How Did YOU Discover The Beatles?

Jai Guru Deva. · Feb 25, 2011, 06:17 AM

Jema, our reasons are very similar. My story is probably a few pages back now, but I too had my Beatles-loving dad leave me when I was too young to remember who he was. Isn't it funny how something like a song can bring you close to someone you barely even know? Welcome to the board, Jema. I hope you make lots of friends and have a great time.

xxx

Jema · Feb 25, 2011, 07:54 PM

Quote from: Jai Guru Deva. on Feb 25, 2011, 06:17 AM
Jema, our reasons are very similar. My story is probably a few pages back now, but I too had my Beatles-loving dad leave me when I was too young to remember who he was. Isn't it funny how something like a song can bring you close to someone you barely even know? Welcome to the board, Jema. I hope you make lots of friends and have a great time.

xxx

I just read your reason and I thought that it was very moving.I'm sorry that your dad left you also at a young age.Also thank you for the welcoming

!

Quote from: Hello Goodbye on Feb 24, 2011, 10:23 PM
Jema, I think what you just wrote was one of the most beautiful reasons for "getting into" The Beatles I have ever seen.

Welcome to the Forum. Please continue to share your feelings about The Beatles and their music with us.

HG

Thank you,it's touching that you think that it's one of the most beautiful reasons

Thank you also for the welcoming!

RingoRulesx3 · Feb 26, 2011, 08:54 AM

Quote from: Mairi on Feb 24, 2011, 10:55 AM
Wow, I wish my school had Beatles day in music class! You must have had a very cool music teacher.

Well I changed school because of bullying and my current music teacher always gives me Beatles questions. x)

beatlemom82 · Mar 10, 2011, 01:12 PM

hi chanya here. ooh... well from what i hear ive listened to the beatles my whole life. but my fisrt memory was about 7 or 8yrs. my mom was listening to the long and winding road and i was hooked since then. beatles are more than a band to me. they helped discover who i was. it was not easy growing up being black listening to classic rock and reggae due to my family being jamaican. jamaicans listen to everything, lol. music over there is not as segregated like it is in the states. one station can play country, rap, rock, anything... and thats how music was in my house.

Bobber · Mar 11, 2011, 02:37 AM

Good story Chanya. Nice avatar as well.

walrusgumboot · Mar 11, 2011, 08:46 AM

In my capacity as Beatles correspondent for a magazine ( ear Candy), I wrote this a couple of years ago...it seems like yesterday, but this year I'm 61 !!

In 1963 the Socialist Newspaper, The Daily Worker described the Mersey Sound as the voice of 80,000 crumbling houses and 30,000 people on the dole.

A comment which in it's own way was equally as pretentious (and nonsensical) as William Mann of The Times, citing the "Aeolian cadences" of Lennon's vocals on Not A Second Time as the song draws to a close, and comparing it to Mahler's "Song Of The Earth".

Lennon, years later, remarked: "To this day, I have no idea what Aeolian cadences are. They sound like exotic birds."

At the time, I was a 12 year old boy and had no idea that either comment had been made...would I have cared if I had? Probably not.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.....so I'll rewind to the early winter days of October 1962. We lived in a reasonably prosperous town in the North of England and although there wasn't the entertainment available that there is today, young teenagers had a pretty good time of it. In my town there were 3 cinemas and the Mecca dance hall which catered for all age groups...Saturday mornings for under 12s , afternoons for under 15s and Monday nights 15 to 18. It was here that I discovered Phil Spector and many others although this education would in no way prepare me for what was about to explode in to my life. As usual after tea, I could be found in front of a roaring coal fire watching our black and white TV, waiting for something of interest to appear...and oh boy, it certainly did! The Regional news programme that we had in those days was "2 People and Places" broadcast from Manchester over the Pennines and into Yorkshire...it would be another 7 years before we had our own station!! I have this memory of the presenter, a gentleman by the name of Mike Scott introducing a new group..it was the Beatles. Four young men with outrageous (for the time) hairstyles suits and boots miming (lipsynching) to either Love Me Do or P.S. I love You...I'm still not sure which I saw first. Contrarily the official Granada site has this to say...

FIRST BEATLES BROADCAST FROM A STUDIO
People and Places
Studio 4
Granada TV, Quay Street, Manchester.
Weds 17 October 1962.
6.35 - 7.00pm
B/W
Earning £35 for their appearance The Beatles performed Some Other Guy and Love Me Do in this their very first transmission!

Unfortunately, the performance does not exist anymore as it was wiped from the vaults by Granada TV. Some other Guy, I don't remember at all from then, although I do recall the famous cavern episode being shown later... I still remember this strange tingle down my back, my face flushing and nearly crying all at the same time!! I'd fallen in love with 4 men!!

Daredn't tell my Dad (who later hated them with a passion) but it wasn't homoerotic love, just what the rest (most) of the world experienced 12/18 months later. After the broadcast I begged, took returnable glass bottles back to the pub and got a "sub" on my paper round money until I had 6 shillings and 8 pence, the cost of Love Me Do in 62...didn't realise then, that it was "red label" as was Please Please Me a few months later. By that time "those of us who knew" had heard about the Helen Shapiro Tour..and desperately wanted tickets.

Luckily I had a friend (Linda) whose Mum worked in the Box Office at the cinema where they were appearing, and so it came to pass that on the evening of February the 7th 1963 me, Neil (my best friend..now in Australia) were in the Regal Cinema Wakefield waiting for them to come on stage. I wish that I could say that I remember the event with startling clarity but I can't. I know they closed the first half and sang Please Please Me...but the impact was nothing like the 10,000volts I'd received a few months before.

And so the story continued buying everything on the day of release, collecting the Bubble Gum cards, the posters and things too many to mention which with the passage of time have disappeared along the way.

For some there abiding memory is where they were when JFK was assassinated, when Princess Diana died or 9/11....

Me?

It will always be that dark, cold October night all those years ago.

Bobber · Mar 11, 2011, 09:12 AM

Brilliant story!

skydropco · Mar 30, 2011, 07:22 AM

Great memories.

It's always a treat to hear stories from people who were actually there..if you know what I mean.

Normandie · Apr 10, 2011, 01:53 PM

This is a great thread; I really love reading people's different stories about how they discovered the Beatles.

I myself was a Beatles late bloomer, not really getting into them until my last year of college, when a friend's boyfriend let me borrow some Beatles and Paul solo cassette tapes, but I quickly became besotted and have been ever since. I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize how awesome they are.

PaulRamon · Apr 12, 2011, 03:08 PM

It was in 1973, the red and the blue album had just been released in Germany, I was 12 years old. I listened to them visiting my elder cousin, I got a kick on it immideately and made a tape copy of both albums. The next two or three months the Cassette player didn't really stop....... That was the beginning of an everlasting love to the sound of the Beatles. I started collecting their albums, first the german editions, than I travelled to GB and came back with British albums, thats the way the story began. Later I began to collect every vinyl and CD bootleg I could get. The latest coup was the remastered Box-Set last year, and I really love it.
I really hope that the Let It Be DVD will be released as soon as possible.
Love, love love................................

Bobber · Apr 12, 2011, 03:25 PM

Good story PaulRamon. Nice to have you aboard and I hope you'll enjoy the forums.

PaulRamon · Apr 13, 2011, 02:00 PM

Quote from: Bobber on Apr 12, 2011, 03:25 PM
Good story PaulRamon. Nice to have you aboard and I hope you'll enjoy the forums.

thanxs Bobber, nice to meet you here!!

PaulieBear · Apr 20, 2011, 09:26 PM

I discovered The Beatles long ago, but let me tell you about my Beatles course I just finished tonight. We listened to Abbey Road, and let me tell you, it was emotional. First we talked about the album and so on, then we listened to a few of of the side A. After a 5 minute break we came back an listened to side B from start to finish. It was amazing. I just cannot describe to you the burning feeling I get when I listen to them. I truly learned the most this semester from this class. The Beatles are everything. ;yes

Normandie · Apr 21, 2011, 02:11 PM

That sounds great, PaulieBear.

And lucky, you, getting to take a Beatles course!

Marvin · Apr 22, 2011, 07:08 AM

When I was younger I'm now nearly 39 i was brought up on 60's music and my dad had a copy of Hello Goodbye/I am the Walrus and thought they were great tracks. A few years later a friend lent me a copy of SGT PEPPER listerned to it and then i was hooked.