Elvis, the Beatles, and Dylan's influences on young women (Katie Kunik)
The idea of the younger generation only liking what their parents hate is a large reason for the success of Elvis and the early Beatles. The sexuality of the singers played a large part in the disapproval by parents of this music, as well as their fear for change. In “The History of Rock and Roll� DVD, the idea of the artist doing something unique was the key to success. This is what made singers like Elvis, Dylan, and the Beatles so huge. They all started out playing mostly covers of other bands, but they each did something to tweak the music, or at least to change the way the music was performed to make it their own.
Along with the changing roles of women in the 1950s and 1960s, and a society on the verge of a sexual revolution, much of the fan base for Elvis and the Beatles belonged to the young females. The sexual hinting Elvis provided with his hip gyration made the young girls flock to him. In Barbara Ehrenreich’s article, she says of the Beatlemania movement that it was the “first and most dramatic uprising in women’s sexual revolution� (524). The Beatles sang songs like “Please Please Me� with an obvious sexual undertone. These sexual messages made it impossible for them to be accepted by the adults of society, which in turn made it impossible for the younger generation not to like them. The irony of this idea of going against the grain was that it became very conformist.
I think this is why women had a different response toward folk singer, Bob Dylan. His voice was certainly not as appealing as the Beatles’ or Elvis’, which may have turned off the young females. His songs were also much more political than Elvis’ or early Beatles’ songs, which was too much the young conforming females to grasp. Dylan himself appealed more to the bohemian crowd, although his songs were very widely known, and many of them were covered by other artists. This led the way into a cultural rebellion when so many other musical artists announced Dylan’s anti war messages through their own versions of his songs during the Vietnam War era.