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BEATLEMANIA - Part 1 of 2.
THE BEATLES
Beatlemania Diaries 1 of 2, 08 & 09 May19 @ Albert Dock, Liverpool , U.K.
During the 50’s, Liverpool was a grim industrial town trying to recover from the savage bombing of WW2. With it’s great ship building industry on the decline, unemployment and poverty on the rise- the city looked headed for a cold and bleak future, rather like the vagaries of typical English weather that it continues to still find itself in. Come the 60’s and along with the slow economic recovery of Great Britain, something extraordinary began to quietly take place in the city which, rapidly swept the entire country ,then exploded across the Atlantic and continued engulfing the entire world decades afterwards .
This is my little tribute to the heady days of 60s & 70 s, when counter culture, the spirit of youth, rock music and The Beatles strode like giants over the globe, reaching out to citizens of a highly volatile divided political world.
For fans of the Beatles, even ones who incredibly are’nt, this is-With Love from Me to You.
John Lennon, a cocky young high school going Liverpudlian lad ran his own aspiring skiffle band – The Quarrymen. On 06 July 1957, at a church fete in Woolton, a leafy suburb of Liverpool , he suitably impressed a younger Paul McCartney to join in as rhythm guitarist. Paul in turn, inducted his younger mate George Harrison through an audition on top of a double decker bus on a windy night in Liverpool. The sole jury, John , suitably impressed with George’s rendition of “Raunchy” , a Bill Justis instrumental, ruled him in ,with possible words of …. Fookin’ allright, in’he ? or something to that effect. George, with his six string guitar, might have been puzzled with John’s 4 string one or his apparent lack of knowledge of the necessity of the 2 missing guitar strings, but he did not demur. The lads became mates soon, visiting each other, John & Paul writing songs, the quiet George with his guitar backing them up, becoming better each passing day till they crossed over from village and church fairs to the pubs and clubs of Liverpool .
The Quarrymen rapidly evolved through a change of names from Johnny & the Moondogs, The Silver Beetles to the Beatles. A fresh new sound came in – skiffle transformed by strains of rock’’n’roll and hidden hints of the blues , from across the waters of the Atlantic. Joined by bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best, the band became musically mature enough to escape the confines of Liverpool and land contracts in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles were now looking good and set up as a band.
And then in 1962, three things happened. A fellow Liverpudlian, Brian Epstein, always disinterested in the regular and armed with a lack of any specific achievements in life till then , took a liking to the Beatles, appointed himself as their manager and did something which would influence the world for years to come. The Beatles landed a contract with EMI and producer George Martin. Stu Sutcliffe, meanwhile, tragically passed away of brain haemorrhage in Hamburg and Pete Best was not found to be good enough by the studio. The tracks, Love me Do & P.S. I Love You were recorded by a session drummer. Confusion reigned till a certain replacement professional drummer, Mr. Richard Starkey, of unknown fame from an even lesser known group Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, settled into his new role. Riots and protests ensued over the ousting of Pete Best, in the streets of Liverpool and at The Cavern Club, where the Beatles played. Greeted with hostility, Ringo ( or our lad , Ring’ , as he came to be called later) responded with his own brand of charm and humour and of course his drums to win everyone over.
Finally, the John met Paul, who had met George and all of them met Ringo, story, had ended.
The Beatles ‘came together’ and on 11 Feb, 1963, they accomplished an incredible single day long session of the studio recording of 10 songs of their first LP – Please Please Me, at the Abbey Road Studios, London. The release of the previous singles and their first LP , stormed the U.K. charts and the Beatles had arrived.
What followed was an extraordinary phenomena of musical ecstasy which swept the world, through the mind boggling 1963-66 years of ground breaking music hits, massive stadium tours, primetime TV shows, hysteria of fans and Lennon’s controversial – “Right now, we are more popular than Jesus Christ” statement , which caused outrage on a global scale in an era when social media did not exist.
A right down “cheeky bastard”, our John was, was’nt he ?
Later came the dark , LSD laced Studio years of 1966-70 when the Beatles locked themselves in, fought each other and their own internal demons of trapped stardom , yet managing to create genre- defining music which has continued to influence generations of rock , progressive and fusion musicians till today.
The Beatles finally disintegrated in the blazing glory of creative combustion, under the weight of being the world’s first superstars . Their last performance – The Rooftop Concert, on 30 Jan 1969 at the terrace of Apple Corp. Saville Row, London could not delay the inevitable , and, on 31 Dec 1970 a legal and contractual battle for dissolution was started till its bitter end in Dec 74, leaving millions of fans in grief all over the world.
Definitions of Beatlemania have ranged from dictionaries stating – “Extreme enthusiasm for the Beatles pop group, as manifested in the frenzied behaviour of their fans in the 1960s” to the press adopting the term "Beatlemania" to describe the scenes of adulation that attended the group's concert performances. From the start of 1964, their worldwide tours were characterised by intense levels of hysteria and high-pitched screaming by female fans, both at concerts and during the band's travels. TV pundits of those days strove desparately to explain the curious incidents of hundreds of “abandoned female knickers” littering the venues at the end of a Beatles concert.
But what mattered in the end was simple, the world loved the Beatles for a singular reason – their music. In an extremely short creative span of 8 years , the Beatles released 11 hit double side albums, 2 film tracks , an endless stream of singles- EPs & SPs, compilations and re-releases followed by the music of their individual years , leaving a rich legacy which continues even today with their surviving members , Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
My personal love affair with the Beatles started only in the late 70s , being too young to see or hear of them in the glory years. The radio music station of All India Radio Calcutta B , news of John Lennon’s tragic death in Dec 80, a chance viewing of the film of George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, snatches of listening to Beatles numbers on record and cassette players , putting up Beatles posters on the walls of a dingy hostel room – my quiet obsession grew over 4 decades. World weary and wiser today, I still continue with my tireless passion of reading about the Beatles, with the added luxury of listening to their music , album by album , with repeats , in today’s digital music world.
The visit to The Beatles Story Museum , Albert Docks , Liverpool , thus , was nothing short of a pilgrimage. 3 hours or more if one wishes so, of an audio-visual paradise for a Beatles lover. I can’t share those headphones but here are a few of those visuals with their own footnotes of music history, and lastly ………………………
“If there’s anything that you want,
If there’s anything I can do,
Just call on me and I’ll send it along
With Love – From Me to You.”
I hope that gets some of you fans rushing back to the music of The Beatles once again.
# Music
#Travel
Beatlemania Diaries 1 of 2, 08 & 09 May19 @ Albert Dock, Liverpool , U.K.
During the 50’s, Liverpool was a grim industrial town trying to recover from the savage bombing of WW2. With it’s great ship building industry on the decline, unemployment and poverty on the rise- the city looked headed for a cold and bleak future, rather like the vagaries of typical English weather that it continues to still find itself in. Come the 60’s and along with the slow economic recovery of Great Britain, something extraordinary began to quietly take place in the city which, rapidly swept the entire country ,then exploded across the Atlantic and continued engulfing the entire world decades afterwards .
This is my little tribute to the heady days of 60s & 70 s, when counter culture, the spirit of youth, rock music and The Beatles strode like giants over the globe, reaching out to citizens of a highly volatile divided political world.
For fans of the Beatles, even ones who incredibly are’nt, this is-With Love from Me to You.
John Lennon, a cocky young high school going Liverpudlian lad ran his own aspiring skiffle band – The Quarrymen. On 06 July 1957, at a church fete in Woolton, a leafy suburb of Liverpool , he suitably impressed a younger Paul McCartney to join in as rhythm guitarist. Paul in turn, inducted his younger mate George Harrison through an audition on top of a double decker bus on a windy night in Liverpool. The sole jury, John , suitably impressed with George’s rendition of “Raunchy” , a Bill Justis instrumental, ruled him in ,with possible words of …. Fookin’ allright, in’he ? or something to that effect. George, with his six string guitar, might have been puzzled with John’s 4 string one or his apparent lack of knowledge of the necessity of the 2 missing guitar strings, but he did not demur. The lads became mates soon, visiting each other, John & Paul writing songs, the quiet George with his guitar backing them up, becoming better each passing day till they crossed over from village and church fairs to the pubs and clubs of Liverpool .
The Quarrymen rapidly evolved through a change of names from Johnny & the Moondogs, The Silver Beetles to the Beatles. A fresh new sound came in – skiffle transformed by strains of rock’’n’roll and hidden hints of the blues , from across the waters of the Atlantic. Joined by bassist Stuart Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best, the band became musically mature enough to escape the confines of Liverpool and land contracts in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles were now looking good and set up as a band.
And then in 1962, three things happened. A fellow Liverpudlian, Brian Epstein, always disinterested in the regular and armed with a lack of any specific achievements in life till then , took a liking to the Beatles, appointed himself as their manager and did something which would influence the world for years to come. The Beatles landed a contract with EMI and producer George Martin. Stu Sutcliffe, meanwhile, tragically passed away of brain haemorrhage in Hamburg and Pete Best was not found to be good enough by the studio. The tracks, Love me Do & P.S. I Love You were recorded by a session drummer. Confusion reigned till a certain replacement professional drummer, Mr. Richard Starkey, of unknown fame from an even lesser known group Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, settled into his new role. Riots and protests ensued over the ousting of Pete Best, in the streets of Liverpool and at The Cavern Club, where the Beatles played. Greeted with hostility, Ringo ( or our lad , Ring’ , as he came to be called later) responded with his own brand of charm and humour and of course his drums to win everyone over.
Finally, the John met Paul, who had met George and all of them met Ringo, story, had ended.
The Beatles ‘came together’ and on 11 Feb, 1963, they accomplished an incredible single day long session of the studio recording of 10 songs of their first LP – Please Please Me, at the Abbey Road Studios, London. The release of the previous singles and their first LP , stormed the U.K. charts and the Beatles had arrived.
What followed was an extraordinary phenomena of musical ecstasy which swept the world, through the mind boggling 1963-66 years of ground breaking music hits, massive stadium tours, primetime TV shows, hysteria of fans and Lennon’s controversial – “Right now, we are more popular than Jesus Christ” statement , which caused outrage on a global scale in an era when social media did not exist.
A right down “cheeky bastard”, our John was, was’nt he ?
Later came the dark , LSD laced Studio years of 1966-70 when the Beatles locked themselves in, fought each other and their own internal demons of trapped stardom , yet managing to create genre- defining music which has continued to influence generations of rock , progressive and fusion musicians till today.
The Beatles finally disintegrated in the blazing glory of creative combustion, under the weight of being the world’s first superstars . Their last performance – The Rooftop Concert, on 30 Jan 1969 at the terrace of Apple Corp. Saville Row, London could not delay the inevitable , and, on 31 Dec 1970 a legal and contractual battle for dissolution was started till its bitter end in Dec 74, leaving millions of fans in grief all over the world.
Definitions of Beatlemania have ranged from dictionaries stating – “Extreme enthusiasm for the Beatles pop group, as manifested in the frenzied behaviour of their fans in the 1960s” to the press adopting the term "Beatlemania" to describe the scenes of adulation that attended the group's concert performances. From the start of 1964, their worldwide tours were characterised by intense levels of hysteria and high-pitched screaming by female fans, both at concerts and during the band's travels. TV pundits of those days strove desparately to explain the curious incidents of hundreds of “abandoned female knickers” littering the venues at the end of a Beatles concert.
But what mattered in the end was simple, the world loved the Beatles for a singular reason – their music. In an extremely short creative span of 8 years , the Beatles released 11 hit double side albums, 2 film tracks , an endless stream of singles- EPs & SPs, compilations and re-releases followed by the music of their individual years , leaving a rich legacy which continues even today with their surviving members , Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
My personal love affair with the Beatles started only in the late 70s , being too young to see or hear of them in the glory years. The radio music station of All India Radio Calcutta B , news of John Lennon’s tragic death in Dec 80, a chance viewing of the film of George Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, snatches of listening to Beatles numbers on record and cassette players , putting up Beatles posters on the walls of a dingy hostel room – my quiet obsession grew over 4 decades. World weary and wiser today, I still continue with my tireless passion of reading about the Beatles, with the added luxury of listening to their music , album by album , with repeats , in today’s digital music world.
The visit to The Beatles Story Museum , Albert Docks , Liverpool , thus , was nothing short of a pilgrimage. 3 hours or more if one wishes so, of an audio-visual paradise for a Beatles lover. I can’t share those headphones but here are a few of those visuals with their own footnotes of music history, and lastly ………………………
“If there’s anything that you want,
If there’s anything I can do,
Just call on me and I’ll send it along
With Love – From Me to You.”
I hope that gets some of you fans rushing back to the music of The Beatles once again.
# Music
#Travel
