THE BEATLES
The Beatles are still one of the most popular rock groups in the world. During the eight years of their existence, they made a revolution in the world of music. Over dozens of years later, their records still sell in millions every year. In Britain, a study recently showed that the Beatles are still one of the most popular groups with people over 15 years old, and they are still popular with teenagers, too.
Among more recent popular groups, many big names, such as Oasis, Blur and Foo Fighters, owe a lot to the Beatles. In their album The Masterplan, Oasis did a new version of the Beatles’ song ‘I Am The Walrus’. However, there are also dozens of bands all over the world which do nothing but copy the Beatles. There is a band in England called the Bootleg Beatles, a band in America called the Fab Four, a Norwegian band called Det Betales and even a band called Museum in Kazakhstan; there are many more!
There are also dozens of Beatles conventions and Beatles weekends every year in different parts of the world. The annual BeatleFest in America, founded in 1974, attracts 20,000 fans each year!
In Britain, the Beatles are still a big tourist attraction. Thousands of people go to Liverpool every year, to see where it all began. In Liverpool, they can visit the Beatles’ museum, take a ‘Beatles’ tour’ of the city or visit the house where Paul MacCartney lived as a teenager.
So, why did the Beatles become so popular in the sixties, and why are they still so popular today?
They became popular because they caught the spirit of a generation. Teenagers in the 1960s were very different from the ones in the 1950s; they wanted to change things and escape from the rather boring decade. The Beatles came along, offering a new type of music, with new instruments such as the electric guitar. At first, they copied rock and roll songs from America. These were not well known in England at the time, but it was easy to get rock and roll records in Liverpool, a busy port city at the time. Sailors brought the most popular records from America, and these became popular with young musicians in Liverpool. Then the Beatles began writing their own songs, and people liked them.
When they became popular, they did not stop doing new things; instead, they pushed the frontiers of pop and rock music in all directions. Today, people are still following them, and they will for a long time to come.