Rock ‘n’ Roll: Is Beatlemcmia Dead?

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Reports of the death of Christianity, as Beatle John Lennon discovered this month, are greatly exaggerated. So, too, are reports of the show-business death of John Lennon. The exaggeration about the Beatles, though, may not be so fanciful. By the end of last week, with only two stops left on their 14-city North American tour, the boys were grossing as grandly as ever (roughly $100,000 a night), but there were signs that it had been too hard a day’s night.

In their two previous U.S. visits, the Beatles were virtually sold out by mail even before the tickets were printed. This time, part of the impresarios’ advance was ulcers. That is because three of the four Beatles are now married (traditionally suicide for teen-targeted acts), and because, as Manager Brian Epstein concedes, “they are not the novelty they were.”

John Lennon’s comments about the relative popularity of Jesus Christ and the Beatles (TIME, Aug. 12) proved less than consequential except in the South. Kids and disk jockeys built bonfires of Beatles’ records and artifacts, and 20 Texas radio stations maintained a Beatle boycott. During the Beatles’ only personal appearance below the Mason-Dixon line, in Memphis, a Christian Youth Rally was scheduled simultaneously. The free-admission protest exhibition drew more than 8,000 people; the Beatles (in two performances) pulled 20,128 at $5.50 a head.

At the same time that the box office was holding up, however, Beatlemania seemed to be on the wane. The airports were not staked out with hysterical hordes awaiting the boys’ arrival; their hotels were less under siege. In New York City last week, cops counted only about 500 kids gathered around the hotel v. 10,000 the year before, and the Beatles’ trip to Shea Stadium by armored truck seemed dictated more by showmanship than necessity. True, two girls did threaten to jump off a Manhattan hotel roof in the Beatles’ honor. But the girls were combing their hair while the crowds gathered, and it was taken as a sign of the times that they chose a 22nd-floor setback of the building and not the 50th floor. Clearly, Beatlemania has seen greater heights.