60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
12/4/64 – The album “Beatles For Sale” is released in the UK. (It will show up here in The States in an abridged form as “Beatles ’65.”)
I literally played the grooves off my "Beatles '65" album ... down to the bare metal. It drove my mom crazy ... to the point she finally came in my bedroom and made me shut it off.
When I lifted the needled, it was covered in shredded vinyl ...
At that point I knew I needed to get a new copy of the LP ... and a new phonograph needle for my little record player, too!
I just couldn't get enough of that LP ...
And when Ron Riley, our go-to WLS evening jock, started playing cuts off the British version of the album that were not on my US copy, I was going crazy!!! (Most of those cuts would show up later on an album Capitol Records called "Beatles VI.")
Those two LPs (which, between them, also included The Beatles' next two #1 two-sided hits, "I Feel Fine" / "She's A Woman" and "Eight Days A Week" / "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party") STILL remain my favorites of the Early Beatles Era.
After this, everything would change. (The Beatles threw together "Beatles For Sale" very quickly in England to cash in on the Christmas gift market. As such, they covered several of the songs they used to perform back at The Cavern Club in Liverpool and The Star Club in Hamburg. We got "Kansas City," Buddy Holly's "Words Of Love," Larry Williams' "Dizzy Miss Lizzie," the best version EVER of Chuck Berry's "Rock And Roll Music," Ringo doing Carl Perkins' "Honey Don't" and George doing Carl Perkins' "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby" ... it just didn't get any better than this!!!)
Unless, of course, you counted the new songs that THEY had written!!!
"No Reply," "I'm A Loser," "I'll Follow The Sun," "What You're Doing" and, in America, George's "You Like Me Too Much" and Paul and John harmonizing on "Tell Me What You See." John's cover of Larry Williams' "Bad Boy" wouldn't show up on a British pressing for two more years ... and it's yet another one of Lennon's shredding vocals.
Also on this date (12/4/64) - Actress Marisa Tomei is born
(I will admit to a decades-long crush!)
