The myth of Klaatu: The Beatles band that never was
Humans love a mystery. It’s in our DNA. In an evolutionary sense, it is advantageous to figure them out for the sake of survival before we fall victim to them. Thus, that romantic pang of investigation is a hardwired titillation. Back in 1976, a collection of desperate Beatles fans figured that they had solved one. They figured they had caught out The Beatles trying to pull the wool over us and issuing new music under a secret new guise.
The band was named Klaatu and when they released their debut record, 3:47 EST, the cover didn’t credit any of the creators. They sounded enough like The Beatles – had they stayed together and entered prog-rock – for people to get excited. There was one big problem with The Beatle-esque psychedelia on the mysterious Klaatu record: none of the band members were either Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison or Ringo Starr.
Nevertheless, the whole Klaatu fan theory debacle did reveal one thing for certain—the legacy of The Beatles was never going to fade, their heirloom was always set to be fevered. As one fan remarked when news broke of their breakup on April 10th, 1970: “Nobody will ever replace The Beatles. It’s just one Beatles group. We grew up with them. They started when they were younger and we were younger, and they belong to us in a way.”
That fateful statement – “They belong to us in a way” – was part of the problem. Bob Dylan experienced it when he was introduced at the Newport Folk Festival and soon defied the notion when he went electric. An announcer introduced him by saying, “take him, you know him, he’s yours.” Dylan electrically rallied against this notion, later saying: “What a crazy thing to say! Screw that. As far as I knew, I didn’t belong to anybody then or now.”
However, that is part of the crux of pop culture. Fans enter the medium of the creation. It’s the reason that The Beatles were so transcendent. Their music had such an impact that even when it wasn’t their music, they were still somehow having an impact! Klaatu had a sound inspired by the ‘Fab Four’, most bands have, however, the “mystery band” press release that followed the release of their record set cogs turning in time.
This revealed a second factor about pop culture that still endures to this day. You see, at first, the Klaatu album was condemned to the ash heap of history. It got a few good reviews but was otherwise ignored. It took a mystery angle for people to take notice. They say that history is written by the victors, well, the same can be said when it comes to culture. The course of cultural history requires an angle, some sort of arc that allows us to follow it through neatly. Thus, the music of Klaatu was subsumed in mystery after the fact and it suddenly transfigured the album by virtue.
In short, nobody cared too much before they thought that The Beatles were behind it. On the one hand, that might sound patently obvious—of course it would be notable if the Beatles were back together. But in a purely scientific sense, if you will, why should it have any bearing at all on the music? In essence, Klaatu are proof that when it comes to pop, we’re not just interested in the music itself, but the stories, personality, posters, personal corroborations and everything else that comes with it. 3:47 EST remained 3:47 EST no matter who was behind it, but its difference before the mystery and afterwards was night and day.
Press is important. The Beatles themselves knew that when Derek Taylor helped to launch them. And in 1970, he fatefully commented on their final demise by stating in the press release: “If The Beatles don’t exist, you don’t exist.” That proves almost prescient when it comes to Klaatu. Suddenly, their record entered the charts. From the ash heap, it rose to a notable 32. However, the only thing that changed was Beatles fans getting carried away.
Once more, that human desire to relish a mystery also had an important hand. All of a sudden, letters were being shared about new potential hints. Hidden references were being unearthed, secret ties were being detected, coded messages were being cracked. All the while, the knowledge that you could put the whole thing to bed in a heartbeat by checking out the copyright lodging for the record was glossed over—it was too pointedly square to be engaged with.
Thus, the interest with Klaatu is not the mystery or myth itself, but what it says about the way we consume pop culture. The record is, in short, creditable. And the band, ironically, merely wanted to release it into the world without press so that it could be judged on merit alone. This is not conducive to modern art.
We need to feel the individualism—it’s what makes music relatable. It is this truth that made The Beatles more than the sum of their parts, more than their music, and such an impacting force that their lore was still being written by the mystic figures of fate years after they parted. The Beatles transcend.
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