Here, there and everywhere: why the world is still crazy about the Beatles
Perhaps the real surprise behind this week’s release of the “final” Beatles song, Now and Then, is not that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr wanted to resurrect the band one last time – uniting them with the “crystal clear” voice of John Lennon from a 1970s home tape, a feat enabled by technology Peter Jackson developed for his 2021 Get Back documentary – but that there remains a seemingly insatiable thirst for all things Fab Four.
It is now 60 years since Beatlemania engulfed first Britain and then, via America, the world. No one then imagined that in 2023 we would still be entranced by the group. The shelf life of pop acts was measured in months, or at best years – the Beatles themselves didn’t make it past their 1970 break-up. Yet this month sees a fresh surge of interest. Accompanying Now and Then are expanded versions of the Red and Blue compilations first issued in 1973, Philip Norman’s biography of George Harrison (to go alongside his tomes on Lennon and McCartney), and an Apple TV series, Murder Without A Trial, examining the 1980 killing of Lennon outside his New York home.
Until the end of last month, the National Portrait Gallery was running Eyes of The Storm, McCartney’s evocative exhibition after his “discovery” of a cache of photos from 1963-64. And you can still enjoy National Trust tours of John and Paul’s Liverpool homes, and hear Hey Jude ringing from English football terraces.
Some reasons for the ongoing obsession are straightforward. Since even the humblest contribution to Beatledom is guaranteed global attention, more products keep arriving. Then there is the nostalgia of baby boomers for their youth – not least in the US, where the likes of Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen were inspired to pick up guitars by the Beatles’ celebrated appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
Behind it all lies the enduring quality of the music – the exuberance of the early hits, the inventive plunge into psychedelia, the gentle beauty of the love songs – and where the Fabs pioneered, the rest followed. Their career still describes the perfect arc of pop success, from early gigs in Merseyside and immersion in the crucible of Hamburg lowlife to becoming local heroes, national sensations and international icons. Unlike their peers the Rolling Stones, they didn’t stick around to become a vainglorious tribute band to themselves.
The foursome’s panache – the “Beatle cuts”, the casual ostentation of their clothes, their gritty ambition – helped make them the personification of an era in which optimism, hope and social mobility were possible. They radiated an infectious joyousness which now seems remote and beyond reach, and even when they were naive – Maharishi, Apple – they were brave. As Harrison put it: “They [the public] gave their money, and gave their screams, but the Beatles gave their nervous systems. They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did, and then blamed it on us.”
Now and Then may be the Beatles’ “final song”, but it won’t be the final word in their story. McCartney, who has cannily curated the group’s legacy, may yet find another cache of photos, while one day, perhaps, we may get to read Lennon’s Dakota diaries, briefly glimpsed after his murder but swiftly recovered by Yoko Ono and kept secret ever since.
• Neil Spencer an Observer columnist
The foursome were the personification of an era in which optimism, hope and social mobility were possible
magnifying its importance and intensifying our experience of it, often neglecting other signs that we are well and healthy.
Health anxiety can also be complicated by the nocebo effect, which operates in the opposite direction of the more familiar placebo effect. It occurs when we read about the symptoms of a possible illness or the negative side effects of a medication and subsequently experience those symptoms or side effects, even when we’ve unknowingly been given a sugar pill rather than the real drug. Clearly our mind exerts a profound influence over our bodily experience.
The advent of Dr Google has had detrimental consequences for health anxiety sufferers, enabling them to delve into endless rabbit holes for every symptom and participate in forums and subreddits where they inadvertently amplify each other’s fears. While their aim is to seek reassurance, the outcome frequently involves heightened anxiety and newfound information that fuels rumination. The escalation in this trend has culminated in the coining of the term cyberchondria.
One of the challenges in treating health anxiety is persuading sufferers that their anxiety, not a physical ailment, is the root issue. While it’s essential to acknowledge the possibility of a physical ailment, and to attempt to rule this out, complete certainty can never be guaranteed. There will always be a minute chance that something has been overlooked and a dreaded illness may lurk in the shadows. Consequently, a crucial facet of treatment involves helping patients to tolerate the reality that life inherently lacks absolute certainty and we have limited control over it.
Treatment also encompasses challenging erroneous thought patterns and relying on empirical evidence for specific outcomes. For example, a vast majority of headaches do not signify brain tumours, so it makes sense to consider more benign causes unless symptoms become severe. Nevertheless, research into death anxiety, a cornerstone of health anxiety, suggests that solely addressing the specific health-related concern, such as a headache, may fail to target underlying existential fears. In this case, the anxiety may simply shift to a different symptom. Consequently, treatment strategies that focus on an acceptance of mortality may prove more effective.
While it can be initially challenging to persuade health anxiety sufferers to seek psychological assistance, most respond well to treatment once they embrace it. Health anxiety exists on a spectrum that encompasses our ordinary apprehensions about illness and death, making it a condition we can all empathise with. Accepting uncertainty and coming to terms with our mortality is a challenge for us all, but an important one to reckon with if we wish to free ourselves from the tyranny of many forms of anxiety, including health anxiety.
• Prof Gill Straker and Dr Jacqui Winship are co-authors of The Talking Cure. Gill also appears on the podcast Three Associating in which relational psychotherapists explore their blind spots
Health anxiety exists on a spectrum that encompasses our ordinary apprehensions about illness and death, making it a condition we can all empathise with
to Weekend Update, where Colin Jost tries to wrap his head around how Mike Johnson became Speaker of the House: “I feel like … after weeks of voting, Republicans got bored and they all wrote in the same fake name, then they were all like ‘Wait, that’s a real guy?’”
Returning to the actors’ strike, Jost then brings on his agent, JJ Gordon (Sherman, in some disturbing male prosthetics). Gordon pitches Jost a few potential projects once the strike wraps up, including a biopic of Jared Fogel, Jurassic Park: Porn Version, a commercial for Jersey Mike’s – not the sandwich shop, but a kill shelter in Newark – and a documentary about his summer with Jeffrey Epstein. Jost and Sherman continue to show off their oddly strong chemistry.
On a flight to Newark, a pregnant woman (Chloe Fineman) goes into labor. She and her husband ask if there’s a doctor on board, prompting Bargatze’s character to declare that he’s a lawyer. Pressed for what that has to do with anything, he explains that, while not as impressive as a doctor, lawyer is still “the second-best job.” This leads to a debate with the other passengers as to whether that’s true or not. A joke about the group’s disdain for teachers is funny, but there’s too much dead air throughout the rest of the sketch.
Following the second Foo Fighters set (featuring H.E.R.), in which they perform the song Rescued, about the passing of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins last March, the show wraps up with a new Please Don’t Destroy film. John and Mark disturb Ben by revealing that they’re on an all-dog food diet. A onenote joke, but its fast and funny.
Following an on-screen tribute to the late Matthew Perry, Bargatze and crew sign off. There was never any question that Bargatze would make good on his monologue, but it was unclear how hi lowkey style would translate to sketch comedy. He played everything as a variation on himself, which worked for the material he was given. Not a classic by any means, this was a roundly solid episode, and the best of the young season so far.