Segarini – I (Still Kinda) Like the Beatles and MacMillan Loves the Rolling Stones Part Three

When adults started wearing Beatle Wigs at their cocktail parties and tried to dance to I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a lot of kids were so embarrassed and angry that Mom and Dad were attempting to join the club, I was surprised most of the parents were allowed to live.

How dare they love what we love, how can my stupid parents join the party and ruin our fun? Why are OUR Beatles sooo lovable that even OUR PARENTS approve of them?

…and in response, a benevolent and caring God created the Rolling Stones. From Part Two

Spielberg and Zemekis made my favourite theatrical Beatle Movie…

…but Dick Clark made the BEST Beatle movie ever…for television. This is the whole thing.You’re welcome.

It was a perfect storm of mania, supply and demand, and an insatiable hunger for all things cute, cuddly, jangly…and British.

Within months, every group on both sides of the Atlantic (and Pacific, for that matter) were busy pouring Miracle Grow on their heads and cutting the collars off their suits. Cuban heeled shoes became the biggest mail-order item in catalogue history, and if the ad said “Beatle Boots”, kids who caught the fever on February 9th, 1964, were stealing money out of Dad’s wallet, and mowing lawns and delivering papers in order to get the money and send away for the correct footwear.

Cute Grandpa and Drunk Grandpa discuss their INFLUENTIAL  heroes

Musically, all The Beatles did was just re-introduce primal rock and roll to a new generation who had been too young to want to chase Elvis, Chuck, and Little through a Hotel Lobby or worse, and gave them their own hormonal booster shot that made little girls scream uncontrollably and wet their pants, and little boys who suddenly dreamed of having little girls scream uncontrollably and wet their pants, for THEM.

…and remember…the Beatles were mostly a cover band….

For older girls, dreams of being deflowered by John Paul, George, and/or Ringo, became a fantasy to share and discuss at slumber parties and over the phone until Dad was finally forced to get them a Princess Phone for their bedrooms, so he didn’t have to listen to them go on and on debating the prowess of Paul, or the stamina of John, and to be fair, some of them just wanted to do their laundry, cook them dinner, and gaze at them while they slept. Creepy, but hey…Moms and Grandmas began to get swept up in the plague as well, and that took up the creep factor a notch or two.

At this point, saturation was complete.

No television show, radio programme, or print media was able to avoid the vampiric lust for All Things Beatle and the demand for MORE opened the door to every Freddie, Gerry, Dave, and Herman who had a British accent, a chipped tooth, or a nerdlinger dance for America to wolf down like a carnival hot dog.

The labels without a British branch took to creating Buggs, Mosquitos, and Novelty records with the word ‘Beatle” or ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ in the titles, and those records on labels like “2nd Rate”, “Nosepick”, and “Liverpool Ltd”, began to pop up in grocery stores, pharmacies, and even some actual record stores.

Unsuspecting Moms and Grandmas would scoop these gems up at the market while shopping for pot roasts and jell-o for 1.98, and give them to their daughters and granddaughters, who in turn would put them on the turntable, all hope and fluttery eyelids, and go straight to disbelief and sadness after the first DOA track recorded by C-list session guys and sung by the label owner’s tone deaf kids.

For all you Beatle Collection complete-ists, you have your work cut out for you…and…believe it or not, some collections DO have all of these hiccups among their rows and rows of Beatle stockings, Pez dispensers, and hair clippings.

Here are just a few of the sites for you to pursue….

http://recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/faqs/novelty.html

https://www.zeroto180.org/?cat=1191

https://www.allmusic.com/album/beatlemaniacs%21%21%21-the-world-of-beatles-novelty-records-mw0000408508

https://www.allmusic.com/album/beatlesongs-novelty-records-mw0000870751

http://www.skepticfiles.org/en003/beat_nov.htm

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By April 4th of 1964, The Beatles had 12 records on the Billboard Hot 100.  The only other British Invasion band charting just after the February 9th Beatle appearance on Sullivan was the Dave Clark Five and their swingin’ Totenham Sound.

After that April 4th Hot 100 Chart, there was no looking back. British artists dominated the American charts (along with Motown) for years afterward.

In May of ’64, the first LP from another British Band was released in the States, which had been released in the UK just 12 days after The Beatles conquest of America.

This was the cover in the UK

This was the cover in the US…Decca puts in the hype

…and like The Beatles, there was much more to them than just the music.

I will never forget the selling points headlined by the press upon the release of the album in the U.S.A, some stolen from articles printed in England the month before, and some penned by the (by now) excitable American journalists who were almost wetting themselves like the girls at the concerts.

Before the Beatles, Music Critics were perceived as Academes in tweed jackets with leather elbows, ascots wrapped around their scrawny little necks, and a cloud of cherry-blend tobacco smoke from their expensive affectation, Meerschaum Pipes obscuring their smug, seriously aloof, sneer and stare through horn-rimmed glasses, a hold-over from jazz arrogance and the Folk Scare of 1962, (so named by James Taylor who decried the Hootenanny Plague that popularized white bread campfire songs) which was driven by kids terrified of being perceived as ‘different’ or ‘weird’, and being rejected by the sorority or fraternity that would assure them of Campus Popularity, and excluded from being pinned by a flat fore-headed varsity quarterback or getting to second base with the head cheerleader.

Go row your boat ashore, Michael, but tap the keg before you leave.

After the  Beatles, music criticism slowly became hip, youthful, and fun. The critics themselves got caught up in both the YAY Beatles and BOO Beatles camps, embraced the style and fashion, grew their hair, and hung out. some even, finally, got laid…and eventually, this pioneering clot of Critics gave birth to Lester Bangs and others, and the world became a better place…and the first thing this clutch of free-at-last journos did…is legitimize the Rolling Stones.

Next Week – Part Four of I (Still Kinda) Like the Beatles and MacMillan Loves the Rolling Stones.

DO NOT MISS IT!~ 

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Segarini’s regular columns appear here every time a 60 year old Beatle Fan gets into a screaming match with a 30 year old Rolling Stones fan

Contact us at dbawis@rogers.com

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, and The Segarini Band and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now publishes, edits, and writes for DBAWIS, continues to write music, make music, and record.