The Beatles in Perspective - A Carnival of Light - James McGrath
9. "Some kind of innocence...": Beatles Monthly and the Fan Community
The Beatles in Perspective - A Carnival of Light - James McGrath
Mike Kirkup [+]
Newcastle University
Mike Kirkup is an Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University (UK), based in the School of Arts and Cultures, teaching media studies and popular culture. He was Senior Lecturer and Media Studies Programme Leader at Teesside University from 2005 to 2019, and was Education & Programme manager at Tyneside Cinema from 1989 to 2003. His publications include “‘Some Kind of Innocence’: The Beatles Monthly and the Fan Community”, Popular Music History 9.1 (2014), and “Cry Baby Cry” in The Beatles, or the ‘White Album’ (ed. Mark Goodhall; London: Headpress, 2018). He has an MA in Film Studies from Newcastle University and is a Fellow of the Higher Education
Council. His greatest musical moment was sitting in as an emergency piano player for The Quarry Men at the 50th anniversary of John meeting Paul event, at St Peter’s Church Hall, Woolton, in July 2007.
Description
The Beatles Book has been overlooked in both academic research and popular biographies of the Beatles. Over 77 monthly issues between 1963 and 1979, the magazine told the Beatles story at it happened, giving modern readers a unique chance to follow the story without hindsight. This article looks in detail at the content of the magazine and its historical and social context: its beginnings as a form of ‘pop propaganda’, issues of fandom and the communication between fans and the band and the treatment of the change in the Beatles image in early 1967.