Sixty years ago, on a Sunday night, the Beatles invaded America, and I watched in glorious black and white as they captivated every teenager in the country. The next morning, I told my mother that there would be no more haircuts and that I needed an electric guitar and amplifier. At this point, I had been playing guitar for two years on an old Gibson D 45 and was ready to take the leap into electrified instruments. I took extra vitamins and found a few special exercises to generate hair growth. It was a painstaking process.
Halfway through my school year, my family moved to Plano, Texas, and I was befriended by my good pal, Jarry Davis. He and I both had that special itch to play rock music. He knew a drummer and a sort of bass player, and I took on the lead guitar duties, playing a Japanese electric with six pickups and twenty knobs that did nothing. We called our band The Dolphins, later changing it to The Orphans, which sounded a bit tougher and fit us because of our long hair and general surely attitude; we were not the Monkees.
My rock n’ roll journey started on that February night and lasted until 2019, when my band, The American Classics Band, retired our setlist. Not a bad run of it.
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Notes From The Cactus Patch 
I’ve been thinking about it much today. Although we were excited they would be on TV, we had no idea the impact would have. So glad to have experienced this enduring moments in time.
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We had no idea what was coming for us. Lucky to have been a teenager in those years, while this country was still somewhat normal.
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I too watched that show. Later that year, I saw “A Hard Day’s Night” at a drive in with my girlfriend. Having no musical abilities, that was it; then I went on with my ordinary life.
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The movie was a ground breaker, basically the first music video. I have a DVD of the movie and watched it not long ago, it still holds up well.
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I was putting away dishes from the dishwasher when the moptops came on. My sister let out a scream, startling me so that I dropped my father’s favorite coffee mug and it broke. Took a couple of years of garage sales to find a replacement. Unforgettable.
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It was quite the historic night. I couldn’t sleep for a week, and their two songs were all over AM radio. The invasion had begun.
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Long enough ago, it seems unreal. Many bittersweet memories from the beginning FabFour years.
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Yeah, we went from the Beach Boys to the fabs in one swipe. Then the bad part of the 60s kicked in.
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Aside from service time, I do not consider the 60s “bad.” I’ve had worse. And despite huge philosophic divides, people were on the whole civil and almost sane. More than I can say for today.
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I agree with all that, but here is why the 60s weren’t all that great, I know because I was a teenager through the entire decade. Kennedy assassination, Matin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassination’s, Charles Manson, the feminist movement, The Viet Nam war, Johnsons Great Society, which we are still paying for today, and worse. the good things, The Apollo program, Moon Landing, great music, great art, education flourished and the middle class became a strong beast, the US led in technology, Texas Instruments led the way into the future of computers and chips, and on and on. The bad part of that decade was how it ended with all the strife within our universities’ and the young people. And, yes the times now are a hell of a lot worse and deteriorating daily. Like you, I was there and witnessed it all.
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Because the Panama Canal Zone was the property of the United States and governed as such, the flag flown over Balboa High School (on PCZ property) was the American flag. But in the 50s and 60s, communist agitators were always looking for some reason to stir up the monkeys, and one of the issues they picked was the right of the Panama people to fly their flag next to the US flag at Balboa High School. This issue turned pretty ugly within three days, the result of which involved millions of dollars in damage and twenty deaths, a few of whom were U.S. Army personnel. So, the president decided to remind the Panamanians who the owner of PCZ was, and he dispatched a battalion of Marines to make his point.
The battalion chosen was “America’s Battalion,” 2d Battalion, 8th Marines, which was my battalion, and off we went as part of the Navy’s amphibious ready group. So this explains why I wasn’t even aware of events on 7 February 1964 when John, George, Paul, and Ringo showed up at the JFK Airport in NYC. The only popular beetle I’d ever heard about was the German car. And it wasn’t until our small fleet was heading back to the U.S. (mission accomplished) that our radios picked up this weird-sounding music that no one had ever heard. When we left the States bound to plant our flag, we were listening to the Beach Boys, Ronettes, Sam Cooke, the Four Seasons, and the Drifters. What in the hell is a beetle? Ringo? Wasn’t he a gunslinger a few years back?
Seriously, when we departed for Panama, everything was America. When we returned, everything had changed.
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Yep, Mustang, it changed within a few weeks. I remember seeing a movie a while back that had that rebellion in Panama as part of the plot, just can’t remember the title right now, but it will come to me.
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(1) The Beatles captivated every teenager in the country. That bit of truth captured my imagination.
(2) Shouldn’t you be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Or do they have an “orphan exclusion” policy?
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We weren’t big enough for that honor, but wanted to be. Probably an exclusion policy, but we changed our names to the A.T.N.T. in 1967 over a copyright dispute. A few days after the Fabs played on Sullivan, girls in our school came down with English accents..very strange.
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I talked to a country studio musician who told me….the world was black and white before that Ed Sullivan show…he said he woke up and it was a different world in glorious color. He said that even country music was played differently in bars after that…and yes they would slip in Beatle covers after a while.
It was 3 years before I was born…I can’t imagine the impact…that is still felt. I asked the guy if there was anything comparable since…he simply said no…I suggested Michael Jackson as far as popularity…and was told no…times him by 1000 and you still wouldn’t get there. That was saying a lot.
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Yep, they changed music. My father, a country musician loved them and bought all their albums. When they did “Yesterday,” with the strings, that’s the tune that grabbed my parents generation and roped them in. I was in a country band in the late 70s early 80s and we played quite a few of the Beatles, with a fiddle and a pedel steel..sounded darn good too.
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Their songs are so universal… that was the key I believe. They weren’t the best musicians but their songwriting was just epic. I could see many of their songs being adapted to country…it woud fit!
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The country band I played in during the late 70s and early 80s did a few. We had a fiddle and a pedel steel so the Beatles stuff had that country flavor. Harrison was a Chet Atkins fan and you can hear it in many of his riffs.
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Did I miss once again your posting of your music? Replace all this mania with Elvis and I get it. 🙂 The Beatles didn’t wow me cuz I liked Elvis’ blues/gospel influence (and he was darned cute–especially in that comeback special in the black leather jacket, man). Wimpy English guys didn’t quite get there for me (though i didn’t hate them) Ha. My mother claimed Elvis wasn’t that exciting and had too much vibrato in his voice, but I noticed she was GLUED to the set during that special. Ha. My daughter loves the Beatles, thouh.
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Yeah, I was and have always been an Elvis fan. His comeback special on that round stage was thrilling. The guy ruled music, and that’s why those skinny English dudes loved him. I wasn’t dissing E, just commenting on the way the Fabs changed the musical landscape. Yeah, I posted some songs a while back, I will repost so you can hear them. My grandsons and granddaughter dig the Beatles, and of course Elvis. Personally, I though he and Ann Margaret should have gotten hitched.
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i went to see the Beatles in concert at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1966. I had a $4.00 ticket but did not stay in my $4.00 seat. I wandered up front and when fans trampled the barrier fence, I followed. The Beatles ran into the trailer behind the stage. Great memories. 🙂
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