I Wanna Hold Your Hand: A Short History of Teen Girls in the Beatles Fandom

The Beatles’ music is considered to be more or less universal, with fans all over the world and of all ages. But in my 11 years as a Beatles fan, I have found that the most active participants in Beatles fan culture are still teenage girls. They put up Beatles posters in their bedrooms, collect vinyl records, spend their allowances on the myriad and sundry Beatles memorabilia, and share and trade pictures, stories, and rare audio clips with other teenage fans. The bulk of their interactions happen online, in fan communities or on social networks such as Tumblr, where users can create a personal page reflecting their interest in the Beatles and re-blog other fan’s creations (graphics, gifs, mash-ups, fan art, and fan fiction).

My most formative experiences as a teen girl Beatles fan in the early 2000s centred around online fan-forums and fan-pages, since my peers “in real life” found my new interest weird, boring and alienating. I ventured online to find out more about my new obsession, and I was met with a plethora of Beatles fan sites run by teenage girls. The content was often quite similar to what you might find on fan sites for contemporary groups such as *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys: Top Ten lists, light-hearted humour, and pages and pages of dreamy photos. It was through these websites that I found a sense of community with other fans and learned how to develop critical thinking skills about my favourite media, as a common theme on these pages was the good-natured mocking of the more humorous moments of the band members post-Beatles careers, including Ringo’s stint on Shining Time Station and Paul McCartney’s ill-fated marriage to his much-younger model wife, Heather Mills. The most popular fan sites at the time were run by teen girls and hosted by third-party websites such as Angelfire, Geocities, and Xanga. 

One of the most prolific webmistresses was Sabrina (no last name known) who ran “God Bless the Beatles”, a Beatles fan site which was unabashedly teen-centric in its use of raunchy, sarcastic humour, teen slang, and breathless rhapsodizing on the physical attractiveness of the Fab Four. “God Bless the Beatles” was initially hosted on a single Tripod page, and eventually expanded onto four different Tripod platforms, as the webmistress churned out enough writing and rare photos to constantly surpass the set limit for uploaded content. “God Bless the Beatles” was comprised of a sprawling assortment of themed pages- some devoted to humorous fan fiction, some to Beatle biography reviews, and some tributes to deceased members of the Beatles’ entourage. Also among these were many pages devoted to the Beatles’ former wives and girlfriends, which included information about their lives, photos, and guides on how to imitate their fashion, hair, and make-up style. One could argue that the fan-worship that sprung up for the Beatles’ wives and girlfriends was tied to cultural norms about rock music which teach boys to aspire to be musicians and teach girls to aspire to date musicians. However, I counter that the fan-worship of these women is linked more to young teen girls’ efforts to carve out a niche for themselves in the Beatles fandom, and to create a space that was explicitly feminized, something that would alienate the middle-aged men who, up until that point, had been the most vocal (if not the most active) members of the Beatles fandom in popular media. 

Why did teen girls in the 2000s feel the need to claim a space of their own in the Beatles fandom? Weren’t all the Beatles’ fans originally screaming teenage girls, anyway? They certainly were, and the Beatles’ female fandom persisted throughout their 11-year run as a band, from the following that began when they were playing gigs in their native Liverpool in the early days, to the young girls who stood outside the court house bawling during Paul McCartney’s 1969 marriage to Linda Eastman. Their music grew and changed over the years, and their fan base widened as they experimented with more daring musical forms, but their core female fan base stayed with them throughout the course of their career. 

The Beatles fandom persisted in the 1970s despite the split of the band, and the demand for Beatles-centric discussion and content was strong enough to lead to several different fan publications (newsletters, magazines, and fan anthologies) most of which were published semi-regularly during the decade. Unlike mainstream coverage, which only offered reviews for the separate members’ solo output, these fan magazines focused on the Beatles as a group, placing emphasis on their chemistry and group dynamic and offering speculation on a possible Beatles reunion. Most of these fan publications were either spearheaded by women or contained a majority of content contributed by women. Aside from the reunion speculations, the fanzines also offered interviews with Beatles hangers-on, stories about fan encounters, fan art, and fan fiction. By the end of the ‘70s, the Beatles had become widely recognized as extremely influential in music and gained a large, diverse fan base, but the most active participants within deeper fan culture were still female: women who had grown up loving the Beatles, and young girls who were just discovering their music for the first time. It was not uncommon for a teen girl in the ‘70s to list the Beatles as her favourite group, along with those other teen girl favourites of the ‘70s, The Bay City Rollers and the Jackson 5.

It was not until John Lennon’s assassination in 1980 that the mainstream’s idea of the “typical” Beatles fan began to change. Upon Lennon’s death, fans worldwide were plunged into very public mourning. But the thing about Lennon’s death is that it wasn’t just the hardcore fans who were mourning his death- it was also people who, although not “fans” per se, grew up in the era of Beatlemania and associated his music with their carefree days of youth. Lennon’s death symbolized the end of innocence for many of these people, and, in order to legitimize their mourning of a man they’d never known or met (and who, for a good part of his life, was associated with screaming girls), they began the deification of Saint John Lennon, a radical peacenik, spokesperson for a generation, and “the thinking man’s Beatle”. In contrast, Paul McCartney, whose post-Beatles career was dominated with love ballads and odes to family life on the farm, was “for women”. 

Although the John vs. Paul dichotomy began in the ‘70s, it was certainly exacerbated by Lennon’s death, as male fans began to infiltrate female fan spaces, many of the fanzines folded, and fan conventions began to focus more on the then-typically masculinized pursuits of tribute bands and record collecting. This would continue throughout the ‘80s and most of the ‘90s, and although there were plenty of female Beatles fans out there, both young and old, they weren’t given the recognition that their male counterparts were, often being left out of retrospective documentaries and magazine articles, despite their contributions to fandom and knowledge of the group. 

Things changed in the ‘90s as the internet began to pick up steam, and more and more households began to have working internet access. By the late ‘90s, website-hosting platforms such as Angelfire, gURL.com, and Geocities provided an easy template for teen girls to create a web space of their own, and teen girl Beatles fans, feeling alienated by the rest of the fandom, saw it as an opportunity to re-claim their voice in a fandom that should always have belonged to them. 

The Beatles occupied several spaces in the life of a young teen female fan in the early 2000s. Often, the music served as a link between these girls and their parents or older family member, the shared love of the music bridging the gap between young and old. The Beatles mythos/legend served as a guiding force and stability for teens who lacked it in their lives. And the Beatles themselves were rendered as crush objects, or, to put it more bluntly in the post-Sexual Revolution 2000s- as sex objects. These websites and message boards allowed girls who might have felt disenfranchised among their classmates (but also disenfranchised at male-dominated Beatles meet-ups) to talk about their shared interests with girls who were just like them. As I’ve said, the enthusiasm and approach they took towards the Beatles wasn’t much different from what their peers might write about any of the boy bands du jour. But the internet allowed these girls a space of their own, a place where they could freak out about a band that split up over 30 years ago, a place to be teen girl-y about something that they might be teased for by their teen girl peers at school. 

As an adult, I can now look back on my time in the Beatles web-based fandom as an extremely positive experience. At a time when my life was unsure and unstable, I gained several older female mentors. I learned that it was okay to be crazy over things that YM magazine and MuchMusic weren’t shoving down my throat, and through writing fan fiction and creating fan art of the Beatles, I honed both my writing skills and art skills. 

Men may try to claim the Beatles as their own, but they will always belong to teen girls. It was teen girls that made the Beatles popular, it was teen girls and women that championed them relentlessly, and teen girls will always be there- discovering the Beatles for the first time, and excitedly proclaiming their love for the four lads from Liverpool. After all, weren’t their best songs written for girls?

"Young Americans" is the most cynical song of the '70s

David Bowie has long been described by the media as a chameleon of sorts, someone who picks up on social and cultural trends, takes them to their logical extreme, and casts them aside soon after, on to the next thing. While I agree that Bowie is certainly always in tune with  the cultural zeitgeist, I disagree with the idea that his many personas represent a wish to emulate the zeitgeist- rather, I'd argue, his many different public identities come from an intent to parody and comment on whatever trend du jour he happened to find worthy of discussion.

Now Bowie is well known for his gender bending which was obviously intended as  his commentary on the constructed social structures placed around male and female identities. But what I think is rarely discussed is his brilliant commentary on race, colonialism and cultural theft.  this was something explored throughout the "plastic soul" era of his career and most explicitly on Young Americans, both the song and album.

As a Brit who was heavily influenced by American culture, Bowie wrote "Young Americans" as an expression of his distaste with the racial climate in the USA at the time. Stylistically, the song is an up-tempo number in black American soul/R&B style but unlike his contemporaries, Bowie didn't just borrow the musical style for aesthetic purposes. It's intended as a reflection on the cultural theft that he talks about in the song. Quite clever really as at first listen it sounds like another blue-eyed soul number, but the lyrics belie a criticism of "blue-eyed soul" and the willingness of white people to steal from and exploit black culture while still harbouring racist attitudes.

Have you been the un-American?

Just you and your idol sing falsetto

'bout Leather, leather everywhere, and

Not a myth left from the ghetto

Well, well, well, would you carry a razor

In case, just in case of depression?

Sit on your hands on a bus of survivors

Blushing at all the afro-Sheeners

These lyrics express Bowie's feelings about the cultural climate of the 1970s in regards to race relations, and basically what he's saying here is that white (especially male) Americans consider themselves the "default" American, and, as it has been said before "everyone else gets a hypen". Now Bowie is a white male and I am a white female so I don't want to imply that either he or I are the foremost experts on race relations. What I mean to say is that the song is intended as a message to Bowie's white contemporaries. Black music was (and still is!) being imitated by white singers and white bands who were happy to take the fun parts of black culture but refused to engage in any political discourse about race relations or acknowledge the disparity between the recognition they got and the recognition black artists got. "Not a myth left from the ghetto" may be referencing the fact that black culture and black stories were mined by white people for artistic inspiration until we (white people) saw the well as being run dry. Not a myth left because we stole everything.

Performing on the Dick Cavett Show, December 1974

Black music and black fashion are things that we white people are happy to steal but still see as threatening in their original form, so they have to be watered down. Bowie is asking his audience why they are happy to take from black culture without ever really knowing the black experience.  He asks his audience, "You may enjoy the music, but do you understand where it comes from culturally and emotionally?"  At this point I have to state: no. I do not understand the experience because I have never lived it. I'm just a white lady from rural Canada and I'm in no way attempting to speak for black people with my commentary on this song. I think it's telling though that most of the musicians featured on this song are black, including of course Luther Vandross, who played a big part in arranging the song. Bowie, a white man, is singing it, and I think it's very sneaky how he gets his message across, because he knows that many of his listeners will only listen to funk/soul/R&B music if it's played by a white man like him, so he emulates the style perfectly but makes his lyrics very cynical and accusatory, so that  the listeners are initially hooked by the melody and style, get into the song, and then somewhere around the middle, realize that the very song they are in enjoying is decrying people like them (people like us, rather).

I think there's also some interesting commentary here on gender, too: the lyric "ain't there a woman I can sock on the jaw" references domestic violence obviously, but it's not an autobiographical lyric, it's a narrative "voice" Bowie uses to illustrate the hypocrisy of the ~enlightened~ '70s man. He loves the fact that the sexual revolution has freed women to engage in no-strings-attached sex, but he is angry at the fact that the women's lib movement has offered them other sorts of autonomy. He longs for an old-fashioned woman he could own and abuse rather than the Modern Woman who asks that a man be accountable for his actions.  

Basically, this song is about the hypocrisy of the 1970s youth: pretending to be so much more open-minded than their predecessors, but still harbouring racist and sexist ideals, just expressing them in a different way, perhaps a more insidious way.

That being said, although Bowie's a brilliant songwriter, the song shouldn't be taken as the last word on race relations: he is after all, still a white man from Britain. I do think though that we white people can learn something from it since we still persist in copying and stealing from black culture. The fact that this song is performed in a funk/soul style is the cleverest thing about it as it allows the narrator (Bowie) to address the issue from within the cultural arena in which it exists. Bowie's always played with personas, image and identity, and although I think he feels free to adopt personas that are based on some aspect of his personality, "Young Americans" is his protest against those who base their image or identity or sound or look on something that is not a part of their life and never will be, something that they will never know or understand. 

Past, Present, and Future

I feel like there's this need people have, sometimes, to compare their favourite to something classic and great that came before it in order to give it credibility. For instance, I've gotten into this argument on Tumblr: people love to compare their favourite boy-band of the day to the Beatles. I see a lot of people doing this with One Direction recently, and no shade intended towards One Direction fans, but people did that with the Bay City Rollers and the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC and the Jonas Brothers. None of those bands have gotten a Grammy tribute recently, as far as I am aware. 

That's not to say that I think some comparisons aren't worth making. Personally, I think One Direction is easily comparable to The Monkees, in the sense that they are a genuinely talented group of young men who were created to be famous and achieved initial success through the medium of television. Much like the Monkees they're prefabricated and were intended to elicit screams and adoration from young female fans; whereas with the Beatles it just kind of happened and they went with it. 

Anyway, that's not really the point. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you really love something- be it a band, TV show, movie or actor- you should talk about its good points and what makes it special on its own and not compare it to something that came before it because they share some small similarities. 

Plus, I just think it's silly to expect bands and singers and actors of today to have career trajectories anywhere near the way acts of the twentieth century experienced. How can any band follow the Beatles' success and become as big as them if they are constantly looking towards them as the pinnacle of rock 'n' roll? When the Beatles started out, rock was a relatively new genre of music there were no big groups that they had to live up to. There was Elvis, of course, but he was American, a solo act, and his career and image had changed significantly by the time they became famous anyway.

To diverge from the Beatles/One Direction example for a moment, let's talk about Beyonce. I remember when she first left Destiny's Child and started off on her own solo act. She was frequently compared to Diana Ross, because her career path at that point superficially resembled Ross' own. She had just left a very famous R&B/pop trio to embark on a solo career, with a significantly sexed-up image and a dancier sound that what she had previously recorded.

Superficially yes, that's similar to what Diana Ross did, but unlike Diana Ross Beyonce has proven herself to be not only a singer, but a songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur, and I would argue that her music holds more significance to her respective generation than Ross' solo output ever did. To compare Beyonce to Diana Ross does her a disservice because it assumes that all the great pop music success stories have already been written, and that modern acts are simply reprising them for another generation.

Anyway, where was I going with this? I guess I just think it's pointless to try and compare young upstart talents with "legendary" acts. Why compare Amy Winehouse with any other members of the "27 Club"? Why compare Britney to Madonna? (I have always found the Britney/Madonna comparison particularly egregious- though Madonna's obviously an influence on Britney, Britney's identity and image has nuance and vulnerability that Madonna never did). 

All these modern acts may be influenced by the people that came before them, but they will never truly recreate their predecessors, nor should they be expected to: they have their own paths to follow.

There is a Little Bit of Liza in All of Us

Liza photographed by Andy Warhol in 1977.

Well, perhaps not all of us. Some of you soulless bastards (by which I mean straight men) could never come close to reaching the fabulousity and adorableness of Ms. Minnelli. However, I think we could all learn a thing or two from her, both in her personal life and her career path. Has she made some mistakes? Yes, and his name was David Gest. But, like any strong, successful woman, Liza has learned from her mistakes, and her spotlight still shines bright today, 50 years since she first stepped into the spotlight.

With Judy Garland for a mother and director Vincente Minnelli for a father, it's not surprising that Liza went into the entertainment business. What is surprising, though, is how adeptly she managed to take control of her own career and be recognized on her own terms. Instead of riding on the coattails of her famous parents, she chose to forge her own path. That's not to say that Liza didn't benefit from her lineage, and neither did she shun the opportunities that were given to her because of who her mother was. It's just that she never tried to be another Judy Garland. She was just Liza Minnelli.

Her best known role is that of Sally Bowles in the 1972 film adaption of the successful Bob Fosse production Cabaret. In order to prepare for her role as Sally, Liza has stated that she studied famous dark-haired vixens of the period, such as Louise Glaum and Louise Brooks. She also did all her own hair and makeup for the film. I find this to be quite an inspired touch that adds to the realism of the character. As a struggling cabaret singer, Sally wouldn't have anyone to apply makeup for her, nor would she know how to apply it properly. In the film, she sports gaudy blue eyeshadow, exaggerated eyelashes, and bright red lipstick. She's pretty, of course, but also completely believable as a naive, overly enthusiastic amateur.
Furthermore, she instills a sense of likability and pathos in a character that is quite difficult to play. Sally, as she is written, may come off as something of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (and an untalented one at that), but Liza plays her with both vulnerability and an awkward, slapdash sexuality that makes her more than just a vessel for a man's desires and search for inspiration.

The character, and Liza' s performance, have both become incredibly iconic, inspiring several tributes over the years, including my own Halloween costume in 2011. Liza won a Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in Cabaret, and in her acceptance speech she simply said, "Thank you for giving me this award".  That speech was an acknowledgement that she had received the Oscar not because she was well-connected in the business and not because the Academy wanted to pay tribute to her recently deceased mother (who died in 1969). She earned that Oscar on her own merits.

Liza's success in Cabaret was followed with another success, her live stage show, Liza With a Z, which I think should be required viewing for any aspiring young performer. Liza With a Z is remarkable because it showcases an iconic female performer at the top of her game who does everything on her own terms. The show is glitzy, glamourous, and celebrates Liza like the queen that she is, and at no time does she pander to the male gaze or engage in false modesty. She's Liza!

In the '70s she performed as Velma Kelly in the original Broadway run of Chicago, and she also appeared in and performed the title song for Martin Scorcese's 1977 film New York, New York.

Her most memorable role of recent years has been her turn as Lucille Austero on Arrested Development, a self-deprecating turn in which she plays a glamourous rich widower suffering from vertigo who still manages to seduce men more than half her age. She will be reprising this role in the upcoming renewed season of Arrested Development as well as in the feature film, to be released this year. As a fan, I look forward to seeing Liza up on the big screen again, and I know she will have something fabulous to wear to the premiere.

The Perverse Appeal of Lana Del Rey

On the heels of my post about Betty Draper, I'd like to devote some time to full-time singing sensation/part-time daddy fetishist Lana Del Rey.

Lana is certainly a polarizing figure, and her persona inspires both rabid devotion and utter repulsion. She's been branded as weak, boring, and anti-feminist due to the content of her lyrics and music videos. I can definitely see where people are coming from with that argument, but I think it's important to understand that Elizabeth Grant the musician and Lana Del Rey the performer are two different people. Much like Alice Cooper or Donna Summer, Del Rey has adopted an image and persona that is more about performance art and characterization than confessional songwriting.

Elizabeth Grant has constructed and concocted a very clever, very interesting character with her Lana Del Rey persona. She frequently alludes to Nabokov's Lolita (in highly unsettling, romanticized terms) and classic Americana figures like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Her video for "National Anthem", in particular, explores the trope of the "American dream" by re-creating the lives of John F. Kennedy and wife Jackie in a lurid celebration of money and excess.

Lana Del Rey's obsession with nostalgia and the dark side of the American dream makes her one of the few retro-inspired starlets who goes beyond aesthetics and actually examines the social and historical context behind her inspirations. She doesn't just dress like Priscilla Presley- she also explores Priscilla's mindset and assumes the role of a young girl who gave up her whole life and changed her image to be with an older, famous, successful man.

You could compare her to Adele, who has a decidedly retro feel in both her musical style and aesthetic, similar to that of '60s chanteuse Dusty Springfield, but is well known for penning her own lyrics and speaking about her relationships in a way that evokes more empowered female singers, like Alanis Morissette. Del Rey, on the other hand, adheres completely to her dark Stepford Wife/Lolita image, both sartorially and lyrically.

She's making a statement about the fetishization of days gone by and sickly-sweet nostalgia, forcing us to look at the dark core behind the appealing retro aesthetic. It's certainly not for everyone, but I find her fascinating.