For information about how to use this forum please check out forum help and policies.
Quote
ds1984
Love me do is both a minor song and a minor hit.
The real success for The Beatles is 1963.
Quote
MKjan
Meanwhile, on July 12th 1962, the world was truly gifted with the greatest band ever.
Quote
tomcat2006
I just bought Blofeld’s costume from SPECTRE at auction. “No, I expect you to die…”
Quote
treaclefingers
The true birth of the 60s culturally right there whether your a Bond or Beatles fan. Stunning it's still significan't 60 years later.
Do you think in 1962 they were looking back fondly at the cultural impact of 1902? I'd wager if anything it was 1942...and maybe not too fondly at that.
Quote
Big Al
Love Me Do is great. I think reaching #17 for your first release isn’t too bad. Thinking about it, it’s almost other worldly. We think of the Beatles battling it out against the Stones, Who and The Kinks, etc. For their debut release in ‘62, the U.K. competition was more along the lines of Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Billy Fury and some bloke called ‘Elvis’ Different times indeed.
Quote
CaptainCorellaQuote
treaclefingers
The true birth of the 60s culturally right there whether your a Bond or Beatles fan. Stunning it's still significan't 60 years later.
Do you think in 1962 they were looking back fondly at the cultural impact of 1902? I'd wager if anything it was 1942...and maybe not too fondly at that.
Cultural Cringe moment. If you live in the USA, then indeed 1942 (pedantically December 1941) may well have significance.
But in the UK, whence Bond & Beatles, 1939 would be far more meaningful. (Arguably 1938 the year of the Munich "agreement" or even earlier years when you-know-who invaded/annexed other European nations - as I type it sounds familiar!)
(Important note. For many though, WW2 started in the mid-1930s with the Japanese invasion of China and the Nazi support of the insurgents attempting to overthrow the elected govt of Spain. There may be other skirmishes that I ought to mention...)
Goldfinger quote, not BlofieldQuote
tomcat2006
I just bought Blofeld’s costume from SPECTRE at auction. “No, I expect you to die…”
Quote
Big Al
Love Me Do is great.
Quote
dcbaQuote
Big Al
Love Me Do is great.
To me it's ear saccharine.
Fortunately the cure for this silly pop band came in 1963. And 59 years later we're still fans of Mick Keith and Charlie Watts.
Quote
CaptainCorella
That article really really contains a lot (not all) of rubbish.
To fully appreciate how different The Beatles' sound was you had to have been listening to 1950's bland Payola music for many years. That DIFFERENCE in late 1962 was stunning and on first hearing in 1962 it really stood out. (See later for an anecdote).
So, an article in 2022 that writes about that difference and uses as several examples comments from people who were not even born in 1962, or who lived in the USA and didn't hear "Love Me Do" until early 1964, can only be rubbish. Listeners in the USA in 1964 are most unlikely to have been exposed to "Love Me Do" before hearing many many other recordings by The Beatles and other bands in that invasion.
Exceptionally an honorable mention has to go to Lulu's contribution. Her background means that she really knows what she's talking about on this subject.
Worth recording that one year later in November 1963 when Beatlemania had really taken off with a vengance in the UK, that the Daily Express was reporting a comment by EMI that "Love Me Do" had only sold 90,000 copies. (By that stage "She Loves You" had gone to No 1 on release with a pre-order of 1,000,000 copies in the UK alone - population at that time about 50m.)
This is not an attempt to pound on and on about how good or bad The Beatles were, but to emphasise how DIFFERENT they were at that point in time.
Anecdote. In the late 1990's a work friend - who would have been about 18 or so in 1962/3 - found out that I then had the kit, and the software, to copy reel-to-reel tapes to CD. She had several tapes of off air recordings of (UK) Sunday evening 'Pick of the Pops' - which was the weekly run down of the UK charts ending with that week's No1. So, a great snapshot of the popular best selling music at that time. It's an entertaining and educational task and can only be done in real time. Listening through those several hours of tape really brought it home to me that the music pioneered by The Beatles (and then Merseybeat and then The Rolling Stones) really really really did sound very different to everything that had gone before.