Hoopla and Hype: The Selling of the Beatles

        By T. Evan Schaeffer

        After a twenty-five year absence, the Beatles are returning to the record stores. Welcome them back with caution. Though once just lovable lads from England, the Beatles are now sophisticated businessmen--and they have their eyes on your bank account.

        This month, the Beatles will wage a commercial assault on American shores.   Assisting in the invasion are a group of record company executives, television moguls, and other soldiers-of-fortune who helped orchestrate the "New Beatlemania." They've been planning it for months, even years. Here's the intelligence report:

   Ÿ On November 20, EMI Records will release the first of three double-CDs titled the "Beatles Anthology." These CDs will contain two new Beatles songs of questionable merit, in addition to unreleased outtakes and mess-ups previously thought unfit for public consumption. The price? Undoubtedly exorbitant.

   Ÿ Timed to coincide with the roll-out of the CDs, ABC will broadcast a television special called "The Beatles Anthology" on November 19, 22 and 23. According to TV executives, the six-hour broadcast will feature interviews, archival footage, and rarely-heard recordings. Though free to the public, this event will garner ABC untold thousands in advertising revenue.

        According to the marketing geniuses responsible for the hype, these twin "anthologies" will confirm the Beatles as the greatest phenomenon in musical history and may even rekindle the "Beatlemania" of the 1960s. The marketers will make sure that this month, no one turns on a TV, goes to a shopping mall, or watches a theater movie without hearing about the boys from Liverpool.

        What's wrong with this picture?

        For music historians, professional musicians, and psychotic Beatles maniacs, nothing. For these people, it may be advantageous to shell out the money required for the CDs and a copy of the television special, which will be released to video stores in an extended version after it airs on ABC.

        But for the rest of us? Think twice about parting with your hard-earned cash.

        Here's a rule of thumb: Music that stands on its own merit should be enjoyed. But if it won't move off the shelves without an advertising budget that would bankrupt Great Britain, it's probably best to pass it by.

        The marketing of the Beatles this month will be intense, clever, and overwhelming. It will be so clever, in fact, that it may not be immediately obvious to the American public that it's being taken for a ride. Although the six-hour TV special amounts to a long commercial, it's advertising hidden in a history lesson. The Beatles will be passed off not as commodities, but as cultural icons, intellectual powerhouses.

        What bosh. It's better to call it what it is: another case of aging rock musicians attempting to capitalize on their past popularity before they're too weak to lift their guitars, or too deaf to tune them. It's a classic case of overhype, oversell, and overreach. What sort of "new" Beatles music is being offered? Only two songs, both without the living input of John Lennon. It's certainly no full-scale, creative work by the Beatles of old. The other 150 or so releases are items that have been collected from the cutting room floor, where previously they had been deemed unsuitable for sale and left to gather dust.

        Still, the allure created by the advertising of the big-money interests will make the new Beatles CDs hard to resist. As disappointing as it is to say, I predict big sales. Why?

        First, the media has already taken the bait by treating the Beatles Anthology as a newsworthy event. The recent cover story in Newsweek is a good example. Such positive press lends legitimacy to the marketing crusade. And there's certainly more good press to come.

        Second, the American public is incredibly gullible, pushovers for advertising bells and whistles. It wasn't long ago that scores of people throughout the nation lined up at department stores in the middle of the night to buy--a computer program. Need I say more?

        Finally, an additional factor is at work here that will make the Beatles even more popular, at least for a short time, than the ubiquitous Windows '95. With the Beatles, the marketing geniuses can count on large doses of false sentimentality and undeserved nostalgia to fuel the coming hype. Once good memories are confused with a good deal, the damage is done.

        Let's hope that during the upcoming British invasion, American consumers caught in the firestorm of marketing hype can keep a tight reign on their critical sensibility, their discerning judgment, and their good taste. If there's to be a "New Beatlemania," let it be swift, short, and quickly forgotten.

     
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