New book from former media lecturer explores global impact of The Beatles
A new book from Dr Stephen F Kelly, the University of Huddersfield’s former Fellow in Media and senior lecturer between 1995 to 2009, has explored how The Beatles influenced enormous social change around the world in the 1960s. Stephen also obtained his PhD while at the university.
How The Beatles Rocked The World (Pen and Sword Books) assesses how the Fab Four inspired young people to question and challenge the authoritarian status quo, both in democracies and in countries where freedoms had been restricted in the aftermath of World War II decades earlier.
A native of Liverpool who would visit the legendary Cavern club in Mathew Street most Sunday evenings and occasionally on a Friday lunchtime to watch The Beatles, Stephen has written more than 30 books, including some on both of the city’s great football clubs, Liverpool and Everton, plus biographies of Bill Shankly, Kenny Dalglish and Alex Ferguson as well as a couple of novels. He was also responsible for the university’s major oral history project on rugby league and for acquiring the highly prestigious rugby league archive for the university.
This is his first book specifically on ‘four lads who shook the world’, but he was inspired to look beyond just their music after a conversation about their impact outside of the UK.
Dr Stephen Kelly
Former Fellow in Media at the University of Huddersfield
“The book is not so much about The Beatles, more about the counterculture that they introduced and the effect they had on young people in freeing them up.
“John Lennon was irreverent, but all four of them spoke their minds and didn’t hold back. Up to that point, young people were very much in a straitjacket, so this book looks at the 60s and how that changed.
Sowing the seeds of social revolution
“I was in Liverpool with some German friends who are the same age as me, and we visited Mathew Street and The Cavern, and they told me how influential The Beatles were on their own lives back in Germany.
“Prior to the mid-60s, their generation never discussed the war or anything about the Nazis with their parents. It was a closed subject, but in the 60s German kids began to question their parents about the war and The Beatles, who were hugely popular in Germany, were influential in getting them to do that because they freed and liberated the minds of that generation.
“Another friend, Leslie Woodhead, had written a book about The Beatles and the Soviet Union. He visited the USSR in the sixties and seventies and was told how tapes of The Beatles would be smuggled in, and then would be recorded and copied to be distributed around Moscow and elsewhere. Again, this was very influential and they had an enormous impact on young people in the Soviet Union.”
From pestering his local record shop for the first Beatles’ single, ‘Love Me Do’, to observing the counter-culture protests when he was at university at the LSE at the end of the decade, Stephen’s 1960s were soundtracked by the astonishing music that reflected how his post-war generation viewed the world very differently to their parents.
“Half of Europe was in the Soviet Bloc,” Stephen continues. “Spain, Portugal and Greece were under military dictatorships, Italy was very catholic, France similar, Ireland was even more so and the USA had segregation while most of Latin America was under military rule. Even in Britain, homosexuals could go to jail while abortions were illegal and divorce laws were very rigid. It was a very authoritarian society in so many ways but when The Beatles came along it all begins to break up. There were other factors as well but The Beatles were definitely at the core of it.
The Beatles' appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US were said to have been watched by over 70 million people at the time.
“I had not quite realised how authoritarian the pre-Beatles world was. Until I put the jigsaw together looking at all these countries, it had passed me by as to just how controlled societies were at that time.
Getting behind the Iron Curtain
“What happened in the Soviet Union is a great example. From one smuggled cassette, they could get so many copies made in the USSR and send them out, which meant their message was getting out there under the radar.”
The Beatles’ first trip to the USA early in 1964 saw them take the country by storm. More than 70 million people are thought to have watched an appearance on TV’s Ed Sullivan Show, the highest TV audience recorded at the time. As well as inspiring other musicians like the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and The Byrds, the band cut through to a young audience just a few months after the assassination of President Kennedy and retained a fascination until their split in 1970.
The interest shows no signs of abating, with the release of a first single in decades in 2023's ‘Now and Then’, plus Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary and the recent re-release of their final film, Let It Be, earning glowing reviews and large viewing figures.
“The Beatles were a phenomenon, the likes of which will never be seen again,” adds Stephen. “But it’s also important to recognise their impact on society and I hope my book will go some way to explaining that impact.”
Main image by Maxpinsoo on Pixabay