STORY OF A GENERATION

by Umberto Buttafava

Approaching the Beatles, one becomes a spectator of a unique adventure that sees the blossoming of the myth of the music group, symbolizing an era, together with the fabulous Sixties.
The contradiction between economic growth and fear of the nuclear arms race is the cultural backdrop against which post-war youth emerges, rejecting the recent past and dreaming of a world free from wars and inequalities. The new Western generation is united by an ideological and cultural commonality in which music, as a cohesive and mass phenomenon, plays a fundamental role.
Rock ‘n’ roll is born in the United States. In the mid-1950s, Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, thanks in part to Richard Brooks’ film Blackboard Jungle, conquers the youth worldwide but soon gives way to the true revolution led by Elvis Presley.
Music accompanied by orchestras slowly gives way to that of the “group.” The phenomenon of bands explodes, especially in England, where it finds its roots in skiffle music. Born in the United Kingdom, beat music, with dozens and dozens of groups, many of them from the Liverpool and Cheshire areas, will not take long to spread across the United States and the rest of the world.
In rock ‘n’ roll and immediately afterward in beat music, frenzied rhythms and onomatopoeic lyrics, sometimes devoid of meaning (tuttifrutti, bebopalula, yeahyeahyeah), constitute a violent fragmentation of sound and language, similar to what happens in the visual arts and literature with cubism and futurism.
The explosive freshness, the dynamic simplicity of “She Loves You,” bursts into the world like an anthem, like vital propulsion sung over an equally direct, authentic, and obsessive rhythm (in other words, primitive) and with an extremely catchy melody, understandable in every part of the world.
For the first time, the world of teenagers breaks into the post-war economy, which becomes a fundamental element of the consumption boom: the first radio broadcasts and the first magazines dedicated entirely to them are born.
In a changing world, which will send the first man to the Moon in those years, the Beatles arrive and become the symbol of this change.
By accompanying the Beatles on their journey, not only musically, it is possible to see the world and society changing with them and, perhaps, thanks to them: transformations that preserve the strength, teaching, and resistance of cultural and artistic customs, and more. The Beatles, today as yesterday, with their career and the myriad of indirect reflections emanating from those songs, are vivid and more relevant than ever.
We are reminded of this every day by radios, televisions, newspapers, and magazines from every latitude and address, which still feed on the myth of the Fab Four.