--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "shempmcgurk" <shempmcg...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > Very neat story, Shemp, thanks for posting it. I > > had no idea of Cronkite's role, let alone that of > > the kid in Silver Spring. > > > > I remember one of my roommates at the time bringing > > home a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand." > > Was this before the Ed Sullivan appearance?
Yup. > > The three > > of us (recent college graduates) practically wore it > > out over the next week or so. > > What prompted you to play it over and over? Obviously > because you liked it but was it because you noticed > something new and different? Don't know about my roommates, but I just loved the way it sounded, especially the harmonies and chord changes. I hadn't been into pop music since high school, so I didn't notice anything new and different about the song because I had nothing recent to compare it to. I've always responded to harmony and modulation more than to melody (my favorite classical composer is Bach). > I ask because although I became a Beatles fanatic like > pretty much everyone else in my generation, the only > reason I was interested in their music at first was > because my older brother was, and without that influence > I'm not sure I would have listened to them initially (I > was 9 in 1964). I'm curious to know -- especially > pre-Sullivan -- what it was that caught people's attention. I think all three of us were taken by how *upbeat* it was, how joyous. Although we'd been traumatized by the JFK assassination like everybody else, I don't recall that we'd been feeling particularly down; we'd pretty much gotten over it by that time. So I'm not sure that was really much of a factor. I don't remember seeing the Cronkite story on CBS, either. The three of us were big Huntley-Brinkley fans. My female roommate and I (the third, the one who bought the record, was a guy) were utterly captivated by the Beatles as people. We both went nuts for John. At one point one of us bought a set of Beatles baseball-type cards and stuck them all over the apartment (I put one in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator). When "Hard Day's Night" opened, we went to see it five or six times. And of course we bought all the records as they came out.
