Remember when there were only 4 television networks and we were all glued to the box? Well, part of the “entertainment” was the commercial and here are some great ones I remember.

Oh how I wanted one of these. Mr Machine I felt I was the only kind in America without one. Now if I can only find one with the box in mint condition!

Starkist Charlie the Tuna, a cool bebopping kid of a guy.

Cracker Jack with  actor Jack Gilford. Whenever I go to Yankee Stadium, I must get a box of Cracker Jack and I still immediately search for the prize!

Mr. Clean Isn’t it funny how many people now look like Mr Clean? He, Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner paved the way for the follically challenged! Who loves ya baby?

Who hasn’t poured milk on their Rice Krispies and put an ear to the bowl?

Good & Plenty Charlie says!

Think of all the toothpastes that no longer exist yet Crest continues to dominate the market

G.I. Joe the first doll for boys!

My apologies for not finding an Operation Moonbase commercial. One of my favorite toys!

There is something magical about being able to step back in time and revisit memorable moments even if the memorable moments are commercials. I must have spent hours in front of the television with my bass in my hands practicing and playing along with whatever was on the tube.

I see these commercials as comfort food! They really create a familiar space to go to. Have a great week everybody!

At the book signing there were a lot of folks who were fans of Clay’s as well as of the music and you know, I can say with total confidence, we did it right! The music, the fashion, the vibe itself, we were and are a very lucky generation to have been able to witness some of the most important music every made and we’ve still got it! Thanks for reminding me of that Clay. I look forward to seeing you again the next time you come to NY.

Some of My Favourite Songs from Britain in the 1960′s

I used to go into my sister’s bedroom when she wasn’t home and go through her record collection. Similarly, before I got my first bass guitar, I used to go into her room and play her guitar.

I didn’t know what I was doing so she always new when all the tuning pegs were lined up perfectly, I must have raided her room!

What does this have to do with this blog? Well, when I would go on those “expeditions” into her room, I would look through her British 45′s and find new music that was not popular on American radio.

Take for instance, Paul and Barry Ryan. Twins whose parents were in the music business. This is oneof my favorite songs of all time. A Hal David and Burt Bacharach composition

Have Pity On The Boy

Popular in America, I have always enjoyed Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien better know as Dusty Springfield. She was one of the best-selling British singers in the 1960s. She was voted the Top British Female Artist by the readers of the New Musical Express in 1964, 1965, and 1968. Of the female singers of the British Invasion, Springfield made one of the biggest impressions in the US.

I Only Want to Be With You

Here is a real anomaly. James Marcus Smith, aka PJ Proby, appeared on a Beatles TV show and the rest was history, at least for a little while. Born in Texas, he traveled to London and became a real heartthrob. I saw his name in early Melody Makers and had to find out if he was any good or not! I really like this song Hold Me Proby’s UK career gradually lost momentum after a number of controversial live appearances – including a notorious trouser-splitting incident at a February 1965 show in Luton – led to performance bans by the ABC theatre chain, its TV namesake and BBC TV. A run of minor hits in 1966 was followed by a number of flops, and in March 1968 “It’s Your Day Today” gave Proby his last UK chart entry for nearly 30 years.

Cilla Black, determined to become an entertainer, sgot a part-time job as a cloakroom attendant at Liverpool’s Cavern Club. Impromptu performances impressed The Beatles and she was introduced to Brian Epstein by John Lennon. Her surname was actually White but a Bill Harry from the Mersey Beat paper mistakenly referred to her as Cilla Black, rather than White, and she decided she liked the name, and took it as a stage name. Her second UK #1 success, was an English-language rendition of the Italian popular song “Il Mio Mondo” or You’re My World

Sandie Shaw was known as the barefoot pop princess, always performing without shoes. s. She was seen as epitomising the “swinging Sixties”, and her trademark barefoot performances endeared her to the public at large.^[ Girl Don’t Come was her biggest hit in the US.

Just so you know, the Walker Brothers were unrelated! Comprising Scott Engel, John Maus, and Gary Leeds they formed in 1964, the three unrelated musicians adopted the ‘Walker Brothers’ name as a show business touch – “simply because we liked it”. They provided a unique counterpoint to the British Invasion in that they were a group from the United States that only achieved success in the United Kingdom and Germany.

I always liked this tune!     The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore

Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich were five friends from Wiltshire, David John Harman, Trevor Leonard Ward-Davies, John Dymond, Michael Wilson and Ian Frederick Stephen Amey, formed a group in 1961, originally called Dave Dee and the Bostons. They soon gave up their jobs (e.g. Dave Dee was a policeman) to make their living from music. Apart from performing in the UK, they also occasionally played in Hamburg (Star-Club, Top Ten Club) and in Cologne (Storyville). Vocalist Dee, the ex-policeman, was at the scene of the automobile accident that took the life of the American rock and roller Eddie Cochran and injured Gene Vincent in April 1960. Dee had taken Cochran’s guitar from the accident and held it until it could be returned to his family.

As a teenager, I couldn’t believe that these songs were not hits in the US! A lot of promo people got it wrong!

Hold Tight and Bend It

When my sister came back from her first trip to London she had a copy of the first Move LP on the Regal Zonophone label.

She also had a British promo of Wild Tiger Woman and the flip side was Omnibus I am not sure if she new how many times I played this 45! I was a big fan and when they signed to Capitol Records and released Looking On. Unfortunately, one more LP and they broke up!

One of my favorite bands were the Small Faces I remember in June of 1967 going to lunch with my mother at Macy’s and picking up the LP

There are but Four Small Faces

Now I am sure most everyone would consider the best song on the LP to be Itchycoo Park but for my money, Tin Soldier wins hands down!

I think there is nothing more fitting to end this blog than this little ditty by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band! Bonzo the dog was a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s. In 1967 as the Bonzo Dog band’s popularity increased, they were asked by Paul McCartney to appear in the “Magical Mystery Tour” film at the end of 1967, performing Death Cab for Cutie This was a very strange band that created many fun tunes. I owned their first four LPs. They were a cross between Firesign Theater and British Music Hall kinda thing! I actually saw them live at the Fillmore opening for the Kinks and Spirit.  What a great bill!

So without further ado…

Intro and Outro

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

I spent hours studying the cover and reading the lyrics on the back.Moreover, we could spend weeks on this one landmark recording!

Here is a link to the Guide to the LP. This will tell you exactly who is on the cover and who bowed out and why. The recording took 129 days and by this time the Beatles were getting into recording late into the night.

Originally, the group had wanted the album to include a package with badges, pencils and other small Sgt. Pepper goodies but this proved far too costly to realise. Instead, the album came with a page of cardboard cut-outs carrying the description:

SGT. PEPPER  CUT-OUTS

The final bill for the cover was £2,868 5s 3d (equivalent to £37,531 today), a staggering sum for the time. It has been estimated that this was 100 times the average cost for an album cover in those days

Lovely Rita This is in my opinion where the Beatles really got funky. Ringo and Paul were so locked in! Paul’s piano work is brilliant and his bass lays it down. The unusual noises during the song after the lines “and the bag across her shoulder/ made her look a little like a military man” were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison playing comb and paper. Mal Evans was sent to Abbey Road’s lavatories to collect toilet paper (which was stamped with the words, “PROPERTY OF EMI”). This was used to cover hair combs, which they blew through to resemble the sound of a kazoo orchestra.

When my sister ran away from home she did it in style! Growing up in NYC, going to private school, you meet a lot of famous people’s kids. My  sister became good friends with Lorna Luft. When she ran away, she moved into the St Moritz Hotel on Central Park South with Lorna and her mother Judy Garland. Picture if you will my sister watching the Wizard of Oz with Dorothy! Why am I telling you this. Well, She’s Leaving Home has a special meaning to me. Now that she passed, I am playing it again for her.

When Beatles manager Brian Epstein decided that a new single was needed, Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were issued as a double-A-sided single in February 1967. Unfortunately in keeping with the group’s usual practice, the single tracks were not included on the LP a decision George Martin states he now regrets. Can you imagine where these two songs would be placed if included on the LP? Or, would two other songs be shelved for a later time?

And as all LP’s have to end   A Day In The Life with Outtake Credited toLennon/McCartney, the song comprises distinct segments written independently by John Lennon and Paul McCartney with orchestral additions. Originally it was given the title “In the Life Of…”While Lennon’s lyrics were inspired by contemporary newspaper articles, McCartney’s were reminiscent of his youth. The decisions to link sections of the song with orchestral crescendos and to end the song with a sustained piano chord were made only after the rest of the song had been recorded. There is some dispute about the inspiration for the first verse. Many believe that it was written with regard to the death of Tara Browne, the 21-year-old heir to the Guinness fortune and close friend of Lennon and McCartney, who had crashed his Lotus Elan on 18 December 1966 when a Volkswagen pulled out of a side street into his path in Redcliffe Gardens, Earls Court. In numerous interviews, Lennon claimed this was the verse’s prime inspiration. However, George Martin believes that it is a drug reference (as is the line “I’d love to turn you on” and other passages from the song) and while writing the lyrics Lennon and McCartney were imagining a stoned politician who had stopped at a set of traffic lights. The description of the accident in “A Day in the Life” was not a literal description of Browne’s fatal accident. Lennon said, “I didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out, but it was in my mind when I was writing that verse. The details of the accident in the song — not noticing traffic lights and a crowd forming at the scene — were similarly part of the fiction.  It was arranged for the orchestral session to be filmed by NEMS Enterprises for use in a planned television special. The film was never released in its entirety, although portions of it can be seen in the “A Day in the Life” promotional film, which includes shots of studio guests Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Donovan,Pattie Boyd and Michael Nesmith.

^{Reflecting The Beatles’ taste for experimentation and the avant gardeat this point in their careers, the orchestra players were asked to wear or were given a costume piece on top of their formal dress. This resulted in different players wearing anything from red noses to fake stick-on nipples. Martin recalled that the lead violinist performed wearing a gorilla paw, while a bassoon player placed a balloon on the end of his instrument.}

Following “A Day in the Life” on the Sgt. Pepper album (as first released on LP in the UK and years later worldwide on CD) is a high frequency tone and the repetition of the phrase “Never to see any other way” along with background noises. Recorded two months after the mono and stereo masters for “A Day in the Life” had been finalised, the gibberish (entitled in the session notes “Edit for LP End”, but widely known as “Sgt. Pepper Inner Groove”) was added to the run-out groove of the initial British pressing.

Magical Mystery Tour released on November 27, 1967. If you woke me up at three AM and asked me out of a sound sleep what my favorite Beatle album is I would have to say Magical Mystery Tour. And in fact, really side two of the US released LP. It was released in the UK as a 2 EP package which I still own!

After Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney wanted to create a film based upon The Beatles and their music. The film was to be unscripted: various “ordinary” people (including John Lennon’s uncle Charlie) were to travel on a charabanc bus and have unspecified “magical” adventures, in the manner of Ken Kesey’sMerry Pranksters.

The Magical Mystery Tour movie was made, but the hoped-for “magical” adventures never happened. During the filming, an ever greater number of cars followed the hand-lettered bus, hoping to see what its passengers were up to, until a running traffic jam developed. The spectacle ended after Lennon angrily tore the lettering off the sides of the bus. I remember going to see it in NY

One of the most perfect basslines in rock music is the one on Hello Goodbye. It has a fugue like quality to it.

Under the working title “Hello Hello”, the Beatles recorded the backing track on 2 October 1967, and added vocals and a guitar overdub on the 19th. After further overdubs of bass guitar and viola, recording was completed on the 2nd November, and mixing on the 6th. The final lines of the song, where the entire band sings “Hela, hey-ba hello-a” came spontaneously in the studio. McCartney said “I remember the end bit where there’s the pause and it goes ‘Heba, heba hello’. We had those words and we had this whole thing recorded but it didn’t sound quite right, and I remember asking Geoff Emerick if we could really whack up the echo on the tom-toms. And we put this echo full up on the tom-toms and it just came alive.”

I Am the Walrus, the last song on side 1 is actually the B side of the single Hello Goodbye. Again, the groove is monstrous! Paul and Ringo have a lock that is so connected. Yea for the rhythm section! The walrus is a reference to the walrus in Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter” (from the book Through the Looking-Glass). Lennon expressed dismay upon belatedly realizing that the walrus was a villain in the poem. “I Am the Walrus” was the first studio recording made after the death of The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein in August 1967

The genesis of the lyrics is found in three song ideas that Lennon was working on, the first of which was inspired by hearing a police siren at his home in Weybridge; Lennon wrote the lines “Mis-ter cit-y police-man” to the rhythm of the siren. The second idea was a short rhyme about Lennon sitting in his garden, while the third was a nonsense lyric about sitting on a corn flake. Unable to finish the ideas as three different songs, he combined them into one.

Lennon received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank Grammar School, which he had attended. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyse Beatles’ lyrics. (Lennon wrote an answer, dated 1 September 1967, which was auctioned by Christie’s of London in 1992.) Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding The Beatles’ lyrics, wrote the most confusing lyrics he could. Lennon’s friend and former fellow member of The Quarrymen, Peter Shotton, was visiting, and Lennon asked Shotton about a playground nursery rhyme they sang as children.

Shotton remembered:

“Yellow matter custard, green slop pie,

All mixed together with a dead dog’s eye,

Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick,

Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick“.^[5]

Lennon borrowed a couple of words, added the three unfinished ideas and the result was “I Am the Walrus”. The Beatles’ official biographer Hunter Davies was present while the song was being written and wrote an account in his 1968 biography of The Beatles. Lennon remarked to Shotton, “Let the fuckers work that one out.” Shotton was also responsible for suggesting to Lennon to change the lyric “waiting for the man to come” to “waiting for the van to come”.

Baby Your A Rich Man was the first song by the band recorded and mixed completely outside Abbey Road Studios. The song was recorded during sessions for the Magical Mystery TourEP, but was intended for the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. That plan changed when it was used as the B-side of the “All You Need Is Love” single. The strange oboe like sound is that of a clavioline which preceded the synthesizer

One last note, this LP and The Who Sell Out were my Christmas presents from my sister. I couldn’t thank her enough!

The White Album was released on November 22, 1968. Originally entitled A Doll’s House, the title was changed when the British progressive rock band Family released the similarly titled Music in a Doll’s House earlier that year. Most of the songs were conceived during a transcendental meditationcourse with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India in the spring of 1968. Lennon left Rishikesh because he felt personally betrayed by rumours that Maharishi had made sexual advances toward Mia Farrow, who had accompanied The Beatles on their trip. Shortly after he decided to leave, Lennon wrote a song called “Maharishi” which included the lyrics, “Maharishi/You little twat”; the song became   Sexy Sadie

Despite the album’s official title, which emphasised group identity, studio efforts on The Beatles captured the work of four increasingly individualised artists who frequently found themselves at odds. Long after the recording of The Beatles was complete, Martin mentioned in interviews that his working relationship with The Beatles changed during this period, and that many of the band’s efforts seemed unfocused, often yielding prolonged jam sessions that sounded uninspired. The sessions for The Beatles were notable for the band’s formal transition from 4-track to 8-track recording. The Beatles was the first Beatles’ album released by Apple Records, as well as their only original double album. Producer George Martin has said that he was against the idea of a double album at the time and suggested to the group that they reduce the number of songs in order to form a single album featuring their stronger work, but that the band decided against this. It was also was the last Beatles album to be released with a unique, alternate mono mix, albeit one issued only in the UK and a few other countries.

Dear Prudence The lyrics are about actress Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence who was present when the Beatles visited Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. Prudence, focused on meditation, stayed in her room for the majority of their stay. Lennon, who was worried that she was depressed, wrote this song for her, inviting her to ”come out to play”. Prudence explained years later that she was just trying to take Transcendental Meditation seriously. She said in Mojo magazine: “They were trying to be cheerful, but I wished they’d go away. I don’t think they realized what the training was all about.”

Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey

In 1980, Lennon said: “That was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you’re in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: You know, ‘What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?’ All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time.

The song’s title is the longest of any in the Beatles’ catalogue, and it originates from a quote by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, however, as for the “and My Monkey” part, George Harrison attested that he didn’t “know where that came from” though McCartney believes it was a reference to Lennon’s heroin habit.

Good Night This song still gives me chills. It was originally a lullaby written by John to his son Julian. Was it a better time back in the 60′s? Were we in a strange way more innocent? Less preoccupied? Kind of funny that this song ends the LP. It seems like it was a metaphor that really signaled the end of the Beatles.

Yellow Submarine released Jan 13, 1969 Only one side of the album contains songs performed by the Beatles; of the six, four were previously unissued. “Yellow Submarine” had been simultaneously issued in 1966 as a singleand on the album Revolver, and “All You Need Is Love” had been issued as a single in the summer of 1967. The second side features the symphonic film score composed by George Martin, in versions recorded specifically for the album.

I loved the instrumental tracks. Actually Pepperland is still one of my favorite songs. It has a beautiful melody!  Only four new Beatles songs appeared on the album, and two were recorded specifically for the film, All Together Now and  Hey Bulldog Only a Northern Song an indictment of there publishers had been recorded during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper, but was set aside from the final running order. It’s All Too Much like similar numbers recorded immediately following the Sgt. Pepper sessions, was not intended for a specific project.                                                                                                                      Although the essential artwork on the album covers issued in the United States and Great Britain are similar, there are a few subtle differences on the sleeves. The front of the British jacket contains the words “NOTHING IS REAL” in green print just below the album’s title. This subtitle had been omitted from the American album cover.

The Beatles were not enthusiastic about participating in a motion picture. They were displeased with their second feature film Help!, and were discouraged by the disastrous reception of their self-produced TV special Magical Mystery Tour. They did, however, see an animated film as a favourable way to complete their commitment to United Artists for a third film. (Ultimately, due to their relatively small roles and the fact it was animated, United Artists still considered them to owe another movie; Let It Be would be the third film to complete their contract with the studio.)

The Beatles were impressed after seeing a draft of the film, and agreed to make a live-action cameo appearance in the final scene, which was filmed in early February 1968 upon the band’s return from India. The cameo was originally intended to feature a post-production psychedelic background and effects; but due to time and budget constraints, a blank, black background remained in the final film.

Moving right along we left off with Beatles VI which brings us to August 6, 1965. The LP  Help! is released curiously 19 days before the movie release in the US on August 25, 1965.

According to The Beatles, they were experimenting in marijuana at the time this movie was filmed. That explains why they flub a lot of their lines or their lines don’t make much sense!
Obviously the songwriting was getting a bit more sophisticated. This was evident in the choice of instrumentation that went into some of the songs. The American release was a true soundtrack album, mixing the first seven songs with orchestral material from the film. The holding-over of the other songs, several of which were released on the US version of the next Beatles album, Rubber Soul, created an impression of the group’s direction that differed strongly in the US from the UK.

Yesterday was arranged for guitar and string quartet and recorded without the other group members.

You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away showed Lennon’s penchant for Bob Dylan

I was not a big fan of the movie. I loved the music but, I guess you could almost say that it was a sophmore slump! It would be hard for anyone to beat A Hard Day’s Night!

Here are a few fun continuity issues. I remember and early James Bind movie where his tie is up in the beginning of the scene and to the side towards the end!    You may want to go out and grab a copy of the DVD and check these out:

During the performance of “Help!” in the beginning of the movie, Ringo is wearing the sacrificial ring in the close-ups but not in the other shots. Also, in the close-ups, Ringo and his drums are on a much shorter riser than in the other shots Help!

In the scene where Prof. Foot and Algernon are trying to get the ring off Ringo in their lab and Ahme comes in to rescue them, the door she enters is red. Then after she comes in, it is gray.

When the boys are at the piano in the Alps at the end of the “Ticket to Ride” sequence, you can see a mysterious hand appear on Ringo’s right shoulder which obviously was a crew member giving the signal for the guys to leave. As the boys turn to leave and ride away, the hand can be seen resting on the top corner of the piano.

And now for my favorite song on the LP     You’re Gonna Lose That Girl

In later years, Lennon said that the title track of the album was a sincere cry for help, as the pressures of The Beatles’ fame and his own unhappiness (what he later called his “fat Elvis” period) began to build, and that he regretted turning it from a downbeat song in the style of Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” to an upbeat pop song as a result of commercial pressures.

The Beatles said the film was inspired by the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup and it was also directly satirical of the James Bond series of films.The Beatles did not particularly enjoy the filming of the movie, nor were they pleased with the end product. In 1970, John Lennon said they felt like extras in their own movie.

Rubber Soul, released Dec 3, 1965 was recorded in just over four weeks to make the Christmas market. Unlike the five albums that preceded it, Rubber Soul was the first Beatle album recorded during a specific period without being interrupted by tour dates.

So there they were on the cover, a bit longer hair. The back cover, little information a bit mysterious! The fact that they had decided to concentrate on recording was evident with their choice of instruments and the way they used the instruments In My Life has a piano solo that sounds like a harpsichord but is actually a piano! The addition of percussion was heard on tunes like Wait. I think one of the most interesting instruments used on the LP was a pack of matches and Ringo’s fingers tapping in the background  on  I’m Looking Through You

You can make a case for  See My Friends by the Kinks which was recorded after they visited India as the first Pop song to include Indian influences with the droning guitars but  Norwegian Wood is the first Pop recording to utilize a sitar.

Remember Raga Rock!  And speaking of the Kinks, a couple of friends of mine have decided to set up a Facebook page Ray Davies Deserves Knighthood that is worth checking out!

In 2003, the album was ranked number 5 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Incidentely, the real catalyst for pet sounds was the US release of Rubber Soul. Brian Wilson was quoted “I really wasn’t quite ready for the unity. It felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was a collection of songs … that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I said, “That’s it. I really am challenged to do a great album.”

Yesterday and Today released June 20, 1966. My sister had the original cover! It was actually a compilation of tracks from UK LP’s Help!, Rubber Soul, and the soon to be released Revolver. It is said that the slipshod nature in which Capitol records compiled their albums irritated the group, who felt they had “put a lot of work into the sequencing” of the British versions.

Apart from the butcher cover, the album is of interest to collectors for the appearance of unique mixes of Revolver-era tracks unavailable elsewhere. Because of Capitol Records’ haste to release new product, “fake stereo” (i.e. duophonic) mixes of “Dr. Robert,” “And Your Bird Can Sing,” and “I’m Only Sleeping” were made from the original USA mono mixes made on May 1966 and were treated with a degree of compression and reverb not found elsewhere. On the stereo mix of “Day Tripper”, the guitar intro is heard on the left channel and jumps into the right channel (and has John’s extra “yeah” on the first chorus). On the stereo LP, “We Can Work It Out”‘s harmonium is moved to the center during the refrain and the bridge.

In early 1966, photographer Robert Whitaker had The Beatles in the studio for a conceptual art piece entitled “A Somnambulant Adventure.” For the shoot, Whitaker took a series of pictures of the group dressed in butcher smocks and draped with pieces of meat and body parts from plastic baby dolls. The group played along as they were tired of the usual photo shoots and the concept was compatible with their own “black humour”.^[5] Although not originally intended as an album cover, The Beatles submitted photographs from the session for their promotional materials. According to a 2002 interview published in Mojo magazine, former Capitol president Alan W. Livingston stated that it was Paul McCartney who pushed strongly for the photo’s inclusion as the album cover, and that McCartney reportedly described it as “our comment on the war”.

Capitol Records printed up 750,000 copies with the cover. Mono copies outnumbered stereo copies by about 10 to 1, making the stereo copies far more valuable today

Capitol initially ordered plant managers to destroy the covers, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to an area landfill. However, faced with so many jackets already printed, Capitol quickly changed course and decided instead to paste this  more conventional cover over the old one. The new cover, featuring a flipped picture (John’s fringe was brushed in the opposite direction to that in which he usually wore it) of a less than content band posed around an open steamer trunk, had to be trimmed on the open end of the album jacket by about 1/8 inch to address problems where the new sheet, known as a “slick”, was not placed exactly “square” on top of the original cover. Tens of thousands of these so-called “Trunk” covers were sent out. As word of this manoeuvre made the rounds, people attempted, usually unsuccessfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover of their copy of the album, hoping to reveal the original image hidden below. Eventually, the soaring prices of Butcher covers spurred the development of intricate and complex techniques for peeling the Trunk cover off in such a way that only faint horizontal glue lines remained on the butcher cover beneath.

Let’s get to the music! Probably my favorite song on the LP is a George Harrison tune If I Needed Someone A version by the Hollies appeared simultaneously, both being released in the UK on 3 December 1965. The Hollies version appeared on a single. Most of the Hollies previous singles had been big top ten hits. When their version of “If I Needed Someone” only reached the lower half of the top 20 in the UK, they were quite critical and said had they had made a mistake recording it.  Personally, I really like this version! The Hollies If I Needed Someone

When McCartney arrived at Lennon’s Weybridge home for a writing session, he had the tune in his head, but “The lyrics were disastrous, and I knew it.” The chorus began, “You can buy me diamond rings”, a cliche they’d used twice before in “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “I Feel Fine”. Lennon dismissed the lyrics as “crap” and “too soft”. They decided to rewrite the lyrics and after some difficulty—McCartney said it was “one of the stickiest” writing sessions—they settled on the “drive my car” theme (which Bob Spitz credits to Lennon) and the rest of the lyrics flowed easily from that  Drive My Car

It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios and is the Beatles’ first recording session to extend past midnight. McCartney, working closely with George Harrison, laid down the basic rhythm track, doubling similar riffing lines on bass and low guitar, as per Harrison’s suggestion. Harrison had been listening to Otis Redding’s “Respect” at the time and, as a result of its influence, “Drive My Car” has more bottom than any previous Beatles recording, mimicking the bass-heavy sound generated in Redding’s Memphis studio. McCartney played the lead guitar solo, although Harrison composed the guitar riff which underpins the verses. Harrison doubled this figure an octave lower on the bass. I also like the great piano work of Sir Paul

Nowhere Man is among the very first Beatles songs to be entirely unrelated to romance or love, and marks a notable instance of Lennon’s philosophically-oriented songwriting. A sad song indeed! Lennon said he wrote it about himself. He told Playboy: “I’d spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then ‘Nowhere Man’ came, words and music, the whole damn thing as I lay down” McCartney said of the song: “That was John after a night out, with dawn coming up. I think at that point, he was a bit…wondering where he was going and to be truthful so was I. I was starting to worry about him”

Revolver was released August 5, 1966. The album is often regarded as one of the greatest achievements in rock music history, and one of the Beatles’ greatest studio achievements. It was released before their last tour in August 1966, but they did not perform songs from the album live. Their reasoning for this was that many of the tracks on the album, such asTomorrow Never Knows,  were too complex to perform with live instruments. They toured with Paperback Writer as their only new song from 1966, which was not on the album.

The album cover design was created by Klaus Voormann. When showing his efforts to the band and their manager, Brian Epstein, the band loved it! Voormann’s payment for the album cover was £40. For this work, Klaus won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts.                                          In 1966, at the same time he was designing the cover of Revolver, Voormann became a member of the 1960s band Manfred Mann. Voormann played bass for the band from 1966 to 1969, appearing on all their UK hits from “Just Like a Woman” (July 1966) through to their final single “Ragamuffin Man” (April 1969). As well, he played bass and flute on Manfred Mann’s 1968 international hit Quinn the Eskimo. After The Beatles disbanded, there were rumours of The Beatles reforming as The Ladders, with Voormann on bass as a replacement for Paul McCartney. This line-up (Voormann, Lennon, Harrison and Starr) did perform in various combinations on Lennon’s albums John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)  (Voormann, Lennon, and Starr) and Imagine (1971) (Voormann, Lennon & Harrison) as well as on Ringo Starr’s eponymous album Ringo, in 1973, and Yoko Ono’s Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band (1970) (Voormann, Lennon, Starr, and Ono). Starr’s album features the Lennon-penned hit single “I’m The Greatest” which is the only song in which all four musicians appear together, joined by Billy Preston.

Eleanor Rigby, one of Paul McCartney’s songs on the album, was released as a single (in a double A-side with “Yellow Submarine”) concurrently with the album. The song contains McCartney’s lyrical imagery and a string arrangement (scored by George Martin under McCartney’s direction). Martin once said his composition was inspired by the Bernard Herrmann score for François Truffaut’s film Fahrenheit 451(one of my top 10  all-time favorite movies) however, this is unlikely because the film had not yet been released. The writers of the book Recording The Beatles theorized that Martin was probably referring to the score from Psycho, which was also scored by Herrmann.

Here There and Everywhere is one of Sir Paul’s personal favourites! George Martin has also mentioned it as one of his favourite McCartney songs. John Lennon reportedly told McCartney it was “the best tune on the album” and said in his 1980 Playboy interview it was “one of my favourite songs of the Beatles.” It was ranked the 4th greatest song of all time by Mojo in 2000.

She Said She Said Lennon describes it as “an ‘acidy’ song” with lyrics inspired by actor Peter Fonda’scomments during an LSD trip in 1965 with members of The Beatles. In late August 1965 Brian Epstein had rented a house at 2850 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills, California for The Beatles’ six-day respite from their U.S. tour. The huge Spanish-style house was tucked into the side of a mountain. Soon their address became widely known and the area was besieged by fans who blocked roads and tried to scale the steep canyon while others rented helicopters to spy from overhead. The police department detailed a tactical squad of officers to protect the band and the house. The Beatles found it impossible to leave and instead invited guests including actors Eleanor Bron (who co-starred with them in Help!), Peggy Lipton and folksinger Joan Baez. On August 24 the Beatles hosted the Byrds and Fonda and, except Paul McCartney, took LSD. This was the final track recorded during the Revolver sessions, and was hastily added when the album lineup was found to be a song short. It took nine hours to rehearse and record the entire song, complete with overdubs. After the recording of the song The Beatles’ producer George Martin is reported to have said: “All right, boys, I’m just going for a lie-down.”

This is one of my favorite Beatle recordings! I did not own this one but I would sneak into my sister’s room and play her copy on her record player when no one was home. I think the clandestine approach along with the great music made this a real winner! The Beatles were writing some spectacular music by now.

Something New is the The Beatles’ third Capitol release, but fifth American album following the United Artists release of A Hard Day’s Night.  Released on July 20, 1964 this album includes eight songs from the original British release of A Hard Day’s Night, as well as the remaining tracks Slow Down and Matchbox from the Long Tall Sally EP and the German release of Komm Gib Mir Deine Hand. It was released in both mono and stereo and the mono release contains alternate versions of  Any Time At All, I’ll Cry Instead, When I Get Home and And I Love Her

BTW, The #1 song in the country on this day was Surf City, the first surfin’ record to get to the top of the charts!

My two favorite tracks were:   Tell Me Why If I Fell This record was also released on the Parlophone label for sale only on American Armed Forces bases in Europe. These copies have great collector value. Moreover, the album was also issued in Germany on the Odeon label. The German version contains the unedited version of “And I Love Her”, which was later released on the US version of Rarities.

On Oct. 1, 1964, Vee Jay packaged its Introducing the Beatles album together with The Golden Hits of the Four Seasons and called the collection “The Beatles Vs. The Four Seasons.” The front cover featured new drawings of the Beatles and the Four Seasons, plus listings of all the songs. The back cover featured a ‘scorecard’. The album was issued with a poster which featured the drawings of the Beatles from the VJ 587 picture sleeve.

Estimated prices on “the Beatles Vs. the Four Seasons Album

Beatles vs. The Four Seasons Vee Jay VJDX-30 (mono) black labels with color band; brackets logo.The labels list the original titles of the albums. value: $500-$1500

Beatles vs. The Four Seasons Vee Jay VJDXS-30 (stereo) black labels with color band; brackets logo. The labels list the original titles of the albums. The cover and the record labels say stereo, and the albums play in stereo.value: $2200

Beatles vs. The Four Seasons poster–value: $200

Making certain to CAPITOL IZE on the incredible phenomenon that was Beatlemania, Capitol Records released on Nov 23, 1964 The Beatles’ StoryThis was a documentary double album featuring interviews, press conferences, and some songs by the The Beatles. It was The Beatles’ fourth release by Capitol and sixth U.S album, released in both in mono and stereo. The disc is unremarkable except for brief stereo excerpts of their 1964 Hollywood Bowl concert, which was unreleased until May 1977. Unfortunately, with a small allowance, I did no think that this was a worthwhile investment at the time. I thought LP’s by the Kinks and Animals were the proper choice. What a mistake. This is one of the only Beatle recordings that has not been re-released!

Beatles 65 was released on December 15, 1964. I had my own copy of Beatles 65′ and come to think of it, so did my sister! The sixth American Beatle release includes most of the songs from Beatles for Sale, but deleting “Eight Days a Week”, “Words of Love”, “Every Little Thing”, “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”, “What You’re Doing”, and the “Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey” medley, which would show up later in Beatles VI. It picked up “I’ll Be Back” from A Hard Day’s Night and includes the single “I Feel Fine”/”She’s a Woman”. These two latter songs were remixed into “duophonic” [fake] stereo and drenched in reverb by Capitol Records’ executive Dave Dexter, Jr. to cover up the use of the mono mixes sent from England.

I Feel Fine

I’m A Loser

Baby’s in Black

I played this LP into the ground! There wasn’t a bad song in the bunch! In the US ,the album was a blockbuster hit, and jumped from #98 straight to #1, making the biggest jump to the pole position in the history of the Billboard Album Charts up to that time. In what may be testament to the overwhelming market appeal of the Beatles, several albums were released and promoted in America during 1965 sporting a similar title. These included Sinatra ’65 by Frank Sinatra and Ellington ’65 by Duke Ellington on Reprise Records, Trio ’65 by jazz pianist Bill Evans on Verve Records, and Brasil ’65 by Sergio Mendes on the Beatles’ own Capitol label.

On the back cover you can see the advertisement for other Beatle recordings. Would somebody email me and tell me that they actually bought this next gem?

The Hollyridge Strings were an in-house act released by Capitol Records. Throughout the 1960′s, they were perhaps best known for their instrumental versions of Beatles songs. This was music for my parents!             The Hollyridge Strings-She Loves You

The Early Beatles was released on March 22, 1965. The album resembles more of an early compilation because all of the tracks had previously been featured on the early 1964 Vee-Jay release Introducing… The Beatles. The front cover photo for this album is the same as the back cover photo for the British LP Beatles for Sale.

Baby It’s You

Anna

Chains

Since I had all of these songs on other LP’s I abstained from purchasing it.

Beatles VI was released on June 14, 1965 and was the eighth album released in less than 18 months! The Mets were no hit by Cincinnati pitcher Jim Maloney but they lost 1-0 in the 11th! and John Lennon releases his second book, A Spainard in the Works!

Two tracks on Beatles VI were recorded specifically for the North American market.  Bad Boy and Dizzy Miss Lizzie, both covers of Larry Williams songs, and both recorded on Williams’ birthday (10 May 1965), marking perhaps the only time that the Beatles recorded material especially for the US market.

The remaining six tracks left off  Beatles ’65 from Beatles for Sale Yes It Is , the B-side to the single “Ticket to Ride”. This is a “duophonic” stereo remix from the original mono track, with additional echo and reverb and two tracks from the forthcoming British release of Help! You Like Me Too Much

and Tell Me What You See

As on Beatles for Sale, the “Kansas City”/”Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey” medley was originally listed only as “Kansas City”. After attorneys for Venice Music notified Capitol of its error, the record label was corrected, although the album cover was not.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!

I think the first time I really was aware of  something other than myself and how the world revolved around me was when JFK was assassinated. November 22, 1963. I had not as yet moved into Manhattan. I was in school, the Principal came on the PA system, and sent us home. I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Oddly enough, it was also the day Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) died.  All I can remember was there were a lot of people at my house crying and that all television programs had been pre-empted!   Two days later Lee Harvey Oswald was shot.

In retrospect, it really was a moment in time when the future had opened its’ door and from there we starting moving at an accelerated pace!  The Warren Commision, Frank Sinatra Jr. is kidnapped, Kenya and Zanzibar gain independence, and on the 26th of December, I Want to Hold Your Hand is released!

I was 10 years old when Introducing the Beatles was released on January 10, 1964, delayed for release from the previous summer. AM Radio. WABC, WMCA Good Guys, Herb Oscar Anderson, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram, Jack Spector, Dandy Dan Daniel, and Gary Spector. That’s how we learned about the new thing coming out of England.

As early as I can remember, let’s say right around the time of Elvis, I was already conscious of music more than would be “normal” for a 3 year old! When I heard this music on the radio, I immediately, like so many other kids, gravitated to it. It had something more than the teen idols could offer. It certainly sounded both novel and familiar at the same time! Who new that within 30 days, everything would change!

P.S. I Love You

Misery

Anna

It would be years before I understood all of the legal shenanigans the people who owned Vee Jay Records were forced to endure with Capitol Records and United Artists.

Just 10 days later on January 20, 1964 out came Meet the Beatles Things were certainly moving fast. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Beatles were what I was waiting for. I guess I was one of the fortunate ones to know exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Music was and is my whole life. Not only a professional musician I am a professional fan! I believe there is no other art form that can transport you the way music does. When you listen to a song, you can visualize the first time you heard it. Where you were, what you were wearing, who you were with etc.  When this record came out, I studied the album cover,

The back cover, I read the liner notes over and over. I studied their outfits down to the Beatle boots with the Cuban heels!
A couple of interesting facts, the “Hit heard round the world”   I Want to Hold Your Hand and This Boy were  in duophonic [fake] stereo, due to the lack of a proper stereo mix that was supposed to be given to Capitol Records. In addition, I Saw Her Standing There has a special mono remix done specifically for the American single and album release. Let’s also not forget

All My Loving. One of my favorites! In 2003, the album was ranked number 59 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

3 months later on April 10, 1964 The Beatles Second Album was released. It went to number one on the album charts in the US, knocking off Meet the Beatles!, the first time an artist replaced itself at number one on the US album charts. Capitol Records, sensing the momemtum, compiled this recording from four different UK releases and some B-sides. Many Beatle fans consider this to be the Beatles most pure Rock and Roll LP. To add to the sound of the recording, the Capitol engineers added a lot of echo and reverb.

A lot of covers from their early days graced this LP. But the three tunes that I wore out were:

Thank You Girl

I Call Your Name

She Loves You

Worth noting is the inclusion of the stereo version of “Thank You Girl,” as The Beatles’ Second Album featured the only “true” stereo version of the song released on any US or UK album for over 40 years, until another stereo version of the song was released on the 2009 remastered edition of Past Masters

A Hard Day’s Night hit store on June 26, 1964. The movie actually premiered on the eve of Ringo’s Birthday July 6th, 1964 at the Pavilion Theatre in London and the UK LP release was July 10, 1964.

is the third studio album by The Beatles, released on 10 July 1964 as thesoundtrack to their film A Hard Day’s Night The American version of the album was released on 26 June 1964 by United Artists Records with a different track listing. It was eventually replaced by the original UK version with its first release on CD, 26 February 1987.

Before A Hard Day’s Night was released in America, a United Artists executive asked Lester to dub the voices of the group with mid-Atlantic accents. McCartney angrily replied, “Look, if we can understand a fuckin’ cowboy talking Texan, they can understand us talking Liverpool.”

The title of the album was the accidental creation of drummer Ringo Starr. According to Lennon in a 1980 interview with Playboy magazine: “I was going home in the car and Dick Lester [director of the movie] suggested the title, ‘Hard Day’s Night’ from something Ringo had said. I had used it in ‘In His Own Write’, but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo. You know, one of those malapropisms. A Ringo-ism, where he said it not to be funny… just said it. So Dick Lester said, ‘We are going to use that title.”

I was 11 years old when my sister took me to the Bay Terrace Theater in Bayside, NY and my life forever changed! Not only did I see a great movie but I figured out with all of those girls screaming, I should be a musician too! I had never experienced something that so radically transformed me! This blog, my performing and recording career, my businesses all, are a direct result of the Beatles and the sheer optimism they exuded.

A wonderful time was had by all!

A Hard Day’s Night

I Should Have Known Better

Tell Me Why

Can’t Buy Me Love

Originally opened in 1926 as the independently operated Commodore Theater, this movie house/Yiddish theater was taken over by Loew’s Inc. and later became known as the Village Theater. It can credit Lenny Bruce as appearing on its stage.In March 1968 it became the Fillmore East concert venue. Located on Second Avenue at East Sixth Street and known as the Village Theater for most of its previous existence, the venue had been a mainstay of the Yiddish-theatre circuit; it had also been a cinema and had fallen into disrepair before Graham’s acquisition. Despite the deceptively small marquee and façade, the theater had a capacity of 2,700 seats.

I remember Mondays at Eron Prep all of us discussing whether we went to the early show or late show the previous weekend and if we were planing on going the following weekend! It reminded me of when I was in grammar school and the morning after the Twilight Zone TV show aired we would all talk about the episode and if, for some reason, you didn’t see it, you just weren’t cool!

To enhance the “experience” the Joshua Light Show, created by Joshua White, one of the trailblazing liquid light shows renowned for its psychedelic art lighting became the backdrop behind many live band performances. Pretty heady stuff!

Here is a listing of every show at the Fillmore East. It would be great if those of you who were there would comment and share your remembrances.

The first time I went to a show was June 7, 1968 to see The Electric Flag featuing former Paul Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Mike Bloomfield, Quicksilver Messenger Service with the underrated John Cipolina on guitar (his brother Mario played bass for Huey Lewis and the News) and Steppenwolf. Leader John Kay, never seen without sunglasses in part due to the fact that he has been legally blind since childhood, escaped from East Germany to West Germany with his war-widowed mother in 1948. Ten years later he emigrated to Canada with his mother and stepfather. A gym teacher who could not pronounce “Joachim” informally rechristened him John; several years later he adopted the Kay surname.

I do not think this was the show that the bass player Rushton Moreve came on stage with bunny ears and a jock strap, but that is for another time!’

I was there when Humble Pie was  This was one fantastic show! Walk on Guilded Splinters to me, was more of a stand out than the ever popular I Don’t Need No Doctor. They weren’t even the headliners! The show was opened by Dada, who I unfortunately do not remember and the headliner was Cactus with former Vanilla Fudge rhythm section Tim Bogart on bass and Carmine Appice on drums.

One of the strangest billings I ever went to was opener If, a horn band from England, The Faces with Rod Stewart, and headlining Black Sabbath.

I got to see Procul Harem Savoy Brown Buddy Miles Ten Years After Sir Lord Baltimore Jethro Tull Edgar Winter John Mayall Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and many many others!

Because of changes in the music industry and exponential growth in the concert industry, Graham closed the Fillmore East. Its final concert took place on June 27, 1971, with the billed acts: The Allman Brothers Band, The J. Geils Band, Albert King, and special guests — Edgar Winter’s White Trash, Mountain, The Beach Boys, and Country Joe McDonald — in an invitation-only performance. The concert was broadcast live by WNEW-FM with between-set banter by many of the station’s then-trendsetting disc jockeys — Alison Steele (“The Nightbird”) and Scott Muni among them. The Allman Brothers Band set was released as the second disk of the deluxe edition/remastered version of their Eat a Peach album.

Then and now

I was fortunate to live 2 blocks from, in my opinion, one of the best clubs in NY Ungano’s. Owned by Nick and Arnie Ungano, it was “the” place to play because of all the A & R reps and agents who frequented it. I used to wait until my parents fell asleep and I would sneak out of the house and go see groups like the original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, Faces with Rod Stewart, Dr. John the Night Tripper and many others. I had always wanted to play there but to no avail. An interesting twist, when it closed, it became a cabaret club called The Grand Finale and I played there a number of times. Once with a pre Saturday Night Fever Karen Lynn Gorney who incidentally, plays a mean guitar!

Another hot spot was the “original” Peppermint Lounge located on West 45th St. Probably the best known band to come out of there was Joey Dee and the Starlighters. Some very famous musicians filtered through his band; Jimi Hendrix and Gene Cornish, Eddie Brigati, and Felix Cavaliere of the Young Rascals. The house band was a group called Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones whose claim to fame was that they recorded the first version of   Wild Thing The Wild Ones were produced by Gerry Granahan in 1966 when he asked songwriter Chip Taylor if he had anything for them to record during an upcoming session. Taylor wrote “Wild Thing” in response that afternoon and gave it to them; Granahan and the band, however, changed the tempo and added horns to the arrangement, altering the song and failing to hit with it, thus giving the opening for the Troggs to score with the song.

Speaking of Jordan Christopher,in May 1965, a little over a year after her divorce to actor Richard Burton, Sybil Burton opened a discotheque called Arthur on 54th Street. It would rapidly become the hottest nightclub in New York. Clearly a shrewd businesswoman Sybil raised the cash to set up the club by selling shares to showbiz pals at $1,000. These patrons included Roddy McDowell, Julie Andrews, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. The incredible success of Arthur was due in part to its fashionable mod aesthetic (see pic), which Burton had imported from such London hang outs as Ad Lib. The name Arthur is itself a jokey reference to one of the Beatles’ hairstyles. The democratic door policy also helped. Maybe her upbringing in a mining community had some influence here, for she was keen for young, hip, working people to attend her establishment. Not that this populism ever stopped the rich and famous turning up in their droves: Tennessee Williams, Princess Margaret, Lee Remick, Nureyev, Truman Capote and Andy Warhol were all regulars. In his book,Popism, Warhol reminisces about meeting Bette Davis, Sophia Loren and the astronaut Scott Carpenter there. In some quarters Arthur has been viewed as Sybil Williams’s ultimate revenge on the ‘Burton and Taylor’ franchise. Her elevation in status to NY’s top nightclub hostess certainly gave her a glamour and power that as mousey Mrs Burton she had never previously enjoyed. She was featured in Time and Life magazines and opened up other establishments in LA, Dallas, Detroit and San Francisco. She even managed to shock everyone by marrying handsome Jordan Christopher, who was more than 10 years her junior, and the lead singer in Arthur’s house band the Wild Ones. Arthur’s other claim to fame is that it is noted for being one of the first clubs to showcase the DJ. Terry Noel was no anonymous background figure spinning the discs but an important element in creating the club’s ambience. became so good at reading thecrowd’s mood and building excitement on the dance floor that eventually the live band was out of a job. .  Before The Wild Ones were out at Arthur, they recorded an album “

The Arthur Sound – Recorded Live at Arthur”, which actually turned out to have been recorded in a studio with a bunch of people brought in to chatter and simulate a discoteque crowd.

As in most nightclubs drugs could be purchased there – acid, coke, amphetamine and crystal meth were, apparently, the narcotics of choice, but trade was discreet and far from being Arthur’sraison d’etre. Unfortunately, toward the end of its existence, criminal elements began to move in on the scene and Arthur even witnessed a racially motivated shooting. Sybil sold the club in 1969.

The Electric Circus was a famous American nightclub, former hippiediscotheque, open between 1967 and September 1971 in the East Village at 19-25 St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues. With its invitation (from one of its press releases) to “play games, dress as you like, dance, sit, think, tune in and turn on,” and its mix of light shows, music, circus performers and experimental theater, the Electric Circus embodied the wild and creative side of 1960s club culture. Flame throwing jugglers and trapeze artists performed between musical sets, strobe lights flashed over a huge dance floor, and multiple projectors flashed images and footage from home movies. Seating was varied, with sofas provided. The Electric Circus became “New York’s ultimate mixed-media pleasure dome, and its hallucinogenic light baths enthralled every sector of New York society.”  Its hedonistic atmosphere also influenced the later rise of disco culture and discos. Experimental bands such as The Velvet Underground, jam bands such as The Grateful Dead and early composers of electronic music (Terry Riley and Morton Subotnick), played there as well as Raven and “Soft White Underbelly” before it became known as “Blue Öyster Cult, The Allman Brothers, The Doors, Sly and the Family Stone and The Chambers Brothers

Steve Paul’s Scene was a popular midtown nightclub at 46th St. and 8th Ave. It sported a labyrinth floor plan which extended through a bizarre network of brick walled cellar rooms and passageways. While the club catered primarily to the jet-set, it also attracted a growing number of the hippie community. Steve Paul once described the purpose of his club in this way: ‘To use music as a common denominator for the fusion between music, musicians, people who like music, and people who are music in their very being.’

Steve Paul, who had an uncanny eye for spotting new stars, would often feature new talent at his club long before word of them had gone out. Among the wide variety of performers featured at The Scene are The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, The Rascals Jeff Beck, Traffic, Fleetwood Mac and many others.  I used to go there after gigs with my band and see amazing jam sessions with Jimi Hendrix, Steve Winwood and the list goes on! An interesting side note, Steve Paul managed David Johansen/Buster Poindexter

Growing up in NY in the 60′s also presented a wide panoply of places to go and  listen to music. From clubs to concert halls, to Central Park, NY had it all.

Stay tuned and enjoy this tribute to NY

The Velvet Underground first gained a degree of fame and notoriety inNew York City in 1966 when they were selected as the house band for Andy Warhol’s Factory and hisExploding Plastic Inevitable events. The band’s lyrics challenged conventional societal standards of the time, and broke ground for other musicians to do the same. The band favored experimentation, and also introduced a nihilistic outlook through some of their music.Their outsider attitude and experimentation has since been cited as pivotal to the rise of punk rock and, later, alternative rock.  Their 1967 debut album, titled The Velvet Underground & Nico(which featured German singer Nico, with whom the band collaborated) was named the 13th Greatest Album of All Time, and the “most prophetic rock album ever made” by Rolling Stone in 2003.

The Vagrants were a Long Island-based rock and blue-eyed soulgroup from the 1960s. By 1965, the group had developed a professional press kit and had gained the interest of the semi-professional Southern Sound record label and soon released a single: Oh Those Eyes b/w You’re Too Young. Though the single wasn’t very popular, it did gain the attention of directors Vince Scarza and Douglas Hickox, who were directing a Beach Party film called “Disk-O-Tek Holiday” which featured various music artists performing songs throughout the film. The clip that featured The Vagrants performing “Oh Those Eyes” is now considered a classic piece of mid-sixties history. However, The Vagrants weren’t that thrilled with just one single and an unpopular sequence in a Beach Party film, and were soon signed to the “folkie” label Vanguard. It was then when the group released their first minor hit: I Can’t Make a Friend, which is frequently found on garage band compilations and is one of their most recognizable early efforts. Still unhappy, though, was Felix Pappalardi, a record producer that would later work with Cream, The Youngbloods, andJoan Baez. Pappalardi worked hard to sign the group to Atco Records, a sublabel of the famous Atlantic Recording Corporation. In the Eastern United States, a cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” became a smash hit. However, a few months later, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” was more of a success, therefore hurting the sales of The Vagrants’ version. It wasn’t long after the group released “Respect,” however that guitarist Leslie West decided to reach further heights by forming his own group, Mountain with Felix Pappalardi. The formation of Mountain was extremely beneficial to West, though; he had many hits with the group. Though The Vagrants existed for such a short time, their impact on Long Island rockers is amazingly vibrant. A compilation of all of the group’s singles (excepting both sides of the “Oh Those Eyes” 45) was released on a full-length record titled The Great Lost Album in 1986, upon which both Leslie and Larry West are credited by their birth names, Leslie and Larry Weinstein.

Jesse Colin Young (born Perry Miller) was a moderately successful folk singer with twoLPs under his belt - Soul of a City Boy (1964) and Youngblood(1965) – when he met fellow folk singer and former bluegrass musician from Cambridge named Jerry Corbitt . When in town, Young would drop in on Corbitt, and the two played together exchanging harmonies. In January 1965, the two began performing in Canada as a duo, eventually adopting the name ‘The Youngbloods’. Young played bass, and Corbitt played piano,harmonica and lead guitar. Corbitt introduced Young to a bluegrass musician, Lowell Levinger  known as “Banana,” who could play the piano, banjo, mandolin, mandola, guitar and bass;  He knew of a fellow tenant who could flesh out the band. Joe Bauer , who was an aspiring jazz drummer with experience playing in society dance bands. Their first show was at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village; months later, they were the house band at the Cafe Au Go Go and had signed arecording contract with RCA Records. In 1967 they recorded Get Together , a paean to universal brotherhood first appeared, it did not sell very well, reaching only #62 on the chart. But two years later — after Dan Ingram had recorded a brotherhood promotion for WABC-AM in which the song was used as a bed for the promotion, and after the National Council of Christians and Jews subsequently used the song as their theme song on television and radio commercials — the track was re-released and cracked the Top 5. This disc sold over one million copies, and received a gold record, awarded by theR.I.A.A. on 7 October 1969. Dick Cavett once reportedly refused to allow the band to perform on The Dick Cavett Show, saying they were overly demanding during the pre-show soundcheck.

One of my favorite bands was the Lovin Spoonful. Formed by John Sebastian, who grew up in contact with music and musicians, was the son of a much-recorded and highly technically accomplished classical harmonica player. Sebastian was joined in the Spoonful by guitarist Zal Yanovsky from a bohemian folk group called The Mugwumps, playing local coffee houses and small clubs (two other members, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty, would later form half of the Mamas & the Papas.) Drummer-vocalist Joe Butler and bassist Steve Boone rounded out the group. Working with producer Erik Jacobsen, the band released their first single, the Sebastian-penned Do You Believe in Magic. Unlike many pop groups of the day (the early Beatles being a notable and influential exception), The Lovin’ Spoonful played all the instruments on their records, with the exceptions of the orchestral instruments heard on their soundtrack album You’re A Big Boy Now and some later singles. Soon-to-be-members of the Grateful Dead were part of the West Coast acoustic folk music scene when The Lovin’ Spoonful came to town while on tour. They credited The Lovin’ Spoonful concert as a fateful experience, after which they decided to leave the folk scene and “go electric.” They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Another interesting note, drummer Joe Butler’s daughter from his first marriage is actress Yancy Butler.

Eddie Brigati (vocals), Felix Cavaliere (keyboard, vocals), Gene Cornish (guitar) and Dino Danelli (drums) started The Young Rascals in Brigati and Danelli’s native state New Jersey. Three-quarters of the group – Brigati, Cavaliere and Cornish – had previously been members of Joey Dee and the Starliters. Eddie’s brother, David Brigati, an original Starliter, helped arrange the vocal harmonies and sang backgrounds on many of the group’s recordings (informally earning the designation as the Fifth Rascal). When Atlantic Records signed them, they discovered that another group, Borrah Minnevitch’s and Johnny Puleo’s Harmonica Rascals, objected to their release of records under the name Rascals. To avoid conflict, manager Sid Bernstein decided to rename the group the Young Rascals. Their first television performance was on the program Hullabaloo on February 27, 1965, where they performed their debut single, “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” During their heyday, the band’s influence on aspiring R & B-flavored white acts was without equal, especially in the northeastern U.S. Notable bands that incorporated (sometimes to the point of parody) the Rascals’ full-on stage demeanor and energy as well as the intense, hyper-dramatic vocalizing, drumstick-spinning gyrations and heavy bottom-end rhythm also achieved some prominence: the Vagrants (featuring Leslie West, later of Mountain), the Rich Kids, and the epitome of over-the-top funky psychedelia, the Vanilla Fudge, all owed their styles to the Rascals’ synthesis of show-biz and soul.

In 1989, I was honored to be a part of the first New Rascals. Not only was it fun to play the music, it was also a thrill to play with the twirling stick master and great all around drummer Dino Danelli! I had known Gene Cornish for some time and he asked me to audition. I was thrilled, went home and learned all the material, came in and aced the audition. I remember Gene telling me how impressed they were with my preparedness. I, still believe in being over prepared! It is the best way to go into anything, The next time I see Gene, I want to remind him to give me a copy of a promotional video we did. Can’t find it on You Tube as yet!

Speaking of The Vanilla Fudge, one of my favorite bands from NY, featured guitarist Vince Martell, organist Mark Stein and one of the best rhythm sections of all time bassist TIm Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice. Stein and Bogert played in a local band called Rick Martin & The Snowmen and were so impressed by the sound of The Rascals (swinging and floods of organ) that they decided to form their own band with Martell and Rick Martin’s drummer, Joey Brennan. Originally calling themselves The Pigeons, they changed the name to Vanilla Fudge in 1967, after the replacement of Brennan by Appice. The group was then “discovered” and managed by reputed Luchese crime-family member, Phillip Basile, who operated several famous L.I. clubs — the Action House, Speaks, Channel 80, Industry — three of which were the same club (on Austin Boulevard, in Island Park, NY) with different names. On March 14, 1970, Vanilla Fudge played a farewell concert at the Phil Basille’s Action House. After that, Bogert & Appice departed to form another group, Cactus (In 1972, they left Cactus and formed Beck, Bogert & Appice with guitarist Jeff Beck). Stein, left on his own, tried to keep the group going with two new players, Sal D’Nofrio (bass) and Jimmy Galuzzi (drums) (both of whom had been members of aPoughkeepsie, New York group known as “Dino & The Cavemen”). But when nothing came from this, Stein ended up forming a new group, Boomerang, instead with Galuzzi.

The street names themselves commemorate two early San Francisco leaders: Pioneer and exchange banker Henry Haight, or, (though it is arguable) the tenth governor of California, Henry Huntley Haight,the former’s nephew. Munroe Ashbury, one of the city’s first politicians, who served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1864 to 1870 lends his name to the latter street. Both Haight and his nephew as well as Ashbury had a hand in the planning of the neighborood, and, more importantly, nearby Golden Gate Park at its inception.

The upper Haight district is famous for its role as a center of the 1960s hippie movement, a post-runner and closely associated offshoot of theBeat generation or beat movement, members of which swarmed San Francisco’s “in” North Beach neighborhood two to eight years before the “Summer of Love” in 1967. Many who could not find space to live in San Francisco’s northside found it in the quaint, relatively cheap and underpopulated Haight-Ashbury. The ’60s era and modern American counterculture have been synonymous with San Francisco and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood ever since.

With that being said, I think I was a bit too “NYC” and too “Mod” to get into the “Hippie” scene. It sounds a bit provincial, but I found the hippies kind of scary and most definitely a bit weird! Some of the music was enjoyable but I really was sold on the British Invasion and was, in retrospect, a bit myopic!

Let’s examine a number of the popular bands and see what we come up with!

Incidentally, I was asked to recommend some music to go along with my posts so I will put CD links to CD’s you might like to listen to as we go forward.

The Grateful Dead began their career as The Warlocks, a group formed in early 1964 from the remnants of a Palo Alto jug band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. he band changed its name after finding out that another band of the same name had signed a recording contract. The name Grateful Dead was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, in his biography “…Jerry Garcia picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary…[and]…In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, ‘Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?’” The definition there was “the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial.” The Grateful Dead formed during the era when bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. “The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock ‘n’ roll band,” said Bob Weir. “What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn’t think of anything else more worth doing. Their early music was part of the process of establishing what “psychedelic music” was, but theirs was essentially a “street party” form of it. They developed their “psychedelic” playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey in Palo Alto, CA and subsequently becoming the house band to the Acid Tests he staged. After relocating to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, their “street party” form developed out of the many psychedelic dances, open-air park events, and closed-street Haight-Ashbury block parties at which they played. Their live shows, fed by their improvisational approach to music, made the Grateful Dead different from most other touring bands. While most rock and roll bands rehearse a standard show for their tours that gets played night after night, city after city, the Grateful Dead never did. As Garcia stated in an 1966 interview, “We don’t make up our sets beforehand. We’d rather work off the tops of our heads than off a piece of paper.”

I went to see them one time at some college in NJ and after an hour or so, I was ready to go. Oh well, you can’t love em all!

The Jefferson Airplane formed in San Francisco CA in 1965. A pioneer of thepsychedelic rockmovement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success. They were one of the most sought-after and highly-paid concert acts in the world and they are also notable as the only band to have performed at all three of the most famous American rock festivals of the 1960s — Monterey (1967),Woodstock (1969) and Altamont (1969)Although the Airplane was considered a San Francisco group, Paul Kantner was the only native San Franciscan in the band.

Quicksilver Messenger Service were one of San Francisco’s leading psychedelic bands, and one of my favorites because I enjoyed their long solos like Cream, Hendrix, et al.  They gained wide popularity in the Bay Area and with psychedelic rock enthusiasts around the globe. Many of their albums ranked in the top 30 of the Billboard Pop charts. Though not ultimately as commercially successful as their contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, the band was integral to the beginnings of their genre. With their jazz and classical influences, as well as a strong folk background, the band attempted to create a sound that was individual and innovative.

Santana was formed in 1966 in San Francisco as the Santana Blues Band. With their highly original blend of Latin-infused rock, jazz, blues, salsa, and African rhythms, the band (which quickly became known simply as Santana) gained an immediate following and the band’s early success, capped off by a memorable performance at Woodstock in 1969, led to a recording contract with Columbia Records. Bill Graham, who had been a fan of the band from the start, convinced the promoters of the Woodstock Music and Art Festival to let them appear before their first album was even released. They were one of the surprises of the festival; their set was legendary and, later, the exposure of their eleven-minute instrumental “Soul Sacrifice” in the Woodstock film and soundtrack albums vastly increased Santana’s popularity. Graham also gave the band some key advice to record the Willie Bobo song “Evil Ways”, as he felt it would get them radio airplay. Their first album, simply titled Santana, became a huge hit, reaching number four on the U.S. album charts, and the catchy single “Evil Ways” reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100.

Moby Grape was formed in late 1966 in San Francisco, at the instigation of Skip Spence and Matthew Katz. Both had been previously associated with Jefferson Airplane, Spence as the band’s first drummer, playing on their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and Katz as the band’s manager, but both had been dismissed by the group. The band name, judicially determined to have been chosen by Bob Mosley and Spence, came from the punch line of the joke “What’s big and purple and lives in the ocean?” While Jerry Miller was the principal lead guitarist, all three guitarists played lead at various points, often playing off against each other, in a guitar form associated with Moby Grape as “crosstalk” In a marketing stunt, Columbia Records immediately released five singles at once, and the band was perceived as being over-hyped. This was during a period in which mainstream record labels were giving previously unheard-of levels of promotion to what was then considered countercultural music genres.As described by Jeff Tamarkin former editor of Relix and Goldmine, “The Grape’s saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad-luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less.” This is truly a sad tail that was not the first and most certainly, will not be the last!

Sly & The Family Stone was pivotal in the development of soul,funk, and psychedelic music. Headed by singer, songwriter, record producer, andmulti-instrumentalistSly Stone, and containing several of his family members and friends, the band was the first major American rock band to have a multicultural lineup. They also had one of the foremost and groundbreaking bassists, Larry Graham in the group. He created a technique known as slap and pop which has become a mainstay of any bassists vocabulary. Joel Selvin, a San Francisco-based music critic and author known for his weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle sums up the importance of Sly & the Family Stone’s influence on African American music by stating “there are two types of black music: black music before Sly Stone, and black music after Sly Stone”. The band was inducted into theRock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

It’s A Beautiful Day was formed in 1967, the brainchild of violinistDavid LaFlamme, a former soloist with the Utah Symphony Orchestra. Although they were one of the earliest and most important San Francisco bands to emerge from the Summer of Love, It’s a Beautiful Day never quite achieved the success of their contemporaries such as The Grateful Dead and Santana, with whom they had connections. e group’s original manager, Matthew Katz, had previously been fired by both Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape. The group’s signature song “White Bird” was inspired by the experiences David and Linda LaFlamme had while living in Seattle.

Blue Cheer was based in San Francisco, and played in a psychedelic blues-rock style. They are credited as being pioneers of heavy metal. Their cover of “Summertime Blues” is sometimes cited as the first in the genre. The band was named after a street brand of LSD and promoted by renowned LSD chemist and former Grateful Dead patron, Owsley Stanley.” Jim Morrison of The Doors called the group, “The single most powerful band I’ve ever seen.” It is said that Blue Cheer decided to adopt a power trio configuration after seeing Jimi Hendrix perform at the Monterey Pop Festival. Sadly, bassist and lead singer Dickie Peterson passed away on Oct 12, 2009 from prostate cancer.

Ok, I know I am going to hear some comments but Janis Joplin scared me! I am not certain why, but I had this feeling about her that really chilled me. Maybe it was her profound sadness, I don’t really know. Her 1968 LP Cheap Thrills with  Big Brother and the Holding Company is considered one of the masterpieces of thepsychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the Billboard charts, and was ranked number 338 in Rolling Stone‘s the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Sopwith Camel is best known for being the second San Francisco band to get a recording contract with a national record label, and the first to have a Top 40 hit.
Would you like some of my tangerine?

Country Joe and the Fish‘s name is derived from leftist politics; “Country Joe” was a popular name for Joseph Stalin in the 1940s, while “the fish” refers to Mao Tse-Tung’s statement that the true revolutionary “moves through the peasantry as the fish does through water.” This makes a great deal of sense since their biggest hit, was the anti-war “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”, which debuted the same year as the band, but became best known after Country Joe’s solo acoustic performance of it at Woodstock. It was a musical protests against the Vietnam War. In any case, I enjoyed their first album “Electric Music for the Mind and Body” which included a song you hear often on Sirius XM Deep Tracks “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine.”

One of my favorite tunes, which I incidentlly heard on Little Steven’s Underground Garage last night was The Chambers Brothers “Time Has Come Today.” The group was part of the wave of new music that integrated American blues and gospel traditions with modern psychedelic and rock elements, spawning a heady mix integrating all these factors. Based on their Southern roots, the brothers brought a raw authenticity to their recordings and live performances that was missing from many other acts of that era. A truly great song!  Their music has been kept alive through heavy use in film soundtracks.

Next week, it is back to NY! I look forward to hearing from you. Have a great week!