Book contents
- The Beatles in Context
- Composers In Context
- The Beatles in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Part I Beatle People and Beatle Places
- Chapter 1 Britain at Mid-Century and the Rise of the Beatles
- Chapter 2 The Beatles in Liverpool
- Chapter 3 The Beatles on the Reeperbahn
- Chapter 4 Brian Epstein, Beatlemania’s Architect
- Chapter 5 “Love, Love, Love”: Tracing the Contours of the Beatles’ Inner Circle
- Part II The Beatles in Performance
- Part III The Beatles on TV, Film, and the Internet
- Part IV The Beatles’ Sound
- Part V The Beatles as Sociocultural and Political Touchstones
- Part VI The Beatles’ Critical Reception and Cultural Legacy
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 1 - Britain at Mid-Century and the Rise of the Beatles
from Part I - Beatle People and Beatle Places
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2020
- The Beatles in Context
- Composers In Context
- The Beatles in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Part I Beatle People and Beatle Places
- Chapter 1 Britain at Mid-Century and the Rise of the Beatles
- Chapter 2 The Beatles in Liverpool
- Chapter 3 The Beatles on the Reeperbahn
- Chapter 4 Brian Epstein, Beatlemania’s Architect
- Chapter 5 “Love, Love, Love”: Tracing the Contours of the Beatles’ Inner Circle
- Part II The Beatles in Performance
- Part III The Beatles on TV, Film, and the Internet
- Part IV The Beatles’ Sound
- Part V The Beatles as Sociocultural and Political Touchstones
- Part VI The Beatles’ Critical Reception and Cultural Legacy
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
The 1950s: life in Britain, for the last decade, had been austere and unsmiling. And in the post-war world, little had changed. In England, government debts had the country on the verge of economic ruin. Furthermore, London, Liverpool, Birmingham – and all of the seaport villages – lay in scalded ruin. Children skittered about, slapdash, on heaps of rubble, and the once pastoral countryside was littered with abandoned military bases and equipment, quietly disappearing in a riot of weeds. Beatles expert and author Mark Lewisohn offers this vivid 1956 description of Liverpool as viewed by author J. Brophy in his period piece, City of Departures: “Once progressive and proud, the city is now dilapidated and dirty, shabby and down and out … still [replete with] unrepaired bombsites, many transformed into eternal temporary car parks, red brick buildings now black with encrusted soot, ruined shops run amok with police-dodging barrow boys, people queuing for almost everything.”
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- Information
- The Beatles in Context , pp. 3 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020