Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Miss Watson and the Beatles


I first heard about the Beatles when Jack Paar announced on his Friday night show that he would show a film of a new British craze called the Beatles. The next week he showed a year old film of them singing "Some Other Guy". According the Jack Paar, they had long hair and when they shook their heads the girls screamed. Always an Anglophile, he was a bit surprised to see British teenagers behaving that way.

Little by little it built up. The radio stations started playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand". In an animated discussion on the Christmas day in the park behind Fanny Hillers School, my cousin and his dog, Rex, my big brother, and myself talked about the Beatles. The consensus was that they were going to be the next Elvis.

They arrived in the United States and the radio stations all promoted it heavily. There was a rumour that George Harrison would not go on the Ed Sullivan Show because he had the flu. They were staying at the Plaza Hotel and their were crowds outside the hotel.
The big night finally came. The family all gathered in front of the tv to watch Ed Sullivan. The sound was terrible and you could hardly hear them over the screaming girls. My mother said that the record company paid them to scream like that.

Miss Watson was our eighty-five year old school teacher. She evaluated the Beatles before the class and said that they were "clean cut" and that she liked them. Little did she know that three years later there would be throngs of rowdy kids with long hair and dirty blue jeans sitting in the nations parks, taking drugs, having sex, and listening to Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Editors note, so you don't miss anything, "Albums" is newer than "Astronauts", but appears behind it. Apparently the blogs are sorted by the date of the first draft, not the date they are published.

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