Excellent story - you really nailed that one! I had a similar experience with the Fabs back in 1978 or so cruising in a friend's Mercury Bobcat loaded with dateless losers (not nearly as nice an environment as you were in, I'm sure!). He popped in the cassette tape of their live show at the Hollywood Bowl, turned up the volume and I'll never forget how completely the music took hold. My brother thought I was nuts, but I've been a rabid fan ever since!

 

Don said:

To write the Beatles's success off as depending on corporate marketing is to not have been there.  Today one cannot imagine the effect their music had on the minds, souls and loins of a teenager back when they first appeared on the airwaves.

I was such a teenager.  Already a working musician. Not into TV at all. Not into hype.  But let me tell you the effect that hearing She Loves You had on me...

I was with my girlfriend in her bedroom. Her parents were out. We were doing the stuff that curious teenagers do at such times.

This girl was a gorgeous blue-eyed Swedish blond.  My attention was not easily distracted.

Suddenly this sound came on the radio. I simply sat up, frozen in time and space, completely and totally mesmerized. I had never heard such a thing. Never been effected like that by any music. Electrified. I at that time had no idea of who the group was.

Today there is no way to simulate that effect. That of something totally fresh and new. Something that entered one's very soul and spirit.

Others may have been effected by other music like that. Perhaps some reacted that way when they first heard Elvis. That I cannot say.  But never to my knowledge has it happened since. And if you grew up with Beatle influenced RnR as the soundtrack of your life you truly cannot even imagine what it was like to hear that music for the first time.

-Don

PS - Lynn - if perchance you are reading this - I really do apologize! :D~

BOTH! Don't get this one or the other hoo ha. Two massive ground breaking bands that influenced music in all four corners of the globe. It's easy to LOVE both you know!

That's definitely a fact.  Chances are "I Want To Hold your Hand" could have died down before it ever took off simply because Capitol refused to get behind it.  DJs were playing imported Parlophone (EMI) copies at the request of a few fans. So they might have gone bust by 1965 or even a little earlier.

RJFait said:

Not to start another argument, I really don't want that, but when you say what you said out loud, it really sounds like The Beatles weren't going anywhere until the money came into play.

Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

"the only reason the DJs started playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was because of a few people who accidently heard it and thought the tune was catchy.  Nobody remembers but Dick Clark actually put out a Beatles record (She Loves You) in the summer of 1963 and debuted it on Bandstand and it flopped amongst the kids.  He even showed their photo and the kids laughed"

And then, a couple months later (when the record companies finally started throwing money at them), everyone who had never heard of The Beatles all fell madly in love.

Strategic exposure is key. If Ed Sullivan said you were cool, dammit, you were cool. I'm not saying anybody got paid, and Ed only put them on because they were already cool, but he had never heard them prior to that show. But, I stand by my above statement about the rare sequence of events.
 
Don said:

Money bought exposure. That for the most part is all it'll buy but without it no one hears the music, no one buys the music, the machine never builds up any momentum.

And yes that is why many great bands never "made it" big.

Another was lack of originality - the thing that makes for product differentiation.

BTW, ever hear of "Payola"?

Have you seen the film Cadillac Records?

Its all there.

-don

I don't believe that it was simply money that made The Beatles, though the massive exposure didn't hurt. I really believe that America needed a change, something to happen or kids were going to start killing their rigid, stodgy 1950's parents. The Beatles were something new - not so much for what they were doing, but because of who they were. Local bands only got local exposure, and were therefore only hated by local parents. The Beatles were hated by virtually every parent in America. The kids had a common hero because their parents had a common enemy. I don't think this alone was the reason for Beatle Mania either, but I think it was one of the major factors. The series of events that all coincided at the time are so mathematically phenomenal and rare that there will never be another Beatle Mania.

Money bought exposure. That for the most part is all it'll buy but without it no one hears the music, no one buys the music, the machine never builds up any momentum.

And yes that is why many great bands never "made it" big.

Another was lack of originality - the thing that makes for product differentiation.

BTW, ever hear of "Payola"?

Have you seen the film Cadillac Records?

Its all there.

-don

Not to start another argument, I really don't want that, but when you say what you said out loud, it really sounds like The Beatles weren't going anywhere until the money came into play.

Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

"the only reason the DJs started playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was because of a few people who accidently heard it and thought the tune was catchy.  Nobody remembers but Dick Clark actually put out a Beatles record (She Loves You) in the summer of 1963 and debuted it on Bandstand and it flopped amongst the kids.  He even showed their photo and the kids laughed"

Nobody likes to admit it but the Stones were almost a cult following in the States for the first year and a half before Satisfaction came along and the other thing is....Capitol kept pushing the Beatles aside until the DJs in the States forced their hand to rethink their position in releasing their records and re-releasing earlier records put out by other labels that originally got ignored.  And the only reason the DJs started playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was because of a few people who accidently heard it and thought the tune was catchy.  Nobody remembers but Dick Clark actually put out a Beatles record (She Loves You) in the summer of 1963 and debuted it on Bandstand and it flopped amongst the kids.  He even showed their photo and the kids laughed.  So there is a little truth behind Capitol telling the kids that Beatles are cool but you still gotta give some credit to everybody who believed in "I Want To Hold Your Hand" before it got released in America. 

There is truth to that. Many of the great bands of the time couldn't get any better than minimal local air play and school dances for gigs - and all because most of them were too everything that was supposedly so great about The Beatles.

Thane Cesar said:

All I'm saying is that if you have a massive machine like EMI behind you, you will be big. Not to say they didn't have talent, but they had a lot of breaks other bands didn't. Not ever band gets their own Alan Parsons, you know what I mean?

All I'm saying is that if you have a massive machine like EMI behind you, you will be big. Not to say they didn't have talent, but they had a lot of breaks other bands didn't. Not ever band gets their own Alan Parsons, you know what I mean?

Some like the Beatles, some like the Stones, but we all love the Kinks!

I'm a Beatles-in-the-AM/Stones-in-the-PM kinda guy.

Well, thank you for that, Don.

Opinionated? Perhaps. But a better word IMO is passionate and I for one enjoy that. Keep on posting! :)

-Don

I find myself deleting replies because it turns out my wife is right, I am very opinionated. I can't help but think though, that The Beatles rise to fame was much like that of most pop artists before and since. The closest things to "Beatle Mania" in recent history have been New Kids On The Block, The Backstreet Boys, and NSYNC. Today our biggest stars are Carrie Underwood and that horrible tripe called GaGa. I'm not saying The Beatles are on the same level of mediocrity, but there is a pattern here. True, there has not been a Beatle Mania since, well, Beatle Mania, but maybe people just realized how silly they were being.

To write the Beatles's success off as depending on corporate marketing is to not have been there.  Today one cannot imagine the effect their music had on the minds, souls and loins of a teenager back when they first appeared on the airwaves.

I was such a teenager.  Already a working musician. Not into TV at all. Not into hype.  But let me tell you the effect that hearing She Loves You had on me...

I was with my girlfriend in her bedroom. Her parents were out. We were doing the stuff that curious teenagers do at such times.

This girl was a gorgeous blue-eyed Swedish blond.  My attention was not easily distracted.

Suddenly this sound came on the radio. I simply sat up, frozen in time and space, completely and totally mesmerized. I had never heard such a thing. Never been effected like that by any music. Electrified. I at that time had no idea of who the group was.

Today there is no way to simulate that effect. That of something totally fresh and new. Something that entered one's very soul and spirit.

Others may have been effected by other music like that. Perhaps some reacted that way when they first heard Elvis. That I cannot say.  But never to my knowledge has it happened since. And if you grew up with Beatle influenced RnR as the soundtrack of your life you truly cannot even imagine what it was like to hear that music for the first time.

-Don

PS - Lynn - if perchance you are reading this - I really do apologize! :D~

I was brought up on the Stones, so I'd go for them.

I like the Beatles, don't get me wrong, and the Lemmy quote is true. The Beatles in Hamburg!

However I do think the Beatles get a lot more credit for things than they deserve. After all, they had a corporation behind them, so yeah, of course they were going to be big.

The Stones may have been middle class(ish, only really Jagger and Watts), but c'mon, the Beatles were hardly born in a briar patch, were they?

The real question is Elvis or Buddy? And I'm a confirm Buddy-ite.

No he wasn't as harsh as that but I'm not putting them down either. I love the attitude in songs like Salt of the Earth and their decadence. And their best music is tough as nails. It's not like they were loaded. I don't think a life of ease and comfort makes for great musicians but the unease and discomfort can come from within as well as without, regardless of background.

Mike Humsgreen said:

Did he ever say it as harsh as that? I know he did kinda say what you said in that film but that sounds a bit of an unfair thing to say about a fellow musician. It's often interesting to hear about a band's background but I often wonder if it really makes any difference to the quality or style of music.

I'm definitely more on the Stones side.

Dana V. Hatch said:

the Stones pampered upper middle class prats.

My wife, also a sixties musician (see http://www.60sgaragebands.com/ivkingsaqueen.html ) always viewed herself as a Stones person while I was more into the Beatles.  Then several things occurred. One was my increasing love for the blues roots of rock -- something that the Stones helped white Americans to know. The other was the release of the film Across the Universe which for perhaps the first time helped my dear one hear the Beatles music on its own terms, free of the Beatle schtick.

In any case we are now both Stones and Beatles people.  And lots of other types of music people too!

(Anyone for Bach?) ;-)

-don

RJFait said:

It's funny that you ask this. I've always said, there are 2 kinds of people, Beatles and Stones, and they don't mix well. I am definitely Stones, my wife is Beatles. If only I'd asked 11 years ago...

Did he ever say it as harsh as that? I know he did kinda say what you said in that film but that sounds a bit of an unfair thing to say about a fellow musician. It's often interesting to hear about a band's background but I often wonder if it really makes any difference to the quality or style of music.

I'm definitely more on the Stones side.

Dana V. Hatch said:

the Stones pampered upper middle class prats.

The Who!

It's funny that you ask this. I've always said, there are 2 kinds of people, Beatles and Stones, and they don't mix well. I am definitely Stones, my wife is Beatles. If only I'd asked 11 years ago...

That's interesting , because Lemmy is a huge Beatles fan , and claimed he used to see them play in Hamburg all the time. It's possible , I would NEVER dispute Lemmy (Who's a very nice guy , BTW.), but he has told stories , like witnessing the Allied intervention of Germany , in 1945 , when he would have still been an infant . That said , he's always marvelled at how tuff The Beatles were , at least , back when.  When I was in Jr. High , High School , before I got into Rockabilly and Garage in earnest , The Beatles and Stones were running neck and neck , for me . Later , The Stones took hold. I guess , because they seemed a LOT more influential on the stuff I like , now , than The Beatles - Who are , of course , totally influential , most people have heard the bulk of their back catalogue over and over, whereas , The Stones , and Elvis , too , for that matter , have a shitload of great songs that only the most hardened geeks , like myself , even know. A Stones tribute band has about 25 songs they can get away with playing , but  , if a Beatles tribute band wants to focus on one era , OR go across the board , it's still P.C.  MY EARLIEST MEMORIES OF THE BEATLES GO BACK TO 1968. I'm sure I heard The Rolling Stones , then , too , but , was'nt conscious of them until the early 70's.

I like some Pop  all right , but , generally , I go in for a grittier sound. The Stones even had some great Pop songs , too , but , you'd have to be a pretty big fan to know more than a few of them .
 
Dana V. Hatch said:

Lemmy pointed out that the story is the Beatles were goody goody and the Stones were tough but the opposite was true, Beatles tough determined working class lads, the Stones pampered upper middle class prats. Still I prefer the Stones' overt sex drugs and rock and roll stance over the Beatles' subtler subversion but I love both bands like my own food.

Totally,Richards talks about it in his book,that the Beatles first tour was pure Sex,Sex,Sex.But the Stones win with my too.

Lemmy pointed out that the story is the Beatles were goody goody and the Stones were tough but the opposite was true, Beatles tough determined working class lads, the Stones pampered upper middle class prats. Still I prefer the Stones' overt sex drugs and rock and roll stance over the Beatles' subtler subversion but I love both bands like my own food.