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GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME
If, like Sgt Joe Friday, you want "just the facts" then The Guinness Book Of Records is the place to look. Our man thumbing through a copy in the bookshop is Geoff Baker, and he has found something really rather remarkable...
When you're already honoured by The Guinness Book Of Records as the most successful popular music composer EVER, the most successful recording artist EVER, the writer of the most popular song EVER and star of the biggest stadium gig EVER, how do you better that?
If you're The Guinness Book Of Records you set a new record by dedicating two pages in your 1997 edition to the achievements of one man.
For this year's GBR, Guinness broke with its tradition of 40 years - which has essentially been to list staggering feats in lust a few lines - and set aside two pages for the records that Paul has bust for the Beatles.
And to give credit where it's due, it's interesting to note just how many of the Beatles' world beating successes featured by GBR were due to Paul's pen.
Looking through the Guinness spread here, you spy:
- Yesterday,
the world's most popular song with more than six million USA airplays
- Can't Buy Me Love,
winner of the biggest advance orders award (2,100,000)
- Hey Jude,
the "hands-down winner" as biggest-selling single (8,000,000 copies)
Just to make sure that Macca's not seen as any sort of slouch, Guinness also points how he drew 184,000 Brazilians as "the largest-ever stadium crowd" and then goes on to officially record the fact that "in 1996 the Beatles eclipsed their own Sixties glories in terms of worldwide sales and audience".
Do what?
"With The Beatles Anthology", says Guinness, "the Beatles have done what every band since the Beatles has been trying to do: beat the Beatles".
How? In 1996 the Beatles have sold more albums than they did during any year in the Sixties (20 million+). Along the way, Guinness instructs me, they "smashed" the world record for the biggest first week sales of any double album of all time (855,473)
And what's more, says Guinness, as Anthology 1 and Anthology 2 got to number one in the USA, the Beatles have now notched up 17 number one albums in the USA "more than any other band".
FACT: Three days after The Guinness Book Of Records 40th Edition was published, the Beatles made their own records obsolete - Anthology 3 went straight to the top of the USA charts, making it 18 number ones and another record, for three consecutive number one albums in the same 12 months.
This is extraordinary. Not only has NO other band EVER had three number one albums in a row in the USA, the last time this feat was achieved was in 1966, by the Beatles. Talk about Now And Then.
However, the importance of the success of the Anthology projects is much, much greater than the fact that Guinness has set aside two pages to record the Beatles' triumphs (and, for the record, this two-page spread is a record in itself - nobody's had that coverage before. Ever).
The importance of the Beatles' success in 1996 is not to highlight nostalgia because it isn't nostalgia.
In 1996, the Beatles sold more albums than they ever did during any year in the Sixties or at any other time. That means that the Beatles weren't lust something that happened then, the Beatles are something that's happening now.
You can argue this until the cows come home but the facts prove me right. As I said, the Beatles never sold 20 million albums in any one year during the Sixties. Nor, during the Sixties, did the Beatles (or anybody) turn on -televisually - such a huge audience. OK, sure, the 'All You Need Is Love' broadcast was watched by 350 million people. But the Anthology was watched by 418 million.
And, if you want to get cute about it, at no point during the Sixties were three short promo interviews (called EPKs, or Electronic Press Kits) made by the Beatles and watched in the USA alone by over one billion viewers. Fact.
The success of the Beatles '96 is much more exciting than a fondly-received review of yesterday. For, that this success is happening now, means - by definition - the Beatles are more happening now.
There's no other way of looking at it. How else do you explain 20 million albums, 418 million viewers and the fact that 41% of those who bought the Anthology albums were teenagers? Teenagers can't look back nostalgically, they weren't even born then.
No, 'what this whole Anthology/Guinness episode demonstrates is proof of a theme that I've touched on in these pages before - that the Beatles aren't something that was. The Beatles are something that is That is, that they are a fluid, growing and pervading influence and force, whose force, I'd wager, even they themselves do not yet realise.
The success of the Beatles in 1996 shows that the Beatles are not a past event. They are a
"WE WERE A GREAT LITTLE ROCK 'N' ROLL BAND"
- Paul McCartney
Beatles records? Are you kidding? They've got 'em in spades - but we couldn't possibly fit them all on these two pages. Here are some highlights of these all-time favorite record-makers (and record-breakers) extra-ordinaires!
YESTERDAY
"Such an easy game to play..."
- Yesterday
"Yesterday" has been played on the radio over 6 million times in the United States alone.
More than 3,000 covers have been made of "Yesterday," more than any other song. Artists range from Elvis Presley to Boyz II Men, Frank Sinatra to James Brown, Gladys Knight to Nat King Cole.
The song reportedly came to Paul McCartney in a dream. He woke up, went to the piano, turned on the tape recorder, and played the song, then spent the next few weeks trying to figure out whether he'd heard the song before or just made it up in his sleep.
Some dream… some rocord!
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