Interesting comments, all! Thanks for posting them. Please forgive my long-winded responses. It's just great to see a discussion in this forum that isn't about whether X civilization isn't better represented by free Y or free Z.
Though Centurio takes it a bit extreme, there's a point to what he says: up until last century artists used to be quite poor, many whom we regard as legends today couldn't meet their basic needs.
Many were also quite rich. The 19th century image of the starving artist was pretty much limited to that century, and the artist's divorce from general Euro-American culture. There's been some research done, for instance, on incomes and life expectancies of composers over the last 400 years. They were quite high for the educated middle class until the 19th century hit, dropped precipitously, and rose above pre-19th century levels in the 20th. A lot had to do with the traditional employment of the composer by nobility and civic organizations, which declined in the 19th century. In the 20th, new venues (and government-funded programs) appeared.
The Beatles are possibly the first legend so big as to be hard to find someone who doesn't know them, who yet lived to see their own legend. That was new. That played with people's ambitions.
There have been many legends in the past, but they were limited to time frames of roughly 100 years or so, and to specific sets of nations. Franz Liszt, for example, was internationally known as a 19th century concert pianist (and secondarily as a composer) who became a legend throughout Europe and the US in his lifetime. Women threw themselves at him, and tried to cut off locks of his hair. The wealthy and powerful sought to become his friend. Cheap editions of his works were sold out everywhere, and his concert tours were always triumphs. Was he the Beatles of his day? Perhaps the Beatles were the Franz Liszt of theirs.
Today the fame and fortune draws many who are not in for artistic expression. I actually think Lady Gaga is a good artist in that she has something to express, there is a world of worse examples to point out.
Complete agreement. The only difference being that when the Beatles came along, rock music still wasn't an Industry, much less an Industry whose sleek product was a matter of packaging rather than content. The Monkees were just ahead, however, and so were many other, similar groups who (for the most part, and at the time) didn't play or compose their own stuff.
