires. There is no room for female agency in a woman’s interactions with the music industry – unless she finds herself a queer community.

Nancy Bruseker, University of Liverpool

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