Who here lived through Beatlemania?

[StrongBad]

Just curious as I'm from a later generation and did not live through it.

The Beatles are one of my favorites so I would enjoy hearing anecdotes of that era by people who lived through it or even took part in it.

[lost-in-nj]

1. I didn't like the Beatles

but grew up with them...

never ever could understand the appeal


:hi:


lost

[pokerfan]

2. Couldn't stand them

probably because my big sis was so into them.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I was in college when they first played on the Ed Sullivan Show...

I was totally enthralled along with all my dorm roomies!

I thought they were great!

[StrongBad]

21. Very cool!

Being a young adult in college, did you get the sense that something big that doesn't happen everyday was happening?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

25. Oh, very much so!

I really felt history being made!

And how exciting it was!

:bounce: :bounce:

[skooooo]

4. My sister was old enough to remember...

Story goes my dad told her that the Beatles were on tv. She went to look and didn't understand because she thought they were bugs. (she was maybe 6 years old)

[MorningGlow]

5. The Broadway show...?

...what? J/K :rofl:

I LOVE the Beatles, but they were before my time as well, so I saw the touring show of Beatlemania many times--it was as close as I could get. Pathetic, I know.

[nuxvomica]

6. My sisters and I had just gotten home from school one day

And the LIFE magazine with them on the cover was sitting there in the kitchen. I laughed and said they looked like girls, expecting my sisters to join in on my hilarious observation. They didn't. They just beamed. That's when it all started.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

7. I was pretty young when the Ed Sullivan

show catapulted them into the American lexicon.

My older sister and I barricaded her bedroom door with the bed and watched on her small TV - My insane mother was so pissed off. She was sure that the long hair(?) would make us all crazy and we would become commies.

I love the Beatles - I have lived my whole life with them as part of my background music.

My 8 year old son loves their music and knows tons of Beatles trivia.

-----

:)

[StrongBad]

23. Haha "long" hair

It's so funny how much things have changed in some ways in only 45 years.

Hopefully your mom warmed up to them eventually...

[QueenOfCalifornia]

31. Mom never

warmed up to anything "liberal." She was sure we would all be commies by now. Pinko liberals were taking over the world - Mom thought Vietnam was actually a good war.

sigh

[mnhtnbb]

8. OMG. My best friends and I were ga-ga over the Beatles. We were 7th-8th grade

when they first broke.

I just wish I still had the albums I bought!

[Bennyboy]

9. SEX!

The first time I ever heard them, I was being babysat by a girl about 8 yrs my elder, Rachel Self. I was about 8 at the time. She had just received her drivers license and we were driving along the road, myself, rachel and a couple of my friends. we were listening to the radio and all of a sudden Rachel SHH'd us all and turned the radio as loud as it would go.

She started singing along and by the time the song was over she had to pull the car to the side of the road. She was apoplectic.

My parents never listened to music, so I was a sheltered kid. I had no idea that music could have that effect on people. ESPECIALLY GIRLS!

Later that week, Rachel again babysat us on a Sunday evening. I really liked that because I could watch one the forbidden shows in our house, The Ed Sullivan show. My parents hated The Ed Sullivan show, rock and roll and just about everything so we never ever got to watch it.

A bunch of Rachel's friends came over to watch the show with her. Teenage girls all over the place. they all sat eagerly for the Beatles. I can't tell you when they came on in the show but when they finally did come on it was pandemonium. the girls all screamed fainted and swooned. I had never seen anyone act this way. These girls were flipping out. No longer were they demure girls, but they were freaking animals! All they talked about the rest of the night was The Beatles and who they were going to marry. Who was going to do what to whom and the pros and cons for each member of the band.

All I knew was, this music really got these girls going, going like nothing else. It changed them. It made their little teenage panties wet and I think it was the first time I was aware of sex.

I also knew that I wanted to be a Beatle. or something like one. Just like every teenage or pre-teen in America.

So we bought Beatle boots. we pegged our pants. We all begged our parents to buy us guitars.(Mine would only allow me to play a pedal steel, it was not a Rock and Roll instrument). We bought Beatle wigs.

Suddenly everything that we had been taught and told by our parents was wrong. Totally wrong. Here were these mop topped kids, having fun, pranking on everything in society and we loved it. Our parents hated it. Some passionately. Mine would not let me see the films (I had to sneak out my window, put on my pegged pants, wig and boots stashed in the bushes and meet up with my friends the night they opened). My parents did not let me have any of their music or wear any of the clothes. My dad was always "They are laughing all the way to the bank" and all that.

Of course that just made me rebel even more. No longer could my parents tell me what to do, what to wear, what to listen to. i was going to do it no matter what and there was nothing they could do about it.

It became a constant battle. I wanted to play music. I wanted to see music. They caught me sneaking out to go see the Beatles at Candlestick park and grounded me forever. It made no difference that I did not have tickets, I was going anyway.

[StrongBad]

24. Excellent story. Thank you for sharing

n/t

[Esra Star]

30. Nice story, sounds like what was happening all round the

world at that time.
I was very lucky. My mother took me to see them back in '64.
A very memorable show... all the screaming...it was an event.

[trof]

10. I. Saw their first live U.S. appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

Didn't think they were such a big deal.
The hair thing got a lot of attention.

Eventually liked their first music, but still didn't see what the rave was all about.

I was 22 when they appeared.

[begin_within]

11. I was only 4, but my 17-year-old sister was a complete Beatlemaniac,

and her bedroom was completely wallpapered with Beatles pictures. She and our neighbor, who was about her age, drove from here (San Diego) to see the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. My sister is now 61 and she still loves listening to their music. I missed the original Beatlemania phase, but I remember when Sgt. Pepper came out in 1967 and I was staring at the cover for a long time, and sort of listening to the music, but I didn't really appreciate it until a few years later. The odd thing was my Mom loved "Come Together" when "Abbey Road" first came out, and my Mom was already 53 at the time! So I think their music appealed to several generations.

[SPKrazy]

12. I lived through them as a child...

didn't really get the whole significance of it all.

My parents hated them I think. They represented the "counter culture". Funny thing is my parents in later years were/are as liberal as one might imagine they could become... quite a bit actually.

[LuckyLib]

13. I was 13 when I heard their first album and I went nuts. Up until then, really good R and B

and rock and roll was limited/controlled on many radio stations (so we never heard it) most offered pop crap that was really adult music. The Beatles and their music made my Dad shake his head, and that's all I needed. It was clear on Ed Sullivan that they were saying "Screw you!" with the hair, the smirks, and the music. Loved it. They opened the door to new music for my generation.

[Doc_Technical]

14. I was 12 at the time,

and rock and roll was becoming a bit stale.
President Kennedy was assassinated a few months earlier and the whole
country was very down.
The Beatles were a breath of fresh air and they brought
the fun back to our lives.

[FarLeftRage]

15. I was six years old when Beatlemania hit

I heard them on the radio, by my sister's and oldest brother's records...
So, I was well aware of who they were and I liked them.

[Tikki]

16. it must have been more fun, more exciting for the.....

kids in Liverpool and Hamburg and in all the small clubs The Beatles played on their
way up, seeing them and all...
By the time many or most of us (including me) in North America heard about The Beatles
it was the autumn of 1963...
The Beatles were already a phenomenon by then and had hordes of
fans screaming shrill above all the music at their shows.

Their music evolved...some of their songs I liked better than others..
"Dr. Roberts" and "Paperback Writer" are two all-time favorites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCzwLoTuD24


Tikki
I was 14 and thought Ringo was cute in 1963...

[Skittles]

17. I was a child in England at the time

they were wonderful; I remember our teenage-girl babysitter wore a hole in the rug dancing in front of my dad's record player. She was from a very poor family with 10 kids and probably would have babysit for us for free just to play all my dad's Beatles and Stones 45's. :)

[WinkyDink]

18. I had just turned 14 the previous November (a REALLY bad month).

I and my friends got all caught up in Beatlemania, buying all the teen mags (wish I had them!), trading cards, and, of course, records. As in 45's and LP's.
Re-naming ourselves "Paulette", etc.
Growing bangs; wearing "boot shoes"; saying "Fab" and "Gear"; "hating" Jane Asher; watching "A Hard Day's Night" in the movies 4-5 times in a row (you weren't kicked out between shows then); elevating John to "Poet Laureate" for "In His Own Write" (OMG, even my FATHER thought JL was a genius!); learning every separate vocal for every single song.

To steal from Wordsworth:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

[NanceGreggs]

34. Reading your post ...

... was like reading about my own life at that time. I turned 15 the night of their first appearance on Ed Sullivan.

My best friend, Gloria, and I used to used to write letters to them constantly. We lived on Long Island, not from NYC, so we would send our phone numbers and tell them that we could easily meet-up whenever they were in New York.

And, of course, we always swore to them that if they did ask us out, we would respect their privacy and never, ever, ever tell of any of our other girlfriends that we were dating them!

What a GREAT time it was to be a teenager ...

[Maccagirl]

35. I'm almost in tears

Captures exactly what the magic was about. I guess, as the saying goes, you had to be there. Thank God I was.

The one Beatle anedote I have relates to my best friend in high school: Lynn's much-older sister (Lynn would have been 7 at the time). Her sister was married to a guy who had a cousin out in Illinois who was married to George Harrison's sister, Louise. Lynn's sister and hubby went out to the St. Louis area in late summer of '63 for a family reunion and George was visiting his sister (his first visit to the U.S.-prior to the Ed Sullivam Show). Anyway, George was talking to a an elderly uncle and the uncle asked George what he did back in England. When George said he played guitar in a group called the Beatles the uncle said "The Beatles? Son, with a silly name like that, you guys won't go anywhere.".

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

19. Me.

I saw them when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. But I didn't like them that much until a few years later, when Sgt. Pepper came out.

[livetohike]

20. I was 12 yrs. old in 1964. All my girlfriends were in love with Paul

but my favorite was George. We would spend hours listening to Meet the Beatles. We knew all the words to all the songs. Boys started to grow their hair longer, well as long as it met the dress code standards as school :sigh:.

I didn't know any parents who liked the Beatles. I remember watching them on the Ed Sullivan show. Everyone watched Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights back then. You could barely hear the Beatles because of all the screaming girls in the audience.

It was a great time to grow up :-).

[Kat45]

28. Yeah, all the girls loved Paul. He was "the cute one." Not me.

Like you, George was my favorite. I was 9 in 1964, but even though I was a few years younger than you, it sounds like we experienced Beatlemania similarly.

[originalpckelly]

22. We've had a good bit of them around here lately...

Nothing a can of Raid can't fix!

[texanwitch]

26. I was 10 years old when Beatlemania started.

I didn't really get into the Beatles until I was about 16 or so.

I do remember going to the movies to see the two Beatle movies.

I was to young to go alone at night so I went with a older neighbor, she was about 14 or so.

She was really into the Beatles.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. I was in eighth grade, but I wasn't a fan

I didn't hate them; I just didn't see what the fuss was about.

I was taking home ec., and the teacher let us have the radio on while we cooked or sewed. Whenever a Beatles song came on, a hush would fall over the room, and the hardcore fans would shush anyone who didn't listen to the Beatles songs in absolute reverent silence.

The Beatles came to Minneapolis a year or so later. I didn't attend their concert, which was held in the old Metropolitan Stadium, but I'm told that the audience screamed so loudly that you couldn't hear a note. There was also a big scandal when it was discovered that the lads had smuggled some local girls into their rooms.

[Silver Swan]

29. I was too young for Elvis

and too old for the Beatles, so I was never a crazy teenage girl fan of anybody.

Nevertheless, I liked the Beatles better than Elvis. I actually owned several Beatles albums, but never bought an Elvis record.

[Arugula Latte]

32. Reading these stories, it's so interesting to note the huge generation gap

Rock and roll as a tool of the devil and such a forbidden fruit ... It seems unimaginable now.

My kids and I swap some songs on our iPod playlists. :)

[mulsh]

33. I was riding in our car with my mom & brother when I first heard

the Beatles. 1963, I was 6. my mom pulled the car over and stopped, when the song was over she search other radio stations for it. My dad was an elementary school teacher and had to teach dancing to his class, he'd decided to avoid square dancing he and another teacher got rock n roll and r& b records for their kids. he bought Meet The Beatles the following day. I still have and play it. The songs still sound fresh to me.

I remember looking forward to every new Beatle album. I also remember my cousin Marie who was and still is an acute Beatlemaniac. She still has little squares of their sheets, lock of hair, figurines. Every Beatle Monthly magazine and xmas record. etc.

Since they broke up I've only encountered a couple of albums that gave me that same feeling. the last one was the Dixie Chick's "the Long Way Home" similar vibe as Beatle records, at least as far as I'm concerned.

My mother in law and father in law knew the Beatles when they were playing in Hamburg, they were student over there for a couple of years. She gets letters from Paul every once in a while.

I had a girlfriend who's father was an SF radio personality. she and my mother in law are the only people I know who've spent time with the fab four. they both said the same thing. "they were so skinny I thought they were going to die on the spot."