Circa 1964, this was a BIG week in Beatles lore ...
On February 7th, The Fab Four landed at JFK Airport ...
And then two days later, on February 9th, they made their first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" ... and the world was never the same again.
As such, just about everybody is celebrating this big anniversary, including Bob Sirott, who will be spotlighting The Beatles (along with a
number of recent interviews he conducted in London, asking the local folk what
they remember about the start of Beatlemania) later this week. (He'll kick things off on Thursday, February 8th, at 8:40 am Central Time ... and then continue with spotlight features at various times in the weeks to come.)
You can catch these pieces on WGN Radio via both these
Listen Live links and Podcast links (for rebroadcasts):
Charles Rosenay! also sent us a piece about the 2024 Beatles
Magical History Tour, kicking off this August …
BEATLES:CELEBRATING
THE BEATLES 60th ANNIVERSARY!
2023 SOLD OUT! BOOK YOUR SPACE ON THE
2024 MMTour NOW!
Roll Up Roll Up for the
Mystery Tour, step right this way …
Join fellow fans on the one & only Magical History Tour,
our 41st (!) anniversary presenting tours to Liverpool and
London in conjunction with Cavern City Tours, the Cavern Club and BEATLEWEEK!
Reservations are now being taken for August 19 - August 28, 2024
where we visit every numerous Beatles sites in Liverpool and London, with a
stop in Henley (you could also come for less days, or join us in Liverpool
only).
The annual Magical Mystery Tour to LIVERPOOL & LONDON is
the definitive travel adventure for fans of all ages. Couples, singles,
families & groups take the tour that’s been bringing Beatles fans to
the homes, clubs, and all the locations since 1983. You are in great hands
with the original presenters of the annual tour for Beatles Fans, the only
company in the world that has brought thousands upon thousands of satisfied
fans and travelers to the Beatles land on a regular basis for so long. We
can supply endless references, all satisfied travelers. We’ve been
officially recognized by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool for our efforts in
bringing fans to the Beatles’ city!
Join us and be part of the most fun-filled, fab-filled
vacation in history, presented
BY fans FOR fans. It’s guaranteed to raise a smile --
you'll have the time of your life! Last year sold out, so don't get shut
out this year.
Cheers, (your host) Charles F. Rosenay!!!, Liverpool
Productions
Email LiverpoolProductions@gmail.com or phone (203) 795-4737
for complete details + an application form for the "Magical History
Tour"
And Harvey Kubernik sent us this somewhat lengthy but well worth reading piece about The
Beatles’ connection to Hollywood and Los Angeles, a perspective not often
discussed …
The Beatles: Their
Hollywood and Los Angeles Connection
“Hollywood and the Beatles were the two
greatest romances of the 20th century,” suggests writer, poet and deejay Dr.
James Cushing. “What did they have in common? How did they intersect? How did
one of these great affairs learn from the other?”
It’s not a secret why the Beatles had an
emotional, musical, physical, and spiritual relationship to Hollywood and
Southern California.
In the mid-seventies John Lennon moved to Los Angeles, liked it too much,
and returned to New York to retire. Paul, George, and Ringo all purchased homes
in Los Angeles County; George died in 2001 and was cremated at Hollywood Forever
Cemetery. His funeral was held in Pacific Palisades at the Self-Realization
Fellowship Lake Shrine.
“I think Hollywood -- the
town and the industry -- really set the stage for Beatlemania,” asserts UCLA
graduate, and novelist Daniel Weizmann, “by raising a generation on Anglophilic
fun from Alice in Wonderland to Peter Pan to all the Hayley Mills
classics. The daughter of actor Sir John Mills and novelist-playwright,
Mary Hayley Bell, Hayley Mills was every local boy's British dream girl.
“Her big hit single 'Let’s Get Together'
for The Parent Trap, written by Disney employees Robert and
Richard Sherman, was cut on Sunset Boulevard with producer Tutti Camarata at
his Sunset Sound Recorders.
“It's almost impossible to overstate how
Anglophilic Hollywood was in those days -- and not just on the big screen. From
the faux Tudor architecture to actors wearing ascots to even the street
names ... I myself grew up on Ben Lomond Place -- 5,000 miles from the loch!
“It was a funny post-war exchange, this
Angeleno / Anglo connection, parodied in Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One:
An Anglo-American Tragedy. L.A. hungered for English
sophistication, but the actual Brits who came here were seeking the new thing,
sunburst electric innocence.
“European intellectuals like Reyner Banham,
Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley traveled to the Far West as a way of
escaping Western Civilization. They wanted to dig the future, in all its
surf-crazy, open-hearted glory. The Beatles, raised not just on American
R&B but also on Honey Pie's Hollywood Dreams, are the ne plus ultra of this
exchange.
“They played the Hollywood Bowl on August
23, 1964, to roaring crowds. Exactly four days later, on August 27th, Mary
Poppins -- featuring classic songs like ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ also written by
the Shermans — premiered at Grauman's Chinese on Hollywood Blvd. The world was
getting smaller, faster than anybody could have predicted.
“A year later, at Walt's
request, the Shermans wrote ‘It's a Small World.’"
The Beatles’ 1961-1963 stage show and
recorded repertoire implemented numerous tunes with origins from Los Angeles
and Hollywood. Based on their club act, Decca Records demo, and ’63 BBC radio
broadcasts, they could at times, be perceived as an L.A. music cover band.
The Beatles had vinyl library cards from the
branches of regional record companies Specialty, Modern, Aladdin, Capitol, Arvee,
Dore, Imperial, Philles, Liberty, Dot, Lute, and Del-Fi.
Capitol
Records in Hollywood on Vine Street, would eventually manufacture their catalog.
We all know what hearing the Ken Nelson–produced
“Be-Bop-a-Lula” by Gene Vincent issued by Capitol during 1956 meant to John
Lennon.
When
McCartney saw Lennon with the Quarrymen for the very first time in 1957, John
was singing (and free-styling his own lyrics to replace the ones he couldn’t
decipher or recall) the Del-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me,” a Dot single from Tennessean
Randy Wood’s Sunset and Vine-based company, distributed in the UK by the London
logo. The Beatles cut the Dot Records of Arthur Alexander: “Soldier of Love,”
“A Shot of Rhythm and Blues” and “Anna (Go to
Him).”
Paul auditioned for John’s band with a
word-perfect, impromptu performance of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,”
recorded in 1956 at Gold Star Studios on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard
and Vine Street in 1956.
McCartney found Chan Romero’s “Hippy Hippy
Shake,” another Gold Star session, on Del-Fi, forming a crucial part of most
each and every set at Liverpool’s Cavern Club and the Star-Club in Hamburg,
Germany, as an opener or closer.
“Till There Was You,” first sung by Paul with
the Beatles in Germany, was written by Meredith Wilson in 1957 for The Music
Man, a 1962 feature film was first a cast album recording for
Capitol in 1957, produced by Nelson Riddle, before a Broadway run in New
York.
Buck Owens recorded his “Act Naturally” at
the Capitol Records studios in February ’63, and future label mate Ringo Starr
sang it.
Keyboardist Billy Preston was an L.A.
fixture. Billy met the Beatles in Germany when the band were the opening act
for Little Richard and Preston was the star’s pianist.He is later key to Let It Be
sessions.
During the Beatles’ late 1962 residency in Hamburg, Germany, a Ringo
stage number was the Hollywood Argyles’ hit “Alley Oop,” produced and published
by Kim Fowley and Gary Paxton.
“Shimmy Shimmy Kate,” a production from L.A.
natives Fred Smith and Clifford Goldsmith on their popular song by the
Olympics, named after a street in L.A., was performed live by the Beatles in
Hamburg in 1962 - and released years later on an album of questionable legality The
Beatles Live! at The Star-Club In Hamburg, Germany; 1962.
Lafayette, Louisiana–born and Los
Angeles–raised blues guitarist Bobby Parker, who worked with the Specialty
Records’ L.A. duo Don & Dewey and Sam Cooke as a teenager, earned a chart
single in 1961 with “Watch Your Step.” The Beatles ’61 live sets included
it.
In the documentary John
Lennon’s Jukebox, Lennon acknowledged Parker’s opening guitar riff
inspiring his “I Feel Fine” lead part. In a 1974 WNEW-FM radio interview,
Lennon confessed Parker’s lick aiding the beginning of “Day Tripper” as
well.
After the Beatles’ 1962 lunchtime sets at
the Cavern Club in Liverpool, it was Ketty Lester’s rendition of “Love Letters”
that played afternoons inside that venue. The disc was produced by Hollywood
High School and Four Preps’ member Ed Cobb, in 1961 for the Era label in L.A.
There are
hints of Walt Disney in “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” A Billboard No.
2 single released on Vee-Jay, from the Please Please Me ’63 album, sung
by George Harrison. It has its origins in Disney's “I’m Wishing” copyright off
the animated 1937 Snow White movie. “Want to know a
secret? Promise not to tell” and colored this Lennon/McCartney effort.
This song also launched fellow Epstein-managed
Liverpudlian Billy J. Kramer’s recording career: It was released in April of
’63, hitting No. 2 on the UK charts, making it the first cover of a
Lennon/McCartney composition to become a genuine hit.
“John, Paul, and George
first developed their ‘This Boy’ and ‘Yes It Is’ three-part harmonies from
‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ in Hamburg, thanks to Fairfax High's own Philip
Spector,” posed Beatlemaniac Gary Pig Gold.
“Meanwhile, Larry Williams was
indeed the savage young Beatles’ second-favorite Specialty recording
artist, and Coasters’ songs, including Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Three Cool Cats’ featured
prominently in the band’s, albeit, unsuccessful, January 1, 1962, Decca Records
audition.”
“I heard the Spector record ‘To Know Him Is
To Love Him’ in the UK like the Beatles did,” declared record producer, author and
deejay Andrew Loog Oldham in a 2014 interview I conducted.
“It made an impact because of the use of
room. The usage of tape delay. You knew something was going on even if you
didn’t know what it was.
“Later, after, say I’ve recorded the Rolling
Stones with ‘Not Fade Away,’ let’s say ‘Little Red Rooster,’ you realize which
was us recording in England and similar mono circumstances in Regent Sound as
opposed to Gold Star or where ever. You realize there is a time in all our
lives when there’s passion takes a back seat to innocents and purity. Then when
you get good at your job passion takes over. Of course, later it becomes
desperation.
“The record of ‘To Know Him Is To Love
Him.’ Basically, how can anybody who knows three and a half chords resist doing
those backgrounds? It’s just there. It’s a George Harrison part as opposed to a
John and Paul part. Meaning that it’s pretty bland. Maybe one of the things
that drew me to the record that did it was there was a subliminal audio text
that we didn’t know what it was but it was from Eddie Cochran records. Eddie
had already recorded ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ in the same Gold Star. So, we didn’t know
but you know, man.”
“When I was
the lead guitarist of the Everly Brothers 1961–1963, we rotated nights with the
Beatles in Germany,” Los Angeles High School alum Don Peake reminded me during a
2023 recording session.
“John and Paul watched our shows. I always
liked the Beatles and I knew they would be successful just like the Rolling
Stones, who opened for us on a tour of England in 1963.
“I’m on the John Lennon Rock ’n’
Roll album Phil Spector produced in 1973. John remembered me
at the sessions.”
If you think all of Keith Richards’ guitar lessons
were gleaned from the Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry playbooks, along with riffs
on the Chess, Sun, Motown, and Stax record labels, this is what Keith said to New
Musical Express in 1963.
“I have picked
up as many hints on guitar playing as I can from Don Peake, who is the Everly
Brothers guitarist. He really is a fantastic guitarist, and the great thing
about him is that he is always ready to show me a few tricks.”
Actress, dancer and singer Ann-Margret,
an RCA Records recording artist, had a Billboard Top 20 hit in 1961 with
“I Just Don’t Understand,” later included on a Beatles’ BBC radio broadcast.
Live at
the BBC and the 2013 On Air—Live at the BBC Volume 2, besidesdemonstrating their fondness for
Spector, Romero, and Little Richard’s “Lucille,” houses the songwriting team of
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Their “Young Blood,” “Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey,
Hey” medley, and “Some Other Guy,” coupled with Larry Williams’ “Dizzy Miss
Lizzy,” “Bad Boy,” and “Slow Down.”
In a 1998 office interview with Los Angeles
composers/independent record producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, I asked
Mike about “Some Other Guy.”
“It
was a song we wrote with Richard Barrett, who we worked with at Red Bird Records. He was a musician and producer.We were recording Richard. He was involved with the Chantels. He
produced them, and I guess he wrote a lot of their songs, I don’t remember. He
was a very capable producer and writer on his own. He wanted to do a session as
an artist. We produced that, and we were going to put it out on our own label.
“I can’t exactly remember what year it was,
but we ended up, I think, leasing it to Atlantic Records. Two sides, that’s all
we did with him. ‘Some Other Guy’ and a thing called ‘Tricky Dickey,’ and I
guess it found its way to Liverpool. It was not a hit.”
Leiber, Stoller and Doc Pomus co-wrote
“Youngblood.”
“Jerry Wexler at Atlantic said ‘Doc has
this great title. Would you like to take a crack at it?’ I was smart but very
naïve at the same time. I didn’t know I was being hustled into a thing.
[Laughs]. ‘Sure.’”
“We were later
sitting in Atlantic’s recording studio and we were mixing something else and
Jerry gave me the song on a legal pad and I wrote the music,” underscored Stoller.
“We wrote it in New York and came to L.A.
and recorded it on Fairfax Avenue. ‘Youngblood’ and three others including ‘Searchin.’”
“We wrote ‘Kansas City/Hey!-Hey!-Hey!-Hey!,” clarified
Fairfax High School alum Jerry Leiber.
“When we did that with Little Willie
Littlefield it was all right. Later, Wilbert Harrison’s version came out; it
sounded right.”
“Between the Beatles records and Paul
McCartney’s recordings, there is a vast array of versions,” added Belmont High’s
Stoller.
“But the first version was taken from
Little Richard’s version, which came out in the US right after Wilbert
Harrison’s record came out. It just said “Kansas City.” Little Richard did the
four ‘hey hey’s.
“I liked
Paul McCartney as a vocalist, and especially loved him in those melodic things
he wrote. Between him and John Lennon, that was the sixties as far as I’m
concerned. And I loved the way he sang our songs. Just beautiful.”
“Ringo
is one of rock’s all-time great drummers,” reinforced drummer Jim Keltner in a
2004 interview. “All you have to do is listen to the Beatles records, of
course, especially, the Live at the BBC. Rock and roll drumming, doesn’t
get any better than that. Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Gary Chester, Fred Below,
and David ‘Panama’ Francis, great early rock and R&B drummers, and Ringo
fit right in there with those guys. Listen to the Live at the BBC tapes
and you’ll hear what I’m saying.”
The
Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl, songs curated from three shows recorded at
the Hollywood Bowl in August 1964 and August 1965, was taped by Capitol Records
arranger/producer Voyle Gilmore, employing the Wally Heider’s mobile studio truck
and engineer Bill Halverson. George Martin mixed and sequenced an album issued
in May 1977.
Audience screams from one of the Beatles
Hollywood Bowl concerts are in the sound collage Jack Nitzsche and Neil Young implemented
for Young’s “Broken Arrow” track on Buffalo Springfield Again.
In
1964, Nitzsche cut an LP, Dance to the Hits of the Beatles. That year, Jack’s
pal, arranger/producer, H.B. Barnum, a child prodigy from the Manual Arts Hight
School music program, reconnected with the Beatles on their ’64 US trek.
Barnum in 1961 was on tour as a singer in
Europe, when he caught the Beatles live in Germany with Pete Best on drums. H.B.
subsequently attended the recording session in Hamburg for The Savage Young
Beatles. Barnum was a member of the Robins, wrote songs and arranged for
Little Richard, and collaborated with David Axelrod at Capitol Records.
At a
Capitol label function around a ‘64 Beatles press conference, Paul spotted H.B.
Barnum in the crowd and spent time together. (Decades later McCartney wanted Barnum
to do some arrangements for an album but H.B. was musical director for Aretha
Franklin and had to pass on the gig).
On that August visit, McCartney made a
trip over to the residence of Capitol Records staff producer Nik Venet, who
signed the Beach Boys and produced their first two albums for the label.
On
August 24, 1964, Alan Livingston, the President of Capitol Records and his wife
Nancy Olson arranged a charity fund raiser for the Beatles in Brentwood the day
after their Hollywood Bowl recital.
Guests paid $25.00 and were required to
bring a child to the gathering raising ten grand for the Haemophilia Foundation
of Southern California.
Among
those in the celebrity throng: Rock Hudson, Angela Cartwright, Dean Martin,
Donald O’Connor, Groucho Marx, John Forsythe, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, Ray
Walston, Jack Palance, columnist Hedda Hopper, Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson,
Eddie Fisher, Barbara Rush, Gary Lewis, Lloyd Bridges with his kids Jeff and
Cindy, and Eva Marie Saint with her son Darrell and daughter Laurette.
My
mother Hilda’s Israeli hairdresser Tovah was invited. She worked at a salon
across the street from Canter’s Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue. Tovah showed
our family photos of the party.
The evening of August 24th,
Paul, Ringo, George, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor, Mal Evans and agent Roy
Gerber went to actor Burt Lancaster’s home to watch the movie A Shot In The
Dark.
On November 23, 1964, Capitol Records
released a double documentary album The Beatles’ Story, produced by Roger
Christian, a Hollywood deejay on station KFWB, who was also a lyricist (Beach
Boys, Jan & Dean), along with songwriter (Beach Boys) and record producer (Hondells,
Surfaris), Gary Usher.
The double pocket LP housed interviews and press
conferences of the Beatles, with snippets from orchestrated arrangements of
Beatles songs. The album reached number 7 on the Billboard Top LPs
chart.
One overlooked association the Beatles
established on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood was their unfading live broadcast from
a UK theater of “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey,” “Boys” and “I’m a Loser,” shown on the October 7th, 1965 Shindig! ABC-TV series
and never screened on UK television.
2024 brings us the 60th
anniversaries of the Beatles’ booking on The Ed Sullivan Show, the North
American US tour, screenings and celebrations of A Hard Day’s Night, as
well as band/brand products and reissues culled from their copyrights and
library.
I met Sir George Martin at The Hollywood
Bowl last century. I talked to him again in 2006 at Capitol Records Studio B about a Frank Sinatra
recording session he witnessed in this very same room on his first visit to
Hollywood in 1958.
The EMI label sent him over the pond after
Martin was invited by Capitol executive Voyle Gilmore to visit the American
division. Martin described that date when Sinatra was backed by Billy May’s
orchestra while actress Lauren Bacall was in attendance. The songs were
eventually placed on Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me LP.
I thanked Martin for discovering and
signing the Beatles to their British record label deal. I complimented his
persistent determination, along with Brian Epstein, in prodding Capitol Records
to have faith in Martin’s groundbreaking Parlophone/EMI recordings with the boys
in 1963.
One of Martin’s productions by the Beatles
started playing. Try hearing their sound over custom TAD monitors inside
Capitol Records … George autographed a solo album, put his arm around me and
observed, “Pretty good stuff. Don’t you think?”
During 1998, I interviewed George Harrison
and Ravi Shankar.
Harrison described his earliest attempt
playing the sitar.
“Very rudimentary,” George said. “I didn’t know how to tune it properly,
and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with. So ‘Norwegian Wood’ was very much
an early experiment. By the time we recorded ‘Love You To’ I had made some
strides.”
Harrison also put his sitar work with the Beatles in perspective.
“That was the environment in the band, everybody was very open to
bringing in new ideas. We were listening to all sorts of things, Stockhausen,
avant-garde music, whatever, and most of it made its way onto our records.”
Beatles scholar Martin Lewis reminds us that it was a Harrison
composition that really cemented the Beatles connection to L.A.
“Between 1962-1966, there was not a single lyric written by
John, Paul, George or Ringo that referenced any geographic location outside of
England. In fact, very few places were mentioned at all before
Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane in early 1967. And no American
locales made it to a Beatle-written lyric in those years.
“Certainly, they sang lyrics that referenced Americana but
those were their covers of American compositions. In 1968 – their lyrics went
global – with references to Miami, Moscow and Chairman Mao et al. But
the lead-in to all that travel and multiculturalism started on 1967’s Magical
Mystery Tour
“And it was George who gave that first Fab shout-out to the USA – and
Los Angeles in particular. With his song Blue Jay Way. With
its opening line ‘there’s a fog up on L.A…’”
The last word about SoCal’s bio-regional
recordings informing the Beatles sonic legacy and awe-inspiring pathway, goes
to guitarist, bassist, and living legend, Carol Kaye.
In a November 2023 dinner conversation, after
interviewing Carol for a music documentary about her remarkable studio career,
Carol is heard on thousands of recording sessions, including “La Bamba,” “Let’s
Dance” and “Then he Kissed Me,” I asked if she met any of the Beatles.
Carol put down her fork, and replied,
"Paul McCartney called me many years ago when he found out I played on the
'Good Vibrations' sessions. We traded
picks."
HK
(Harvey will also be appearing on Coast To Coast AM with
Richard Syrett this Saturday Night (2/10), at 10 pm PST, discussing not only his Hollywood piece but also living
through the impact The Beatles had on the world, sixty years ago this
week! You can tune in here:
And, kicking off on Friday, February 9th (the 60th Anniversary of The Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show), The Fest For Beatles Fans will commence in New York City with what will be THEIR 50th Anniversary of celebrating the music and the magic of The Beatles ...
Special Guests include Micky Dolenz, Billy J. Kramer, Jenny Boyd, Laurence Juber and Steve Holley (both formerly of Wings), Chris O'Dell, Freda Kelly (President of the original Beatles Fan Club) and many, many more.
Much more information (as well as the complete calendar of events) via the link above.
And Forgotten Hits has dedicated 2024 to reliving the glory days of The British Invasion as well, with daily postings covering all of the main events from 60 YEARS AGO TODAY!
But while we're covering the magic of The Beatles 60 Years Ago ...
The Beatles are still having an impact on the music world, 60 Years On ...
Sunday night they won a Grammy for their "I'm Only Sleeping" animated video, released to help promote the then upcoming deluxe edition of their "Revolver album." (I have to admit it's a pretty well-done video ... "I'm Only Sleeping" has never really been one of my favorite Beatles tunes ... but I have grown to love and appreciate it SO much more these past few years.)
And then, of course, there was the release of what was touted as "The Last Beatles Single" ...
"Now And Then" raced up the charts, giving them yet ANOTHER Top Ten Hit to tack on to their illustrious career.
And the video for THIS one is quite impressive ...
LOOK FOR OUR SALUTE TO THE BEATLES THE REST OF THE WEEK AS PART OF OUR ON-GOING NEW FEATURE,
