Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

My earliest memory of hearing a Beatle song was 'And Your Bird Can Sing'. Unless this is a faulty memory, it was on a Saturday morning watching their cartoon series in 1966 or 1967. I was six or seven-years-old. I've never checked to see if that song ever appeared in a cartoon, but that's how I remember it. To my young ears it was a great song then, and it remains a favorite to this day.

I heard The Beatles plenty of times before this memory (I hated them then) but this is what I remember that got me hooked. My dad was taping the anthology from another tape and he had it on TV. When the "Hello Goodbye" promo came on I was hooked. I was maybe 11 or 12.

"I Want to Hold Your Hand", on the radio. My older sister and her neighbor friend were going ape over the song on the radio...I wasn't sure what the fuss was all about. A bit later she also made me watch them on the Ed Sullivan show...my parents declined the opportunity, so it was just me and her watching.

Funny thing is, now I'm sure I listen a lot more to the Beatles than she does. I really only started to like their music right about when Paul switched to the Rickenbacker. Coincidence? I think not.

Sullivan, 1964. Hooked me from the get-go. I guess it was 'All My Loving'. I was a mere lad of 12 at the time. My parents saw the perfomance and didn't come close to the same opinion. They wanted more Topo Gigio.

Weird thing is....My mom found a copy of "The Beatles Complete" VHS in a box from a neighbor down my street......She watched and I just happened to be sitting in her room (mainly cause it was the only room with A/C) and I watched it once.....then for some reason I kept watching it over and over....Then my neighbors gave me a cheap Gretsch Classical.....And Here I am today

There's no way I could remember my first Beatles song.
Having 3 older brothers and my Mom liking them, they were always on. I'm sure they were always in the background. Along with the Who and Stones.

I do remember being at my aunt's house before I was in school at about 4 years old. I would put on Hey Jude (the album), get their violin out and pretend I was Paul.
Some things never change!

I like the Rick Bass era songs the best too.

Wednesday, January 22, 1964.

My connection to music at age 15 was the radio. I had a friend whose parents were fairly well-to-do, and they had bought him the best Zenith cabinet stereo that money could buy. After school, we'd go to his house and listen to records.

I'd heard scuttlebutt about the Beatles, and remembered their first attempt at the American charts with "Please, Please Me" on VeeJay, about a year plus earlier. But I had not heard anything on the radio yet--the album was just out and had not broken in Chicago yet.

He had bought "Meet the Beatles" in a downtown record store the day before and put it on this killer--for that day--stereo. Side One, Cut One: right into "I Want To Hold Your Hand".

That was a magic moment. The Sullivan Show a couple of weeks later was great, but the crummy sound from the tinny mono TV couldn't compare with the pure sonic experience of hearing them on vinyl that Wednesday afternoon.

WLS - RADIO 890
THE BRIGHT SOUND OF CHICAGO RADIO
SILVER BEATLE SURVEY
CHICAGO'S OFFICIAL RADIO RECORD SURVEY
FEBRUARY 21, 1964

1. I Want To Hold Your Hand - The Beatles
2. She Loves You - The Beatles
3. Dawn Go Away - Four Seasons
4. Penetration - The Pyramids
5. Out Of Limits - The Marketts
6. See The Funny Little Clown - Bobby Goldsboro
7. Navy Blue - Diane Renay
8. You Don't Own Me - Lesley Gore
9. A Letter From Sherry - Dale Ward
10. Hey Little Cobra - The Ripchords

Do you remember hearing some of this Paul, after the Beatles broke on Sullivan? It's part of an old Music Survey from WLS in Chicago, Feb. '64. Can't say I recall Dale Ward.

Love Me Do ('64 I think).

Here Comes The Sun, around mid-late 1970. Didn't know who/what I was listening to (I was four years old) but I just knew there was something special about it. I remember seeing the album cover and thinking they were a bunch of hippies.

Something. My mom had the 45 of Something/Come Together. I remember liking the green apple on the 45. I remember the opening bass line for Come Together scaring me.....weird since I'm a bass player now!!!

I heard it a couple of weeks before they broke on Sullivan, Stan. I remember every song except the Dale Ward one, too, Stan.

Apparently I heard it a month approximately before this Silver Dollar Survey (the Bible in those days!) came out. I'm going from the release date of Monday the 20th of January, and my friend telling me that he was going to Rose Records the next day after school to buy some vinyl. Then the next day I heard what he had purchased. So that would have been January 22nd.

I've got to say--those two Beatle songs were quite unlike everything else on that or any other survey at the time!

Jeez--I just contradicted myself. I actually remember hearing the VeeJay release of Please, Please Me on WLS sometime in early Spring of '63--fully a year before they came to the States. The DJ, Art Roberts (who was still spinning last time I heard!), gave them a brief intro, and I remembered the name as "Beetles", because you can't see a homonym unless you know what you're looking for. The opening descending riff confused me at the time--I couldn't imagine what instrument made that sound.

That was the first Beatles song I heard. But that album on that good stereo in January '64 made a bigger impression!

Paul, 'LS was the station! I could pick it up on skips at night. And heard a ton of Beatles by mid '64. Now, after digging up that old survey, I gotta find out who in the hell was Dale Ward. Whoops, takin' this thread way off track.

I think it was "I want To Hold Your hand" for me also, I first heard the album Meet The beatles at my older cousin's house sometime before old Ed too, I'm not sure of the month, I was 10 years old at the time and didn't like it the first time, I thought they were wierd, I changed my mind very quickly though like probably in two days. I loved them by the time they were on the Ed Sullivan show, i remember my father saying: "They're not playing those guitars!" haha!
I remember most of those songs on the survey also, always have loved anything the Four Seasons did, Hey Little cobra, Lesley Gore etc. Outer Limits.