The one thing I just can't stand about The Beatles story. Why the screaming? For a band that produced perhaps the greatest popular music ever, their fans seemed hell bent on deafening out any sound of it.

So a few questions

Can anyone point to a specific date when the screaming started?
Did non-stop screaming start with The Beatles? If so, why?
Did The Beatles kill this fad by merely growing moustaches?
It's just annoying. Did anyone at the time ever suggest to these girls just to shut the hell up?

Quoted from Out Of Me Head

The one thing I just can't stand about The Beatles story. Why the screaming? For a band that produced perhaps the greatest popular music ever, their fans seemed hell bent on deafening out any sound of it.

So a few questions

Can anyone point to a specific date when the screaming started?
Did non-stop screaming start with The Beatles? If so, why?
Did The Beatles kill this fad by merely growing moustaches?
It's just annoying. Did anyone at the time ever suggest to these girls just to shut the hell up?

Great questions.  

1. I don't think any screaming was going on in Hamburg, but it seems like there might have been some as early as the Cavern days? They probably perpetuated it with their on stage antics at the time.

2. I think it started with Frank Sinatra and then Elvis. And there were probably a few in between. But I think the Beatles fans were the most insane. Although my mom tells me a story about my aunt wanting to climb up the fire escape to Frank Sinatra's hotel because she was so crazy about him. So who knows!

3. I love the mustache theory. That's hysterical. I think they had already stopped touring by then, but yeah, the mustaches were probably icky to all the screaming pre-teens. Either that, or their fans finally grew up!

4. I've always wondered why one of them didn't just hell: SHUT THE HELL UP!! But I think they were just too polite to do that! That, and they were pretty awed by it. At first.

Still, it's great that their fans went so crazy. It's a phenomenon really. I don't think we'll see anything like it ever again. Makes them more legendary.  

I think you are looking for something like this (on YouTube - only about 30 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPlWBKKm21Q

Quoted from Out Of Me Head

Did anyone at the time ever suggest to these girls just to shut the hell up?

John, I think, did just that on stage a few times when he was sufficiently fed up. No one heard him, of course.

Quoted from Geoff

John, I think, did just that on stage a few times when he was sufficiently fed up. No one heard him, of course.

I think it was their Miami performance or something when Paul was talking and they started screaming John says: shut up while he's talkin'! Or something like that. But it was always sort of tongue in cheek. Pretty good restraint on John's part overall. The mentally challenged (newspeak?) imitations were pretty harsh though. But I think those went over most of his fans heads at the time.  

Ah, there it is on YouTube. Didn't realize that's what you posted douglaslee! I love it!

The hysteria i think looks a little silly today . It did however cover up a lot of the limitations of their sound system .

I think Paul actually encouraged the screaming with his stage comments. He pretends to be trying to quiet them down, but very reliably it only serves to egg them on, and I'm pretty sure he knew how to play that instrument too!

A co-worker of mine says he remembers his sister doing the same thing over Elvis.  I guess some artists just kind of have that effect over their fans.  The only other artist I can remember people really flipping out over is Michael Jackson (let's not go there)!

As a performer, I would be flattered to an extent, but of course it would be very frustrating while you are trying to play and no one is listening.  Then again...without those screaming fans...you wouldn't be where you are!  

I would have shot them all dead

Make sure to wear a bullet proof vest around PaulieBear  

i dont know if this is true, as my dad told me this, but he says that sometimes, on stage, they would just stop singing and mouth the words because they knew no one could hear it anyway. does anyone have any fact to back this up, or is my dad delusional? (which is probably true either way.....)

I read somewhere that they would play the wrong chords because they knew no one was really listening. OR not even play the note at all.

Quoted from HeatherBoo

Make sure to wear a bullet proof vest around PaulieBear  

why bother, no one would hear me creep up on them! they would be screaming TO LOUD

well, can you really blame them? i would have done a lot worse..............  

i own the anthology cds and they were playing the song help! at Blackpool Night Out. John sang the wrong line, and people didn't care. and i think they did some major work on trying to get the screaming out.

The screaming was the most obvious manifestation of the hysteria the Beatles created. If you didn't have the screaming you wouldn't have had the hysteria, and no hysteria would have meant only a fraction of the attention the band attracted. They would be remembered as just another good band with good tunes, nothing more. The whole course of their history would change.
The screaming wasn't just an unfortunate consequence of Mania-era Beatles. It was The Beatles.

Quoted from Kevin

The screaming was the most obvious manifestation of the hysteria the Beatles created. If you didn't have the screaming you wouldn't have had the hysteria, and no hysteria would have meant only a fraction of the attention the band attracted. They would be remembered as just another good band with good tunes, nothing more. The whole course of their history would change.
The screaming wasn't just an unfortunate consequence of Mania-era Beatles. It was The Beatles.

Very true. It's the major thing that distinguishes them from other groups of the time. Gerry And The Pacemakers, unlike The Beatles, first three songs went to No.1, but they never had a top 30 hit after '65. The Tremelos (signed by Decca instead of The Beatles) had hits all throughout the 60's but are hardly even considered as a footnote in that decade. These groups, for one reason or another, did not attract the attention from the fans that The Beatles did. Whether that's down to personality, musical ability, or sheer luck is anyone's guess.

Screaming, huh?  Well, here are the Beatles at a Rolling Stones concert:

Quoted from Hello Goodbye

Screaming, huh?  Well, here are the Beatles at a Rolling Stones concert:

Great pic!!

These guys, jeesh...

Great pic lol!

The screaming is insane.  It's like George said on the anthology doc, the Beatles were peoples excuse to go mad.  The years it was happening self expression was non existant and everyone was expected to act very straight laced.  So here was an outlet for people to lose there heads and get away with it...at the beatles expense.  Being able to scream like that back then would probably have felt pretty liberating.

I love the clip on VH1 Classic where they ask Bob Geldof what he remembers about Beatlemania and he says the smell of piss LOL!  All these girls would get so wound up when they appeared on stage that they would faint and immediatly piss themselves.

That pic is classic, I love it!

The smell of piss... wowsers!

LOL! Perfect pic, HG!

Nice historical reflection, Kevin and BM. I have to say that _I_ got interested in the Beatles because of Beatlemania. It was just so _weird_. So I kept looking into it and fell in love with the boys along the way.

I think the screaming is a candidate for one of Dawkins' "mind viruses". It's like the phenomenon when suddenly every teenage boy in the country was wearing his baseball cap backwards. There was no memo; they all just did it. Same thing with the screaming. You'd get the stories of these girls, and they'd say (I'm paraphrasing one I remember in particular): "It was my first concert and I wasn't sure what to do. And everyone around me was screaming so I just assumed that's what you did." I don't think they were crazy; I think it's part of that peer-pressure/example/fad thing. Here are the Beatles, you scream.

Yeah, fans were annoyed even at the time that they couldn't hear the band. But the screamers made the phenomenon, as Kevin said. I wonder if this was their equivalent of MySpace-- show up being a hysterical, screaming fan, and there you are, out in all the papers. You're a contender!

Quoted from fan numero uno

i dont know if this is true, as my dad told me this, but he says that sometimes, on stage, they would just stop singing and mouth the words because they knew no one could hear it anyway. does anyone have any fact to back this up, or is my dad delusional? (which is probably true either way.....)

I believe John said they did this, but he might have been lying. At other times he said they really did sing, so you can choose. Still, I think it was discouraging to all of them except Paul (who I think was having a whale of a time regardless) that they couldn't be heard. They were quite enthusiastic after they played Atlanta with its new good sound system. If all the concerts could have had the good sound, I think they mightn't have tired of touring so quickly.

Quoted from harihead

"It was my first concert and I wasn't sure what to do. And everyone around me was screaming so I just assumed that's what you did." I don't think they were crazy; I think it's part of that peer-pressure/example/fad thing. Here are the Beatles, you scream.

It's akin to a mob mentality. One starts, everyone follows. It's how riots gain momentum. Remember those clips from old western movies? A barroom brawl starts off with two people shoving each other, and before you know it the whole bar is a war zone.

Been in a couple of those bar fights myself....

Alcohol can be an evil drug  

Quoted from BlueMeanie

It's akin to a mob mentality.

I'm a complete idiot when it comes to mob mentality. I mean, it fascinates me, but I don't understand it in the least. I can be the one person standing there while everyone else is going insane, saying, "What's up, dudes?"

And you remember the proverb: "He who keeps his head while all others are losing theirs is inhibited."

Well, I think -and this is just me personally- that it was a way for girls to release sexual tension. I mean, think about it, teenage girls were very repressed at that time and they were supposed to be coy and "hard to get". I think screaming at a Beatles concert was just a way of letting loose. You never saw young guys screaming at, oh, I dunno- Brigitte Bardot.

Quoted from Mairi

You never saw young guys screaming at, oh, I dunno- Brigitte Bardot.

I think the guys in Paris 1963/4 kind of "freaked" the Beatles a little.
(more guys than girls plus the guys yelling "Beatles".)

Heh! Good point.

So what was up with those French kids? Were they unisexual screamers, males releasing sexual tension, or was it just the "cool" fan thing to do?

Quoted from mysterymagic

Great pic lol!

The screaming is insane.  It's like George said on the anthology doc, the Beatles were peoples excuse to go mad.  The years it was happening self expression was non existant and everyone was expected to act very straight laced.  So here was an outlet for people to lose there heads and get away with it...at the beatles expense.  Being able to scream like that back then would probably have felt pretty liberating.

I love the clip on VH1 Classic where they ask Bob Geldof what he remembers about Beatlemania and he says the smell of piss LOL!  All these girls would get so wound up when they appeared on stage that they would faint and immediatly piss themselves.

That's the way to remember The Beatles!

note there was no screaming when the beatles played some other guy on the anthology

Quoted from Mairi

You never saw young guys screaming at, oh, I dunno- Brigitte Bardot.

Being sexually attracted to performers is definately a girl thing. BB would get the same response from guys whether she was a superstar or the lady that cleaned the toilets. Conversley, no amount of good tunes is going to make Nana Maskouri attractive.
Every guy that picks up a guitar knows the chances of himself getting laid just went through the roof. I don't know many guys whose sexual opinion of a woman would change just because she pulled out a six string.
Maybe too guys don't get "pent up" the way girls do. We have a quick release system far more efficent than your convaluted (and frankly overly labour intensive) method.

Quoted from Kevin

no amount of good tunes is going to make Nana Maskouri attractive.

What are you saying!??

Quoted from ringostarr1983

note there was no screaming when the beatles played some other guy on the anthology

That was in late 1962 before Beatlemania kicked in.

Though Pete Best said some screaming took place as early as 1960.

Still, what with the TV cameras, and possibly being a lunch time crowd with "older"  "working" girls there, maybe it wasn't a good setup for a scream fest.

I'M GUILTY! I was listening to my Anthology CDs, like usual, but on comes I Saw Her Standing There, and I started screaming! My friend was with me, and she laughed at me.

Quoted from freakchic9

I'M GUILTY! I was listening to my Anthology CDs, like usual, but on comes I Saw Her Standing There, and I started screaming! My friend was with me, and she laughed at me.

yep, there's defintly something about them!  

When watching footage I don't scream but I find myself tearing up alot.  
In a good way though!