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In February 1964 the British Invasion of America began with
The Beatles appearing on the universally watched Ed Sullivan TV Show. Beatlemania hit our shores, with excellent
British bands following shortly after, and American youth were never the same
again. It was a revolution, indeed.
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The Beatles broke into phenomenal popularity in the UK in
1963, unbeknownst to us in the States. My first clue was on Christmas Day
1963. I was a 13-year-old wannabe
hipster trying to tune in my brand new AM transistor radio. (No FM pop or
Rock in those days; FM was still only for Classical.) That afternoon I
heard a radio DJ announce the next song with a bit of surprise in his voice.
He said that this was a song by a band “from England”! I was surprised
too. We didn’t know that the British even listened to Rock n Roll, let
alone played it. Man, were we ever surprised in the coming months!
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That song was She Loves You – “Yeah,
yeah, yeah!” Totally unique like we’d never imagined music could be sung
and played. I heard the song again twice in the next week to New
Years. Then in January 1964 a series of Beatles’ songs assaulted the
American pop charts and radio slots. I remember sitting at breakfast on a
school morning with the AM radio next to my ear at our old kitchen table.
Just before finishing breakfast I had the immense joy of hearing the radio pump
out I Wanna Hold Your Hand, the Number One hit in the
nation! Wow! Their music was so Happy! It
was more upbeat, honest, innocent, and fresh than anything we’d heard
before.
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Within two months time The Beatles completely captured the
American pop charts. They always had 5 songs in the Top Ten every week
for weeks and weeks, and they always had a lock on the number 1, 2, and 3
spots, new songs replacing the earlier ones. It was indeed a Phenomenon.
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In February 1964 The Beatles came to America and played on
the most popular variety show of that time, The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday
evenings. They taped enough music in New York and Miami to play for three
weekly shows – delighting and enlightening the youth of the USA. Here is
a BBC article about that time, with an excellent 29-minute video of the complete
Sullivan performances. My own favorite part of this video is on their third
appearance, at minute-22, when they launch into Twist and
Shout, followed by Please Please Me and I
Wanna Hold Your Hand.
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On the evening of their historic first performance, I had
gone (i.e., I had been forced to go) to Sunday night church with my father, the
end time of the service being the exact start time of the TV show. Church
ended, and we had to look forward to the inevitably painful delays of shaking
hands and meaningless chat with fellow parishioners at the back of the church
before escaping – too late – to the parking lot and home. I would miss
much of the show.
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To my delight and total surprise, my father – knowing how
much I wanted to see the Beatles TV show – furtively suggested to me that we
quickly exit the church via the door left of the pulpit down to the parking
lot, thus escaping the glad-handing mob. For this, I am eternally
grateful to my father’s perceptiveness and kindness in that simple humane
gesture. He truly understood me at that moment.
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We got home just minutes after the Sullivan Show had started.
My mom had the TV on and tuned in. As we entered the living room, still
in our winter clothes, The Beatles had started to sing and the crowd went
absolutely bonkers! Pop joy! It really was an historical
event.
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The first record album I ever bought was the 33-RPM vinyl
Meet The Beatles, the first album release in America by
Capitol Records. Cousin Bonnie bought an even earlier album, a British
release on another label with their earlier songs.
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The “British Invasion” had begun. The first Rock group
to knock the Beatles off the number one in England were The Dave Clark Five
with Glad All Over, an exuberant ode to joy. My next
album purchase was of theirs. (In later years they had radio hits that I
listened to while sleeping out in the yard under the stars, my favorite music
venue, in 1965, I Like It Like That in the summer, and
Catch Me If You Can in the autumn.)
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Then the 1964 British group The Searchers hit the top of the
British charts, with a cover of Needles and Pins. As
1964 turned into summer, we had even more bizarre and beautiful music from the
UK. That summer American radio heard The Animals (a Newcastle working
class band with Eric Burdon singing) playing The House of the Rising
Sun, a mournful old American Blues standard that few in my generation
had never heard. Thus was the main theme of the British Invasion:
American Blues, Rock, and pop songs recycled back to us through British
interpretations.
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That very same 1964 summer week we also heard for the first
time a new British group called The Rolling Stones, playing Tell Me,
and later, It’s All Over Now (now a standard that I have
heard still played in Bangkok bars). My late great best friend from my
youth, Ron Diethrick (1948-2011), and I sat in my parents’ living room beside
an ancient cabinet phonograph, playing these Stones songs over and over again
to try to decode the lyrics; Ron had pencil and paper, and he got down to
serious business. (We also decoded the lyrics to “Monster Mash” with the
same methodical technique.) My mother drove Ron and me to a theater in
the nearest city where we saw the Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night.
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I will never forget being in the barn one day when my cousin
Dan was working. The radio was on, and
as The Beatles’ Twist and Shout came on, we just looked at
each other and nodded – “Oh, Yeah!”
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As 1964 turned over into 1965, I remember a classroom
discussion in 9th grade. I was in a Civics class and was
seated with class members, basically good decent folk, who later became
preachers and leading members of their communities. I.e., I was
mismatched. The Beatles had been popular for over a year now, and one of
my classmates remarked to another, “I think the Beatles are okay,” to which
another nodded in tentative agreement. Then I put in my own two cents, “I
like the Rolling Stones.” To which they visibly shrank away in horror,
implying that the Rolling Stones are “not acceptable.” Always the
heretic, I still love the Stones.
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In the summer of 1965, my poor suffering mother drove my
good friend Dick Hale (1950-1973) and me to a drive-in movie theater to see the
Beatles film Help. My mom was ill (perhaps a gall
stone attack) and lay uncomfortably groaning in the back seat while Dick and I
sat up front reveling in the music. (Mothers do endure so much self-sacrificial
agony for their kids. I think some kind of sainthood is in order.)
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But if you think Rock was good in early 1965, you should
have heard the incredibly new sounds reaching America in the summer of 65
(e.g., The Yardbirds, the band that had a history of great guitarists, such as
Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page), and into 66 (The Who, “Talkin’ bout
my generation!”), and 67. It just got better and better. The entire
decade rocked. My life’s soundtrack.
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For me it started 50 years ago today.
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-Zenwind.
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