Long, Long Ago

The Beatles wave to fans after arriving at Kennedy Airport. (UPI Photo, Photographer Unknown)

I reckon I was asleep at the wheel last year in February.

Perhaps I just wasn't in much of a reminiscing mood.

Perhaps (I have noticed this a lot lately) it's just the standard "it seems that time all runs together when one gets to a certain age." I dunno.

Anyhoo...

I was fooling around on the computer, wondering just what to post for Thursday and, as is my wont, I put on a little music in the background. Just to keep the aural circuits amused.

Quite often I turn to the lads from Liverpool for my entertainment.

I remember those days fairly well.

Dad was convinced that it was the end of civilization.

Some of my friends insisted that The Rolling Stones were, ahem, "better." I did not agree. Oh dear no, my disagreement was vociferous as times.

I guess we were rather passionate back in those days.

Well one fine day, Mom brought home the Beatles first single to hit American shores...

"03 iwantoholdyourhand" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia CC

The Olde Vermonter and I were ecstatic, The Musician was only three (or so) at the time and immersed in his own toddler world. I don't recall him expressing an opinion.

Dad grumbled about his "hard warned pay" being "blown" upon such fripperies as those "long haired ba$tards" from England. (As he put it in his colorful way. Dad was a man of strong opinions, God rest his soul.)

At any rate we listened to that record over and over.

Now that bit of vinyl, which came out in January of 1964 (I think) preceded another Earth-shattering event which took place on the 9th of February, 1964.

Now in those days we gathered as a family in the living room to watch a certain TV program on one of those big, black-and-white console TV sets.

The Ed Sullivan Show.

As it was a family ritual, Dad couldn't really turn the set off on the 9th of February, as much as he probably would have liked to.

For The Beatles were to be on the show.

I recall the excitement, my brother and I couldn't wait. Dad even kept his grumbling to a dull background mumble.

We didn't notice.

Those were "interesting" times.

The year before saw the assassination of President Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis had been the year before that. Lord knows we needed something to lighten the mood (so to speak).

So while I was remembering all that, and trying to formulate it into a post perhaps worth perusing, I stumbled across something that still has (what's left of) my hair standing on end.

A recording of that night on The Ed Sullivan Show. Talk about entering the Wayback Machine! Right here. (Emphasis mine, heh.)

Watching that recording was weird in a way. John Lennon was the oldest member of the band, he was only 23 at the time the show was recorded. George Harrison, the youngest, would hit 21 later that same month.

Now John and George are gone. Paul McCartney (Sir James Paul McCartney to us commoners) and Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey Jr. as his mum named him) are all that remain.

Damn, that was 51 years ago.

Perhaps you need to be of a certain age to remember those days but it was pretty exciting. We listened to The Beatles for most of my childhood really.

From grade school up through high school, until their last album in 1970, it was all Beatles all the time, musically. (Okay, there were others. Hendrix, Cream, The Byrds etc, etc. But the main focus was the lads from Liverpool.)

Still listen to the lads, a lot some weeks.

Those were pretty good times.

Pretty good indeed.