I still marvel at the fact that a mere one year after A Hard Day's Night was in the theaters, and the same year as Help! was playing, The Grateful Dead (still known as The Warlocks) were playing their first shows in the Bay Area, their very first in Menlo Park, not far from where I lived in Cupertino (now home to Apple and ebaY).
Some older (college age) guys I knew (the original organist and bassist in the first line-up of The Chocolate Watchband) had started going up to The Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco in the Spring of '65 to see The Great Society (Darby Slick and his wife Grace. My sister went to the same girls "Finishing School" in Palo Alto as had Grace, though years later), The Jefferson Airplane (Signe Anderson female vocalist, Skip Spence---later of Moby Grape---on drums) and other San Francisco groups (as bands were called at the time), but there was no way my Dad was gonna let me go (I was 14, a Freshman in High School). I didn't see the Airplane and The Dead until the Summer of '67, together in The Panhandle in Golden Gate Park, two years after I had seen Help! Things were moving fast back then.
Abbey Road seemed to me anti-climatic; they should have called it quits after The Beatles (the white album), their last hurrah. In fact Ringo quit during it's making, John talking him into coming back. But they then did the dreadful Get Back (as dreary an album as I have ever heard), and finally AR. It already sounded passe' to me upon it's release, but I'm in the minority on that opinion. I had moved on, to music whose roots were purely American, as had been The Beatles when they made their early albums. I had started hearing music like the original version of "Money" (covered by The Beatles on their first album) by Barrett Strong, which absolutely smoked The Beatles version. Abbey Road sounded so superficial, contrived, and "lightweight" to me then, and still does. But enjoy! ;-)
