• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Why 1964?

wlllljoyyyyy said:
How do " older generation " popsters Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong both having not only hits but #1s fit in there ?????????
The "older generation"'s music didn't go away completely just because a new generation took over. (Just as an aside, I believe that those two were only single-week chart-toppers, each.)
 
...Yes , of course . BTW , I have a theory as to how , especially , Martin's " Everybody Loves " (produced by Jimmy Bowen IIRC) fit in...which I haven't time to go into now :(...
firepoint525 said:
wlllljoyyyyy said:
How do " older generation " popsters Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong both having not only hits but #1s fit in there ?????????
The "older generation"'s music didn't go away completely just because a new generation took over. (Just as an aside, I believe that those two were only single-week chart-toppers, each.)
 
TheFonz said:
melan8tr said:
Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.

I think we were ready for them. Remember, many of the songs on those early LPs (including the Vee-Jay LP) were covers of '50s songs. The Beatles cut their teeth on American '50s rock & roll. I bought some of the their early singles, but I would have never bought the LPs if it weren't for those '50s songs (and they were available in STEREO, a real treat back then).
exactly..but remember you bought them in 1964 not 1963..in reality my statement didn't mention the fact that the songs that vee-Jay released in 1963 were actually available by june of 1962..when they were recorded by george martin..so it's back further than may 1963... the reason that their first 6 lP's (Capitol) were 50% american covers is that they had not written that much material..from Rubber Soul forward there was little or no cover material because their compositions were now the norm.
 
firepoint525 said:
melan8tr said:
I like the answer why not 1964...1964 has so many great elements of history and music, It may well be the best all-round year in pop music. The Capitol story explains the internal delay of the Beatle releases....Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.
Got to see the Beatles tribute band that went by the name 1964 The Tribute. (They were 1964 As The Beatles until the (real!) Beatles' lawyers got involved! :eek:) If the real Beatles had been able to break through in 1963, I suppose the tribute band would have called themselves 1963 The Tribute! ;D

The Beatles 64 cast,autographed my Beatles song books and my poster of the show...If you want the poster (no charge)you are welcome to it..e-mail me at [email protected] and i will mail to you..I am gettimg rid of all my collections as of early 2012.
 
firepoint525 said:
TheFonz said:
melan8tr said:
Why the Beatles didn't break in America till early 64, because we were not ready for them...Vee Jay released the first Beatle recordings back in May of 1963...they never charted..some blame covers by Del Shannon I think we wre still stuck in that first decade of Rock n Roll..as word started to come from Britain about these Beatles, it snowballed from there. After the Capitol release exploded , Vee-Jay released a Beatles album and by april of 64 they were #1 and#2 on the Charts.
I think we were ready for them. Remember, many of the songs on those early LPs (including the Vee-Jay LP) were covers of '50s songs. The Beatles cut their teeth on American '50s rock & roll. I bought some of the their early singles, but I would have never bought the LPs if it weren't for those '50s songs (and they were available in STEREO, a real treat back then).
If VeeJay had had the marketing department that Capitol had, they could have broken the Beatles stateside in 1963.

again I say..I don't think we were ready for them... Vee Jay was in a the third biggest market.. historically Capitol artists have never said good things about capitol A&R especially the Beach boys. When the Beatles came to America in 1963 they couldn't get arrested.
 
In one sense I think that we were ready for the Beatles, and pop culture was ripe for the taking at the time:

The Beatles in particular and The British Invasion in general helped mostly younger people get over the pall in the air that was left over from the Kennedy Assassination.

The time between the JFK tragedy and the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (2-9-64) was only 79 days, but the time was right for the mourning amongst the young to end.

As someone else used to say, and now you know the rest of the story.
 
melan8tr said:
the reason that their first 6 lP's (Capitol) were 50% american covers is that they had not written that much material..from Rubber Soul forward there was little or no cover material because their compositions were now the norm.

Funny you should mention "Rubber Soul". That was the LAST Beatles record I bought back in the day. The drug culture took over and, for me, the music died. Just a matter of taste, I guess...........
 
FRR said:
As an old guy that loves music from the 1960's, I'm convinced that the years from 1961 to 1967 was the greatest music ever. After 1992 with the advent of rap and hip hop, commercial radio was as dead as a door nail as far as many of us were concerned.
I agree, however, I would go back just a little bit to 1958.
 
Music had become somewhat "sedate" after payola, blander stuff was being pushed at teens,
and they were ready to cut loose.

There were other signs that such a sound was coming, and unstoppable.

Link Wray had already introduced tthe snarling sound that would be needed in the 50's.

In 1963, "Surfin Bird" by the A -Bones, "Wipeout" by the Surfaris, and "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen
pretty much opened the door for songs that were far wilder than the [ square] adults of the day approved of.

As far as the Beatles, there was a real anti-Beatle current at the time, Capitol was more or less in favor
of boosting the continuing popularity of the Beach Boys.
The "hair" problem for the Beatles was a great obstacle, and as kids figured out that their parents really didn't
like the Beatles, naturally their popularity increased.

The "longer hair for boys and men" war began then and it's not possible to describe now how
"unacceptable" the mop tops were then to adults.

Dick Biondi broke the Beatles early for Chicago. In most areas they were not well accepted at first.

:D And as soon as the parents become more accepting of the "earlier" works, say in 1966, they Beatles
started getting all heavy and introspective, so they were always a MOVING target to love/hate.
 
desertv said:
1964 was the great year of the music convergence..The British Invasion hit the states, Motown took off, the California surf sound hit its peak, the grrl groups, even Lorne Greene had a hit. Why did it occur in 1964 instead of a year later (or earlier)?

Getting back to the original question, it needs to be said that a big part of this musical turning point was demographic. An awful lot of kids were born from 1946 to 1952, making teenagers a big part of the population by then. After the first wave of rock and roll fizzled out in '59, the radio and records businesses were going in circles with teen idol pop --cute singers but not a lot of great move-your-feet music. So there was pent up demand for rock and R&B and a growing number of ready fans.
Someone mentioned above that the psychological blow of the JFK Kennedy assassination helped spark the British Invasion, and I think that's certainly a factor. A station in DC played an import single of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" the week after the assassination and the teen listeners loved it -- a sign of what came weeks later nationwide. What's amazing is to listen to airchecks of Top 40 stations from the fall of '63 and from the summer of '64 -- it's like two different universes. The music reshaped radio, which reshaped the record biz, which reshaped radio ... and on and on.
 
RicoGregg said:
In one sense I think that we were ready for the Beatles, and pop culture was ripe for the taking at the time:

The timing was right; we accepted them as they accepted us. Remember, Radio Caroline began off the English coast in 1964. ;)
 
TheFonz said:
Tom Wells said:
In 1963, "Surfin Bird" by the A -Bones.

That would be The Trashmen

Wow. Brain access misfire. Thank you. I had just gotten up.
Must have been a few cylinders off.
 
RicoGregg said:
The Beatles in particular and The British Invasion in general helped mostly younger people get over the pall in the air that was left over from the Kennedy Assassination.

The time between the JFK tragedy and the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (2-9-64) was only 79 days, but the time was right for the mourning amongst the young to end.

Listening to stories my mom told of that time, I'd agree with this. She was born in May 1950, so she was 13 when Kennedy was killed. She remembers vividly working furiously to get her homework done on 2/9/64 so she could watch Ed Sullivan. I showed her a clip of that show on YouTube a while back and she couldn't believe what she was watching.
 
TheFonz said:
melan8tr said:
the reason that their first 6 lP's (Capitol) were 50% american covers is that they had not written that much material..from Rubber Soul forward there was little or no cover material because their compositions were now the norm.

Funny you should mention "Rubber Soul". That was the LAST Beatles record I bought back in the day. The drug culture took over and, for me, the music died. Just a matter of taste, I guess...........

I also pretty much prefer up to "Rubber Soul" (maybe because I'm 66 yrs old)...I like some of the SGt Pepper for the pure genius of the LP..
 
Many Top 40 stations were mass appeal and "full service" back in the 60's. Even if parents hated the music they'd listen to a Top 40 station because they had the best and fastest news department. Some Top 40's played more MOR or (especially in the south) Country crossovers in the morning-early afternoon to appeal to adults when the teenagers were in school. So little wonder why something like "Hello Dolly" made #1.

And its amazing that Capitol was so stuck up about releasing the Beatles in the USA. EMI in the UK had the rights to the Dave Clark 5, The Yardbirds, Herman's Hermits, The Hollies, Manfred Mann, The Animals, Freddie & The Dreamers, and Gerry & The Pacemakers.

Yet the old farts in the Tower refused to release their records in the USA, let them go to other labels and only hung onto "safe" artists like Peter & Gordon, Cillia Black and The Seekers. Capitol could have created a couple more labels to go along with Tower and made a killing with those bands.
 
billyg said:
Many Top 40 stations were mass appeal and "full service" back in the 60's. Even if parents hated the music they'd listen to a Top 40 station because they had the best and fastest news department.

That is an excellent point.

When JFK was assassinated in 1963, and I was stuck at school with other students and a few teachers in the music room gathered around an old wooden tube radio, my mother was glued to both the TV and the local Top 40 outlet.

When I got home later, she told me that the radio news was quicker and more concise than the TV networks.

The radio station stayed glued to the story.
 
In 1963 in Los Angeles, there were two top-40 stations, KFWB and KRLA. KHJ was adult contemporary. Following the Kennedy assassination, all three stations immediately began full-time news coverage. Following the funeral, the first station to go back to music was KHJ, and then they played only ballads and soft instrumentals. The country was in no mood for upbeat music. But I disagree that radio provided better coverage than television. We saw film footage of the Presidential motorcade, live updates from the Dallas hospital, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the funeral procession, the burial of the President, John Kennedy Jr. saluting the casket, and the respected and trusted journalist Walter Cronkite falling apart and uttering "Damn." The JFK assassination is the event that made newscasts "must-see TV" (to steal a phrase from NBC).
 
LARadioRewind said:
But I disagree that radio provided better coverage than television. We saw film footage of the Presidential motorcade, live updates from the Dallas hospital, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the funeral procession, the burial of the President, John Kennedy Jr. saluting the casket, and the respected and trusted journalist Walter Cronkite falling apart and uttering "Damn." The JFK assassination is the event that made newscasts "must-see TV" (to steal a phrase from NBC).

Right, radio did a great job covering it, but seeing the TV footage even now is still very depressing. The live broadcasts of the 9-11 attacks were the only thing I can think of that was equally shocking to our nation.

That said, Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion were the right bands to come along at the right time.

I wish we had a new Rock band with a fresh sound and full of happy positivity like the early Beatles had that would burst into the world, sell millions of albums and downloads, and make all these angry rock bands and rappers instantly "uncool" with teenagers as teen idols suddenly were when Beatlemania exploded in 1964.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom