Ever wonder who those NYC girls going crazy on the Ed Sullivan show in February of 1964 were? They weren't imported from England where The Beatles were already throbbing hearts; they were girls savvy enough to have heard and bought that first release, driving "I Want To Hold Your Hand" to #1 less than a month later.
19 comments:
There's a beautiful cover of it in Across the Universe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exqLZPbpYYQ
Two months... thats just about how long Justin Beaver has been on the scene. Maybe i exagerate ;)
I should have realized this long ago.
It just dawned in me that Capitol Records controlled both The Beach Boys and The Beatles.
The Fab 4s were hitting up on the froy-lines too with their Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand.
Having been a college sophomore during that 63-64 academic year let me share a couple of observations that I made even at that time regarding the US introduction of the Beatles: 1) the deliriously out-of-their-minds screaming ninny female crowds attending Beatles concerts only solidifying my feeling even then that women should have never been given the vote (or as Kate at smalldeadanimals says: "I'll gladly give up my vote if I can take them all with me."lol) and 2) It was immediately apparent even then that music and society-at-large would be changed forever--a feeling I also had the first time as a thirteen-yr-old when I saw Elvis on the Tommy Dorsey and Ed Sullivan TV shows.
Great trivia! My older sister bought that 45 quickly. I was probably playing w/ my cap gun. I love the smell of caps.
Ya hadda be there.
My sister was a dedicated Beatlemaniac and why I will never understand.
El Pollo Raylan said...
I should have realized this long ago.
It just dawned in me that Capitol Records controlled both The Beach Boys and The Beatles.
And the Kingston Trio, whom they let slip through their hands.
PS Real gunpowder, nd.
I was 13/14 yrs old when the Beatles came on the scene. My parents very kindly offered to buy me some tickets to a concert that was being held in SF.
I opted out and my reasoning was. Why do I want to go to a music show where all I am going to hear is the screaming of a bunch of annoying retarded girls?? I didn't care that much for the Beatles anyway at that time.
My parents were visibly relieved. I don't think they relished the idea of driving me (and some friends) to SF, waiting around and then picking us up to drive us home. BTW: My parents were very cool to offer.
deborah I agree with you on that. That's a very sweet version of that song. The Beatles version is for when you feel like dancing and incidentally changing the history of music. TV Carpio's is for when you care about someone.
Those four mopheads were very radical at the time. I mean the actual mopheads, not their music or the lyrics they put to it. I remember endless derogatory "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" comments. Oh well, change is first unsettling and then after a while as taken for granted as the landscape.
It was a genius move on the part of the Beatles or whoever was managing them at the time to get the very best cinematic talent in Britain when they made A Hard Days Night. That film catapulted them into a dimension way beyond being simply a musical phenomenon. They became "Youth" "Spontaneity" "Liberation": all that capitalized stuff.
edutcher, More good trivia on the gun powder.
Fun little moppets who turned into boring, serious, lefties.
From "I want to hold your hand" to "Imagine".
Judas Priest.
My mother (born 1937) bought that 45 rpm when it came out. How cool is that?
I was in sixth grade when Beatlemania hit. I missed their epochal appearance on Ed Sullivan but noticed the buzz on the school playground the Monday aftter. I got caught up in it myself. I remember listening to a transistor radio past midnight under the bedsheets when "She Loves You" replaced "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as #1 on KEWB and it seemed oddly right and significant.
American youth were ready for the Beatles, but unlike hundreds of other teen fads that came and went, the Beatles were more than ready for us and deserving of our attention. They marched from strength to strength with hardly a misstep until they broke up in 1970.
I had a loud blustery argument with my mother, a classically trained pianist, who claimed no one would be listening to the Beatles in fifty years. She should have been right. The Beatles should have gone the way of Rudy Vallee, but they didn't. They were just that good.
It seems like only yesterday that it was 20 years ago today.
How time flies.
chick, Yo mama is @ the higher end of Beatles fans. Most born that year hated the Beatles and were all Elvis. She was cutting edge! My mom[1926] loved The Long and Winding Road.
Blue collar guys on the east coast were Four Season guys, west coast, Beach Boys.
Nick, my dad (born 1932) liked Elvis. He took my mom to see him the first chance he got. I was so uncool I passed. I wrote about that here.
I never got Elvis or Sinatra. I hear them now and recognize their terrific talents, but I still don't get them. That's the way it goes sometimes.
But those doors may yet open for me...
Post a Comment