I see that it was on this day, 50 years ago that the Beatles ended.
I got nothing [I was 6 and would have been out on my bike all day], but perhaps you have some remembrance of the day?
Or maybe you’d like to post your favourite Beatles song, or perhaps a playlist or video clip?
Or maybe, you’d like to tell us all why you still don’t get what all the fuss was about?
I was definitely a Beatles fan, so you would think I would remember this well, but it does not resonate at all. It should be the musical equivalent of the deaths of JFK, RFK & MLK, all of which are indelibly etched in memory.
I just checked and Easter Sunday was March 29th in 1970, so I guess I was still enjoying the Easter holiday. Had I been at school it would probably have been the No. 1 topic of conversation, but I can’t recall any discussions about the Beatles break-up when I returned for the summer term.
For me the most telling line is that (excellent) article is Annie Nightingale’s, “We really didn’t want the Establishment coming back.”
Spoiler alert, they did.
To be filed, I think, with this fantastic observation by Shirley Collins in this month’s Uncut:
“I feel uncomfortable talking about Englishness now. I loathe the present set-up and our so-called leaders. I have to hold on to what I grew up with, my family’s love of England: English landscape, literature and music and, equally essential, cricket! I find that hard to reconcile with the England and English of nowadays. How could people today, especially the working classes, be so gullible? Tugging their forelocks to the so-called gentry. I despair!”
… is the correct answer.
I was 8. I remember the cover of the Daily Express – and my mum saying “Oh well 10 years is quite a long time for a group” (Not a details person obviously my dear old mum – but I wonder which other groups she was using as a benchmark. Who of any note – to my mum at any rate- would have split by 1970.)
10 years is about right. 8 with Ringo though. Of course they actually effectively split in 1969, Sept I think, when John informed them he wanted a divorce.
I guess she meant that it was a long time for a group to be successful, which it certainly was at that time. Pop music was quite mainstream in the 60s – artists would be on variety shows or even have their own shows (Cilla, Dusty, Cliff, Tom Jones….er, Scott Walker), as well as TOTP of course, so our parents would have been very aware of the music, even if they didn’t like it much. It was still considered light entertainment and ephemeral by most, and most artists only had two or three years of high chart placings unless very lucky. Thinking about it, solo artists tended to have longer careers in those days – more easily adaptable I guess.
Quite a lot of band splits are prompted by a push for solo success (e.g. The Police) which, as you say, for a long time seemed – apart from all its other benefits – to grant a longer shelf life. I can still remember being shocked to hear that The Smiths were breaking up, but, at the same time, thinking “well, six albums (including HOH and TWWL) seems about right”. I’m not exactly sure when the turning point happened where it became normal for bands to stay around forever..
Things were different then – there was none of this taking 3 years between albums, and you weren’t allowed to go off and work with anyone else or do a solo project and come back. Bands are much looser arrangements these days.
It was just after my 19th birthday. I have no memory of that particular day, so obviously it didn’t register as very significant.
I was much more a Beatles fan than a Stones fan as I grew up, and afterwards, but these days, due at least in part to this blog, I find myself rather “Beatled-out” and disinterested in them.
I was a month away from my 10th birthday. Didn’t register with me at all. My total interaction with pop music at that time was listening to my Dad (a brass band and light classics man) complaining about TOTP while I was trying to watch it.
I was 20. I’m not sure whether I really believed it – it seemed such a throwaway at the time, I think I thought it would just be a temporary rift and it would blow over. It’s hard to separate what I actually remember from what I have learned in the intervening years – the benefit of hindsight and the subsequent stories lead us to believe it was obvious, but I don’t really remember it that way. The film had yet to appear, of course.
I do remember it. I was five, and it must have been holidays because we were staying with my mum’s sister. I remember a plush sitting room and sun outside, and a report on the news with some young black-and-white lads running down a fire escape and into a field. Then they were playing guitars and one was hitting a punchbag. My uncle said “They’re all millionaires now.”
The reason I remember this so well is that their last day was the first time I ever heard them, or of them.
I was 6 at the time of their break up but I too recall that black and white footage of them on the fire escape. I vaguely recall it may have been reshown on Ask Aspel that week. I remember feeling sad but with no understanding of why.
Doesn’t Steve Jones in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle say something along the lines of “I was too young to really know The Beatles when they were goin’, but I was still fucking glad they stopped”. Something like that. I remember it getting quite a cheer at the cinema where I saw it.
I was minus 3 and a half months.
I grew up in a Beatle free world.
There were 2 events that changed that: Lennon’s assassination, and The Beatles Movie Medley single
Two horrendous events.
I was five weeks old. I shat myself at the news. Or at any news at all, for that matter. Some things never change, etc.
My parents had a small LP collection dominated by my dad’s C&W (not the good stuff) and A Hard Day’s Night. It was music in Black & White to me, during the colourful early 80s.
I heard Sgt Pepper round a friend’s house when I was 15, and it was like the bit in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothty clicks her heels and the whole world becomes Technicolour. I bought everything when the reissues came out in 1987.
I was too young to remember – but my parents would have been in their late thirties in 1970. The Beatles were about 10 years younger than them – ergo, Another Planet.
My hairy proggy older brothers had the blue greatest hits album 1967-70. They were very kind, looking back – they didn’t seem to mind me playing their records. I was 7 when that was released in 1973. Looking at the track listing now, it’s no wonder I loved it so much. And then over time, I think I picked up on the earlier stuff.
It may have been NEWS to civilians but me and my mates had known the band was no more for a while. Anyhow we decided after a few phone calls that is was a good enough excuse to meet up for a day out in Liverpool for a good old piss up, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
I recall it being announced but it was unmomentous as it had effectively been over for so long. More of a formality.
How did you know that?
I was eighteen and remember reading that story but not really taking it in. Almost like you always thought back then, nah they’ll patch it up. They didnt and that was the end of their period. But one thing history has revealed is they were fucking great, casting aside all the nostalgia trips foisted on us since, they were though. Weren’t they?
They sure were/are!
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to hear I am the Walrus for the first time. It’s a hearty square meal of a song, a thousand things going on at once.
Not being funny, but you must have heard it for the first time too at some point..?
Of course, experiencing the Fabs’ development in real time is something I treasure, and each release is planted firmly in my memory in a pure linear fashion as part of my teenage years. Yes, the sheer whack of hearing I Am The Walrus was extraordinary, but we had learned to expect greatness with every succeeding record, so you anticipated the unexpected, if that makes sense. I still remember the nervousness of being about to hear the new single or new album for the first time – would I actually like it? I was never disappointed.
Yeah Walrus sounded amazing when I first heard it in about 1977. In fact we joked about the lyrics in my 5th form class at school.
My seven years older brother would always skip certain Beatles tracks when we listened to the Blue and Red compilations (this was years before I begged mum to give me the Complete Beatles LP box for a combined birthday/Christmas gift). Since he usually was around I was taught to skip them as well, to avoid complaints.
I vividly remember the first time I decided to play all of them without skipping any tracks, him not being at home at the time. I Am The Walrus was one of those tracks and the coolest thing I’d ever heard. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last time, I thought that my brother’s taste in music was seriously flawed…in fact, all of the tracks he skipped ended up being favourites of mine!
Yes indeed but by then I had heard and seen all kinds of crazy pop music. I think IATW must have had more widespread impact on its relase date because the Beatles hasn’t created that context yet.
To be honest, my recollection of that time is that there was an awful lot of crazy experimental type stuff coming out, and that this was part of that maelstrom. This was the height of psychedelia, so the impact of this was that it was very much part of that scene. In many ways, the next single, Lady Madonna, was more of a surprise.
I never conciously search out a Beatles track to listen to, and haven’t since the Anthology days, not in the same way as I would reach for a Bowie or Steely Dan number when nothing else will do. So the reaction to this news has to be a “meh” from me.
It’s all relative. I sold all my Bowie CDs/LPs/Box Sets decided the comps would suffice but I’ll never sell any of my Beatles collection. Steely Dan? I have everything but hardly play it, I do play The Beatles pretty often though. Another man’s meat……….
No need for me to own or indeed play anything by The Beatles. I know it all so well, I only have to think of one of their songs and I can hear it in my head.
I have Beatles For Sale, Rubber Soul, Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt. Pepper, (for some unexplained reason) sides 3 & 4 of The White Album without a cover, Abbey Road and both volumes of the MFP Rock ‘N Roll Music set on scratched to buggery vinyl, plus Abbey Road and Revolver on CDs.
I haven’t played any of them for at least 10 years.
Like I said further up, I reckon I’m pretty much Beatled-Out.
The trick with any of the sizable acts with long back catalogues is to ask yourself:
“In the unlikely event of the great unwashed and/or Tony Blackburn listening to them, what would the great unwashed and/or Tony Blackburn possibly listen to, and then listen to the other stuff that the great unwashed/Tony Blackburn aren’t listening to.”
Listened to “Help!” the other day on the moody cow that is “Alexa.”
Skipped “Help!” “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Yesterday,” and the two covers.
In 2020, “Help!” “Ticket to Ride” and “Yesterday” especially, have great unwashed/Tony Blackburn written all over them and, as such, are pretty much off the menu.
Not sure I’ve ever given any thought to what Tony Blackburn thinks about anything.
Who is Tony Blackburn?
Your loss, you are missing a few great songs whether an aging DJ likes them or not.
Indeed. They get played most because they are the best songs. That’s how the passage of time works. To know this you first have to admit that time does actually pass and people’s habits and likes change, however.