Oct 3rd in Pop History
On this day, October 3rd, in:
• 1964 - Beatlemania! The year 1964 was defined by The Beatles. Today, the album A Hard Day's Night had been out for 12 weeks, with 11 of those at # 1. Something New by The Beatles was a runner-up at # 2!
Bob Stanley identifies A Hard Day's Night as the album that best captures the band's early-career appeal.
“If you had to explain the Beatles' impact to a stranger, you'd play them the soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night. The songs, conceived in a hotel room in a spare couple of weeks between up-ending the British class system and conquering America, were full of bite and speed. There was adventure, knowingness, love, and abundant charm”.
(From his book Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé).
In 1964, Life magazine put it like this: “In 1776 England lost her American colonies. Last week The Beatles took them back.”
I remember as a kid, going with a friend to the local theater to see the film A Hard Day's Night, and I remember the sense of magic and electricity in the air. Outside the theater and in, there was a buzz, a vibration, that didn’t exist with other movies. People were a little crazed. And it had little to do with how good the movie was or wasn’t. It was the Beatles! It was the music.
Clearly, Beatlemania was a thing!
Think about this — it makes your head spin! The Beatles released an unprecedented 6 albums in the US in 1964! A Hard Day's Night was the 4th and Something New was the 5th!
Then they held all Top 5 positions on the singles chart! In March the group’s first album with Capital, Meet The Beatles, shipped 3.6 million copies making it the best selling album of all time. And by the first week of April the Beatles had twelve records in the Top 100 — and held every position in the Top Five! The songs hogging the top five positions were, in order, Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Handand Please Please Me. Obviously, this record has never been broken. And then the movie A Hard Days Night comes out in July! Clearly 1964 belongs to The Beatles.
A Hard Day's Night was released in England on July 10, 1964. The American version of the album was released two weeks earlier, on June 26, 1964 by United Artists Records, a different label. And the American version had a different track listing. In contrast to the Beatles' previous albums, all 13 tracks on A Hard Day's Night were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, thus showcasing the development of their songwriting partnership.
The album includes the song A Hard Day's Night with its distinctive opening chord, and Can’t Buy Me Love, both transatlantic number-one singles for the band. Several of the songs feature George Harrison playing a Rickenbacker 12 string electric guitar, a sound that was influential on many pop bands like The Byrds and other groups in the folk rock movement.
New York radio station WMCA was the torch that lit the fire. Even though it was 10 days ahead of the release of the Beatles' U.S. album, A Hard Day’s Night – the soundtrack to the movie of the same name — the station played the LP in full. The result was almost instantaneous, as author Stephen Glynn noted:
“This culminated in advance orders of over two million for the soundtrack album, making A Hard Day’s Night potentially the biggest-selling album to date in the U.S.A.," he wrote. "Before the final print of the film had been released by the laboratory, the tie-in soundtrack album, itself still at the presses, had guaranteed itself No. 1 position in the charts.” (From: ultimateclassicrock.com)
Here are: The Beatles A Hard Day's Night
on Spotify:
A Hard Day's Night (the Song) (link below)
A Hard Day's Night (the album) (link below)
Here is my Playlist for The Beatles four appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show
*The above playlist is for the Beatles four live and pre-recorded appearances on Ed Sullivan. Those were in 1964 and 1965.
(The Beatles also several times from 1966 on, provided Ed Sullivan with “promotional clips” (what we would now call music videos). For example, in 1966 the clips for Paperback Writer and Rain were run. In 1967 clips of Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were run. Let It Be appeared in 1969.)
And continuing on October 3rd…
• 1901 - The first record company, The Victor Talking Machine Company, is incorporated, later merging with the Radio Corporation of America to become RCA-Victor
• 1941 - Chubby Checker was born in Spring Gully, South Carolina. His hit The Twist is the only song to go to number 1 on the US singles charts twice. Once in 1960 and again in 1962
• 1952 - The hit The Adventures Of Ozzie & Harriet, now featuring the couple's 12-year-old son Ricky Nelson, debuts on CBS. Ricky would go on to become a major 1950s/60s teen idol and would sell more than 60 million records
Also, on this day in…
• 1969 - Gwen Stefani, lead singer for No Doubt, is born in Fullerton, California. Happy Birthday Gwen…
• 1970 - Cosmo's Factory, one of The Top 100 Albums of the Rock Era*, from CCR was # 1 for the seventh consecutive week on the album’s chart. Woodstock, the Soundtrack was second, with Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen at # 3
• 1992 - Abba dominated the U.K. Album chart with the # 1 album Gold-Greatest Hits
