1964: Beatlemania
June 21, 2021
By AHNZ
Today in history, 21 June, 1964, The Beatles arrived to tour New Zealand. They performed twice in each of Wellington, Auckland, Dunedin, and Christchurch with hysteria following at all times.
“It was hysteria with the young girls at that show, and they were fainting all over the place. The St John Ambulance men were dragging them out like you wouldn’t believe”. – NZ booking agent Benny Levin
Beatlemania was far beyond music or music appreciation. The female fans screamed so much they couldn’t hear anyway. What was going on? Why the mass female hysteria?
“The teenager comes not to hear but to participate in a ritual, a collective grovelling to gods who are blind and empty. “Throughout the performance,” wrote one observer, “it was impossible to hear anything above the squealing except the beat of Ringo’s drums.” Here, indeed, is “a new cultural movement”: music which not only cannot be heard but does not need to be heard.” – Paul Johnson, New Statesman (Feb 1964)
Until 1964 the Kiwi youth was easy to keep repressed by their elders who outnumbered them. During the previous 35 years a Depression and a World War helped see to it. Youthful devotion, especially that of our females, was channeled to ‘useful’ figures such as Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and Jesus. Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours explains the band’s musical talent but it is social psychology that explains Beatlemania.
“The early infancy parenting of the Baby Boomer generation explains a great deal, or all, of who they grew up to be….babies being wheeled around in a trolley like stock by government staff. An absolute disaster for parent/child attachment.” – Ref. 1944: No serotonin for you, Boomer!
“Today we look at our Baby Boomers for all the trouble they’ve caused, the wrecking ball they’ve taken to our society …Their failings were preceded by their parent’s failings and they identified that very well but exercised no power to change it.” – 1954: Mazengarb
“By August 1964 Otahuhu College was, for the first time, conducting examinations under massive exam hall conditions.” – 1964: Massive Exam Hall Conditions
The lid now came off a boiling brew of Baby Boomers coming of age. Elvis and The Beatles opened a door for Boomer girls to be passionate and to experience serotonin and dopamine hits their nervous system circuitry couldn’t conduct; They blew their fuses and slipped their leashes. Their Depression and War elders didn’t have the numbers to keep a lid on what had been awakened in their youth.
“These young folk who will welcome the Beatles are those who tomorrow will be called on to sacrifice their lives should World War III eventuate. So let them have their excitement.”- Prominent Aucklander, Mr George F. Joseph JP; Ref. NZ Herald (2004)
“Pat Booth in the Auckland Star wrote what was intended to be a witty “review” in which he applauded the volume, the beat, the gyrations and stamina, and the hair. He was talking about the audience.” – ibid
“Ten thousand throats are raw, ten thousand tear ducts dry. A two-day state of siege is lifted in the cities, policemen return to more usual “beats”, and the hearts of the young are heavy with loss. ” – Bruce Mason, A golden era: When The Beatles came to New Zealand, Listener (1964); Wayback Machine
The power the Beatles had would usually be used to lead enthusiastic young people into battle; But the quartet were not generals and there was nobody to slaughter. Nor were John, Paul, Ringo, and George threatening figures come to drive us from our homes like Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Without ‘fight’ or ‘flight’, then, what is an amygdala supposed to do when imprisoned in a static audience faced with one’s godlike idols on stage? At first screaming took the load of the stationary ‘fan’ (they had yet to learn how to dance in audience) until the load became stress. Then, they froze and they fainted.
“…the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline—remember that later. This causes your heart rate to rise and lungs to dilate, allowing more oxygen into the system. Organs that prove unnecessary in a life-or-death interaction, like the gastrointestinal system, shrink, pushing contents up or out. Every other resource is sent to the muscles, which you’ll need for a flight or fight response…Adrenaline triggers a surge of calcium, which rushes into the chest cavity and stiffens the heart muscles, ensuring they stay taught until the threat has passed. But if there’s too much calcium or the body is overly-sensitive to its presence, the mineral can stop the heart from beating normally. Without a steady supply of blood, an individual may succumb to a ventricular fibrillation.” – You really can be scared to death—here’s how, Popular Science
“John B. Lynn, son of the owner of a venue the Beatles played, told the Washington Post that the concert hall smelled like the pee of overexcited girls after the show…Bob Geldof told Q Magazine in 2010: ‘The Beatles was a case of watching females in excelsis. It’s the old cliché, but you couldn’t hear them for all the screaming. I remember looking down at the cinema floor and seeing these rivulets of piss in the aisles. The girls were literally pissing themselves with excitement. So what I associate most with the Beatles is the smell of girls’ urine.’ ” – Beatlemania in the 1960s: They’re All Wet, Femmes Fatales (2014)
“I would prefer conscious, but I don’t know what your .. pleasure threshold is.” – Babylon 5 (1994)
“The symptoms of respiratory alkalosis include: dizziness, tingling in the lips, hands or feet, headache, weakness, fainting, and seizures. In extreme cases it may cause carpopedal spasms, a flapping and contraction of the hands and feet.” – Hyperventilation, Wiki
Stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, are supposed to save a mammal’s life by powering its fight or its flight. The toxic cocktail of hormones will cause the animal to die of fright if it cannot run it off by fleeing the stimulus. Attacked rabbits don’t explode like popcorn, they run in order to preserve their lives. But if a rabbit were trapped in the face of its overwhelming stimulus the default procedure of its biological firmware instructs the organism to scream, vacate its bowels, and then drop dead of fright. Fortunately for the crying and screaming New Zealand Beatlemanics thee hyperventilation got them before a coronary did.
Girls such as Bruce Mason’s daughter could prepare by “obliterating” the wallpaper with posters and saturate their bookcases, draws, and their airwaves with Beatles product. They were partly immunised and ready to withstand the full dose in 1964 without risking organ damage. Girls who had been suppressed by their elders from expressing Beatlemania until the Ground Zero 1964 took the full force of the blast and it must have been far harder for them to have recovered afterwards. The mania serves an evolutionary psychological use in separating the more composed women with nerve control from their lessers; The alpha females from the betas. As Paul Johnson wrote at the time, “Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures.”
It would be worth exploring what lasting damage was done to the Beatlemanic Baby Boomer girls, both physiological and physiological. Understanding this mass hysteria informs us a great deal about who they grew up to be, the governments they elected and tolerated, and the New Zealand they built.
—
Image ref. cover of Listener, 1984
Image ref. Fans in Philadelphia, AP; Japan Times
Ref. Paul Johnson, New Statesman (Feb 1964)
Ref. 1944: No serotonin for you, Boomer!
Ref. 1954: Mazengarb
Ref. 1964: Massive Exam Hall Conditions
Ref. 1970s: Road Warrior Boomers
Ref. 1970s: The Fall of Four Square Stores
Ref. 2010s: Baby Boomer Self-Entitlement
Note: “Me and my sister,16 and 17 year olds worked to save so we could go to the 1st Auckland show. And yes there was screaming and shouting BUT, seeing them live is now a treasure to remember, equal to Jesus walking through crowds, I’m not religious but it is something people experienced.What important occasion have you experienced ?” – Ellen Abrahams, comment to AHNZ. Facebook (2023)
Like Comment Share
