The second of my pieces for my CCU Music course. Other geezers will get it.
I was 11 years old in February of 1964 when the Beatles
were introduced to me and the rest of America
on the Ed Sullivan Show. I knew they
were something special because the girls were screaming so loudly that I could
hardly hear their music and my Southern Baptist mother thought they were the
devil incarnate. I had to throw a
mini-tantrum for her to allow me to watch.
I had never seen anything like them.
To a blue-jeaned boy with a flat-top haircut these four guys in
Edwardian suits and bowl haircuts were as alien as if they had arrived in a spaceship. If not for the assassination of President
Kennedy a few months earlier, this would have been the most memorable event of
my youth. It turned out to be one of the
most significant in my life.
The arrival of the
Beatles gave the nation a much needed diversion
from the grim realities of the previous year: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the
assassination. It could not have come at
a better time and timing is everything.
They made four appearances that month, but none had the impact on the
world, or me, that the first one did. It
is estimated that 40% of the population of the United States watched that
program. They performed five
songs: "All My Loving", 'Till
There Was You", "She Loves You", "I Saw Her Standing
There", and "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Using my paper route money I purchased Meet
The Beatles the very next day from a local drug store. I was disappointed that only four of the
songs I had heard were included, but still excited. "She Loves You" came in the second
of many Beatles albums that I subsequently purchased.
My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Wakefield, was young and
beautiful (to a boy entering puberty) and had already become a Beatles'
fan. She used to post the Billboard Top
10 on our bulletin board and each week at least half of those songs belonged
to the Beatles. She brought in fan magazines and was my
source of all things Beatles for the remainder of that school year. I remember being amazed that though I could
sing along with all the song lyrics I could not understand a word they said
during interviews. It was as if
Liverpudlian English was a foreign language.
The Beatles stayed together throughout my Junior and
Senior High years until my graduation in 1970.
In just six years they produced more memorable music than any of the
flood of British bands that followed in their wake. Like great composers throughout history, much
of Lennon/McCartney music was timeless.
The songs I heard in that first televised performance were nowhere near
their best compositions. They continued
to evolve. Unprecedented success allowed
them to continuously experiment and creative genius insured those endeavors
were nearly always fresh and interesting.
It seemed to me that every new release ventured into unexplored musical
territory, borrowing from many genres of music. Early in their careers, they covered songs
from a variety of artists from R&B to Country. They were inspired by such artists as Elvis, the
Everly Brothers, Beach Boys, Buddy Holly, Carole King, and Little Richard. Their initial
influences of American Folk, Rockabilly,
Skiffle, Ragtime, and Motown, eventually expanded to include both Western
and Indian Classical, innovations
previously unheard of in rock/pop music.
Though I became a fan of many other performers, no others
had the life-long influence on me, or the world, that the Fab Four did. All four had successful post Beatle careers, though none captured the magic in a
bottle that the synergy of their collaborative efforts produced.
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