I first heard them on my transistor radio. The Disc Jockey announced them as the “Latest Singing Sensation from England”. I was fourteen years old and music was my constant companion. If I wasn’t listening to it, I was singing it. It was constantly playing and replaying in head. The name of the musical group was The Beatles.
I had heard a few other English groups but this sound was different. It was hard to pinpoint why. The harmony was good but that wasn’t all of it. The drummer was strong but there was more. The two lead signers sang an octave apart into the same microphone which was different but not unique. Then I watched them on the Ed Sullivan Show on television. They were incredible. They were the whole entertainment package for a teenager. The first thing you noticed was their hair, it was so long, and it was styled. The next impression was the way they were dressed, all alike, in suits and ties and boots. They were wearing “Beatle Boots”, which had heels, a zipper on the side and were covering their ankle part way up the leg. Most importantly they were having a great time on stage. The music was good but not great, but it was delivered in such a fashion that you wanted to hear more.
A cultural change unlike anything since Elvis Presley was about to unfold, and I wanted to be right in the middle of it. I wanted it all, the hair, the boots, and the cool clothes. There was a problem standing in the way. America was stuck in the middle of a 1950’s hangover. I still dressed like my Dad did when he was growing up and got my haircut in a Flat-top like I did when I was ten. More over, America was not ready for change and my Dad was firmly at the head of that list. To make matters worse, school administrators were on that list as well.
Almost immediately, Beatle wigs became available and were quickly outlawed at school. Beatle Boots sprang up at shoe stores with the hard to attain price of $60.00. (In some places you could buy a car for that.) Beatle Jackets were all the rage and showing up everywhere. Barbers were caught off guard. Most young men under the age of 16 were not getting their regular bi-monthly haircut. Things were changing fast and the magazines of the day were fanning the flames. Look and Life carried dozens of photo-shoots of John, Paul, George & Ringo. The “Lads from Liverpool” were almost everywhere overnight. Teenagers from all over the country, deluged record stores for anything from the Beatles. Their first Album “Introducing the Beatles” was Number One on the American Billboard charts before it was released.
All of a sudden, a cultural wall became apparent between parents and their children. Most parents were sure that this “fad” would soon pass. Most kids were afraid that they were getting left out of being on the cutting edge of cool. My Dad was not sure how he had gotten caught up in this tidal wave of change and he didn’t like it. First of all, I was told if I wanted Beatle Boots I had to buy them myself. So I got a job at a shoe store and bought them. Then I was told that if I wanted to wear a Beatle wig , it had to be approved by the school. It wasn’t, so I wore the wig on the weekends everywhere I went. If I wanted a Beatle Jacket, all of my allowance money would be put toward its purchase. So I forfeited my allowance. It is hard to explain how exciting this phenomena was for a fourteen year music fanatic. I went to sleep every night listening to the radio and dreaming of becoming a singer.
As the months turned onto years The Beatles grew up and so did I. They experimented with drugs , I did not. They took years off between recordings, I went to college. They lived on their laurels, I went to work to support a family. Unbeknownst to the world, change was waiting for a vehicle to arrive in. The 1950’s were over and needed to be put to bed. The Beatles tucked that decade in and let the 1960’s horse out of the barn. For those of us who were there for the ride, we will never forget the exhilaration.