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Earliest memorable Beatlemania
This post is inspired by the Beatles Yellow Submarine badge that now adorns Mona’s jacket.
I’ve posted this previously at the forum about my most vivid and memorable Beatles song and Beatlemania moment. It was when I was about 16 on a big high school feed trips, listening to the Beatles Yellow Submarine. One of the kids had a ghetto blaster and they cranked up Yellow Submarine and everyone on the school bus started singing it. I experienced for the first time what Beatlemania was I think. The comradery it let me feel with the other kids was amazing. For a moment it felt like I was a part of something so wonderful together with everyone on the bus. I will never forget that absolutely joyous moment.
The Beatles Yellow Submarine was a song Paul McCartney wrote for a childrens album, and found it’s way onto a Beatles album, Revolver, and became one of their biggest hits, sitting at #1 in the charts for 4 weeks, and overall chart run for 13 weeks.
What is your earliest most memorable Beatles song or Beatlemania experience?
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28 Replies
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Here is a little charming background story about this song and Ringo.
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Until I was in college I knew nothing about the Beatles, other than that there had been a group by that name in the 60’s. My first genuine Beatles experience was when my brother, who had just discovered them, bought a copy of A Hard Day’s Night on VHS and insisted that I watch it with him.
Needless to say, my appetite was more than whetted. And as I listened to songs from their albums (which my brother had purchased), I noticed several that I already knew other versions of from early childhood, although I have no idea which one I heard first.
There was Love Me Do, which was featured on the Brady Kids album, and three songs that had been covered on Sesame Street: Yellow Submarine, Octopus’ Garden, and this one, which was just posted on YouTube three days ago and which I’ve just now heard for the first time in over fifty years:
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I just found this one. I probably saw it on TV back in the day, but I have no recollection of it. Most likely I blocked it out to keep from having nightmares.
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David, between Sesame Street and the Muppets, they were quite prolific with the music. Our childhood TV shows certainly exposed us to great music.
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Hi David, that is such a wonderful story about how you already knew of some of the Beatles songs from childhood. Beatles music has a child like quality, and I don’t mean it in a negative context at all, but a rather profound quality that appeal to the child in all of us. Perhaps that is why the Beatles music is so widely loved across the the globe and across all the generations, more than any other music. It’s musical appeal gets right down to our inner core. Love Me Do, Octopus Garden, Yellow Submarine, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, I Am The Walrus, etc…
I like that Sesame Street video of “The Word” song, sounds great, a nice version. Interestingly I never heard that Beatles song until I got the “Rubber Soul” album a few years ago as recommended by Lisa here. I think it could be a great lesser known Beatles song that MLT could transform into something very wonderful.
Here is an interesting re-mixed “The Word”.
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Hi Jung,
the first Beatles song I consciously noticed was “Good Day Sunshine”. There was a honey commercial that aired regularly on TV in the 70’s. This commercial used the song’s chorus. I didn’t know at the time which group the song came from, nor that there was a band called The Beatles. A few years later, when I became interested in the Beatles, I was surprised to find that I already knew a lot of Beatles songs.
PS: And yes of course: I loved the Sesame Street versions of Yellow Submarine and Octopus’ Garden without ever knowing who composed these songs. Here’s another nice Beatles cover version:
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Hi Jurgen, that Muppet video is hilarious. I remember a time in my early teens I noticed all the songs I really liked on the radio or super cool songs I heard at school or played at the record stores more often than not I learned later were by the Beatles, Here Comes the Sun, Something, Norwegian Woods, Ticket to Ride, the list just went on and on. Anything that sounded good more often than not turned out to be the Beatles. They seemed to have a monopoly on all the good music.
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I like that Gonzo cover, Juergen; I had never seen it! I was actually introduced to that song by a different Muppets version of it:
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I was aware of some Beatle songs from my parents’ radio preferences, but I was 10 when Anthology came out, and between the TV show itself, magazine articles, albums, posters, radio spots, and media coverage, I got to experience a very tiny sliver of what it might have been like in the 60s, and I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s kind of scary and kind of wonderful that it’s now been longer between Anthology and the present than it was between Let it Be and Anthology.
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You’re making us all feel very old, Dan!
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Hi Dan, it’s hard to believe these great Beatles songs and albums are 60 years old, and sound as good today as it did when they were first released in the 60s. They are timeless indeed.
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If you search for “Beatles reaction” in YouTube, you’ll find hundreds of videos of people in their teens and early twenties listening and reacting to the Beatles for the first time. The magic is definitely still there.
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1980…Grade 10…went to the record shop to purchase “The Grand Illusion” by Styx (I had the up-to-date albums, “Cornerstone” and “Pieces of Eight”). However “The Beatles 1962-66” was staring at me and I bought it.
From there, the next album I purchased was “The Beatles 1967-1970”. Then it was time for original albums; specifically, “The White Album” and “Abbey Road”. Until then, I liked The Beatles, but side two of both those original records made me a fan for life!
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Hi Christopher, it was like that for me too in the late 70’s when I discovered my older brothers vinyl collection and the The Beatles 1962-66, and 1967-70 albums. A lot of “so this song was done by the Beatles, wow!” moments as I listened.
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A while ago on one of the Ask The MLT questions, Lisa shared this of a Beatlemania moment from 7th or 8th grade:
“I’ll never forget this one day, when I walked home from school, listening to (of course) the Beatles on my MP3 player. I think I’ve written about this day before in one of the blog posts and it seems like a pretty insignificant setting but for me it sums up the effect the Beatles had on us. I got off the bus, the sun was shining and it was playing “Getting Better”.
“And for a moment I didn’t care about anything else in the world. School, friends, heart-ache, worries, … All I could think of was how in the world music can be this beautiful. And I cried and I cried because I was so happy that something like this exists. And it wasn’t the lyrics in particular that evoked those emotions, it was about everything those 4 boys created, the beauty and spirit and this feeling of friendship and unity you felt through their music. I was the closest to real-life magic I ever felt … forget Harry Potter or flying carpets, the Beatles were witchcraft, that’s how good they are???? “
Like I said, walking home from school, getting emotional over a rather cheerful Beatles song doesn’t sound that significant but it’ll stay with me as one of my most precious memories of my teenage years. It showed me what music can do, how it can transform and move you in ways few things can.
I feel exactly this way with Mona and Lisa’s music, and I am certain others would echo the same. How in the world music can be this beautiful!
I can see that joy and passion in Mona and Lisa’s singing here.
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Hi Jung,
Great thread you started. As a child of the 60s, the Beatles were background music to my childhood. I know my parents liked them because we always had the albums and none of us kids knew how to buy stuff. I remember my favorite song was the third song on Rubber Soul. It gets fuzzy from there. I also remember thinking I could make myself look like Ringo on the cover of Hard Day’s Night. I tried to demonstrate, but I needed to hold a cigarette (you’ll recognize the shot on the album cover). My dad smoked but my mom disapproved and wouldn’t let him give me one. Good for you, Mom! Having no candy cigarettes around (which were a thing back then), they were alas denied my visual transformation.
I also remember my mom had the John Lennon books, “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works,” neither of which made a lick of sense to my undeveloped brain.
Other Beatles ephemera passed through our house, like a fan magazine that went through the “Paul is dead” myth (which of course was news to me) and decided it was a publicity stunt.
Lastly, I remember going with my mom and siblings to Sears, where Mom bought the white album. Each was individually numbered. Ours must’ve been 800-something thousand–I remember the 8 and can’t imagine we would’ve had 80-something thousand. Crazy what random things we recall from childhood. I wonder if that album is still around. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of my siblings took it when they moved out!
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Hi David, thanks for sharing your story of your memorable Beatlemania moments. That White Album your mom bought would be very special if you still have it around. I miss Sears, they are all gone in Canada, use to get everything there, appliances, tools, electronics, clothes etc… We don’t have any more department stores left hardly where there was some service.
Ahh, I use to buy cigarette candies from the corner store with my quarter, at my mom’s shagrin, but I think that was better than when I use to pickup cigarette butts off the side walk. I remember a few scoldings. LOL.
The 3rd song off of Rubber Soul. This is what my UK version has. Niiiice!
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Hi Jung,
It was the U.S. version that we had, but that is the third track on the U.S. version, too. Trouble is, I can’t say for sure if my “favorite” was the third track on side one or the third track on side two, which I believe would be “I’m Looking Through You.” Each had its charms for little kid me, either the “la-la-la” refrain of “You Won’t See Me” or the organ bit (what Lisa brilliantly played on an electrified banjo!). Why I remember it was the third song (one whatever side) but can’t remember the song is one of life’s mysteries.
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Bought the White Album at Sears, that’s great. I remember being very young when a trip to Sears was like going to the mall. Sears sold “everything”. Of course we didn’t have a mall yet. But when the mall opened up a few years later, Sears had relocated to one end of the mall. Remember the Sears Christmas catalog? Our version of Amazon.
1979 My older brother got me Pink Floyd’s Animals and Seargent Pepper for my fourteenth birthday. I kept playing Animals for a while. It was the koolest. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There were actual animal noises mixed into the music. Those guitars are awesome. I still have both of those albums on vinyl.
I already knew a couple of the Beatles songs, so I was just listening to the songs I knew. One night I decided to give it a proper listen. I arranged two speakers on my hardwood floor, so that I could lie down with my head between them. I couldn’t play it too loud, as I was supposed to be doing my homework. When I got up to flip the record over, I knew that this was worthy of a quality cassette. That way I could listen to it in the car, too. How can this sound this good? Why am I crying when those parents realize their daughter is growing up? The music was very moving. That albums runs through a full circle of emotions played beginning to end. And then ends with a big sigh and a smile.
By the time I heard the last crescendo of A Day, I was hooked. I was never an obsessed Beatles fan, but loved them just the same. I know them mostly from listening to my friend’s albums. Whenever someone in the group had some Beatles, it would get thrown into the rotation.
This was the beginning of my journey into good music. I sometimes think of those phases in our younger years, and realize they were so short. You may remember listening to a particular group or album “all the time”. What seemed like all the time was actually one summer. Remember when you were young and the old timers would say to cherish each day, because it goes by quick? They were right. Get up and dance and romance, before…
In closing, I concur. How is it that this team of four people can create such magic? I think we all stumble with our words trying to describe how beautiful the MLT harmonies really are. Their songwriting is just, wow, about fifty loud Canadian Geese just flew over the house. That was kool.
Anyway, thank God for the Beatles and how they have inspired future musicians to create music with such beauty that it’s appeal is worldwide. MLT’s first two albums are nothing short of sensational, and the third promises more. Our world is definitely a lot brighter with the MonaLisa Twins.
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
JP
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Earbuds are recommended here. This is a favorite. It takes me back. The first time I watched this felt like the first time I heard it forty-some years ago. Enjoy.
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Ahhh, She’s Leaving Home! I had pretty much forgotten that one until hearing it again a few years ago. I remember at the time just marveling at the amazing output of great songs from this one band, something I couldn’t appreciate as a kid lacking a frame of reference. But how many acts come on with a big hit, maybe two. Or maybe even one great album. And then, nothing. The Beatles only got better with time, with song after song after song after song.
This is a great cover. I’d love it if Mona and Lisa did a fresh recording in their studio for Volume 2 of the Duo Sessions when they can return to that.
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Hi JP. It sounds like your brother had great taste in music for sure, what great albums to get you. I remember the first time I heard MLT’s version of “She’s Leaving Home” before this video was posted, it was a performance they did for Billy Butler on his BBC Saturdays with Billy Butler shows here in the MLT Club. I was blown away, and couldn’t help but listen to it over and over.
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Jung, great post. My earliest Memory is watching them on the Ed Sullivan show and remember my dad saying…quote They will never last…LOL..Love my dad, and just loved hearing and seeing them perform. And I know for a fact that I will be the same way if and when I ever see Mona and Lisa in person or concert!!
Bill
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Thanks Bill. That is probably one of their most memorable performances on the Ed Sullivan show. Good first show to catch when you were little with your dad. The earliest memory of seeing the Beatles on TV for me was a rerun of their first Shea Stadium performance when I was 7 or so, and I remember my brother pointing out how the fans were screaming so loud, the Beatles had trouble hearing their own playing.
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