Introducing The Beatles

Vix was walking down the main road in the Village.
It stretched from the train-station, past the church, the town hall and a row of small shops.
The cheese-shop was next-door to a hardware store selling everything from tools to mouse-traps, and there was even a restaurant next to an undertaker further down the street; all of which, Vix thought, summed up mortality nicely for both mice and men in one street.
He baptised it ’Mortal Road’ to himself, and wondered whether there actually was a road somewhere carrying such an alarming name.
He guessed not.
When he got to the coffee-shop, he sat down at his favourite spot by the window, ordered a double espresso, and picked up a magazine.
He was almost at ease.
”If you ever - though I don't find it very probable - reach my age, you’ll most definitely be stone-deaf by then.” Mr. Friend tapped Vix on the shoulder with his rolled-up newspaper while gently lifting up his headphones with his umbrella.
Vix paused the mp3 player.
”What the hell is that noise anyway? I could hear it as soon as I entered this place.” Mr. Friend was speaking in a different voice than his own, as if impersonating a strict headmaster or just someone who’d lost touch with everything but their own lack of happiness.
”It’s Underground Resistance.”
”I bet it is!”
”Well, I don’t listen much to your kind of dusty old stuff - like The Beatles, if that's what you mean. Or some other totally irrelevant and wrongfully canonised outfit from the past.” Vix tried to sound like the young student who found himself totally aware of his own self-centered vitality, though tragically ignorant of his soon-to-come downfall. He thought such a character an appropriate foil to Mr. Friend’s strict headmaster.
”They were ours.”
”What? Who were?”
”The Beatles. John, Paul, Ringo and George.”
”I know the names of the members of the Beatles, I’m not totally ignorant of the past!”, Vix snapped. ”What do you mean by yours?”
”They were the first case to be tried through GMES, the global media network. We didn’t want to risk testing it by running the moon landing right away.”
Vix quickly adjusted his brain to try and get out of Underground Resistance's techno universe and jump onto Mr. Friend’s freight-train of sudden and unexpected information. "You didn't wanna do what?"
”Launching a more leisure-driven and culturally tinged project towards a teen-oriented target group was considered much safer than going for the campaign we built up simultaneously with the Apollo project, which was aimed straight towards the slightly older and more sceptical masses.”
”You’re losing me. I need more background.”
”Mass-media! The global television network! World press! Hell, boy, I’ve just started developing a tiny spark of hope in my aching old soul, and you were about to become my one and only symbol of belief in the future generations. Don’t you go and let me down by slipping back into the comfort of sleepwalking.”
”Ok. The Beatles. I'm ready. Shoot.”
”Shoot? Yes, well, that’s also part of the story, and quite a sensitive part of it, too. But I’m afraid it’s not in the part of it that I’m going to talk about now.” Mr. Friend again ignored Vix’ confused look and went on with his story. ”Do you know anything about the teachings of Aikido?”
”Aikido? The martial arts? What’s that got to do with The Beatles? I know Elvis supposedly had a black belt in Karate, but that was a hoax, wasn’t it?”. Vix was talking very fast now, something he usually did when he got excited about something.
”Forget Elvis for now. Aikido is not exactly a martial art, if you consider the fact that such a definition is based on its relation to the planet Mars and its war-like qualities. But let’s start there anyway.” Mr. Friend twisted on his chair, as if to find the perfect position for a lengthy lecturing. Of course, this irritated Vix greatly. It reminded him of a cat that smugly and thoroughly prepares for going to sleep in your lap just as you’re about to leave the sofa and go for a piss.
Then he continued ”At the base of the philosophy of Aikido lies the acknowledgment of the ’personal sphere’. That is the area that is within the immediate reach of both your physical and your spiritual body, when the spiritual one is bound to the physical one in your waking mode. The goal in a combat situation is to make your opponent step out of his own personal sphere of power – to put him ’out of balance with himself’ – and then lure him into your own, where all your personal force is rooted. With your opponent out of touch with himself and his own power, and now in the hands of your power, you can do near anything you wish to the poor bugger.”
”OK. So you trick your opponent to step into your own sphere of power and knock him off balance... Then what? You play a Beatles song over and over again until he loses his mind?”
”Something like that.” Mr. Friend ignored Vix and smiled to his left at some invisible listener who seemed to deeply admire his cleverness.
He went on, ”The problem with collecting, and manipulating the masses has always been one of geography. Physical distance. Getting into their personal sphere. In the old days, announcing the King’s orders at the town square could only give a limited success, and then only when coupled with a healthy dose of random public hangings and other dramatic effects, to make sure any message presented by the King really sunk in."
"Shock and awe."
"Exactly. You needed to put some fear in people to get their hopelessly fluctuating attention. With television there was suddenly an opportunity to bring all the King's commands into the personal sphere of every member of the public – into their own home, where they were unguarded. This was a fantastic situation. Even those who would never even turn up to the town square to see an execution or hear the latest tax rates being announced, turned out to be completely stripped of any resistance when their own living room had a TV-set placed quite innocently in a corner.”
”The great propaganda machine?”
”That’s underestimating it. Propaganda is something most human beings can defend themselves against. No, we are talking about a perfect global network for mass-hypnosis.”
”Hypnosis? But in order to get hypnotised I thought the victim had to agree to let it happen?”
”And that’s the true genius of it. Most people perceive watching television as a purely leisure-orientated activity. This is where entertainment enters the picture. You have to remember that prior to television, entertainment was a very small part of most people’s lives. You had the public executions way back, you had sports and the odd barn-dance. ”The Arts” - especially theatre was not viewed as mere entertainment by the less privileged, but more as a channel to let off steam and express discontentment with the establishment, or metaphorically discuss ”forbidden” political issues. It wasn’t until the emergence of TV that the kind of brainless, bland forms of entertainment that have become such a major part of our culture today really started developing.”
”And this development has been wilfully engineered?”
”More or less. As everyone walking this Earth knows, you can only try, as no control is absolute. Some experiments work, others don't. But there are degrees of success, and some seem more successful than others in reaching their goals."
"Surely the ruling classes do. Your Kings."
"I guess if you really, really want power, and are willing to do anything to get it, and keep it, you can go very far. As far as anyone who really, really wants something ever can get. Even a petty criminal’s willingness to cross a few borders and ignore his socially-conditioned 'conscience' makes him likely to succeed at some point or other. Even if he just wants to break into the off-license at the corner and steal a couple of bottles of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes for the night.”
”And for those who really, really want power, the television with its global network has been a most useful tool?”
”Of course. But not that there haven’t been trials and errors.”
”Like...”
”Let’s go back to The Beatles.”
”Go on.”
”They were the first ever launch of such geographical magnitude through the global television network. Never before had anyone attempted a campaign on such a scale. The targeted social segment – mainly teenagers, mainly female – were carefully selected because if they responded correctly, the hope was that they would then influence males to copy these new role-models. The males would do so in order to attain the same effect that John, Paul, George and Ringo had on females. It is often said that the easiest way to reach a man’s heart is via his stomach. I don't know about that, but certainly the easiest way to reach a man’s stomach, and thereby his personal power-centre - is via women.”
”Well, you make it all sound very clever.”
Vix tried to hide the exitement he felt at Mr. Friend’s suggestions. Somewhere inside him he had a feeling of a door that had been closed for a long time slowly opening, letting in fresh air. On the other hand he couldn’t wait to get a chance to pick the whole story to pieces. He decided to try some of Mr. Friend’s own tactics, and put on a smug ‘yeah, right’ smile and turned to his invisible admirer to his left somewhere.
The old cat didn’t notice the gesture at all. He was too overwhelmed by his own story, and just continued:
”Yes, very clever. Once the target group had been determined, the time-plan to launch this new phenomenon was carefully drawn up. They had surfaced on our radars through their early recording sessions at EMI Records, where we had our people. Of course there were hundreds of equally talented bands at the time that all looked and sounded the same, but these four young lads were selected mainly on the basis of their natural attitude and the effect they seemed to have on their fans. All four were considered easy personalities to sell once they’d got under the public's skin. The music was as good as any of their peers.”
”Thankfully.”
”They released a couple of singles and an album that worked its way up the charts in the UK, and then a preliminary screening test was done with Granada Television in October 1962 with a domestic audience.”
”And ’Bang’?”
”Very much so. By early 1963 Beatlemania was already a word in the UK, and the operation could proceed as planned.”
”So?”
”The only problem was that the US public didn’t think much of the music. Neither their first nor second single received airplay on American radio stations when they were released in the spring and autumn the same year, but then that’s not what this is about, after all.”
”Of course not. We’re talking about a pop group. Why should it be about the music?”
Vix thought it an on the spot comment, but once again was totally overlooked.
”When the first exposure was initiated on the programme ’American Bandstand’ in August 1963, the only reaction from the selected teens present in the studio was laughter."
"Laughter?"
"They thought the haircuts were funny.”
”Really?”
”Yes. But of course this was a thoroughly planned operation. As I mentioned earlier it was expected that there would be errors and that adjustments would be required. Plans B, C, and D were already in place.”
”What happened to plan E?”
”Like in chess, you should never plan too many moves ahead, but instead constantly adjust your strategy with a few moves ahead according to your opponent’s behaviour.”
”I wouldn’t know. I prefer backgammon myself.”
Vix spotted a glimpse of irritation at this. He wished he had his notebook up so he could tick one more point in the Vix column of the discussion scoreboard.
”The initial plan was to take them on air in the CBS Morning News on November 22nd, but there seemed to be a clash of schemes that morning.”
”What happened?”
”I thought you put a lot of effort into remembering the past?”
”Yeah. But the past is such a fat old bastard. Please enlighten me.”
”Surely. The news that day mainly concentrated on the same morning’s killing of the American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas.”
”Oh.”
”I guess it would be considered strange to the public if this news coverage was rushed through in a couple of minutes, followed by a 'and that’s that with our president, and now over to four British brats with incomprehensable accents and weird hairdos' They'll be singing ’I Wanna Hold Your Hand’.”
”I guess so.”
”The appearance was resceduled to the Evening News on December 7th, and this time it seemed to gain momentum. Soon the music started getting airplay, and their next single was rush-released in the US. A string of three consecutive appearances on the ’Ed Sullivan Show’ had already been scheduled for February, and before you knew it they were the biggest cultural phenomenon the world had ever seen.”
“Upping even Jesus Christ?”
“As John so humbly and discretely put it.”
At this point Vix thought it was about time to put a hold to the one-way flow of communication. Just as Mr. Friend was about to continue, he straightened his back and raised his voice above the monotonous mumbling that his constant attempts at arguing back during the lecture.
”As I see it, this was simply a band with the right songs, the right attitude and the right haircut. There’s nothing in this story that indicates that it wasn’t just a lucky blend of talent and hitting the right moment that made them go down in history.”
”Ahh, my dear Victor. Exactly! That’s the target group speaking. And what a numerous group we have here. More than one billion records of various formats of these four lads have been sold worldwide. To this day no other musical artist in history has sold the same amount of records. One can say that you’re probably not alone in believing in the simple version of this story.”
Vix twisted uncomfortably in his chair. He wasn’t really too happy at being categorised as just one in a herd, and he’d rather choose the complicated version of just about anything over the simple one. He swallowed his slightly bruised pride. He just didn’t like being fooled, nor being told that he had been.
”So the ’campaign’ was a successful one, then?”
”Very much so. It opened up for far greater things to come, although the power put in the hands of four seemingly harmless Liverpudlians proved more dangerous a tool than anyone could foresee. With John it got so out of hand that it had to be taken care of in the end.”
”'Taken care of.' So that’s what it’s called. He certainly got taken well care of, I must say.”
”Of course they were an experiment. Four working-class kids from Northern England were considered the most harmless guinea-pigs one could imagine. No-one could know that they’d start using their power to promote real ideas later on – ideas that were great threats to the whole agenda that the experiment was part of. Trials. Errors.”
”This story makes me sick.”
”Yes, Victor. It is very sick indeed.”
Vix sipped his coffee. It had gone quite cold now.
Mr. Friend suddenly got up, put his coat back on, and said: "Have to dash. Goodbye Victor." And before he knew it he was out the door and off to wherever it was Mr. Friend would go when he 'had to dash'.

Vix dosed off on the train back and didn’t wake till he got poked by a grim-looking cleaning asssistant at the city station.
He grabbed his rucksack and set off for the bus back to the Shelter.
The streets were empty and he felt the soul of the city descending upon him like a far too tight hat after the break from his connection to its nervous system.
The bus eventually turned up, almost empty except for a woman sitting just opposite him staring wide-eyed at him in short, machine-gun-like glimpses. She looked afraid – like anyone travelling on the bus late at night in a city full of strangers tend to do.
She clutched her handbag very tightly in ther lap, he could see her knuckles whitening.

Fear not, Sister. One day we’ll be free. For you are the only reason for all my efforts, to love you is my only goal. Soon all these fears will wither away, and once again you will see the stolen truth.

Once inside the Shelter, he made himself a decent cup of tea, opened his laptop, and made a post for his blog:

You tell me lies
You tell me lies
You take my eyes
And tell me lies

He uploaded the track ’Mastodon’ by space-rockers The Oscillators, taken from their all-too obscure ’Crocodile Fungus’ EP.
He wondered if The Oscillators could have been The Beatles instead of The Beatles with the right ’campaign’ behind them, but quickly let the thought lie.
Then he wrote:

Don’t fear the magic!

Then he opened his arcade-game emulator program, and wasted half an hour playing his favourite game, "Pong". He realized that this was about the oldest computer game around, but he had never found another game to match the simplistic yet entertaining flow of this game. Tetris almost had him at some point, but he had to give it up after a few months of gaming, when he caught himself trying to turn parts of the city skyline upside down inside his head and make it fit another part of the skyline while looking out the bus window. He decided it was not entertainment anymore, but obsession. Even possibly possession. So he'd been happy when he returned to Pong again. Maybe those lazy afternoons as a child, dozing off in front of the television during the Wimbledon tournament had something to do with it? Even only the sound of a tennis game on low volume with a monotonous commentary on top would make him feel really calm. Why hadn't someone released this as a field recording yet, instead of those horrible whale song CDs? He would have bought one for sure. Or at least downloaded it.
He gave up as the speed of the game became a little too frantic for his tired mind.
He opened his personal log, noted down the day’s conversations with Mr. Friend, and went to bed.
Vix still almost felt at ease, and welcomed the night.