It was 50 years ago today...


Only a few bands have earned the attention/obsession of the masses, as the Beatles.

 I was only 7, but clearly remember Beatles being spun on the Grundig tube console.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-music-beatles-abbey-road-idUSKCN1UY0XD

Play your copy today! 
tablejockey
Seven? So we were about the same age watching them on Ed Sullivan. I wonder, did your folks find them uncomprehendible as mine did? I mean they didn’t want to let us watch them, but they were on Ed Sullivan so pretty much had to (there’s like two TV channels you know, and everyone watches Ed Sullivan) and the kids are going crazy, why are the kids going crazy??? Oh my God Betty the girls are screaming. Why are they screaming? Turn that off! Oh wait- nothing else on.... mutter, grumble...

In 1965 when the movie Help came out I was 8 and even though it was playing just a few blocks down the street my parents wouldn’t take me. Well this being 1965 it cost like 20 cents so of course they had to be careful with their money. I mean popcorn was 15 cents. Can’t take just me, before you know it the whole family is going and too many treats and you could be looking at a whole two dollars!

Besides neighborhood movie theaters (real ones, ones that actually looked like movie theaters and not concrete bunkers) this was also back when they had neighborhood stores. No not convenience stores. Not 7-11. Actual stores. Where they sold pop. In bottles. With a one (three?) cent deposit. (Imagine, if that had kept up, a dollar deposit on a beer bottle!)

Anyway we had just boxes of bottles sitting in the garage. I had a wagon. And so that was how with a little planning and deception I came to watch my first movie Help at the age of 8.

Couple weeks ago Better Records had a Hot Stamper of the album Help. Playing it, in the midst of all the ones everyone knows Help, The Night Before, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, You’re Gonna Lose That Girl, Ticket to Ride (this is just side one!), Yesterday (!), somewhere in there is one don’t remember ever hearing at all. And it is just as amazingly good as all the rest!

The Beatles, a band so good even when you grew up with them and think you’ve heard it all over more than 50 years it turns out there’s still great Beatles songs out there waiting to be heard!

Great idea. Gonna play em tonight. Thanks!
My first vinyl purchase...I was 3 years old...and convinced my mom to buy me the 45rpm of Yellow Submarine to play on my plastic folding case phono on a wire rack stand.  The 8mm reels still exist showing me rocking out to it.
I think I was eight or nine when they were on Ed Sullivan.I liked them but was never a big fan until Sgt. Pepper.My younger brother was rather obsessed though.He'd listen to the albums over and over and write down the lyrics in a notebook.
I was in high school at that time. After reading the initial post I listened to my original abbey road record. Its a very good record.

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! ;-)