Fans and adoration

One Direction has hit Sydney.  Being an oldie and not much interested in modern music (as those who suffer my whistling can attest) I had not heard of these latest boy band heartthrobs from England until they landed in Sydney amongst scenes of mass hysteria.  However, I had to smirk at all the experts (how I have come to hate that word) who are jumping on the bandwagon of self righteousness and predicting dire consequences from the outpouring of looovvve that the young girls are heaping on these young lads.  One child psychologist actually stated that thirteen year old brains were still developing and this was not doing them any good and so parents should exercise more control on these young girls to stop them from hurting themselves.  What a lot of pish-tosh.

I might not have known who One Direction are but I certainly was alive when those other great heart throbs hit Sydney nearly fifty years ago.  I am talking about The Beatles, of course, and while I was never a screaming hysteric, I was as fanatical a Beatle fan as the next girl.  I actually rose from my bed at some ungodly hour and sat glued to the television to see them arrive in Sydney.  It was a dreadful day - the rain was teeming down and the poor Fab Four were put aboard a jeep, raincoats flapping and umbrellas turning inside out, as they were taken to the terminal.  (Before the building of the International Terminal, everyone had to walk down gang planks and along the tarmac to the terminal)  My mother wouldn't let me go to greet them, nor would she allow me to go and see them, which was sad.  She promised I could go the next time they came to Australia, but they never did - sigh. However, tens of thousands of girls did go to greet them - not only in the pouring rain in Sydney, but in every other city they played in.  The crowds in Adelaide were enormous and I believe half the city turned out to see them.  If we discount the oldies who would not have been interested, one could say that almost every girl in Adelaide was there to greet them.  Beatlemania had well and truly arrived. 

As stated, I wasn't a screaming fan.  When I went to see A Hard Days Night and Help, I wanted to hear every song and wonderful witticism uttered by my idols - not a bunch of idiotic girls screaming - but scream they did.  When the Beatles filmed A Hard Days Night, they invited fans to be the audience as they sang a number of brand new songs.  Not one of those fans heard a word - they were too busy screaming, so when the album came out each song was as new to them as it was to me.  Ah no greater love has a father who willingly sits in a picture theatre with his daughter to watch the Beatles - surrounded by hundreds of screaming fans, nor a mother who paid for any magazine that had a photo that I didn't have, nor Grandparents who patiently fended off my fanatical attempts to convert them to Beatle fans without losing their sense of humour.

All those screaming young fans would now be staid, dignified and sedate ladies in their sixties - just like me :-) and all that outpouring of love didn't affect our brains or cause us to implode. We're all fine (twitch, twitch) - and I have no doubt that this modern crop of screaming hysterics will be fine too- regardless of the experts' contrary beliefs.

Of course the Beatles weren't the only band to cause hysterics.  In the intervening years a number of bands have set the teenage hearts a-throbbing.  Most have not stood the test of time unlike the Beatles who have an acknowledged place within the history of music.  I wish One Direction well but only time will tell if they have the staying power and will still be thought of with affection by their fans fifty years on. 

And in the meantime - go girls go - take no notice of those who disapprove - and if any of the naysayers are women in their sixties then I say shame on you.  Have you forgotten what it was like when the Beatles came to town? Because I haven't.