THE SATANIC ROOTS OF ROCK.pdf

While in Hamburg, in June of 1962 the Beatles received a telegram from their manager,
a homosexual named Brian Epstein, who was back in England. "Congratulations,"
Epstein's message read. "EMI requests a recording session." EMI was one of Europe's
largest record producers, and their role in promoting the Beatles would be key in the
future.
Under the the strict guidance of EMI's recording director George Martin, and Brian
Epstein, the Beatles were scrubbed, washed, and their hair styled into the Beatles cut.
EMI's Martin created the Beatles in his recording studio.
Martin was a trained classical musician, and had studied the oboe and piano at the
London School of Music. The Beatles could neither read music nor play any instrument
other than guitar. For Martin, the Beatles musicianship was a bad joke. On their first hit
record, "Love Me Do," Martin replaced Ringo on the drums with a studio musician.
Martin said Ringo, "couldn't do a [drum] roll to save his life." From then on, Martin would
take the simple little tunes the Beatles would come to him with, and turn them into hit
records.
Lockwood and EMI
EMI, led by aristocrat Sir Joseph Lockwood, stands for Electrical and Mechanical
Instruments, and is one of Britain's largest producers of military electronics. Martin was
director of EMI's subsidiary, Parlophone. By the mid-sixties EMI, now called Thorn EMI,
created a music divison which had grown to 74,321 employees and had annual sales of
$3.19 billion.
EMI was also a key member of Britain's military intelligence establishment.
After the war, in 1945, EMI's European production head Walter Legge virtually took
over control of classical music recordings, signing up dozens of starving German
classical musicians and singers to EMI contracts. Musicians who sought to preserve the
performance tradition of Beethoven and Brahms, were relegated to obscurity while "ex-
Nazi" Party members were promoted. Legge signed and recorded Nazi member, the
late Herbert Von Karajan, promoting him to superstar status, while great conductors
such as Wilhelm Furtwangler were ignored.
From the beginning, EMI created the myth of the Beatles' great popularity. In August of
1963, at their first major television appearance at the London Palladium, thousands of
their fans supposedly rioted. The next day every mass-circulation newspaper in Great
Britain carried a front page picture and story stating, "Police fought to hold back 1,000
squealing teenagers." Yet, the picture displayed in each newspaper was cropped so
closely that only three or four of the "squealing teenagers" could be seen. The story
was a fraud. According to a photographer on the scene, "There were no riots. I was
there. We saw eight girls, even less than eight."(Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in
Their Generation, p. 188)
In February 1964, the Beatles myth hit the United States, complete with the
orchestrated riots at Kennedy Airport, previously mentioned. To launch their first tour,
the media created one of the largest mass audiences in history. For an unprecedented
two Sundays in a row, on the Ed Sullivan Show, over 75 million Americans watched the
Beatles shake their heads and sway their bodies in a ritual which was soon to be
replicated by hundreds of future rock groups.
On returning to England, the Beatles were rewarded by the British aristocracy they
served so well . In October 1965, the four were inducted into the Order of Chivalry, and
were personally awarded the accolade of Member of the British Empire by Queen
Elizabeth at Buckingham palace.