Hell yes!
Journey back to 1964 and experience Beatlemania like never before. From producer Martin Scorsese and director David Tedeschi, stream Beatles ’64, an original documentary, only on #DisneyPlus November 29.
Tales of True Adventure for Rugged Men Not Unlike Yourself
Bring it on!
The Beatles Cinematic Universe beats all of the others.
I ditched Disney+ back when they jacked up the price. Might have to resubscribe for this.
Queenan is correct, the Beatles were like a light switching on. My brother and I had a similar experience. Neither of us had liked many pop songs before the Beatles, maybe none. Certain songs made an extra-musical impression here and there. I remember Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips,” probably because people said he was a kid, which made me wonder how a kid got to make records. I also remember some Johnny Cash because he scared me by singing about falling into rings of fire (children are literalists) and shooting a man just to watch him die. Our older sisters played mostly folk records, folk being a thing in the early 60’s. My oldest sister had liked Elvis; I must have heard some of his records as a toddler, but they didn’t hold my attention. She was away at college by the time I was three, and I never remember hearing Elvis on the radio. The only music that had ever grabbed me was classical, mostly Beethoven and Wagner.
One day close to when I was turning six, the younger of my two big sisters brought home a single of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” rounded up my brother and me, and put it on. When those opening chords hit, we just sat up and looked at each other. What is that? It was just great. Then after those chords, the verse melody, the harmonies, the energy. We were instantly hooked. You got the sense that everything had just changed. A similar thing had happened to me some months earlier when my father put on Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto, a real black-and-white-to-technicolor moment, but IWTHYH was something new. It was like pop with the power of classical.
McCartney said in the trailer something I’ve heard a lot, that the US needed something like the Beatles to get over JFK. That might be true, but I think people also needed rock’n roll with better hooks.
John Lennon said, “before Elvis there was nothing.” For many late boomers, that’s more true of the Beatles.
I project myself into the past and imagine that Chuck Berry, Little Richard, or Jerry Lee Lewis would have grabbed me before Elvis, but who knows?
The music that drew me to music as a child? Beatles. My parents had a few vinyl records from various artists and we listened to the radio some… but it was the 8-track on the two hour trip to northern Idaho every weekend that sealed the deal. The five of us in the middle seat / way back demanded Beatles ’62-’66 until our parents caved in. Every trip. Could not hear it enough.
It’s nice to get more of Renfield: Origins. Having the musical bandwidth to appreciate Beethoven as a wee lad probably puts you among some prodigies.
A bit of a contrast with yours truly, at his first piano lesson around age 6.
Piano teacher, presses a bass note like A3: “Does that sound LOW or HIGH to you?”
Monkeystador: “Um… HIGH?”
Piano teacher: [tries to hide disappointment]
Those tapes definitely look like they got some mileage.
I was no prodigy, but I had a good ear. I managed to trick my first piano teacher by learning my lessons by ear. About a year in, he realized that I’d barely learned to read music at all. He must have been an insecure fellow, because he blew a head gasket. My mother heard him shout a word forbidden in the Renfield household, came in and fired him on the spot. Which was fine with me. I didn’t like him or practicing piano.
I read somewhere that Paul Stanley also was bowled over by the “Emperor” at an early age. But we otherwise seem very dissimilar, not even considering the massive chest-hair discrepancy.