Was there a Beatles 'backlash' in the late 70s??

And there was a big Dave Clark Five boom in the late 70s, then? Almost all the replies here proclaim "yes, there was a backlash, I was in school and nobody liked them" well, big news, fellas, nobody in school likes music from 15 years ago. There was no Beatles backlash in the 70s but there's a mini "Beatles backlash" every year in every school.

 

Well, funnily enough, yes. The Dave Clark Five, Twenty Five Thumping Great Hits album came out in 1978 and was a huge seller.

 

I believe 'Love Songs', 'Hollywood Bowl', 'Rock and Roll Music' were huge sellers in 1976,7 and 8 as well.

 

Definitely not here. The Sgt Peppers LP re-entered the charts in 1976, reaching #4. The White Album reached #23 two weeks after John's death. Indeed, John's death created a major resurgence in Beatles and solo records that lasted well into 1983. Only Love Songs could be considered a failure, reaching only #59 (even Star Club reached #24).

 

What I remember from end of the 70's/beginning of the 80's is that all boys at school listened hard rock and heavy metal, and Beatles were considered very old fashioned and very soft band, so no one took them seriously. There were only two girls in my school, fanatic Lennon/Beatles fans, and everyone considered them strange and crazy

 

I've always understood that especially George seemed to think there was a Beatle backlash every now and then, especially in the UK. But then, he was always a bit grumpy...

 

I think that was more of a press thing than a public thing. I know that Lennon always felt the British press gave him a harder time than the US press during the 70s. They were fairly relentlessly negative about most solo Beatle product. I can remember a Charles Shaar Murray article in NME (probably) that was written to accompany the release of London Town which was just viscious. I was 13 at the time and a big Beatle and Macca fan and I was horrified and upset so that kind of stuff can't have been easy for them personally.

 

My oldest brother was a chef at Birmingham University and Wings were put on by the students union in a hall that held hundreds max capacity. They could hardly give tickets away. My Brother, a big beatles fan did not bother to go for free. I have been shot down in flames before for saying this, but I still feel that a few Wings lps are better than some Beatles albums. That could definitely be about how I first heard them. I got fed up of my brothers Motown and Beatles records on all the time, and listened to Wings at a Friends house from his dads lp when I was 11. I started buying my own Beatles albums after reaching 40.

 

If there had been any anti-Fab Four backlash in the late 1970's, it may well have been in part due to the flop film adaptation of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, and an all-star cast. I remember well that during the Fall of 1978 WYNY (97.1 FM) in New York was playing nothing but Beatles records. There was also the musical Beatlemania on Broadway (the film adaptation of which would later be judged as one of the worst films ever made). Maybe the resulting oversaturation did it at the time . . . ?

As for me, I've dug their music, but then again . . .

 

That was not widespread by any means. They continued having #1 hits.

 

I was around 20 then. All I remember was that the solo Beatles production was really not that hot any longer, Ringo's novelty/retro stuff played A LOT in the lounge room (old farts) of the hotel where I held a summer job (1978), and the National Lampoon mag flamed the Beatles with a special issue around that time (1979/80?).

 

If anything, those productions only served to remind us how great the original recordings were...

I remember the Beatles being VERY popular in the '70s, although their solo careers did begin waning around '77, as others have mentioned. But the Beatles' group recordings (and image/personalities) were as popular then as always. The magic hadn't faded (and still hasn't, actually).

I had one of these around '76 or '77:

 

Not a backlash, but they weren't as cool. Ringo's solo career was off the tracks, John was supposedly "baking bread" and so on. Popularity goes in cycles as well IMO.
I think George and Paul made great solo music in the late 70s, though.

 

Well, the late 70's was punk and disco, and the Beatles weren't 'retro-cool' yet..........................among music fans they've always been revered, but for most people they were a little passee at that point................what was just starting to spread was the interest in the different takes/mixes, mono v. stereo etc., some people had always been interested but it was sort of coming out into the open, and you had Record Collector magazine starting in '79 in the UK, which grew out of The Beatles Book which was a reprint of the original fan club material...............

 

In the UK, with things always moving so fast, that fatigue was already there in the early 70s. The 1973 red and blue albums did bring a new surge of interest but they were seen as being old fashioned and anchored in the 60s. However, they were stilled adored by everyone (in our genes). Once punk kicked in, they certainly faded way into the background, although my interest was re-kindled with the "Rock & Roll Music" compilations. I remember Paul particularly being seen as a boring old fart.
The big comeback was when the 20th anniversary re-releases came out with all the singles in those green sleeves in 1982. I remember London buses adorned with posters featuring just a black and white photo of the band with "It was 20 years ago today" across them. The Beatles were BACK!

 

Well, backlash might be too strong of a word, but in my school there were definitely people who weren't fans. It was cool to like Kiss, Led Zep, Rush, and even ELO. The Beatles, not so much. Even with their high-profile releases (Rock & Roll Music, Hollywood Bowl, etc) , or perhaps because of those releases, there were naysayers and some were fairly vocal about it. I remember one little twerp telling me, along with the entire class as he was little but had a big mouth, "It was easy for the Beatles because they were the first to do it". Whatever that really meant. I told him if it was so easy then he should go out and be the first to do something.

I don't think any of the dislike actually had to do with the music, but more because people thought they were passé. More than one person told me that I listened to old music. I told them it wasn't old to me (it still isn't).

 

Same here; I listened to my older sibling's Beatle records, but although Paul's 'Silly Love Songs' and 'Let em In' were played to death on the radio, my narrow age group was into "our" music: Kansas, Boston, LZ, etc...

 

Well, I don't always check Wikipedia, I just speak to what I remember things to have been, and it seemed to me that McCartney and Wings were experiencing a dip in their profile in the late 70's, specifically during the time of Back To The Egg. I don't consider '76 to be "the late 70's." London Town was certainly "late 70's" in 1978 but the problems, however brief, occurred subsequent to that. BTTE may have went platinum but it was still a far cry from BOTR and WOA when Wings was this massive superstar act. Now of course McCartney remained a superstar regardless but I do think that the difference between 12X Platinum and 1X Platinum is significant, even if many other artists would have killed to get 1X Platinum.

 

there was so much going on
it wasn't an organized backlash
it was more benign neglect
with all the AOR, pop, punk, disco, rap, funk, new wave, etc., going on
this was the era of the mega sales of Boston, Frampton, Saturday Night Fever, Cheap Trick, The Knack etc.,

 

This seems correct to me. If anything, the Beatles simply didn't dominate the scene as they had at other times, but it wasn't like people rejected them.

 

Not true at all.

 

I wouldn't say there was a backlash; there simply wasn't much to get excited about. Beatles fans weren't well served in the Seventies after the breakup. The only genuinely new official Beatles release was the Hollywood Bowl album; the rest was just repackaging.

Neil Aspinall should have taken the opportunity to finish the film of The Long And Winding Road (AKA Anthology). I remember feeling frustrated when The Rutles was shown on TV, as so many sequences were based on real film clips we'd once seen but no longer had access to. It was only after Lennon's death that they started showing them again: a high price to pay.

 

Seconded.

 

I was living smack dab in the heart of Louisiana (transplanted) during the late 70s. This made keeping up with what was considered "cool music" more difficult. No backlash noticed by me.

 

Sorry, pedant alert but the green sleeves were the 1976 reissues when they all came out at once. A number of the singles re-charted in the UK at the same time along with Yesterday and Back In The USSR, which had never previously been issued as singles here. The 20th anniversary reissue programme started in 1982 with Love Me Do on a red Parlophone label and in a picture sleeve. All of the subsequent singles were also issued in picture sleeves on their respective anniversaries though few of them went top 40 after Please Please Me as far as I can remember.