Teen boys who disliked The Beatles
The Tony Smerko character is actually quite realistic in some ways. There were some teen boys, especially "greasers" and juvenile delinquents, who hated the Beatles. Some of the boys in my high school were that way but others, like me, welcomed the new music, hair, and clothing styles. I wore a black sport jacket, a deep red shirt, and a red and white psychedelic checkered tie at a high school dance and all of the girls admired it. A female exchange student from Argentina fell in love with me at that dance. At school, I'd sometimes wear the red shirt with the black dickie that was sold with it. By the next week, I saw some other boys dressing in a similar "Mod" fashion. I remember talking to a guitarist (member of a band that played at a school dance) who had to play "Just a Little" by the Beau Brummels. He hated the long Beatles style hair and the music but knew they couldn't get gigs unless they kept up with the times.
These critics didn't have much of an impact because the British Invasion was like a tidal wave. I loved the scene when Smerko was going to destroy the antenna and a lightning bolt destroyed the axe.
Smerko: "Fifty million TV sets are all gonna go black, and there ain't a damn thing that you or anybody else can do about it!"
Lightning strikes the axe and Smerko falls to the rooftop.
Smerko: "OK! All right! You want 'em? You got 'em. You got 'em."
Tony is directly addressing God. Two more lightning strikes happen.
Smerko: "Oh Sh*t!"
Tony runs from the rooftop.
I was in High School when I first heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in late 1963. I don't think the song was released in America yet but the DJ from New York was very enthusiastic about it. I didn't need to be guided by his opinion because I liked the song while it was playing. It was so fresh and innovative, unlike a lot of the record company rock and roll that was pumped out in the early 60's. Because the record companies controlled rock and roll in that period, if one song was a hit, they demanded that other songs by a group be like it. Most of the groups didn't write their own music. Brill Building music was called that because many of the songwriters worked there. Motown was similar in that many songs were written by Holland, Dozier, and Holland or Smoky Robinson. There were some good songs but so many of them sounded alike. Although The Beatles did cover some early American rock and roll, they soon began writing their own songs. The same thing happened with other British Invasion bands and the American Garage Rock bands that followed. That's why that era became known as Classic Rock.
Unfortunately, the teen female fans were so loud and adoring that you often couldn't hear the music. Fan is short for fanatic: "a person whose strong admiration for something is considered to be extreme or unreasonable". I didn't care if The Beatles liked jelly beans or what their favorite color was. If female teens drowned out The Beatles' music with their screams, they destroyed what was most important.
Monsters from the Id