Beatles to Bond - Very British Institutions

Oct 07, 2012 22:30

The Beeb has been running some retrospectives on the Beatles recently, and yesterday I attended a panel discussion on Dr No - the first of the Bond franchise films. Both marking 50 year anniversaries.

The Beatles may be considered very passée in today's music circles, not helped by Macca continuing in his attempts to sing - some time after he lost that faculty. The 'new' has long since replaced them; but they were new once, and had their own power in sweeping the old away. I was too young to fully appreciate them at the time, but my elder brother and sister were closer to their target market, and the 7" singles and EP's could regularly be heard in our household, alongside The Beatles' ubiquitous presence on TV and radio ('208').

Though I would not count myself a fan, and own very few of the albums, I still seem to know an inordinate number of their songs. A testament to their infectious melodies, catchy lyrics, and strong association with place and time.

The 'Magical Mystery Tour' film was shown again last night. A hotchpotch of a road-movie cum pop video. The last, and only time, I'd seen it before, was on crackly B&W (405 line) TV on it's first showing post-Christmas 1967. I must have been just 7, and watching with the rest of the family. For its time it was adventurous, weird, daring and very non-establishment. So weird (and unsuitable for family viewing) that my father turned it off half way through. The film was poorly received on release, and the documentary before the re-run suggested that the older generation were offended, not so much for its (very tame by today's standards) risqué elements, but because they realised that it was a herald of the change sweeping through the culture of the time, a change that they were fearful of, and powerless to stop.

I caught Scorsese's engrossing film of George Harrison's life when it was re-shown last week. It charted the Beatles rise from rough and ready night-club band through to boyband and pop superstars. The right people in the right place at the right time for the late 60's liberation, revolution, and psychedelia. And for me, George Harrison's All Things Must Pass remains one of the most enduring of the strong solo efforts in the immediate post-Beatles period. My brother played it continuously in late '70 and early '71, a time locked in to memories of my Grandmother's cancer and death. I discovered from the film that Harrison wrote some of the songs around the time of his own mother's death, explaining some of their poignancy.

In those 50 years The Beatles have continued to develop as a commodity and brand. Still classic Britpop, still earning money for corporations (perhaps more than justified, seeing the plight of their contemporaries), and still influencing the music of succeeding generations, even if at a decreasing rate.

Bond too has developed, probably well beyond recognition of his originator Ian Fleming had he still been with us. A panel (including Charlie Higson author of Young Bond) at my local Literary Festival discussed the enduring attraction of Bond. A product of the post-war austerity '50s, the novels were devoured by teenage boys, thrilled by the action, suspense, and sex - a recipe that gained a large adult audience too. The panel considered Fleming a master of narrative; an excellent travel writer, illuminating the public on exotic countries that they were (then) unlikely to ever reach themselves; able to transform words into vivid action sequences; but perhaps not so hot on emotions and sex.

They questioned whether Fleming had seen his Bond novels merely as a low-grade diversion from his other work, an attempt to raise a bit of cash for his expensive life as a part-time ex-pat in Jamaica? Certainly Fleming had been touting the film rights for some time, and apart from a low quality B&W 50's TV special made somewhere overseas, it took until the 60's for it to get to the big screen. This was considered a very good thing, as by this era there was sufficient money and international interest, and a less restrictive climate, allowing a film with more potential to make a real impact. I recall the film Dr.No having a rather closer resemblance to the book than many of the following movies. The panel considered the books generally to have had a more formal structure and back-story than any of the films, with Bond in a few cases not appearing until a third of the way into some novels.

Now Bond has transformed into much faster paced action blockbusters, following a more familiar formula and with even more blatant product placement. Connery was considered the most quintessential Bond, with Craig a close second, and after the disappointment of Quantum of Solace there were high hopes for Skyfall. And for the future? The panel considered Bond was too much of a moneymaker to disappear just yet, perhaps the older films will eventually be remade?

Thanks for those 50 years of entertainment and memories.

films, books, music, festivals, british

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