1966: the year The Beatles’ popularity began to wane
There’s a misconception that, during their time, The Beatles were the definitive focus of the music world. To an extent, this is true; they were the biggest act globally, reaching a level of fame previously unseen. Yet, the music scene was vibrant, with other influential names like Bob Dylan, The Doors, and The Rolling Stones gaining ground in the countercultural sphere, while Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys continued to capture mainstream attention. It was an exceptional era for music, and competition was fierce. By 1966, it even seemed as though The Beatles might be losing their place at the top.
It’s also often forgotten that, really, The Beatles weren’t around for long. Their lifespan was short and sharp as they were only a band for a decade, counted from their first gig through to the signing of the divorce papers. Really, it’s even shorter, as their debut album wasn’t released until 1963. It means that the entire timeline of the band’s shoot to massive, global fame, the chaos of Beatlemania, their turn to more experimental sounds, their LSD trips and travels to India, and the eventual collapse of their friendships and working relationships all happened in only seven years.
Only when put in that context do the twists and turns in the band’s story make sense, providing a slight insight into what it must have been like to be within the band. History underestimates how stressful, and even scary, being one of the Fab Four must have been as within a few years, they were plucked from Liverpool and put on a pedestal no one had seen before. It wasn’t just fame; it was a smothering notoriety that meant their lives, as they knew it, couldn’t be the same.
Even as we discuss the dip in their fame around 1966, the change in their publicity was so slight that it was barely noticeable. But the major difference was within the group, as something shifted in the atmosphere.
“During 1966, The Beatles were having a bit of a setback,” George Martin said, “It wasn’t generally known that their general popularity seemed to be a little bit on the wane. Brian Epstein was very worried about it indeed.” While virtually invisible to the public, inside the Beatles HQ office, their manager Epstein was able to pick up on the slight dip, or more so the shift when it came to the world’s treatment of the band and the band’s ability to handle it.
Beatlemania was over, and something darker had taken its place. In the early 1960s, it was screaming, crying teenage girls chasing their cars and blowing kisses, but by the mid-1960s, their fame had begun to feel like a threat. “This time as well, they were undergoing a lot of death threats,” Martin said, “George Harrison was pretty worried when they were in Berlin that they were gonna be picked off.” Within the context of the recent assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X and the heightening social and political tension worldwide, the band’s global fame began to feel more scary than fun.
Of course, they didn’t do themselves any favours. Part of the reason why Epstein was so worried about the slight dip in their fame and why the band were starting to feel on edge was because they’d angered a scary crowd: devote Christians. “We’d had the tremendous controversy when John Lennon has said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, which caused a great deal of damage in the states,” Martin said but defended Lennon. “He was actually stating a fact; certainly more people bought Beatles records than went to church.”
In reality, when Martin talks about the “wane” in popularity that Epstein was so scared about, the truth is a minor dip in their major success that already had them miles ahead of any competitors. But it was the context of this change that actually made the impact. This shift in the atmosphere to something worrying impacted the band greatly, they no longer felt safe, nor wanted, to work in the same way.
“They were having a rough time, and they told Brian they would not do any more touring at all. They would not perform in public again,” Martin explained. “It was a pretty serious thing to say, but they said, ‘We don’t want to know about it. All we want to do is make records in the studio with George, and that’s it.’”
With that one decision, it was really The Beatles themselves that didn’t necessarily damage their popularity but changed it. They would no longer be the band at the centre of what David Lynch called “screaming events”. Instead, they stepped fully into a new chapter that allowed them to lean further into counterculture, sonic experimentation and their pioneering new path as solely recording artists. To some fans, sure, this new era will have marked the end of their love affair with the early and innocent rock and roll band, causing a wane in popularity there. But to others, The Beatles’ later period was endlessly more interesting.
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