Fifty years ago today two British icons made their first appearances before a wider public. On the fifth of October 1962, the very first Beatles single Love Me Do and the very first James Bond film, Dr No, were released. Hundreds of millions of album and ticket sales later, Hywel Davies takes a look at the Fab Four and 007.
The Beatles had been a working band for two years before George Martin agreed to take a chance on them. He didn’t even like their music much. But he said he liked the four Liverpudlians when he met them and thought they might develop. Martin got the band a contract and they released their first single “Love Me Do” on the 5th of October, 1962. It eventually went to №17 in the charts. Stuart Borthwick, lecturer in Popular Music Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, says the song isn’t that stellar. Personally I feel that the Beatles progressed musically through their career. I do feel that the level of complexity and the nuances of their later work is stronger than in earlier works. Doctor No, the first James Bond film, was also released 50 years ago today with the cool danger-sounding music of John Barry heralding the audience in cinemas of the ultimate spy. Since then it’s estimated that a quarter of the world’s population has seen a Bond film. The director of Next Skyfall is Sam Mendes. He says the film’s become essential part of British childhood, for boys anyway. I’ve always been a huge fan of Bond movies as a child and, of course, every young English schoolboy grows up with them. In a sense, it’s part of my life. And I vividly remember the first time I saw one of the Bond movies, ‘Live and Let Die’, and the impact it had on me. Mark Mollohan, film writer on the Daily Telegraph, says there’re good reasons the film has endured, stretching out over 22 outings now. There’re lots of reasons. I think the main reason is that is a pure trilling escapicism, above all. Bond is – I’m not the first – a person that every woman wants to go out with and every man wants to be. And I think he still is. The Beatles by contrast didn’t last as long as the Bond movies. The band split up in 1970 after just 8 years as recorded artists. Stuart Borthwick, however, points out that they developed amazingly fast and gained more, he says, in those 8 short years than any other band. I think, in terms of their musical and intellectual development, they developed more in those 8 years than, I think, any band has done in any time scale. So it’s the Beatles’ ability to move on from their debut, to become more complex and sophisticated – that’s at the heart of much of their appeal. But it’s the same true of Bond. Mark Mollohan says it’s actually the opposite. “We like Bond – at least, partially, – because things stay the same. We look forward to seeing him invincible using gadgets to get out of trouble, driving fast cars and always managing to seduce the woman with a teasing name.” In a sense, Bond is the formula. We won’t expect certain things from a Bond movie and we certainly don’t want to deviate too much from that. One of the fundamental differences often between film and TV is that we demand that the TV doesn’t change from episode-to-episode or series-to-series. Fundamental difference with the film is that we expect some sort of character-up. Absolutely not so in James Bond! Fans of both these British icons today have the chance to celebrate. Perhaps the Beatles and Bond don’t have all that much in common beyond the world-wide success on a scale they wouldn’t have been able to imagine 50 years ago.Source: Voice of Russia
