The Beatles, Woodstock & Rock 'n Roll: Still Seeking Pepperland's Hip Utopia

Very simply, the Yellow Submarine follows the Hero's Journey pattern described by mythologist Joseph Campbell, which I know you want to talk about later.

This classical framework is thanks to Erich Segal, author of "Love Story" and professor of classics at Yale, who was one of the scriptwriters on The Beatles Yellow Submarine. It's a story of good vanquishing evil, but doing so with a twist.

The plotline essentially starts in a utopia called Pepperland that is attacked by an army of cartoonish monsters called Blue Meanies who hate color and music. The Pepperlanders send out the Yellow Submarine with Young Fred/Old Fred at the helm, in search of help for their besieged land.

The Submarine finds The Beatles in Liverpool, and through a long series of misadventures, they finally return to Pepperland and are able to rescue the inhabitants using their special magical powers combining love and music.

Most importantly, instead of killing or defeating their enemy, The Beatles and their colleagues in Pepperland transform their enemies into allies through the power of love and friendship.

MAB: I love that, Laura! It brings to mind one of my favorite quotations, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend."

Robert Hieronimus Ph.D: In our book we provide an unusual plot summary that is not a blow-by-blow of all the action in the film, assuming most of our readers will already be fans. Instead, we pause at certain sections and analyze them symbolically.

For example, when traveling with The Beatles to bring them from Liverpool back to Pepperland, the Yellow Sub passes through several Seas of Illusion, each one animated to a different Beatles tune. They pass through the Sea of Time to the tune of "When I'm Sixty-Four" and they enter a time warp where they go backward and then forward in time. This allowed us to examine the nature of time itself and parallel universes.

The next scene is the Sea of Science to the tune of "Only a Northern Song," where we examine the nature of space and vibration. There's an analysis of why the Blue Meanies are blue, and why the submarine is yellow, and why Pepperland is green, and what these colors mean symbolically and together.

There's an examination of "nothingness" with the Nowhere Man, and how achieving a state of higher mind allows you to move into the realm of magic. "It's all in the mind, you know" was the catch-phrase on the promotional posters for this film.

MAB: Thanks for the refresher! In both your books you explored Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" noting that the "monomyth pattern can serve as a revealing framework for the journey of the Yellow Submarine." Can you elaborate?

LC: Here's how we applied the Hero's Journey to the Yellow Submarine.

(Ed note: The words underlined and in bold are the traditional steps in the Hero's Journey.)

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