For those Dopers around in early '64 (or whenever the Beatles broke big in your country) I got some questions. When did you and your friends first hear the Beatles? Did it take anyone time to warm to their music? Did you know anyone in your age group who didn’t like them? How often did they get played on the radio and which songs? Did you and your friends talk about them a lot, and did they change how you dressed or what you listened to? And (although this was obviously later), when they changed their sound later on how long did it take people to get used to it, or were there a number of people who stopped listening to the Beatles?
I traded a neon tetra for a bunch of Beatle cards in either late '64 or '65.
I was in fourth grade when they came to America. I remember one afternoon at school lunchtime a bunch of kids were talking about how they would appearing on Ed Sullivan’s rilly big shew on Sunday. Never heard of them before and no one had ever really talked about rock groups before. I had heard songs like “The Twist” and “The Name Game” and when Sullivan mentioned that Elvis Presley had sent a telegram, I recognized who that was.
Big early song? “I wanna hold your hand”. How often did it get played? WABC music radio in New York would play a top song once every hour. Sounds repetitive to us but at the time the evening DJ “Cousin Brucie” Morrow had extremely high ratings that no one can touch today.
Did anyone hate them? My older sister, although she changed her mind about a year later and didn’t want to be reminded of it. She went to “A Hard Day’s Night” when it opened in the theatres and said she couldn’t hear the title song at the beginning because of all the other kids singing.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the world became a different place on February 9, 1964 . . . just as it had changed a couple of months earlier, with JFK’s assassination. I was a freshman in college and was not really into pop music, but joined my rooming house-mates at the one TV in the house, a portable black-and-white set . . . the same one on which we had seen Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. I had heard of The Beatles, but probably hadn’t heard their music, so I didn’t know what to expect.
What I witnessed was an explosion of on-stage music and audience screaming that I had never heard before. I had seen clips of the previous generation, when teenage girls would scream at a Frank Sinatra concert, and of course there was the Elvis phenomenon . . . but this was live and totally unexpected, at least for me.
The whole world changed that night. For many of us, that was the beginning of “The Sixties.” The dance called “the twist” had been around for a while, but had been done to ‘50s-style music, much to the disapproval of many adults. Now, with The Beatles, the music caught up with the dance . . . much to the disapproval of many adults. And right away, some boys started growing their hair, trying for a “Beatles haircut.” But they were still a minority. The music caught on immediately, but the hair took a while.
Of course, there were people of all ages who didn’t like their music, or anything else about them, but at least virtually everyone had heard them and had an opinion . . . and everyone, loving them or hating them, had a favorite Beatle. Mine was George . . . based entire on his looks. It’s strange, by today’s standards, that the group was probably criticized more for their hair than their music. The term “hippie” hadn’t been invented yet, and they were certainly different than the previous “Beat” generation (from which they got their name). It was clear that this was a new phenomenon, and the most obvious symbol for it was the Beatles haircut. (Back in high school, boys weren’t allowed to have our hair over our ears or over the back collar of our shirts.)
But even the group’s detractors soon learned that The Beatles were more than just an act with long hair. The music was something new, and soon there were other groups from the UK, and the term “British Invasion” was coined. “The Sixties” had arrived.
As far as clothing was concerned, the guys were still performing with suits. I think the first impact they had on clothing was the pea coat and long scarf look. But when *Sgt. Pepper *came out, the cover had a tremendous impact on the way we dressed. I had a beautiful sky-blue Nehru jacket. It remained in style for about a month. And in the school yearbook, starting that year, group photos had suddenly become a lot more interesting.
And the music itself? I remember people’s taste slowly evolving along with the music, especially since other groups were becoming just about as popular. For me, the breaking point was around the time of *Magical Mystery Tour. *Some of the music on that LP was a little far-out for me at the time. It’s funny, looking back from today’s perspective, I have no idea what I had a problem with.
I was born in 1965 and have no memories of anything before 1970 (after they had broken up) so I can’t add much. But my older brothers & sisters of course remember watching them on Sullivan and one thing that always gets me is they say my mom & dad both said while watching it that those girls in the audience screaming & fainting were all plants put there by the TV network!
Damn kids and their long music and loud hair…
Ah, Beatlemania…
The Chicago radio station, WLS, would play Beatles songs on a continuous rotation. They would also have 3-4 minutes of just Beatles news at night - where they were having concerts, when the next song was coming out, the top 5 songs of the week, etc.
One contest they had was write the word “Beatles” over and over on paper and the top two with the most won [some prize I have forgoten now] and people were filling hundreds of pages to win.
The local Sears sold “Beatle wigs” that were basically something shorter but more realistic than Donald Trump’s hair today.
When a new Beatles song was about to be released, they would promo it and let you know that on Friday, at 6:09 PM you could hear the song for the first time and if you were home with friends, or driving in a car, everyone was listening to hear that first airing of the song.
I remember when Hey Jude had that first airing, we were shocked with how long that chorus went on at the end, but loved it. Two days later, when a DJ on WLS cut the song short, there were hundreds of calls to the station to complain and cutting off the end of Hey Jude on WLS never happened again.
There were Beatles brand guitars and amps for sale in most music stores. You also had to have the Beatles boots (above the ankle) to be cool. Some kids with liberal (or no) parents started growing their hair long (2-3 inches) and girls would go crazy for those guys and adults would say “Ya look like a girl…”.
Beatles albums sold out on the day they were released and you would have to wait for the next shipment to arrive - usually 2-3 days later. They couldn’t keep the albums in stock, even in my small Illinois hometown.
And BTW, I believe the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show three weeks in a row, not just that one Sunday night.
The Movie I Wanna Hold Your Hand did a pretty good job of portraying that time period, metaphorically, as good historical stories should be told. It’s available from NetFlix.
I remember it. I did watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but out of curiosity. My mother saw Beatlemania as the equivalent of the bobby soxers screaming for Frank Sinatra (which is pretty much the same thing as Beiber Fever today). Teen girls do that sort of thing.
I wasn’t a big fan, but I was only 12 and didn’t listen to music at all at that point. I actually didn’t own any records at the point, nor did I have a stereo. I was a little contemptuous of the brouhaha around them: it was mostly a teen girl thing.
I finally got a record player around 1968, and the first album I bought was Sgt. Pepper.*
*In mono, because I still didn’t have a stereo. I’m amused at the sudden love of the album in mono – it really doesn’t sound any different from the stereo version.
I was 13, the perfect age for the start of the Beatles. I had discovered rock in 1963, which was fun enough even pre-Beatles. Hearing rock was hard. My family had one radio and it certainly was never going to be tuned to a rock station. I finally sent away for a crystal radio kit with an earpiece. It only brought in one station, but that was the local top 40 station, so it worked perfectly.
I was in the eighth grade, which was high school under our system. Every kid was awaiting the coming of The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The records had already broken on radio and the whole world was watching. Everybody watched including the parents, whether they approved or not. This was the same school year as Kennedy’s assassination, so everything had been dark and gloomy, but now lightning made our world bright and new again.
We followed every detail as best we could. Remember, the only information we had was whatever the DJ said. Maybe an article in Life magazine or a tv appearance. Nothing else. I know there were fan magazines but I don’t remember ever seeing one. Maybe the girls had them at home. We talked about music every lunch period. I remember vividly when the Top 40 station issued its weekly top ten records and nine of them were by The Beatles. The tenth was “We Love You Beatles.” They were kings but we couldn’t see the future. When the Dave Clark Five had hit after hit we took them seriously as possibly knocking The Beatles off their perch. All the British groups were great to our ears. The only American group that could compete were The Beach Boys.
They didn’t change the way we dressed. We had dress codes, yes, in a public school. The years changed our dress, our hair, our likes and dislikes. By 1968 I was a freshman in college. The guy in the room next door in the dorm had a great stereo system that he brought back from Japan after being in Nam. That alone should give an idea of the distance between 1964 and 1968. When the White Album came out, that same top 40 station played it in its entirety. They’d never do that today, never did it then for anybody else but The Beatles. That’s how important they remained. All of us on our corridor crowded into his room to listen to the whole album and discuss the songs as they emerged.
The whole of the decade, from 1963 on, remains in my head with an oldies soundtrack. The decade was the music. Those of us who lived it may talk about it too much, but it really was that special. Objectively, the 60s transformed culture. Not just the culture of art, but all American culture. You can make that case for the 20s as well, but I didn’t live through it and hardly anybody alive can talk about it in those terms. That’s why the 60s are treated as transcendent and unduplicable. You just can’t imagine…
I was in third grade when the Beatles came. I did hear them on Ed Sullivan, but I couldn’t buy records or control our radio. I do remember singing the songs in the car and driving my parents crazy.
At school recess four boys in my class would pretend to be the Beatles by singing some of their songs and we girls would be the screaming audience and chase them around the playground.
I was in 8th grade. By late January I’d heard of The Beatles, as there had been a short article about them in some magazine or other (Time?), but I’d never heard their music. I remember remarking to a particularly shy girl in my class that Ringo was quite ugly, and to my surprise she sprang to his defense. This was really my only direct contact with female Beatle fandom; I never actually witnessed a real human being acting like what I saw on TV.
Anyway, it was a week or two after that when a song came on the radio that I noted as being particularly good, but I didn’t know what it was. Turned out it was “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” I immediately decided that, although I’d been skeptical about all the talk I’d been hearing, there really was something to The Beatles after all. So I’d say my reaction was immediate, and untainted by foreknowledge.
My next door neighbor and I both picked up copies of “Meet the Beatles” within a few days. I actually recall having the feeling related by Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone’s “History of Rock and Roll,” that you could actually go out an buy this stuff. I remember that for some time we would sit around together listening to the album and singing along at the top of our lungs. This was distinctly un-male behavior, but we were so carried away that we didn’t care.
The press at the time had no idea how to deal with what was going on. Maybe some of the younger writers had some clue about Elvis-era R&R, but most seemed to be stuck in a pre-rock period of Frank Sinatra and Patti Page (and probably Paul Whiteman, for that matter). It was generally agreed that it was all just recycled American rock, and was a fad that would burn out in a few months. Filling the gaps left by these clueless scribblers would, before long, make Jan Wenner a very rich man.
I don’t recall too many further conversations about The Beatles or other performers during the period, though I know we had them. The Beatles were definitely number one. The Dave Clark Five, well, how could anyone take them seriously? The Kinks were damned good. The Stones were not well thought of initially; they were an acquired taste, which I didn’t acquire for another two years. Most of the Mersey stuff was sappy stuff that only girls seemed to like much, although I kind of liked Peter and Gordon, and “Needles and Pins” by The Searchers kicked ass. I mention all this because after a few months we were all completely immersed in a tidal wave of British invasion rock. American bands couldn’t keep up; the Beach Boys (who’d been around before America knew about The Beatles) and, a little later, the Byrds were kind of second string contenders; Rock and Roll was all but completely owned by the Brits for some time.
Oh, and everybody I knew was glued to the TV for Ed Sullivan for a few weeks.
I guess that’s enough, I could make this very long and boring because it was an amazing time.
I wasn’t born in '64 but my cousin was a teenager at the time and, being an original Beatlemaniac and a pack rat she still has most of her memorabilia. I’m amazed at the haul she accumulated living in Alabama at the time; evidently they were one of the first real marketing explosions with their likenesses and name appearing on everything you can imagine.
In addition to Beatles cards (especially for A Hard Day’s Night), posters, stacks and stacks of magazines, and original posters the items in her collection include
-Beatles shampoo
-Beatles shoes
-A Beatles record player
-Beatles candy
Things I couldn’t find an image of easily include her Beatles’ radio, Beatles’ flags, Beatles’ cereal (or at least some cereal with the Beatles on the box), Beatles puppets, Beatles necktie, etc., and all of this from '64/'65 by a middle class teenager in Montgomery, AL (about a 3rd tier city if that and most if not all of this bought at local stores). Brian Epstein famously screwed them (and himself) out of gazillions by signing away their likeness for merchandising for next to nothing, but he may actually have helped them in the long run as since it was relatively cheap and they were flaming hot the merchandise was everywhere and on everything and so kept their semi-divine status front and center everywhere.
You can also see Beatles themed episodes on every single sitcom episode from the time. Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show (one of Lucy’s post ‘I Love Lucy’ vehicles) and The Dick Van Dyke Show and other hit shows of the era all mentioned them by name. Even shows like Gilligan’s Island, The Addams Family, and The Munsters that had unusual settings or characters managed to work in The Beatles or bands that were clearly parodies of them.
Also the fact that this was during Elvis’s ‘crappy movie’ phase probably helped. He was big, but not doing concerts at the time, and thus America’s biggest act was out of the way for rivals. I do remember the Michael Jackson mania of the early '80s very well and I’m guessing there was some similarity, with people like Ed MacMahon and Hee-Haw performers donning a single gold glove like Groucho and Steve Allen had done back in the '60s with Beatles wigs.
Beatlemania is cyclical today. There’s a major upswing every few years, usually synced with a major tour by one of them or the long documentary the three survivors participated in or some organic factor, and then there will be years of “they’re still the Beatles but…” not as hotness. The market for their memorabilia ebbs and flows as well (not that my cousin would ever sell her’s; she’s been broke half a million times but would sell her kidneys first). I figure that 2014 will see some sort of upswing due to the 50th anniversary which will probably launch a lot of documentaries and books and retrospective.
Radio still does that today. But it’s much less of an event and is often shuffled off to some little-heard time slot. But it still happens.
Philadelphia’s Distant Drummer underground newspaper ran a front-page teaser for their review of Abbey Road that began “The children of a future age will never know the excitement we experience when a new Beatles album is released.” I made note of that at the time, and forty-two years later, that still sums it up.
I was born in 1962.
However I distinctly remember hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on a transistor radio that someone had at a bus stop. It was probably in 1965 or 1966, but I remember it.
During my formative years The Beatles were absolutely pervasive. My older brother had their albums and I quite enjoyed them at the time.
It was headline news in my small southwestern Ontario city when they split. I remember reading the newspaper headline at the time. Everyone, I mean everyone, talked about The Beatles splitting up. It was huge news.
Top 40 radio?
There was a huge buzz going around about them appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show and I wanted to be part of it. I was 13, hadn’t quite reached puberty yet and had no inclination for rebellion, so their “rebellious” music didn’t do much for me. What caught my interest was their free-spirited performances, the way they’d shake their hair and scream “Woo-oo”, without any “professional” affectations. In retrospect, I think there was a palpable honesty about them that I think was a major reason for their appeal.
We all started buying their 45s and playing them over and over. I soon hit puberty and developed a preference for “wild” music, as I called it, straight ahead rock and roll like Twist and Shout, which is probably why I resisted their changes in style at first. Yellow Submarine seemed silly and childish when I first heard it, and Sgt. Pepper’s took some getting used to, but I always came around and appreciated them for what they were. As the Beatles expanded their musical horizons, so they expanded mine. I don’t remember anyone being particularly anti-Beatle, just that some weren’t as interested as others.
It was about a year after the Ed Sullivan appearances that I saw my first Beatle haircut. After that, long hair gradually became more acceptable, though not in all circles. I was sent home from high school a couple of times to get a haircut.
Signs of their breakup had been coming for a couple of years and when it finally happened, when I was 19, I had a melancholy sense that an era of my own life had passed. They had ushered me into adolescence and their breakup marked the end of it.
Oh fer chrissake, a crystal set? The Beatles didn’t debut in the 1920s. :dubious: I find it hard to believe there wasn’t a cheap pocket transistor radio available in '64 for the price of a crystal set, or less.
I was 14 and a sophomore in high school. Being in the NY metropolitan area I heard their music on WABC and WMCA. I Want to Hold Your Hand and Love Me Do were the first songs. Saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show. Saw A Hard Day’s Night I don’t know how many times in the movies. First time I saw it, it played with Peter Seller’s A Shot in The Dark. Yeah, double features back then. We watched ASITD, then A Hard Day’s Night, rinse and repeat. Who knew that the day would come when I would own my very own copy of a A Hard Day’s Night.
I collected magazine articles and made a scrapbook, had a Beatles beach towel and even a bobble head George Harrison doll. Hm… what else? Oh yeah, I was at the 1965 concert in Shea Stadium (the old one). Way way up in the peanut gallery. Couldn’t hear a thing. Baseball stadium sound systems were not geared for concerts back then. And they were so far away they could have been any 4 people with the same suits on. Concerts were also reasonable back then; you could get tickets with your allowance and not complain about it. You also could get the tickets easily.
I bought all the albums until Sgt. Pepper. Their music took a turn that I didn’t appreciate then.
I started dressing like the “mod” English girls–ironed my long wavy hair straight on the ironing board, wore textured stockings, bought Yardley of London cosmetics.
I was about the same age as Sally Draper on Mad Men in 1966 and my reaction when my mom came home with tickets to see the Beatles was more or less identical to hers.