Beatlebores
THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY
I once knew a man, obsessionally anti-Catholic, who, whenever he got steamed up about some- thing, would dash off a message to the Pope. All the letters were addressed, simply but splen- didly, to 'The Pontiff, Rome.' I don't know whether His Holiness ever read them; I do know he never replied to them. Did this deter his correspondent? Of course not. The stream never dried up, the trumpets never stcpped sounding. Across the mountains the messages flew and the Vatican heeded them not.
I no longer laugh at that man. Weekly I com- plain about something or other that the papers are up to, and do they desist? They do not. I am certain they will pay no attention to this week's epic either, but like my anti-Catholic, I just can't stop. So here we go again.
Years ago, early '64, I think, Mr William Mann, the music critic of The Times, devoted his space to a eulogy of a pop group. The column was headed `Songs the Beatles Sang' and it contained stuff so stupid that only a clever man could have written it. Four geniuses, we were to understand, had been born in this lucky land of ours. England was once more to become a nest of singing birds. Hop it Haydn, move over Mozart, Beethoven wouldst thou had ne'er been born.
I disagreed with Mr Mann's assessment of the boys' musical talents. But I did not disagree with his opinion that they would go far. How far, everybody now knows. When Nye Bevan once said that there could be people in China who had never heard his name, he was joking, but you'd have to be careful before asserting it about the Beatles. The question that bothers 'me is why do so many otherwise intelligent people think I want to read even more stuff about them? Haven't we read millions -of words already? Haven't we read millions of words too many already?
Apparently not, if the Sunday Times and the Observer are anything to go by. It will not have escaped your notice that these elegant papers are both at it. The Sunday Times started this week, of course, although the early warning system has been bleeping away for some time now. The Observer started last week, so it not only pipped its rival on the post, but did it with a neat little joke at the Sunday Times's expense: `Special! The UNAUTHORISED Beatles Story'—for the Sunday Times talks in hushed tones of the 'authorised biography.'
In no other way is the Sunday Times hushed. It blurbs away like a mad thing about its big buy. And it does go on. I do not know how many words Mr Hunter Davies has written. I do know I'm not going to read them all. I cannot even promise to read any more. Not if this week's opening instalment is typical. It is full of the sort of delicious detail with which Crawfie used to set us all quivering about the doings of the Royals : 'I was in my white sports coat and black drainies.' Paul remarks. 'Drain pipe trousers,' Mr Hunter Davies thoughtfully inter- prets. I'm glad he didn't feel he had to tell us what they mean when they talk about `ciggies.'
Day by day, sometimes almost minute by minute, Mr Davies guides us through their lives. No remark, however trivial, but finds its place in the record. Boswell had nothing on this boy,
but Boswell was talking about a rather different class of person, if I remember, and it could be that which has made his book live longer than I think Mr Davies's will. I don't think the Sunday Thnes will agree with me about the book's triviality, though. They say it is tot just another book about pop idols, but a social document with vivid sidelights on the outlook of the generation born during the war.' If all the other instalments are like this first one, I take leave to doubt it.
I have no objection to stuff like this being written. I'm sure there's an enormous demand for it. There is for Godfrey Winn. I'm sure that Mr Hunter Davies will make a fortune out of it, and I wish him joy of it. And if the Sunday Times is in on the royalties then I hope it makes a packet too, for it's the Sunday paper I'd choose if I had to make do with only one.
But really . . . is the Times the place for this sort of stuff? Is it so sworn to the false doctrine that you've got to cheapen yourself these days to get anywhere? And, just by the way, does the Observer have to follow them ('follow' in the sense of imitate, since I presume that once they heard what was happening in Grays Inn Road, they quickly codged up their own 'unauthorised' version)? Do they have to indulge in the incest that so bedevils the literary scene, where not to be doing, or knowing about, or sneering at, or praising what all the others are doing, knowing, sneering at, or praising, is to show yourself up as stupid? Or is it just part of a plan to go for bigger circulations, regardless of what you do to get them? If it is, somebody should be feeling a bit ashamed. I'd be delighted to see Mr Hunter Davies's book in paperback on the bookstalls so that teenagers can buy it. I don't want it in my Sunday Times, thank you very much.
But, as I said right at the beginning, I know nobody will pay any attention to me. Never mind. I just felt I had to write another letter to The Pontiff, Rome.
Public execution, 1968
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