Staging the Beatles: ephemerality, materiality and the production of authenticity in the museum

Abstract

This article examines how popular music and its material culture have been exhibited within museums. More specifically, it is concerned with how decision-making and processes within museums impact on how materials are interpreted and presented to museum visitors. The article uses one central case study relating to a highly mythologised moment within popular music history, claimed as the starting point of the Beatles. On 6 July 1957, John Lennon, member of the Quarrymen, was introduced to Paul McCartney at St Peter’s Church fete in Liverpool. Consideration will be given to how the church stage on which the Quarrymen played, along with a sound recording of their performance, have been presented within displays by National Museums Liverpool. Drawing on interviews with staff, the article will discuss how the curatorial and conservation treatment of the stage aimed to intensify its connection to a moment in history. It will also discuss to what extent a sound recording can capture and communicate the ‘presentness’ of a musical performance. The article raises a number of issues concerned with the production of authenticity, the ‘reliability’ of material evidence, and the extent to which sound recordings and material culture can enable museums to represence the past.

Keywords:

• popular music
• museum
• material culture
• authenticity
• the Beatles

Acknowledgement

This article is based on research conducted with Robert Knifton as part of the project ‘Collecting and Curating Popular Music Histories’. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Beyond Text programme and was conducted in partnership with National Museums Liverpool and the V&A.

Notes

1. . More broadly, within the field of museology, some studies have specifically addressed issues relating to the collection and display of popular culture (Moore 1997, Martin 1999).

2. See, for example, the websites: Home of Metal (www.homeofmetal.com), Birmingham Music Heritage (www.birminghammusicheritage.org.uk), British Music Archive (http://britishmusicarchive.com) and Derelict London, which has a section of the site dedicated to musical history landmarks (www.derelictlondon.com).

3. The Beat Goes On (12 July 2008 to 1 November 2009) World Museum Liverpool.

4. Unlike the stage, which failed to sell at auction, the guitar was sold in September 1999 for £155,500 (BBC News 1999).

5. An excerpt of this track is also used in ‘the Beatles Show’ in the Museum of Liverpool. A short clip of this recording is played as part of the audio-visual presentation in the theatre space where the Quarrymen stage is on display. The track is layered with other audio clips in a fast moving presentation involving sequenced projections of still images and moving image footage. There is not room in this article to discuss the distinct nature of this audio-visual presentation and so the discussion will be confined to when the recording used in the first display of the stage in The Beat Goes On exhibition.

6. Admittedly, I am taking Fried’s specific use of these terms and turning them to a quite different application. I do not wish to import Fried’s aesthetic arguments here but just to draw on the distinction between these terms.

7. As Fried (1998, p. 172) notes, the fact that music has duration, extending over time, is a complicating factor of this art form which prevents it from have the quality of ‘instantaneousness’ he allies with presentness.