Beatles. - If you like the Beatles: here are over 200 bands, films, records and other oddities that you will love

Also by Bruce Pollock

In Their Own Words: Lyrics and Lyricists

The Face of Rock & Roll: Images of a Generation

Playing for a Change

Me, Minsky, & Max

Its Onlly Rock and Roll

The Disco Handbook

When Rock was Young

When the Music Mattered: Rock in the 1960s

Hipper Than Our Kids: A Rock & Roll Journal of the Baby Boom Generation

Rock Song Index: The 7500 Most Important Songs of the Rock Era, 1944-2000

Working Musicians: Defining Moments from the Road, the Studio, and the Stage(E-book)

By the Time We Got to Woodstock: The Great Rokck n Roll Revolution of 1969

When the Music Mattered: Portraits from the 1960s (e-book reissue)

Its Only Rock and Roll (E-book reissue)

Copyright 2011 by Bruce Pollock

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2011 by Backbeat Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Photos courtesy of Photofest

Book design by Michael Kellner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pollock, Bruce.

If you like the Beatles: here are over 200 bands, films, records and other oddities that you will love / Bruce Pollock.

p. cm.

ISBN 9781617130700

1. Beatles. 2. Rock musiciansEngland. 3. Rock musicHistory and criticism. I. Title.

ML421.B4P65 2011

782.421660922--dc23

2011028882

www.backbeatbooks.com

CONTENTS

The Beatles, 1964. ( CBS.)

Introduction

An untold number of hardy souls were prompted to work on their vocal chops and dance moves after seeing Elvis Presleys hip-swiveling debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, 1956.

Buddy Hollys Ed Sullivan stint in December 1957, however, failed to produce any sort of onslaught of jangly guitar bands with a sensitive songwriter at the helm to challenge the prevailing dominance of the Presley rock n roll model: charismatic lead singer flanked by faceless backup players.

But within a few months of the Beatles three consecutive appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, on February 9, 16, and 23, 1964, ninety percent of the aspiring musicians in America were buying matching suits, ties, and instruments and growing their hair long.

By 1960, the fevered run of wildcat rockabilly and salacious R&B singles that defined the 1950s had given way to malleable girl groups, post-doo-wop Italian crooners, and identical R&B acts with identical time steps. For all-American white collegiate types anxious to be sophisticated, the fraternity house harmonies of folk music gently tweaked the system, from the Kingston Trio and the Brothers Four to the Highwaymen and the Chad Mitchell Trio.

In Philadelphia, Dick Clark was grooming the first graduating class of teen idolsFabian, Dion, Paul Anka, Bobby Rydell, Freddy Cannon, Neil Sedaka, Frankie Avalon, Brenda Lee, Connie Francisfor lounge careers in Las Vegas or at the Copacabana. In Detroit, Berry Gordy was looking to make black music respectable by emulating the song factories of New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville, which clung to their franchises in the sometimes thrilling, sometimes tired Tin Pan Alley tradition.

Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in February 1959; Eddie Cochran, in a car crash in April 1960. In 1961 Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers were either already in or heading toward creative limbo; Elvis was busy making movies; even Wanda Jackson had cleaned up her act. Bob Dylan blew in from Minnesota, a secret rock n roll fan in the guise of a weathered beatnik poet. But Dylan was an acquired taste for a small downscale market.

With no one else to be enamored of, the spreading rock n roll audience became, during the 196063 period, enamored of itself. In the image of its new president and his New Frontier, this crowd was old enough to reinvent its antiquated inner Elvis in a new kind of downtown nightlife gyration called the twist. For two years this dull thud dominated the radio dial and the aspirations of local bands.

Through 1963 the idea of a rock band not tied to the mindless rhythm of the twist or the equally mindless (albeit seductive) rhythm of surf music seemed to exist only in Portland, Oregon, where the instrumental group the Wailers, of Tall Cool One fame, still occupied a legendary place in the areas rock pantheon.

Paul Revere and the Raiders sent the instrumental track Like Long Hair, to the Top 40 in 1961, but Revere got drafted and the momentum faded. By 1963 he was back, vying with another local band, the Kingsmen, for the next crack at a 1956 Richard Berry favorite called Louie Louie that was kicking up dust on the circuit. Revere got the regional hit, the Kingsmens version went national. But both paid a price. Signed by Columbia Records Mitch Miller, who was noted for his antipathy towards rock n roll, Revere and the Raiders were aced by the Kingsmen when Miller failed to promote the Raiders single.

The Kingsmen may have won the battle, but they lost the war when lead singer Jack Ely quit after Louie Louie became a hit to form a new band. The Kingsmens bass player, who owned the group name, drew the wrath of fans when he lip-synched to Elys voice at gigs. Paul Revere and the Raiders wouldnt reach the Top 40 again until the end of 1965. No wonder no other major American label wanted to sign anything that smelled like a real rock band.

The most successful new American bands of the 196264 period, the Four Seasons (Vee-Jay) and the Beach Boys (Capitol), were essentially throwbacks to earlier, softer eras. The Four Seasons were already warhorses; post-doo-wop Italian soul veterans, with Frankie Valli in the Frankie Lymon falsetto role. The Beach Boys were the Four Freshmen on surfboards, with Brian Wilson still in the creative closet, under the thumb of his father.

President Kennedy was more popular than any rock star. Comedians like Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Shelley Berman were more relevant. Dylan was in Greenwich Village now, starting to tap into the outcast rage rock n roll had once channeled. Dylan walked off The Ed Sullivan Show when Sullivan wouldnt let him sing a song about the John Birch Society. You wouldnt find Dylan on Hootenanny, the folk music TV show that blacklisted Pete Seeger. On the other hand, Joey Dee and the Starliters played for the presidents wife, showing just how entrenched in the establishment this harmless rock n roll had become.

England wasnt on the typical rock fans radar then, but a few discerning folks were in on the secret. England was where old rock n roll still mattered. Gene Vincent settled there. Eddie Cochran died there. Buddy Holly had a string of posthumous hits there. In 1964 Paul Simon spent his first divorce from Art Garfunkel busking there. In 1966 the Everly Brothers recorded an album called Two Yanks in England there. Amid folk, blues, and classic rock n roll, the Beatles soldiered on, relentlessly playing seven shows a night, the most eclectic bar band in the world. They could segu from era to era as easily as they went from genre to genre. In the meantime, their original songs were starting to get some notice. Once Please Please Me hit Number One on the UK singles chart in February 1963, they would notch eleven more in a row (not counting the Twist and Shout EP).