In my concert poster for the Beatles final tour in the United States of America, my intent was threefold. Firstly, I wanted to acknowledge the importance of the Beatles’ musical influence in the United States on the level of pop culture and rock n roll music and its subgenres more specifically. Secondly, my intent was to incorporate this theme with an acknowledgment of the Beatles’ own aesthetics, thus being consistent with how the band represented itself visually, such as through album covers. Thirdly, an ambition was to underscore the importance of this event itself, and therefore the meaning of the Beatles final tour in the United States for the country as well as for the band themselves. With my concert poster I thus attempted to synthesize these three main concepts into a coherent and captivating image.

The Beatles’ influence on the United States and its pop culture is clearly enormous, but this is a type of symbiotic relationship. This is to say that the Beatles were also heavily influenced by the American rock n roll musical culture that gave them inspiration. The two central images of the poster reflect this notion. The Beatles are shown walking against the backdrop of a map of the United States. In one sense, the way the band members are posed evokes the sense that they are at home in the United States, a certain casual manner portrayed in their walking At the same time some of the band members look around at their surroundings. This is meant to symbolize the way that the Beatles found their own voice through appropriating American rock n roll culture in their unique way, finding something in this culture that made them feel at home. However, when the Beatles visit the United States they also are visiting the cultural backdrop that spawned their own music. They thus are pictured as admiring this landscape, for the final time, the landscape that gave them motivation and musical motivation.

Another key point of the project, as mentioned, was to stay true to the aesthetics of the Beatles. I did not want to radically deviate from their aesthetics, because the Beatles’ image is a clear cultural marker. I thus retained the iconic Beatles logotype in my poster. At the same time, I wanted to reference the Beatles’ previous album cover art. Thus, the choice to depict them walking was informed by the Beatles’ famous Abbey Road album cover, where they are seen crossing a London street. In my poster they are now crossing the United States, this also once again reflecting a certain domestic feeling that the Beatles have in American culture because of the importance of U.S. culture in shaping their own cultural contributions.

Lastly, I wanted to capture the importance of this event itself. I think there is a certain sombre character to the picture, showing this final tour. I did not go for a more psychedelic look, for example, from the end of the Beatles’ career, but a more self-reflective aesthetic, since this marks one of the key events towards the end of the Beatles’ career. There is a certain subtletly to the image and a calmness, as though the Beatles themselves in the poster understand that something important now ends with this final tour, an end of an era not only in their careers, but also in world popular culture.