“And in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make.”
Among the final lyrics from one of The Beatles’ final albums as the 1960s, a decade they dominated as a musical and cultural force drew to a close.
A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
While making one of my frequent trips to Record Theatre in Buffalo, New York a few months ago, they were selling a bumper striker there that read, in so many words; “The Beatles didn’t need a website.”
The first Canada edition of a Beatle album released in this country in 1964 – very rare now if you have one
They sure didn’t. They didn’t need marketing from the likes of Disney or any other too-big-to-fail corporation either – corporations that continue to poop out musically challenged inflatables like Britney Spears and on up to Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber and the like. Soulless, lip-syncing robots that are so impoverished around putting out good music that they need wardrobe malfunctions, grinding their butt into other on-stage robots’ groins or alternation, along with smiling mug shots with the cops to help them and their corporate handlers shovel out whatever shit they offer up on CD or iPod or whatever.
It was, believe it or not, 50 years ago, this February 9th, that The Bealtes made their debut in North America, and let me say this. ….
In stark contrast to this mostly stinking mountain of manure that constitutes the music business today, a group of four guys from Liverpool, England called The Beatles appeared for the first time 50 years ago this Sunday, February 9th on a then very popular Ed Sullivan Show. More than 70 million people tuned in too that show – the largest in television history to that time and for decades into the future – and it set off a musical and cultural revolution that has not been surpassed on this continent, and possibly in the world, to this very present, all too pitiful Justin Bieber date.
This was a group of guys from a working class town called Liverpool, England – frowned upon by elites in more southern towns in their own country like London. They soaked up the sounds of 1950s American rockers like Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, not to mention the ground-breaking harmonies of the Everly Brothers.
The Beatles were a group that mixed all of this early rock, blues and country into their own brilliant music writing and performance in a way that changed pop music for decades to come.
What was so amazing about The Beatles – and what remains amazing about them to this day – is that they did it organically, working from smokey, sweaty bars, performing their stuff set-after-set, many hours into the night every day, rather than from a Disney-like corporate factory, and they did it without an American record company of any renown at first willing to take them on.
In late 1963, just weeks before The Beatles went to today’s equivqalent of viral on the Ed Sullivan Show, one of the only record labels that would press their records in North America was a Chicago label called VeeJay. That lable circulated a couple of singles for songs like Please, Please Me’, and put out an album called ‘Introducing the Beatles’ with other tunes like ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ on it because the big corporate Capitol Records label still saw no interest in the band. It wasn’t until their song ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and they were on the verge of arriving in America 50 years ag this month to appear on the Sullivan show, that the corporate boys at Capitol Records decided togobble up whatever deal VeeJay had with The Beatles and take them on.
What is amazing about all that is that this was about the last time a rock group led the way in front of some corporation inventing a rock group or any other pop artist they have invented and marketed for popular consumption. It was one of the last big times that they music of a group and those who discovered it in a sweaty club like the Cavern or wherever else came first.
Along with all of the wonderful music, from the earliest ones to A Day In The Life and Here Comes The Sun, that is what I most love about this group.
It is doubtful that we will ever see, at least in our lifetime, an organic rise of popular music on the scale of Beatlemania again.
Long live The Beatles. No one has beat their ability to write and perform great music that has so engaged countless tens of millions around the world – just for the music – since.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
Liverpool back in the late1950s was an incubator for music, this was when groups like Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Quarry Men. and Lonnie Donegan and his skiffel band were hot, even guys with bongo drums were doing their thing, I was back in Liverpool in 1960 when I saw on the Liverpool Echo display board on the sidewalk outside Quarry Bank School ( John Lennons old school,) That the Quarrymen were back from Hamburg. I returned to the States 1961 and several years later I heard of a Liverpool band called the Beatles had landed in New York, These guy’s were cleaned up wore nice clothes and portrayed a different image from the scruffy guy’s that I remembered. no more tight drain pipe jeans and leather jackets , DA, greased hair styles. they were now presentable. trying to get into the Cavern club was no easy feat, most of us were content to look in off the sidewalk , so packed they were like sadines in a can., The Cavern Club was used for coal storage, friuit storage even potatoes. the place was whitewashed ( lime wash) and was now a club. on Matthew Street.if you can even call it a club. When I found out that The Beatles were the old Quarry Men I could hardly believe it, the rest is history. The City of Liverpool suffered horrible damage from Hitlers Luftwaffe during the second World War.downtown stores were destroyed by bombs.that part of Liverpool missed the bombs.other parts did not do so well.If you liked caribbean music the place to go was “The Jacaranda “which was a basement place several blocks away.
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Actually I do have the original “Twist & Shout” album and “Beatlemania” album from 1964.I also have the button of the Beatles and something that is very rare and I don’t know much its worth but a piece of Beatles wallpaper.Of course I also have some 1963-64 Parkhurst hockey cards with the flags, MacDonald’s Export “A” calendar featuring the 1963-64 Toronto Maple Leaf Stanley Cup Champions which are very hard to come by these days.I still remember being in Grade 6 when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.
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Linda is right about the Cavern Club. During the 1960s the Liverpool City council which was mostly socialist, voted to tear down the eyesore on Mathew Street, which they did. They even put huge palm trees in giant flower pots down Church Street the main drag. Their thinking was outright crazy, after they woke up to what a stupid thing, that they had done, they came up with a substitute Club, more like a hole in the ground.
I was in Liverpool last September and the place for souvenirs of Liverpool, is the Royal Albert dock which is on the waterfront and has trendy shops, an Art Museum, a Beatles store where you can buy hats, t-shirts, bags, key chains and Beatles music, along with the replica Strawberry Fields, and Penny Lane street signs, Penny Lane is not much larger than Chippawa Town square, but does have everything mentioned in that song. Forty years ago, my son had his hair cut at the barbershop in Penny Lane. Penny Lane was the Terminus for the Liverpool tram cars.
I also took the kids on the ferry boats to cross the River Mersey. They still love that time so long ago.The tram cars are long gone now and replaced by belching diesel buses.I was at the last tram car in Liverpool, on Edge Lane all the political folk were there, Mayor , dignitaries and the colourful Labour Party MP who happened to be a woman. Bessie Braddock, a very rotund lady who was very outspoken and strident.. .Liverpool shaped those lads, that came from that grimy, scarred city over 50 years ago.
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Hey Doug – We’re getting OLD!!!! I remember the Sullivan Show that night (including the cast of Oliver with a young Davy Jones) & also seeing a brief clip of them on Jack Parr the fall before. Canada was playing the Beatles in the fall of ’63 but they caught on a bit later in the US. I still have my old VeeJay album along will all the others & even had the privilege of being in the Cavern on Mathew St. before it was destroyed (and later rebuilt as a tourist trap). My cedar chest is full of their three North American tour programmes from ’64, ’65, & ’66 and tons of 60’s articles from The Saturday Evening Post & Life to 16 magazine & the Toronto Telegram articles on their concerts. I thought they might be worth something some day.
The Beatles had it all, humour, irreverence, charisma and talent honed by years of hard work. They EARNED their fame. The US press showed up at La Guardia thinking they were a joke & were actually impressed with their wit. As you said, everyone now has to have sparkly gloves, pants around their asses, tats & a bunch of back up dancers to disguise their lack of talent. They started out fairly simply but grew so much so quickly & branched out into many other genres consequently resurrecting the careers of many American artists who had been on the fringes, especially black artists who they admired & launching the careers of others. They were also on the first satellite broadcast with “All you need is Love”. They paved the way for the Stones, Who, Kinks, Animals & many other great bands.
Their irreverent attitude changed the attitudes of young people of that generation and, I think, made them more interested in music generally & empowered them to be more outspoken & socially active.
I can imagine songs like “In My Life” or “Something” being around for another 50 years. “Baby, baby” & Bieber not so much.
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Doug, I would find it interesting if people would post THEIR favourite Beatle songs here. Mine-
In my Life, Nowhere Man, Here comes the Sun, Let it Be, Yes it is, Follow the Sun. Just a few of many.
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I could never come up with enough superlatives to describe The Beatles. Such a fresh, crisp sound, so well-crafted and diverse in theme and tempo. Their act was absolute perfection and so was the timing. For those of us growing up in the 1960’s, it was a time when the sky was bluer, the grass (lawn) was greener, and such wonderful sounds made a deep impression appreciated to this day. 50 years is a big chunk of time, in terms of a human lifespan. To maintain this universal appeal, these lads displayed gifts for the ages. Their music will perpetuate through future generations with a popularity and longevity which no doubt will exceed other historic greats like Bach and Beethoven. I was fortunate to witness their performances, at least on TV, and I am privileged to tune in to The Beatles’ great music whenever I wish with vinyl albums, cassettes, disks or downloads. It is indeed a refreshing natural talent contrasting so brightly with the lack of talent out there today, which tries to compensate with obscene antics and cheap theatrics typical of today’s visual pornographic appeal. Hollywood and its proponents market the wrong emphases, and contribute heavily to the moral decline of our society and family units, all for the sake of “entertainment”. That industry is rapidly aligning itself with the well-known corrupt influences of money and politics. Yes, those were much brighter days 50 years ago.
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Good idea! My fav 5 from the Fab 4 would be, and it’s tough to pick… >> In My Life, Nowhere Man, Eleanor Rigby, I Want To Hold Your Hand, and of course, Day Tripper.
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Robert, you’re SO right about the timing. After the JFK assassination and the blah predigested music of all the Frankies and Annettes (the early 60’s equivalent of today’s here today, gone tomorrow acts) and the resultant doldrums, the boring little Susie Homemaker mentality, cold war jitters & Eisenhower suburbia, the world was ready for a youth explosion & they were the match to the fuse. They sure shook things up.
The same in the UK which was trying still to climb out of the post war angst. I remember seeing bombed out areas in Coventry, London & Liverpool still in the 60’s. Even in the Soviet Union of the decade young people would smuggle in Beatle music burned onto Xray films that they could hide up their sleeves. Some in the USSR said the Beatles helped bring down Communism because the kids there saw there was something else beyond their cloistered world. I may be wrong, but I also heard the Beatles refused to play for segregated audiences, another stimulus for change. The song “Blackbird” was a nod to integration.
George, it must have been exciting to witness the early groups first hand. I understand that now Liverpool uses the Beatles as a major tourist stimulus & the airport is named after Lennon. I hope to go there next year.
Looking forward to the tribute tonight on CBS!
Cheers.
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Let me begin by saying that the Beatles had a huge – big, huge, influence on popular music.
When they first became popular in North America I was not a big fan of them. But as I began my broadcasting career in 1964, there was no option – you played the Beatles or you were unemployed!
I fully agree with Doug’s comments about the likes of Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears etc – garbage!
And as a sidebar — am I the only one who equates so-called “rap” or “hip-hop” with sewage?
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You’re not wrong Will. I loved a quote I once heard:
“Rap is to music as etch a sketch is to art!”
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There wasn’t a rascist bone in John Lennon’s body, he thought it ironical that the huge Georgian Houses of Liverpool that were built on the backs of the slave trade, were now occupied by Jamaican and west Indian blacks, who’s ancestors passed through Liverpool on the way to the Britsh colonies they embraced the music of Black America and brought it back to the US of A. , we all thought”Elvis” was the cat’s meiow. .Wow! we had real music in those day’s.
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Dear Linda, That airport was once called Speke Airport, and a lot of the fill was from the bombed out buildings of Liverpool. several of the Beatles worked for peanuts at that Airport, making lunches and food for the passengers, they were not very happy at that place, either.I used to fly to Shannon Ireland from that Airport. via Aer Lingus.. Wow! what fantastic memories.!!!
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