Daniel Finkelstein, The Beatles, Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis and the dawn of commerce and consumption

When "Colonel" Tom Parker signed Elvis Presley on August 15, 1955 for a one year contract with renewals, he became an enduring symbol of the triumph of canny packaging over art, and a symbol for the nineteen fifties as the beginning of commerce and consumption and capitalism as the baby boom kicked in after the second world war.

While some saw Parker as a baleful influence on a singer who started out with such promise in his Sun Studios days, Parker tended Presley's image, turning him into a pop phenomenon and spinning off more movies than even his most devoted fans could endure (some argue Tickle Me is the worst, but they'd be the folk who haven't seen Change of Habit).

Oops, sorry, got that completely wrong. But halleluja, I'se seen the light.

According to Daniel Finkelstein, it wasn't Parker, it was Brian Epstein and The Beatles, as so cogently evoked in All you need is capitalism:

The reason why the influence of the 60s endures is because it was the dawn of modern consumer capitalism. It was this culture - of commerce and consumption - rather than the counterculture that made the era and now shapes our time. And of this era, Epstein was a symbol.

So long Colonel Tom, sorry Elvis, roll over Beethoven, another culture vulture loon with a totally pointless point to make is on the prowl. And how did Epstein produce this revolutionary bout of consumer capitalism?

Epstein transformed the Beatles into a professional showbusiness act. He put them in suits, protected their image, added theatrical touches to their stage shows, made sure they turned up on time.

You know, like show biz acts had been doing since the dawn of the twentieth century. Turning up on time? Revolutionary capitalist practice comrade!

Finkelstein blathers so much he even provides the internal incoherence and inconsistency to undermine his own argument:

Some of his early business deals were a disaster, it has to be admitted. He basically gave away the publishing rights of the Beatles songs and lost millions with a naive merchandising deal. Paul McCartney, surveying the damage years later, remarked that Epstein "looked to his dad for business advice, and his dad knew how to run a furniture store in Liverpool". But Epstein's insistence on controlling the quality of the products associated with the Beatles name was a masterstroke. It is possible to argue that the group's entire success has rested upon this. And that it remains, even now, the central plank of the Beatles' commercial strategy and an important reason that they have attained iconic status.

So as a businessman he was hopeless? So that's how he becoming an enduring symbol of modern consumer capitalism? And he was responsible for the quality control of the music? Or was responsible for the quality of the music? Like any time you listen to a Beatles tune, the first thing that springs to mind is Epstein's masterstroke quality control of the product? Sorry, George Martin, ain't got nothing to do with you.

Yep, however you cut it, it ain't got nothing to do with the music.

Appreciating the role of Epstein allows one to appreciate that the Beatles are as much a triumph of commerce as of art. They were not merely brilliant musicians fusing avant-garde influences with rhythm and blues music. They were a showbiz act managed by an inspired entrepreneur. They weren't simply class rebels against the establishment, they were the brilliant product of capitalist enterprise, the early pioneers of globalisation.

I guess that's why The Troggs and The Yardbirds never cut it, never broke really wide. They didn't have Epstein at the helm.

Now I mean no disrespect to Epstein. It was sad he overdosed in 1967, and it was also sad that he was gay in a time when staying in the closet was about the only socially acceptable way to behave.

And he did help the Beatles, but the bottom line to Finkelstein's rant is to blame Harold Wilson for everything that went wrong with The Beatles, based on a memoir by Tony Bramwell:

First told to give away vast amounts to avoid tax bills - which they did in a series of madcap ventures, offering money to any old person who dropped by with a demo tape - then told they had to make pound stg. 120,000 in order to keep just pound stg. 10,000. Soon their finances were in chaos and their energy sapped as nutters besieged Apple HQ pressing tapes on them. They also ran a clothes shop as a tax dodge.

Bramwell blames Wilson directly. "There were enough new regulations and red tape to tie up free enterprise for years ... One minute Swinging London was like a giant theme park, the envy of the world, then they - Wilson and his gang - closed it down. It was as if they went out and stamped on it."

Yep, never mind the relationship between Lennon and McCartney, never mind Yoko Ono, never mind the actual minutiae of the decline and demise of the band. Suddenly it's all the fault of Harold Wilson that swinging London closed down. As if they went out and stamped on it.

While we in the antipodes are currently enduring the legacy wars, Finkelstein's piece shows the cultural wars go on all over the globe. Ignorance and a lack of interest in actual culture is essential for their conduct. That's how you can arrive at this piece of blather:

Epstein was indeed a symbol of his generation. And I think understanding that helps to understand both the Beatles and the 60s. If you write the history of the 60s with a bigger role in it for Epstein, you write a different history of the 60s and see the present differently.

Not really. No more than I see the fifties differently because Colonel Tom got his talons into Elvis Presley.

The overweening attempt at significance and astonishing revelatory discovery is what gives the Finkelstein game away. He's just got an axe to grind, but the more he grinds away, the less sharp it is.

It's a bit like the nonsense we recently had to endure about Woodstock, which was either (a) a transforming moment in the world or (b) young people in a lot of mud.

In the old days, Finkelstein's ramblings would have been fish and chip wrappings the day after they'd been written.

These days they'll lurk on the intertubes, showing once again how The Australian likes to recycle product from Chairman Rupert's far flung empire, because yes, it was first published in The Times online under the header The Beatles were a triumph of capitalism And it was all down to Brian Epstein. It was his commercial flair that turned four musicians into a global phenomenon, on September 9th.

And Chairman Rupert expects payment for this kind of 'yech' nonsense, where music is yoked to cheap ideological points about the triumph of capitalism and the evil of Harold Wilson (loon that he was)? What next? Beethoven as the explanation for Napoleon? Shostakovich as the triumph of Stalinism? German expressionism as the cause of the rise of Hitler?

Fools and their insights are soon parted, and Finkelstein doesn't even get to first base. But I do so look forward to his exegesis on how Colonel Tom made Elvis Presley, Graceland and really bad movies the quintessential expression of the dawn of modern consumer capitalism in the fifties in the American heartland, as the evil vampire baby boomers were born and came to suck the soul from the world.

(Below: Colonel Tom Parker in festive mood Christmas 1978, ready to announce no one was getting a bonus but they could have an Elvis calendar. Story here).