The Beatles

No coverage of the 60s could be complete without the Beatles in some form or fashion.  Is there anyone alive today who has not at least heard of these legends?  If so, there is something wrong there. 

For our older siblings, Elvis had been huge, but we were a little too young to appreciate his style and moves.  All we knew was that Elvis was BAD and we shouldn’t even look at him.  At the dawn of the Beatles, Elvis was growing older and passé, but he would make his reemergence in 1968.

Before the Beatles made their debut in the United States, they were already well known in Great Britain and Europe.  They had been honing their craft and perfecting their style there for almost five years, beginning in 1960.  They had become a phenomenon in their home country and were now ready to invade the United States and the world.

In February of 1964, the advertising blitz began.  If you were one of the few mainstream Americans who had not learned that the Beatles were appearing on the Ed Sullivan show that coming Sunday night, you lived on another planet.  The advertising went on for weeks, and was especially heavy on the Saturday before Ed’s Sunday night show.  You simply couldn’t miss it unless you were Amish and had no television coverage.  The media flashed pictures of the lads as well.

Their hairstyles were rather unusual, but looking back on it all, they were not really that outrageous.  However, they did not fit the American standard of proper male grooming and appearance of the day, and thereby began the problems with our esteemed parents, the “older” generation.

Both my mother and father grumbled throughout the weekend, up to the show, “They LOOK like a bunch of beetles!” 

It was not meant as a compliment.  They were already programmed to dislike them.  They, like many other parents, felt their comfortable and conventional flat top haircut world to be threatened.

At 7:00 p.m., Ed Sullivan broadcasted and the Beatles stepped into history.  These were early Beatles, and only a façade of what they would become later as they evolved.  What we saw were four young men in matching suits with stovepipe legs and hair that flopped into their eyes and was a bit on the longish side.   They were actually nice-looking young men.  Their music was catchy, but a bit on the frivolous side.  It was “pop”, pure and simple.

They had no appeal for me and I promptly forgot all about them.  But no one could miss all the screaming girls, about to faint and fall over the railings of the theatre.  And then there were those shots of policemen carrying girls away after they had attempted to storm the barricades outside the Ed Sullivan theatre or at the airport.  What was going on?

My father began grumbling again:  “It was that Frank Sinatra that started all of this screaming and fainting nonsense!”

I thought it was Elvis started all that.  Frank Sinatra?  That puffy faced middle aged singer who took swings at news photographers and made death threats to his biographers?

School the next day was abuzz with the Beatles.  Did you see them?  Weren’t they just wonderful????  How many of their records do you have????   What’s your favorite Beatles song??  Little girls played Beatles on the playground, and you could not visit anyone’s home without being dragged before their record player and listening to a 45 of their latest hit.

Their frothy little pop hits continued on until they began to morph into the TRUE Beatles, hatching out of their pop cocoons around 1965 with their real music which was melodic, unique and haunting.   We had never heard anything like it.  Their appearance changed radically as well.  Gone were the mop headed but clean-cut eager working class English boys.  They were replaced with more and more outlandish hairstyles and clothing.  The boys were also getting heavy into pot and other controlled substances.  I hate to say this, but the music they created under the influence was the best they ever did.  When you heard it, it drew you in.  There was a depth and soul to mid 60s beatle music that could not be resisted.

The issue of the LSD drenched Sgt. Pepper album was the pinnacle.  There had never been anything like it and there never would be again.   It was during the Sgt. Pepper era that rumors started racing that Paul was in fact dead.  It was getting bizarre.  We would play the album over and over, listening for the secret messages at the beginning or end of the tracks.  We pored over all the clues in the photographs and album cover.  Paul was pictured barefoot.  They buried people in England without shoes.  Paul’s left-handed guitar appeared on the cover and it was made of funeral flowers.  How much more convincing could it get?  Then there was the bloody glove.  It had to be: Paul had died in a motoring accident.   We held our breath and discussed it endlessly at school.  We learned little until it all finally blew over. 

At one point, our parents banded together and met at school at night after John’s unfortunate “we are more popular than Jesus Christ” comment.  The Beatles would be the ruination of our young people.  We would grow our hair long and tune out!  Their songs were full of subliminal messages about drugs:  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was an anthem to LSD!  Poor little Julian Lennon’s innocent picture became a hail storm of controversy.  For my part, I believe that John Lennon took one look at that picture, immediately saw the connection and took advantage of it, snickering all the while.  Or maybe poor little Julian, a chip off the old block, knew all about LSD and he was just expressing himself.

We were outraged.  How could our square parents think such disgusting things about our heroes? 

Things began sliding downhill soon after.  There was disagreement, dissension, and financial squabbling in the group.  Paul was still the ebullient cutie, but John was getting weirder and weirder with bizarre utterances and love-ins.  He was beginning to resemble Jesus.   At one point, he and Yoko gave an interview while they sat in giant paper bags, answering questions in muffled voices.  John and Paul were both scrambling for creative control of the group.  George, talented in his own right as a composer and song writer had been shoved completely to the side as John and Paul locked up horns and grappled.  George then entered another dimension, chanting mantras with his yogi when he was not smoking pot and playing his sitar.  George’s wife ran away with Eric Clapton. 

Then they broke up, and just when they were really getting going too!   All we could hope for now was a reunion and reassembling of the group, but it was a dream which never came to be.  Paul, under the influence of a good woman, his wife Linda Eastman, went on to form a far more commercial group, the Wings.  John and George continued on their own, producing a number of hits, both of their lives spiraling slowly downwards in a fog of drugs and marital discord.