By the height of beatlemania many fans had completely lost their minds. A combination of bad music played at mind-numbing volumes, media manipulation, and complete global saturation resulted in a state of what could only be called ‘forced retardation.’
The average beatle fan suffered not only a loss of intelligence, but a loss of reality. Beatle blind pilgrims searched desperately for secret messages and salvation on album covers and cereal boxes. A few even went so far as to try finding meaning in their music. Delirium raged and the moptops were suddenly elevated to the status of prophets and snake handlers.
Fans began bringing disabled children to their concerts, convinced that with a word or a gesture the four wise men from Liverpool would heal them. It didn’t end there, mentally and physically handicapped people of all ages were wheeled backstage for a shot at salvation. Thalomide kids with deformed and missing limbs, the blind, people with crutches, canes, wheelchairs, and oxygen tents. Understandably, the only people who didn’t want to be healed by the beatles were the deaf.
These poor misguided people, or spastics as Lennon commonly referred to them, may have pinned their hopes of salvation on the wrong lads.
Ringo: “people would bring in these terrible cases and leave them in our dressing room. They’d go off for tea or whatever, and they would leave them behind. If it got very heavy we would shout, “Mal, cripples!” and that became a saying, even when there were no handicapped people present. If there were any people around we didn’t like, we’d should, “Mal, cripples!” and they’d be escorted out.”
George: “John was allergic to cripples. You could see he had a thing about them; I think it was a fear or something. …We’d come out of the band room to go to the stage and we’d be fighting our way through all these poor unfortunate people.”
John: “When we would open up, every night, instead of seeing kids there, we would see a row full of cripples along the front. When we’d be running through, people would be lying around. It seemed that we were just surrounded by cripples and blind people all the time, and when we would go through corridors they would all be touching us … They’d line them up, and I got the impression The Beatles were being treated as bloody faith healers …”
-source: The Beatles Anthology, pages 142-143
Honestly, it would be really uncomfortable for anyone suddenly thrust in that position. Regardless of what they may have said or thought, you can be sure they held only the utmost respect and compassion for those unfortunate people who not only had to overcome incredibly debilitating, life shattering obstacles; they also had to sit through beatles concerts.
Lets end this on a brighter note. Here’s a clip of some of that respect and compassion in action:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFWLnBxZMDw[/youtube]
sigh..We watched this movie called “The Savages”, which was pretty good, a story about dealing with your parents’ alzheimers…and part of it was how the children in the movie brought old movies to the hospital to remind their parents of who they’d been, where they’d come from. (this is a part of alzheimers treatment, I know from experience, as both my parents died from this terrible disease, and you can put my ass on an iceflow and set me off into Hudson Bay if I get it, not kiddin in the least.) anyway, the movie they brought was something from the 30’s..but I was thinking about Help! and HDN…. and how that would be showing up any minute now because..well you know….and then I started ruminatin’ on the beagle cover bands playing at the Sun City retirement home boogaloo..and whether or not this guy i know who is in one of them (and has been since 1980, that’s 28 years of suffering) would be like 78 years old, and still dressing up like the cuddly poo one, and i got so fahnking depressed I went to sleep, and had a dream about Yoko who was the activities director at the local nursing home (except it looked strangely like the last club I played..) who was pushing me around in a wheelchair and singing Woman is the Nigger of the World, and Yas? I wonder sometimes, I really do.
When I take a shit in the morning, sometimes there’s little chunks of Lennon in it.
Sometimes, I imagine I’m the one who shot Lennon. Then, I wake up crying.
Tears of joy.
Hello. Your site is really cool. I would love to have my website as good as yours.
1,010,000,000 – Number of records, casettes, and cd’s sold by the beatles. there are about 6,000,000,000 people on earth. which means about 1/6th of the earths population would see how big of a joke this site is.
That means 5/6 of the worlds population has enough sense to keep their minds open and their wallets shut.
Whew, what a relief. Thanks for the kind words!
Why don’t you post some of your own music so we can all tell you how shitty it is? Oh, that’s right, you’re not a musician and don’t know the first thing about music.
I’m not a politician, but from experience through my ears, I can tell you which one of them smells like shit the most that a lot of other people would agree on.
Run along little boy, smoke another bong, and listen to the White album in your Mommies dingy basement on that old turntable your father left you when he gave up the ghost!
You are very big idiots!!! The Beatles is king of rock!!
Foh Forever
The Beatles were the people interesting, valuable, crazy. extraordinary! And this page shows how people are
stupid!