Who was the first pop group to be depicted as a waxwork?
For whatever reason, gawping at waxworks of the day’s biggest celebrities has generated a major tourist attraction around the world.
2.5million people a year flock to Madame Tussauds London alone, the leading waxworks heavyweight in the world, having expanded operations to multiple exhibits globally. The London original was established by Marie Tussaud herself nearly 200 years ago, and has only grown in popularity since, making attendees part with their cash to behold anybody from the Royal Family to serial killer Dennis Nilsen.
Wax models have a slightly more interesting heritage. Born in 1761 in Strasbourg, Tussaud was enmeshed with the French monarchy at the worst possible time, being an art tutor to King Louis XVI’s sister and holding residence in Versailles’ Royal Court. As the Revolution exploded, Tussaud was imprisoned with her mother in Paris’ La Force Prison, narrowly missing the guillotine by making death masks of her former royal employers, as well as the infamous Maximilien Robespierre.
Establishing her first permanent site in Baker Street in 1835, the allure of Tussaud’s detailed and artful life-size models proved a major draw to a public who still wasn’t wholly familiar with history’s biggest characters, long before mass media. At a time when photography was still in its experimental infancy and image printing was confined to texts or newspapers, the chance to see Horatio Nelson or Henry VIII standing tall ‘in the flesh’ was an intriguing novelty in the early 19th century.
Moving to the current site on Marylebone Road in 1884, the Madame Tussauds museum became the lucrative attraction it is today. Yet, strangely, the waxworks industry developed a cult following for the truly amateur and downright awful attempts at figures of history and pop culture. Closing after over 50 years in 2013, Jane and Peter Hayes’ Louis Tussauds House of Wax in Great Yarmouth pulled thousands of visitors eager to marvel and guffaw at the flaky and bizarre-looking renditions of Adolf Hitler, Tony Blair, and a sincerely unsettling Noel Edmonds.
While it’s impossible to glean exactly which pop star was first honoured with a waxwork likeness, there being hundreds of such museums all over the world, it’s on record for which chart-topping group of the day held a Madame Tussauds debut for the UK institute.
So who was the first pop star to be depicted as a waxwork?
At the peak of their fame on March 28th, 1964, Madame Tussauds unveiled models of all four Beatles, their first foray into pop music as a company. Famously, the group was photographed with their likeness waxworks the next month, and the museum would revise their appearance as their fashion attire evolved with the countercultural trends across the decade.
The Beatles’ models would be dusted off to adorn 1967’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, standing to the left of the band on Peter Blake’s orchestrated cover. Strangely, the heads of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr had been lost for years, eventually rediscovered in 2005 and auctioned for a tidy £81,500.
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