Paul McCartney at The Grammy Awards
Recently I was interviewed, as I am "a certain age," about my personal experiences with live shows by the Beatles during the height of Beatlemania in the U.S., 1964 - 1966. And as frequently much of what is meted out ends up on the cutting room floor, here's all of what I offered, which might be removed herein if and when the book She Loves You by Eddi Fiegal is published...
While eschewing the query
as to my exact age, I will confess to early teenhood which precluded my
driving myself to any entertainments in Los Angeles, a city lacking then
or now any reliable public transportation after hours. To the matter at
hand, that meant I was dependent on others to witness the Beatles live
twice at the Hollywood Bowl and lastly at Dodger Stadium, all in L.A.
I
saw a postcard photo of The Beatles from a British-born classmate
mid-1963, slightly before the band broke in America, and thought they
looked cute in their European movie, nouvelle vague longer haircuts. It
was closer to the cool surfer look here than the normal, straight,
American, Marine soldier norm for male teens everywhere of that era.
I
had liked rock and roll from the moment I heard the radio station that
my parents' maid had found (then called, unfortunately, a race station)
which retained the open-mindedness to play Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog"
along with its normal R&B fare. 'Liked it all immediately.
Heretofore, popular 1950s broadcast music was Perry Como mellowmush to
me. In the early 1960s, popular American broadcast music still was
mellowmush and teen formula (like...today!) until wheels started turning
at Vee Jay and Capitol Records to put the foreign phenomenon of The
Beatles on heavy rotation, starting with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."
Wowza! Love at first listen! Then correlation to the postcard cuties I
had seen.
The
mechanisms of that heavy rotation as it turned out provided a useful
life-lesson in the mechanics of the entertainment business to yours
truly, who aimed her talents at same, at a very young age. The Beatles'
first show had sold out in one hour while I was at school. Frantically I
prevailed upon any grownup up I ever had met in the entertainment biz
for connections to get a coveted ticket. One of them was the head of Dot
Records, Randy Wood, who, while he couldn't help with my immediate
concern, had the kindness to give me a consolation prize, that of an
unusual Beatles promotional item. It was an EP record of an interview
with the Beatles in which the questions had been expunged so that
various radio stations' DJs could be heard asking the questions in "an
exclusive" for whatever that radio station was.
This
was such an important life lesson of what went on behind the curtains
of The Biz that I've forgotten how I eventually procured that first
Hollywood Bowl Beatles ticket. Hence my Beatlemania was objective as
well as subjective, with the addition of more to that in a moment. I do
recall what I wore-- a Japanese bamboo-patterned short shift dress to
fake pre-teen sophistication-- and that I was dropped off and retrieved
by parents, but not how I got the golden ticket.
With
this much trouble getting tickets while I was at school, I went all out
from then on. With the third concert I hit the jackpot on all three
ticket sources and ended up with a plethora. That meant I could invite
several of the cute young musician guys I had just met to the Dodger
Stadium show, plus a parent who would provide transportation. My
musician friends had wanted to record this show. With yesterday's
technology that meant giant reel-to-reel tape recorders, which they
begged me to smuggle in within a girl's normal beach bag. So I did, and before we found our seats the tapes fell out and unspooled all the way
down the sports' stadium bleachers' seating. But they didn't care,
re-spooled same, and got a recording of nothing but tens of thousands of
girls and other teens screaming their heads off nonstop. I'm told the
band The Byrds did the exact same thing to procure those screaming sound
effects later used on their 45 single release "So You Want To Be A Rock
And Roll Star..."
My
second important life lesson via The Beatles came from the coincidence
of exact location, era, proper age and gender. I had slightly older
girlfriends who both met and occasionally slept with assorted Beatles on
those first three American tours. They had access at parties from their
well-connected parents, or, in a most original introduction, one of
them rode her horse over to the mountaintop mansion enclave where "the
boys" were housed and requested entry. Beatles' security even then was
sufficiently well trained to let a beautiful teenaged girl wearing a
poncho and little else on a well-behaved horse into their rarefied
grounds...
Therefore
the Beatles' phenom was personalized into an expression of superior
musical talent by a group of guys who potentially were "one of us" to me
via these girlfriends. I had heard the stories. So later I provided the
pictures, and to this day fifty years late I remain a pro music
photographer. However in this earliest case I provided the artwork. For a
fee I would draw my girlfriends en flagrante with her favorite Beatle or Rolling Stone...
-Heather Harris
Sept. 12, 2017
