COVER STORY : Prepare for the Second Coming

If the Beatles are back, so are the big bucks. Call it “Beatlemania II”--the second coming of the greatest music marketing onslaught in history. Consider:

* Shrink-wrapped buses in Los Angeles and New York turned into “Yellow Submarines” by ‘60s pop-artist Peter Max.

* ABC renaming itself “A Beatles C,” in honor of “The Beatles Anthology,” which the network airs Nov. 19, 22 and 23.

* Enormous projections of the Beatles on Manhattan skyscrapers.

* The cast of “Home Improvement” singing the “Hey Jude” chorus on commercials.

* Ticketmaster playing 30-second “Beatles Anthology” commercials for phone customers on hold.

* Capitol/EMI slogans luring Generation X-ers, like “Find Out What Messed Up Your Parents--New Music From the Beatles.”

* Six hundred 15-second Beatles spots on the Sony Jumbotron in New York’s Times Square.

* ABC’s “Monday Night Football” airing Howard Cosell’s interview with John Lennon on Nov. 20.

An estimated $20 million to $30 million is being spent on promotion alone. But no--there is no truth to rumors that one Generation X marketing scheme includes Beatles trading cards in packs of unfiltered Camels, or Beatle wigs in home piercing kits.

Combined with the recent merchandising deal with Sony Signatures, which expects to blitz the world all over again with Beatles notebooks and lunch boxes, the marketing frenzy brings to mind a George Harrison statement from the upcoming “Anthology”: “They used us as an excuse to go mad, the world did. And then blamed it on us!”

The figures tell the story of the new madness. ABC paid $20 million to the Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. for the rights to air “Anthology.” Sony Signatures expects to sell $200 million worth of merchandise in the next two years. Advance orders for “The Beatles Anthology, Vol. 1” double-album, due Nov. 21, are more than 3.5 million. Profit from the initial CD orders is expected to be in the $60-million to $70-million range, and could average $100 million for each of the three volumes--in the United States alone.

Meanwhile, advertising rates for the TV “Anthology” are said to be upward of $300,000 per 30 seconds (“Seinfeld” gets $490,000). Advertisers reportedly were guaranteed an 18.1 rating the first night of the “Anthology” broadcast (about 17 million viewers), an 18.5 rating the second, and a 12.1 rating for Thanksgiving. (ABC denies making any guarantees to advertisers.) Top-line expectations for the viewing audience are, a Capitol/EMI source says, a 35 rating and 50 million watchers--rivaling the final episode of “MASH.” (ABC denies having any such expectations.)

Finally, the $20-million to $30-million overall promotion figure suggested by Capitol/EMI executives is based on a hard-cash outlay of $2 million by ABC, about $6 million by Capitol/EMI--plus the value of extensive ABC on-air commercials, cover stories in Newsweek, Life and other magazines.

Any way you add it, you get . . . Beatles--the No. 3-earning entertainment act of the past year (behind Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, but ahead of the Rolling Stones, who made a concert tour). Fueled by the 1994 release of “The Beatles Live at the BBC” and an estimated $75 million in international sales of TV rights for “The Beatles Anthology,” the Fab Four ‘94-95 booty tops out at $100 million, according to Forbes magazine.

“There is a marketing danger in all this,” said Steve Chamberlain, a senior executive adviser to Capitol/EMI. “We can’t just go out and drench the whole marketplace and make everybody sick of the Beatles. The most important thing we can do is create an ebb and flow to this thing over a full year.”

(An “Anthology” book, an expanded, eight-part home video version of the six-hour ABC special and a box set of “Anthology” CDs are also planned.)

Chamberlain is himself an example of creative Beatles marketing. The former executive vice president for Turner Home Entertainment supervised re-release of classic films for their 50th anniversaries, including “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz.” He was first enlisted by Capitol/EMI to re-promote Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys and Nat King Cole, and was brought in for one year to work on the Beatles project. Are the Fabs his latest “old classic”?

“I want to be careful when I talk about the Beatles here,” Chamberlain said, “because I don’t look at them as I look at ‘Gone With the Wind.’ I still look at them as a mainstream band, very vibrant and able to cross over to other generations.”

Indeed, an estimated 17%-20% of sales for the minimally promoted “Live at the BBC” were to persons under 25, according to Bruce Kirkland, Capitol executive vice president. As for targeting the so-called Generation X, Kirkland is wary.

“The 13-album catalogue turns over every year to the extent there’s a new audience,” he said. “But I think with the [Generation X] audience, you’ve really got to let them discover it . . . rather than ram it down their throats.”

Still, Capitol/EMI will advertise heavily in the alternative press, including big-city weeklies, and the College Music Journal. Major Beatles programming is also planned by MTV and VH1, and Chris Carlisle, ABC marketing vice president, reports that the network is trying to secure videos of Beatle endorsements from Hootie & the Blowfish and Boyz II Men.

The biggest marketing surprise so far, Kirkland notes, is that “Anthology, Vol. 1” orders are “snowballing” from non-music businesses--including Ralphs supermarkets, Walgreen’s, airport gift shops and hotel lobbies.

“It’s the first time we’ve made these inroads with a music product,” Kirkland said. “It might not sound exciting to you, but for us, it’s a big deal.”

Of course, the profit potential would be compromised by any leak of the CD, notably the reunion track “Free as a Bird,” prior to Nov. 19--something that Capitol is protecting with what Kirkland calls “a small army” of armed guards at its pressing plants. In Canada, he added, one attempted theft of an “Anthology” CD from a pressing plant--by a private security firm employee--was thwarted by an in-house Capitol/EMI security officer.

Perhaps the most authoritative assessment of “Beatlemania II” comes from Derek Taylor, Apple Corps Ltd. press officer and a longtime friend of the Beatles:

“There is a generation now, quite a mature generation, that has no pre-Beatle memory of Western society, so it’s pretty well stuck in the consciousness,” Taylor said from London. “And this will renew it so there will be a new generation that has a Beatles memory. . . .

“The music didn’t go away. We don’t have nostalgia here, we merely have another layer of whatever we’ve been going through. . . These boys are hot!”