Hi, Hullabalooers. Someone did a great job assembling home movie footage from numerous sources to recreate the Beatles performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964. What we end up with is a rather full look at the show
I’ve heard the album of this performance, but had never heard the complete introduction, in which we learn that Bob “Newlywed Game” Eubanks was one of the people who helped pay to bring the Beatles to the bowl.
KLRA’s Bob Hull played host, and teased the crowd a bit before bringing the boys on for their short show.
I love the screams, and there are some great shots of hysterical (as in crazed) young women. The Beatles suits and the way they bow after each song are classic. No light shows, smoke machines, or background dancers required. Just great music.
Thank you, everyone who filmed this.
The Near-Perfect Alignment
It was simply the appearance of the Beatles or any Beatle, anywhere that triggered an arousal rarely found in human contact. As a 14, on the cusp of being a 15 year old, in August of 1964, ‘us teens’ did not have to see them in person to glow with the excitement that the Beatles triggered. It seemed all of female and male teendom came alive those years. Contributing to the animate, energetic unequivocal zeal for life was a near-perfect alignment of youth, music , style and awareness with that of the Beatles melding many of us forever with these four guys from Liverpool.
Caruso, Valentino, Frank’s Bobbysocks, Elvis’ swivel before and Menuto, Michael and Bieber afterwards you didn’t really have to be there to understand.
But if you weren’t there in the Sixties Seventies at the age appropriate relative position in those years, you can know or wish you were there, but you could never understand.
Feels Like Being on a Starting Line
Teens are relatively new to the pubescent world. The body comes alive.
It feels like being on a starting line and you’re waiting for the flag to drop or the starting pistol.
The Beatles burst out of the gate and it seemed that every teen joined the race headlong into ‘The New’ dawn and only we knew we were not wearing blinders.
The hair, the accent, the pretty girls and boys, the clothes, the guitars, the screams, the new teen dialogue with each other, the pure desire to enjoy our sexual freedom, the marijuana, the unimpaired freshness of moving into a counterculture…
All in slender, lean, hot bodies not afraid to sweat from being on the run.
If you ever hear some creep tell you how bad the Sixties were or that they don’t remember from being drugged up, don’t pay any attention to them.
If you were there, you remember.
And it was good, really good.
not just teens
I was less than a month old when this show happened. All the cool babies were also electrified by the new sound. A few danced in their cribs. Others wore tight trousers and let their hair grow out.
Seriously, though, I got a little shiver as soon as they started playing in this video, 50 years after the show. Probably similar thoughts going through my mind while watching, too, to the kids at the show: It’s them. There they are. They’re playing!