Feeling My Age

This is where I came in… Please Please Me had been good, while From Me To You topped the charts while I was still twelve. But when She Loves You burst into our lives in August 1963 the Fab Four really, truly became a national phenomenon: even my dad had heard of them. My (older) brother went to see them live in Cambridge that year, but said he couldn’t hear a thing because of all the screaming. I first heard the quip about “not a dry seat in the house” around the time of Beatlemania, tho Wikipedia dates it from Frank Sinatra.

It does look and sound as if they’re actually playing live in this clip. Except none of today’s artsts would get a sound as tight and polished as that without close miking the drums and singing right into the vocal mics ? This is the Beatles at their iconic early best – still strictly under Brian Epstein’s orders with the neat suits, well-cut fringes and bowing politely at the end of the song. But tight as fuck and ferociously ambitious. Anyone who remembers them looking and sounding like this will definitely be feeling their age.

Incidentally at a press conference in the first year of the Fabs’ early fame, some smart aleck journo asked why all their hits up until then had included the word ‘you’ or ‘your’ in the title. “So what should it be?” Lennon shot back “She Loves Them – or I Want To Hold Its Hand??”