Discuss the ways in which the film culture of contemporary world cinema is promoted through journals, magazines and film festivals


Giles Jacob, former Cannes Film Festival director, once said “for twelve day a year in May, Cannes recharges the batteries of world cinema”. Stars, producers and press flock annually to the southern French city on the Rivera to preview the latest films throughout the genres. Cannes film festival has hit headlines since the start, from 1954 when French actress Simone Sylva flashed her bare chest for the cameras to Sacha Baron Cohen wearing a mankini on the beach in 2006. Cannes is, said Agnes Varda, ‘at once the pinnacle of cinema, and a big, vulgar bazaar’ (McGill, 2013). What started as a response to Fascist and Nazi propaganda is now is one of the most highly regarded, glamorous media events.

There are two other main competitive international film festivals as well as Cannes, both located in Europe, they are Venice and Berlin. The history of the international film festival is a very turbulent one, the Venice film festival was created by Benito Mussolini as a nationalist agenda to promote his fascists ideas of the time and “as part of his effort to make Italy the centre of European cinema” (Wollen, 2001). Whereas the first Cannes film festival, created to oppose and stand against the Venice counterpart, was interrupted on its first year by the Second World War but started up again in 1946.  In the post war period, festivals displayed films that could attract foreign distributors. Being successful at a festival gave a film an economic advantage and helped directors, producers, and actors became prominent and affluent. “Film festivals are important to the considerations of world cinema, as they facilitate cultural exchange between different “national” cinemas and provide an alternative global distribution network” (Chaudhuri, 2005, p3). As well as the profitable benefits of winning awards also it can boost an actors or directors credibility as an artist and creator.

As well as film festivals, journals and magazines can promote the culture and one of the most important journals on film is called Cahiers du Cinéma (Notebooks on Cinema). This magazine invented a fresh method of analysis of cinema and as well as starting the idea that ‘pop culture’ should be taken seriously as a part of artistic and philosophical reflection. Emilie Bickerton states that “Cahiers managed to build on the New Wave and redefined itself on successive occasions throughout the sixties and seventies, generating consistently radical critical writing and ideas on film” (Bickerton, 2011, p4). One of those most influential points that could be taken from the French magazine is that promoted the director as individual creator.

A nation’s film festival may create a new wave of film making, with the best coming from France and the Cannes festival. This point can relate back to Dudley Andrew’s Atlas of World Cinema and he use of the demographic maps as the Cannes festival is the central hub to all contemporary world cinema and, in turn, makes France more powerful than it would otherwise be in film making and cultural terms. Andrew states in his An Atlas of World Cinema essay that “the Parisian press of the 1920s invented a national tradition of French cinema with the support of the government and citizen-spectators” (Dennison, 2006, p12). France compared to Romania has nine times more cinemas so smaller countries such as the later need another ways to promote their national identity or culture through film. Winning at a foreign film festival is one way of promoting a state’s arts and literature, this could also help the start or enhance a new wave, with waves from Iran, South Korea and Argentina that were promoted by festivals. Other cases started with a single film, such as Cristi Puiu’s 2006 film The Death of Mr Lazarescu, that was premiered at Cannes 2012. The film won the Cannes Prix Certain Regard as well as awards at the Toronto Film Festival and others to help create a new Romanian wave. James Bell from Sight and Sound Magazine has stated that “Puiu’s film cut through the chatter at festivals across the world as piercingly as the siren from the ambulance that carried its dying protagonist from hospital to hospital had sounded through an uncaring Bucharest night.” (Bell, 2010). Films such as Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12:08 East of Bucharest and Cristian Mungiu’ 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days have came through this wave and remained successful, winning the Caméra d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and Won the Palme d’Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival respectively.

The British Film Institute are trying a more strategic approach of promoting at foreign film festivals, they have set up an organization called We Are Film UK, where “UK’s national and regional film agencies have come together for the first time to create a new internationally facing brand for UK film” (The British Film Institute, 2013). This set up has been initiated so that UK film makers can be showcased at film festivals to a wider audience, this then should in turn expand and escalate the profile of UK film industry and talent that surrounds it. BFI’s Head of International Isabel Davis states that “this exciting new brand will raise the international profile of UK film’s Gold Standard and ensure it continues to punch above its weight on the global stage. (The British Film Institute, 2013). We Are Film UK was launched at Berlin film festival 2012 and featured 19 UK produced films

International film festivals can create and promote a sense of community and identity when niche film festivals are curetted. The International Freethought Film Festival and The San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival are some of the most well known niche festivals. There are other niches such as disability festivals and human rights festivals. Paul Schradar, scriptwriter of Taxidriver, states that “by separating a select group of art works from the larger Dead White Male panorama, a critic can study the works as part of a subset, evaluating them by how they function in the subset.” (Film Comment. 2006). These specialized film festivals also serve for the widespread markets and, in a post-Fordist cultural economy, as well as niche and segmented markets.

With all these constructive and productive points coming out promoting contemporary world cinema through film festivals and the presentation of international films, there are some negatives. Some filmmakers, mainly non-western countries, have been criticized for producing their films specifically for film festivals to compete with their western rivals, Mark Cousins states that “Let me not be coy. We still parse the world by nations” (Dennison, 2006, p26). Some world cinema commentators suggest that the choices of the film producers such as subject matter and imagery are accommodated for western film festival tastes, and in a sense, have learned to play the game of how to create a film just for the festivals. Other critics suggest that even though this may happen, it is only used as a strategic tactic for surviving in the western climate and to be able to compete for production funds, but these films that are being distributed at film festivals may not be the representative of the film making or film culture coming out of that nation.

It can be conclude that the use of journals, magazines and film festivals can promote countries to showcase their talents in ways other platforms cannot, whether that’s a certain actor, director or style of making film. These three media outlines provide a financial and illustrious stepping stone for filmmakers to be able to exhibit their films to a wider audience and around the world. The festival film as Peter Wollen terms it, films that appeal to ‘festival audiences’. Emerging out of the negatives of the international film festival, it is as so far to say that a separate genre and style of film has been created, considered as the Festival Film genre. This is true of Wollen as he goes on to state that there is whole new genre of films – the Festival Film genre. Films in this genre were specially made according to their own rules and traditions in order to win prizes at Festivals. They were immediately recognizable as Festival Films by juries, critics and audiences alike. (Wollen, 2001). Jean-Michel Frodon identifies that “film festivals have become the circuits through which an idea of cinema other than that valorized by the market constantly circulates” (Cahiers du cinéma). Festivals, journals and magazines are significant and commercial centers supporting contemporary world cinema.


Bazin, André. Doniol-Valcroze, Jacques. Lo Duca, Joseph-Marie. 1951. Cahiers du cinéma. 1st ed. Paris: Phaidon Press.

Bell, James/The British Film Institute. 2010. Eastern promises. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/comment/festivals/eastern-promises. [Accessed 18 November 13].

Bickerton, Emilie, 2011. A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema. 2nd ed. London: Verso.

The British Film Institute. 2013. UK film industry unites with new brand ‘We Are UK Film’. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/bfi-news/uk-film-industry-unites-new-brand-we-are-uk-film. [Accessed 18 November 13].

Chaudhuri, Shohini, 2005. Contemporary World Cinema: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia And South Asia. 1st ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Dennison, Stephanie, 2006. Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. 1st ed. Bognor Regis: Columbia University Press.

McGill, Hannah/Film List. 2013. Cannes Film Festival 2013 highlights. [ONLINE] Available at: http://film.list.co.uk/article/50598-cannes-film-festival-2013-highlights/. [Accessed 21 November 13].

Schrader, Paul/Film Comment. 2006. Cannon Foder: Paul Schrader’s Cannon Criteria. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.filmcomment.com/article/cannon-foder-paul-schraders-criteria. [Accessed 18 November 13].

Wollen, Peter/New Left Review. 2001. An Alphabet of Cinema. [ONLINE] Available at: http://newleftreview.org/II/12/peter-wollen-an-alphabet-of-cinema. [Accessed 21 November 13].


In his book Youth Culture in Modern Britain, David Fowler has suggested that the Beatles were ‘young capitalist who, far from developing a youth culture, were exploiting culture by promoting fan worship, mindless screaming and nothing more than a passive teenage consumer.’


The Beatles main contribution to youth culture, it seems, was to generate what the Daily Telegraph christened ‘Beatlemania’

– David Folwer (2008, p168)

During the 1960s there was not a band as successful as The Beatles, during 1965 their Official Fan Club reached 80,000 members and the band gained number one hits on both side of the Atlantic. Even with all the commercial and critical triumphs there has been a lot of criticism of the integrity of their music. David Fowler proposed in his book, Youth Culture in Modern Britain, the idea that the band were just popular entertainers and questions wether they were had an influence on British youth culture. He stated that the Mod artists were more influential to the young generation around the country. On the other hand, other critics such as Ian McDonald believe The Beatles defined the 1960s, they produced the culture and single-handedly created pop music as we know it. Even the early Beatles records were more than standardized pop songs, they represented the general mood of the youth, emotions of liberation, joy and freedom.

Youth culture is described as a group of young people ranked together by their interests within their generation, this is backed up by Bryan Wilson, a sociologist who discussed youth culture in 1960s. Wilson (1970) defined the term as the autonomous behavior of the young. Fowler develops this point and states “youth culture transcends class; but age caused fractures within British youth culture at certain periods” (2008, p5). Youth culture is closely associated with the term fandom, which derives from the word fanatic. A person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious or political cause or person with an obsessive interest in and enthusiasm for a particular activity. This term can directly be used for Beatlemania in 1960s. John Fiske presents the idea of “fans create a fan culture with its own systems of production and distribution that forms a shadow cultural economy that lies outside the culture industries” (1992, p30). There were two stages to The Beatles’ career, the first stage for the group being a standardized pop boy band and the other period being drug and peace loving hippies. The progression into the second stage of their music career came around 1965 with their sixth album Rubber Soul as McDonald states “the day after the second session of Norwegian Wood, McCartney informed New Musical Express that he and Lennon had found a new direction” (2008, p162). This LP helped the band break away from their boy band roots of Motown covers and love ballads to instrumental experimentation and more meaningful ambiguous lyrics. Certainly before 1965 there is evidence for Folwer’s argument that the Beatles created their fan worship, they used a standardized pop formula to create three minute songs about love. These tracks appealed and targeted to younger females, who were a passive listening audience and Ehrenreich et. Al. goes on state there has been “no culture so strenuously and shamelessly exploits its children as consumers” (1997, p100). Artists like Elvis and Sinatra came before them with pre teen girl audiences but the difference with the Beatles is there was more teenagers around after a baby boom in early 1950s living in a more sexualised society and the band pounced on this situation. The Beatles were not apart of the counter culture of 1960s as many critics proclaim, they distrustfully exploited their youth culture audience for commercial gain as Fowler (2008) claims “they did about as much to represent the interests of the nation’s young people as the Spice Girls did in the 1990s”, who were the most successful group since the Liverpudlian band in 60s.

The Beatles created the film A Hard Days Night to coincide the release of the LP with the same name in 1964 as a marketing tool to advertise the album. The group used the film as a catalyst to carry on their fandom and portray how they wanted their fans to behave. The first scene in the film shows John, George and Ringo being chased around Marleybone station and they enjoy the chase as they laugh and joke while the group flee from thousands of pre teenage girls. This scene can be read as the Beatles encouraging their fans to act in this manor and create a frenzy and hysteria, Fowler goes on state “British beatlemania did generate some disturbing behavior. At several concert venues they played during 1963 and 1964, it was discovered afterwards that the seats were stained with urine” (2008, p2). The film captures beatlemania with shots of genuine fans as extras and using closes up them when the band are performing. Along with portraying scenes of beatlemania, the film was commercially successful with Slide stating that the film “set records at the London Pavilion by grossing over $20,000 in the first week, ultimately becoming so popular that more than 1,600 prints were in circulation simultaneously” (1985, p188) and “by 1971 the film was estimated to have earned $11 million worldwide” (Walker, 1974, p241). The success on this film helped advertise the score of film which was all Beatles records from the A Hard Days Night album and the record went straight to number one on its first week release.

The Beatles were not were not a voice of the youth culture during 1960s, critics such as Fowler explain all they cared about was selling records to their fans. He goes on further to say “The Beatles were not in any meaningful sense a reflection of youth culture during 1960s, Their appeal was chiefly to pre-teenage girls” (2008/p197-98). Other successful bands of the same era such as the Rolling Stones did not care much about voicing an opinion through their music, they were not concerned in acting as mouthpieces for young people. The leader singer of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger was quoted on saying in a TV interview with William Rees-Mogg that they were only interested in selling records and Fowler goes on to state…

The working-class youth were alienated by the representations of youth culture made in speeches by middle-class pop stars like Mick Jagger; and, to working class youth in Liverpool, the Beatles dalliance with hippie values in the late 1960s was too much to bear. (2008, p198)

This was a similar school of thought for the Beatles as later on his career, Paul McCartney commented on the lyrics to the his own penned song Can’t Buy Me Love, the lyrics go “can’t buy me love / everybody tells me so / can’t buy me love / no no no, no.” McCartney was later quoted “it should have been ‘Can Buy Me Love'” when reflecting on the perks that money and fame had brought him” (Badman, 2000). Statements as such determine the group be focused on selling records and looking to profit commercially. The group did not lead to rise to a youth culture, they had a following of a youth audience of passive teenage, mainly female. These fans who became surplus when the band finished touring Britain in 1965, Fowler goes on to state “in Britain Beatles fans were, in the main, girls of 10-14 who lost interest in pop culture at around 20 it is unlikely that group had as much of an influence older teenager” (2008, p168). By the end of 1960s they became detached with all from youth culture as they individually came recluses and only met up for studio sessions around London or at Lennon’s house.

David Fowler has a strong argument on The Beatles exploiting the culture and fans that surrounded them but others theorists and critics display contrasting views. Ian MacDonald believes The Beatles were at the forefront of the counter culture of 1960s, with a message they wanted to spread to the world of peace and love. The counter culture of the 1960s was the culture of those, especially of the young, who opposed the dominant values on the war in Vietnam, race relations, sexuality and women’s rights. Corry goes on to state “the Beatles became a major symbol of cultural transformation and the veritable leaders of the 1960s youth movement” (2010, p1). The Beatles personified the communal message of the 1967 Summer of Love through their music and fashion style, the band established major attributes of the embryonic counterculture. Corry explains the band attributed to “the maturing sensibility of rock music and [to the] greater personal freedom as expressed by physical appearance” (2010, p1). Earlier in their career, the Beatles fan base was mostly young pre-teenage girls but around the Summer of Love they were performing to an slightly older audience who wanted to make a change to the society they lived in. The band also contributed to attraction and interest in experimentation with drugs like LSD and heroin and Grunenberg expands this point by stating “one essential ingredient of the US counterculture was LSD” (2007, p45). The band went on to become the biggest commercial advocate for the psychedelic revolution with their revolutionary Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, later being named the number one greatest album of all time in numerous music critiques.

To conclude, The Beatles used their fandom to cash in and gain commercially instead of being the voice for the youth, Fowler claimed “the Beatles, who emerged in 1963 and generated a form of fan worship not seen in Britain before or after” (2008, p2). The fandom was needed to create the uncontrollable emotion and excitement for their fans of anticipation of seeing the Beatles live or buying their albums on release day as Ehrenreich et. al. go on to say “hysteria was critical to the marketing of the Beatles” (1997, p99). The fandom that was created by the band themselves may have been the making of their downfall as The Beatles feared for their personal safety while touring in the later stages of their career. The hysteria and commotion they birthed became too much to handle, they became “the first musical celebrities to be driven from the stage by their own fans” (Ehrenreich, Hess and Jacobs,1997, p86). Restricting themselves to the studio, the group lost their core fan base later on in their career and lost touch with their followers, Fowler explains “the Beatles alienated ‘Liverpudlians’ as their careers developed” (2008, p172) and therefor never really became the voice of the youth that they performed in front of. The Beatles needed to start their career as a standardized pop band in a need to gain a foothold within the music industry and they used a standardized pop formula to gain this, by releasing three minute songs of love and wearing identical clothing and hair styles. Once the group gained a fan base and critical recognition, they began to experiment and use techniques that were not seen in pop music before them. More importantly they created the music they wanted to play, but in the end their own manufactured fandom went too far as it resulted in death for the Beatles as a crazed fan named Mark David Chapman, who idolized John Lennon, shot the star in back on 8th December 1980.

The scene is nothing but absurd–a thousand groupies caught in an endless cycle of pathetic hero worship

– Daniel Nathan Charness (2010, p88)


Badman, Keith (2000). The Beatles Off The Record.

Barry, Peter, 2002. Beginning Theory – An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Charness, Daniel Nathan, 2010. BeatleBoomers: The Beatles in their Generation. 1st ed. Connecticut: Wesleyan University.

Corry, Jessica, 2010. The Beatles and The Counterculture. Journal of Student Scholarship, [Online]. Volume XII. Available at: http://joss.pages.tcnj.edu/files/2012/04/2010-Corry.pdf [Accessed 07 March 2014].

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Hess, Elizabeth. Jacobs, Gloria. Beatlemania. A Sexually Defiant Consumer Subculture? In Gelder, Ken and Thornton, Sarah, The Subcultures Read, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, pp.523-536

Fiske, John, 1992. Cultural Economy of Fandom. The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, 30-49. 1st ed. London: Routledge.

Fowler, David, 2008. Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c.1920-c.1970: From Ivory Tower to Global Movement. 1st ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Grunenberg, Christoph, 2007. Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in 1960s: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counter-Culture in the 1960s. 1st ed. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Horkheimer, Max. Adorno, Theodor W. , 2007. Dialectic of Enlightenment (Cultural Memory in the Present). 1st ed. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.

Jarniewicz, Jerzy. Kwiatkowska, Alina, 2010. Fifty Years with the Beatles. The Impact of the Beatles on Contemporary Culture. 1st ed. Poland: University of Lodz.

MacDonald, Ian, 2008. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties. 2nd ed. London: Vintage Books.

Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now. New York: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-5249-6.

Slide, Anthony, 1985. Fifty Classic British Films, 1932-1982: A Pictorial Record. 1st ed. Dover: Dover Publications.

Walker, Alexander, 1974. Hollywood England: British Film Industry in the Sixties . 1st ed. London: Orion.

Wilson, Bryan, 1970. The Youth Culture and the Universities. 1st ed. London: Faber.

The term psychedelic can be applied to the Beatles’ music and lyrics


‘At the bohemian fringe of our disaffected youth culture, all roads lead to psychedelia’

Theodore Roszak (1969, p155)

The psychedelic experience has been craved for centuries as human beings sought alternative consciousness experiences. At the turn of the 20th century, researchers such as William James and Havelock Ellis conducted experiments with the use of hallucinogenic agents, including nitrous oxide and peyote. Some fifty years later Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley undertook similar psychedelic studies, that as Theodore Roszak explained were “once again, the object was to gain a new, internal perspective on the modes of consciousness” (Roszak, 1969, p157). This was era when the term psychedelic was coined, between the early LSD pioneers but Dr. Albert Hoffman revolutionised the psychedelic experience in the 1940s when he discovered the hallucinogenic properties of LSD-25. The introduction of the drug would become a major catalyst in the evolution of the 1960s counterculture. The phrase psychedelic is commonly associated with the Hippie counterculture of the 1960s, with the movements’ peak at the Summer of Love in 1967. The subculture established their own communities as the “Hippie counterculture…strove primarily to develop a separate culture with its own morals, beliefs and lifestyles” (Wesson, 2011). This society of Hippies adopted the psychedelia culture; including psychedelic music, drugs and art. Psychedelic drugs, including LSD, were consumed to alter cognition and perception in order to explore the mind further than ordinary consciousness. The psychedelic music was inspired or influenced by the culture it was breaking out of as the purpose of the music was to reproduce and magnify the altered consciousness experiences by the use of psychedelic drugs.

The Beatles embraced the psychedelia culture into their own music, through their lyrics instrumentation use and album cover artwork. At the ‘Hippie’ stage of their career, during 1966 and 1967, they released two studio LPs. Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are viewed as two of the greatest albums of all time and through these LPs the band introduced many notable components of the psychedelic sound to a mainstream audience. These elements included non-Western instruments, innovative studio techniques and lyrics that made reference to drugs. Direct and indirect references to drug use can be found throughout the Beatles discography and the most prominent drug references can be found in the lyrics from 1965 onwards. This addition of drug references coincides with Lennon and Harrison both been introduced to hallucinogenic drugs such LSD at the start of 1965, although their use would not peak until 1967.

At the end of 1965 the band released ‘Day Tripper’ on a double A-side single with ‘We Can Work It Out’ on December 3rd. The term ‘day tripper’ is slang for a person who failed to fully embrace the hippy lifestyle, Lennon later explained the song was wrote as ‘an attack on ‘weekend hippies’ – those who donned floral shirts and headbands to listen to ‘acid rock’ between 9-to-5 office-jobs’ (Macdonald, 2005, p167). Lyrics like She was a day tripper, a Sunday driver yeah suggest a person who partakes in psychedelic drugs but on a Sunday for the day and then goes back to regular life on the Monday. McCartney goes on further to explain it was ‘a tongue-in-cheek song about someone who was a day tripper, a Sunday painter, Sunday driver, somebody who was committed only in part to the idea. Whereas we saw ourselves as full-time trippers, fully committed drivers, she was just a day tripper.” (Miles, 1998).  This song was known for the references to the rapidly increasing drugs based Hippie counterculture of the 1960s, but were disguised well as The Beatles clean cut image was still intact at the time of it’s release. Even though The Beatles and Lennon were not at the height of their use of hallucinogenic drugs, they embraced the counterculture from an early stage. The counterculture was influencing their own music as Macdonald explained ‘though Lennon had yet to launch himself into his full-scale LSD period, he evidently felt sufficiently versed in the ‘counterculture’ associated with the drug to poke fun at those who took without changing their outlook’ (Macdonald, 2005, p167).  In the next few years, the band’s music styles changed drastically as they completely incorporated and adopted the psychedelia culture, moving away from their boy band roots.

Revolver was released in the summer of 1966 on August 5th and is considered as one of the first psychedelic rock album. Many critics describe the LP as innovative and pioneering with DeRogatis explaining “Revolver, Pet Sounds and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn are relics of the first era of psychedelic rock and a shining testament to what can be accomplished in the recording studio when folks are fuelled on the potent drug of rampant imagination” (DeRogatis, 2003). Around the time of the release of Revolver, The Beatles had initiated a second pop revolution, associated with Hippies and the counterculture. MacDonald described this stage of the Beatles career as ‘The Top’ and further states that ‘In Britain, the fourteen tracks from Revolver were released to radio stations in twos and threes throughout July 1966, building anticipation for what would clearly be a radical new phase in the group’s recording career’ (Macdonald, 2005, p192). The album is known for its lyric and instrumentation diversity while also using new innovation in the studio with the latest technologies.

‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, most innovative song of the album, was only unveiled a few days before the LPs release but it was a fundamental track in the development of psychedelic music. Gilliland explains ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was one of the first songs in the emerging counterculture genre of psychedelic music’ (Gilliland, 1969). The song was written by Lennon, with help from McCartney who proposed the insistent drum pattern and supplied the backwards guitar solo. The unconventional lyric was inspired by Timothy Leary’s book ‘The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead and ‘yet of all Lennon’s LSD-driven songs, ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is most directly about the drug, commencing with a line from The Psychedelic Experience.’ (Macdonald, 2005, p188). Lyrics such as Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream, it is not dying, it is not dying refers to The Psychedelic Experience, that Lennon followed while taking LSD and on a trip. The direct referencing of the drug and the book in the song helped popularise LSD to a wider audience for significant public consumption. The song induced something of a social revolution as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows introduced LSD and Leary’s psychedelic revolution to the young of the Western world, becoming one of the most socially influential records the Beatles ever made’ (Macdonald, 2005, p188). Tomorrow Never Knows is considered as the catalysis of the psychedelia era for The Beatles, breaking away from their boy band image. It was also notable for being the first Beatles song not to use rhymed lyrics as they tried to branch away from the production of the conventional pop song.

The follow up to Revolver was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was released June 1st 1967. After growing weary and bored of performing live on tour, the band wanted to experiment with their music from the studio. Sgt. Pepper displays the beginning of McCartney’s ascendancy as the Beatles’ dominant creative writer and ‘in February 1967, McCartney suggested that the Beatles should record an entire album that would represent a performance by the fictional band. This alter ego group would give them the freedom to experiment musically’ (Moore, 1997). Hallucinatory agents heavily affected the band and how they created their music, at the time of Sgt. Pepper’s release Lennon had been consuming LSD for nearly two years. The album became the soundtrack to the Summer of Love, in the height of using hallucinatory drugs for the Beatles and the wider counterculture population, even though the band had already stopped touring. One of the standout psychedelic songs from the album was ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ and as MacDonald explained the songs ‘lyric explicitly recreates the psychedelic experience’ (MacDonald, 2005, p240). Even though John Lennon maintained the lyrics of the song were inspired by his son’s painting, there is strong evidence to suggest otherwise. The main reason why Lennon would protest the song’s innocence is that it was banned from being played on the radio by the BBC, but it is hard to argue for a song that contained the letters L, S and D that featured so prominently in the title during the peak of the Hippie counterculture at that time. Lyrics such as with tangerine trees and marmalade skies evokes a mystical, psychedelic countryside with the marmalade skies playing on the theme of marmalade can be made out of tangerines. The lyric suggest experiences of Lennon’s trips from LSD as ‘the imagery in the song is partly a reflection of John’s drug experiences’ (Turner, 2010).  Songs like ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ presents the audience a positive insight to the psychedelic experience which would appeal to a wide range of people both inside and outside of the Hippie counterculture.

The Beatles and other psychedelic bands of the mid 1960s frequently utilise non-Western sources such as the sitar and tabla as well as using melodies like ragas and drones of Indian music. There are many song examples of Indian influence throughout The Beatles discography, specifically noted in 1966 and 1967. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ is one such example as the song’s harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based upon a high volume C drone played by Harrison on a tamboura’ (Lavezzoli, 2006). Harrison was the one most influenced by India music and embraced Hindustani methodologies but Lennon’s captivation furthered the influences found in their music as ‘Harrison had been interested in this instrument since he’d heard it used to spice up of help! but it was new to Lennon who, sensitised by the ‘acid’ became fascinated by the exotic raga phrases Crosby played to him’ (MacDonald, 2005, p165). ‘Norwegian Wood’ and ‘Within You Without You’ are the most known songs from The Beatles psychedelic discography, in which George Harrison plays the sitar in both. Within You Without You became a great success and achievement as MacDonald explains the song is ‘the most distant departure from the staple Beatles sound in their discography – and an altogether remarkable achievement for someone who had been acquainted with Hindustani classical music for barely eighteen months” (MacDonald, 2005, p244). The song only featured Harrison from The Beatles as the rest of musicians were Indian instrumentalists based in London, with George Martin arranging an Indian string section.

Many of the Beatle’s album covers contained psychedelic art and imagery, including Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s. Features of psychedelic art included metaphysical and surrealistic subject matter, bright and highly contrasting colours, morphing of objects and themes into collages. The artist Klaus Voorman, a friend and sometime bassist of the band, created the photo collage cover for Revolver with a mixture of drawings and newspaper photos cuttings from various stages of the Beatles’ era. The cover art was a representation the type of music that was included on the LP as the cover ‘paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of a musical act pushing the boundaries’ (Jensen, 2011). The Revolver album is considered as a psychedelic surrealistic montage and the album cover symbolises this notion superbly with its striking collage of ink and photos. A year later, the more trippy, more colourful imagery of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was published to their audience. Just like the Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s cover artwork contained a photo collage that was representative of their new musical direction and as Julien explains ‘the idiosyncrasies of Sgt. Pepper’s cover were therefore a continuation of these new directions and a public announcement, of the most deliberate kind, that The Beatles, and their music, had undergone significant changes. (Julien, 2009, p198).  With the inclusion of their colourful military outfits, the band embraced the counterculture of the Hippies flower power. The representation can be seen in their trippy imagery, which was in full bloom by the summer of 1967. The multicolour military suits symbolised the psychedelic experiences of LSD trips while also representing the Hippie counterculture’s belief on the Vietnam War, by wearing opposing outfits of the American soldiers fighting for their country.

The term psychedelic can apply to the Beatles music during the years of 1966 and 1967. Around the Summer of Love, the band released material that carried heavy influences from psychedelic and Hippie counterculture. The Beatles already existing idolisation popularised the psychedelic culture to a wider scale and Marwick describes ‘key features of what began as a distinctive youth culture were welcomed into the wider culture’ (Marwick, 1999, p89). The albums Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s provided to a  mainstream audience the insight to the psychedelic experience through their lyrics, instrumentation use and album cover artwork. There had been no change in society as the future for psychedelic music carried through the generations. In the 1980s, rave culture swept across the world with similarities to Hippie movement of the mid-1960s as the youth and counterculture of the generation gathered together to partake in hallucinogenic drugs while trying to spread a message of love, indistinguishable to the 1960s. The Beatles publicised a psychedelic and Hippie counterculture to a mass audience which is still in effect today through influences on other cultures such the rave lifestyles of 1980s and the electro dance movements of 2010s.


Badman, Keith, 2008. The Beatles Off the Record. 1st ed. London: Omnibus Press.




DeRogatis, Jim, 2003. Milk It: Collected Musings on the Alternative Music Explosion of the ’90s. 1st ed. Massachusetts: Da Capo Press.

Engebaten, Linda , 2010. 1967: A Year In The Life Of The Beatles. 1st ed. Oslo: University of Oslo



Inglis, Ian. The Words and Music of George Harrison. Praeger, 2010.


Julien, Olivier, 2009. Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series). 1st ed. London: Ashgate.

Lavezzoli, Peter, 2006. The Dawn of Indian Music in the West. 1st ed. New York: Bloomsbury.


Marcuse, H. One-Dimensional Man. Routledge, 1964.

Marwick, Arthur, 1999. The Sixties: Social and Cultural Transformation in Britain, France, Italy and the United States. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford Publishers.

Masters, Robert, 1968. Psychedelic Art. 1st ed. New York: Grove Press.

Monika Kocot: The Indian Beatle(s): from ‘Norwegian Wood’ to ‘The Krishna Mantra’. Indian influences on the lyrics and music of the Beatles [Course Reader]

Bob Spitz, The Beatles (2006) p 160-6

Moore, Allan, 1997. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter-Culture. Faber, 1970.

Rubin, David, 2010. Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s. 1st ed. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Sheff, David, 2010. All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Turner, Steve, 2010. A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song. 1st ed. London: Carlton Books Ltd.

Walker, John, 1992. Psychedelic Art – Glossary of Art Architecture & Design. 3rd ed. Boston: G K Hall & Co.

Wesson, D R, 2011. Psychedelic Drugs, Hippie Counterculture, Speed and Phenobarbital Treatment of Sedative-hypnotic Dependence: A Journey to the Haight Ashbury in the Sixties.. 1st ed. Oakland: CNS Medications Development.


Audio Podcast

KRLA Pasadena, (2014). The Rubberization of Soul: The Great Pop Music Renaissance. [podcast] The Pop Chronicles. Available at: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19794/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2014].

Online Sources

UGO/K. Thor Jensen. 2011. Hidden Secrets Of Album Covers. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ugo.com/music/revolver. [Accessed 01 May 14].

University Papers


Throughout my time at University I wrote many essays and papers, for the most of the time I really enjoyed writing them. I wrote papers on many different subjects, such as Disney, contemporary world cinema, culture and society, The Beatles, the counter culture of 1960s, music culture and technology.

Even though I have now finished University I plan to carry on writing on Media subjects in an academic stance as I still find it very interesting.