# Who DIDN'T like the Beatles in 1964 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 12, 2014, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120 "2014-02-12T04:16:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2014, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120/101 "2014-02-14T20:25:15Z")
> [@montag01](#): > > My dad, to an extent. He did like their early stuff, but feels they became unlistenable from Rubber Soul on to the end of their career. I don’t know how common such a sentiment is. I think from Rubber Soul on is where they do all their interesting music. I knew a guy who was more or less like this in high school. He was a guitarist and loved early Beatles, but when “Strawberry Fields Forever” came out, he thought it was terrible and got right off the bus for this and anything else that didn’t match the 2 1/2-pop song with verses and chorus paradigm. Me, I’m a big fan of that paradigm, too, and I’m quick to defend it against those who find such songs trifling and insignificant. And even though, while liking all Beatles eras, I probably lean slightly toward the earlier stuff myself — SFF is, to me, one of the greatest achievements in the history of rock. I was more than willing to follow the more experimental path…at least until it dissolved into pretentiousness and bombast. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2014, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120/102 "2014-02-14T20:29:52Z")
Let’s back off sniping, please; next we’ll devolve into full-fledged name-calling and one of you will go all Maxwell’s Silver Hammer on someone’s ass. We don’t want that. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120/103 "2014-02-14T20:34:48Z")
> [@montag01](#): > > My dad, to an extent. He did like their early stuff, but feels they became unlistenable from Rubber Soul on to the end of their career. I don’t know how common such a sentiment is. I think from Rubber Soul on is where they do all their interesting music. My parents–who came of age in the 1950s–also held that opinion. In their view, the Beatles’ music (with some exceptions) got louder, druggier, weirder, edgier, and more discordant after 1965 or so. ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120/104 "2014-02-19T16:22:01Z")
> [@Reeses\_Monkey](#): > > Allan Sherman [Pop hates the Beatles](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-2Tcuzy0I) Came here to post that. Here it is with Allan Sherman getting Dean Martin and Vic Damone to sing along… [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/QgKCQJfAVgI/hqdefault.jpg "I Hate The Beatles") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgKCQJfAVgI) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120/105 "2014-02-19T17:32:48Z")
> [@DChord568](#): > > Correct in spirit, but your timing is just a little off. > > After receiving an impassioned letter from one of his listeners, Washington D.C. disk jockey Carroll James was the first to play “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on a U.S. radio station. That happened on December 17. 1963. (He played an import copy of the single sent to him from England by a friend.) The reaction from listeners to his station, and at other stations who got wind of it and followed his lead, was so strong that it forced Capitol Records to move up the release date of the U.S. single, originally scheduled for mid-January 1964, to December 26, 1963. > > So it wouldn’t have been until the last couple of weeks of December 1963 at the earliest that Beatlemania in the U.S. really got underway. My memory isn’t quite sharp enough to pinpoint it, but if I had to guess I would say the buzz didn’t really start in my area until early January 1964. Probably when you got _back_ to school following Christmas break? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-didnt-like-the-beatles-in-1964/681120.md?page=5)