The dangerous side of Beatlemania
No band has ever experienced the levels of fervent devotion as The Beatles. Before they’d even released their debut album Please Please Me in 1963, the Liverpool foursome attracted large crowds of screaming fans during shows at the local Cavern Club. However, the success of early singles such as ‘She Loves You’ and ‘Please Please Me’ propelled the band to heights never seen before, with fans treating the musicians as gods to be worshipped.
As soon as the band began touring around the nation, fans, mainly teenage girls, went crazy, screaming so loudly that the music couldn’t be heard during the concerts. The Beatles also attracted devoted fans off-stage, continuously drawing masses of fans outside studios and venues. By their autumn tour in 1963, the safety of the police was a national concern due to the strength of the crowds that would gather to see The Beatles, leading officers to use hose pipes to combat the masses of fans. Even artists like Elvis Presley failed to garner such intensely adoring fans as The Beatles. A whole new phenomenon was born.
Writing for The New Statesman, Maureen Lipman, who went to see the band in Hull as a teenager, unconvinced of their greatness, explained: “At the concert, the music was completely drowned out by the screaming,” Lipman said. “Someone very close to me screamed the most piercing of screams, a primal mating call. […] My Cornetto dangled. Sweat ran across my upper lip and down my virgin armpits. The screaming was increasing in volume and intensity. Someone was about to implode. I realised with an electric shock that the screaming someone was me.” By the show’s end, workers “cleared away 40 pairs of abandoned knickers”.
It wasn’t long until the band embarked on international tours, which included a 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States, which generated a then-record-breaking viewer count of 73million. Their appearance on the show marked the beginning of American Beatlemania, as well as the start of the British Invasion. In 1965, the band cashed in on their fame and starred in Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night, a semi-fictionalised depiction of The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. The film sees the Liverpool lads flee from adoring fans, who chase them into cars and down streets.
The cult-like following the band endured was typically harmless, although you were definitely at risk of permanent hearing damage if you stood among the screaming crowds at their concerts. However, certain fans took their love for The Beatles to unprecedented levels. Certain instances highlighted a dangerous side to Beatlemania, where fans somehow forgot that John, Paul, Ringo and George were just people, not untouchable gods.
When Pattie Boyd married George Harrison, they moved into a beautiful property guarded by high walls. Of course, many fans discovered the location of their house and worked out how to get inside. In her book Wonderful Tonight, Boyd wrote, “Hordes of girls used to hang about outside, waiting for me to go out. If the gate was ever left open, they would come onto the grounds. They also discovered that if they put stones into the sliding mechanism it wouldn’t shut properly and they could squeeze through.”
When fans broke into her home, they would often take her belongings, such as clothes and accessories. “I kept finding clothes missing and once George gave me a beautiful Piaget watch that disappeared. I presume some fan took it.” Boyd also wrote, “The fans were making life intolerable for us, and not only when the Beatles were performing. None of them could go into or out of their flats without being grabbed, mauled, and begged for autographs at any time of day or night.”
Harrison wasn’t the only one who faced break-ins. John Lennon’s aunt Mimi Smith, who he lived with as a child, had to move house after eager Beatles fans broke into her home looking for Lennon. In the book, The Beatles: The Authorised Biography, Hunter Davies explained: “They did at last go but on the way out stole her backdoor key. She was in a terrible state when she realised what they’d done and was sure burglars would now really get in, especially as she was ill and should be in bed.”
Paul McCartney was also a victim of a home break-in, although he channelled the experience into a song – ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’. According to the culprit, Diane Ashley (via A Hard Day’s Write by Steve Turner), “We were bored, he was out, and so we decided to pay him a visit. We found a ladder in his garden and stuck it up at the bathroom window which he’d left slightly open. I was the one who climbed up and got in.” Luckily, the young girl only took a pair of pants, photographs and a copy of ‘The End’, and they were swiftly returned to McCartney.
The Beatles even incited riots, such as on November 7th, 1963, the only date they ever played in Ireland. Fights broke out when the crowd from their first show of the day interacted with the second, resulting in overturned police cars and attendees being taken to the hospital. Moreover, during a Seattle gig in 1964, a fan managed to climb above the stage, leading her to fall and land in front of Ringo Starr’s drum riser. That same night, the band’s Cadillac was destroyed by fans, forcing them to sneak away in an ambulance, and the US Navy were used to form a barrier between the fans and the musicians.
Of course, the most dangerous effect of Beatlemania came a decade after the band broke up. In 1980, John Lennon was tragically shot in the back by a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, who was disillusioned with the musician’s behaviour, such as when he called The Beatles “more popular than Jesus”. This act truly demonstrated the dangers of stardom, suggesting that no matter how many adoring fans one might have, living in the spotlight also runs the risk of tragedy.
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