October 1960: Number 8 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of pop music
In October 1960, a German student took five young Britons to a Hamburg fairground for a photoshoot. Astrid Kirchherr had only just met the Beatles through her friend Klaus Voormann. She was determined to find common ground through the language barrier.
Many of the negatives are now lost but one group shot remains: caught in a grid of metal, the Beatles stand and sit in a line. Dressed in leather, jeans and boots, they could be a street gang, were it not for the sharp intelligence of their faces. They're not sleazy deadbeats but existentialist heroes.
In Kirchherr's photograph, the Beatles came into focus for the first time. It came at a crucial historical moment when black American music, as played by Britons, came up against the continental avant garde aesthetics embodied by Kirchherr and her friends.
That triangulation resulted in the beginning of pop modernism. The next year Stuart Sutcliffe, and then John Lennon and Paul McCartney, swept forward their 50s' rocker haircut into the pilzen kopf (mushroom head) style, and the western world soon followed.
Leonor Varela Joanne Montanez Michelle Obama Kerry Suseck FSU Cowgirls
No comments:
Post a Comment