Today is the Anniversary of a Seismic Moment in Music History. One that Changed the Game for the BIggest Band in the World courtesy of Bob Dylan

On today 1964, Bob Dylan was holding court at his hotel room and in walked the Beatles. While waiting on a bottle of wine, Dylan turned the Beatles on to marijuana. "Love Me Do" became "Norwegian Wood" which turned into "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

 Bob Dylan in 1964. The year that he met the Beatles and they were starting to break big in the US  

The Beatles in 1964 when they just wanted to hold your hand and "Love Me Do"was topping the charts. 

Dylan 66' facing down Engish crowds

Beatles 66' after Revolver, which contained
"Tomorrow Never Knows"

Today in 1964,  a seismic shift occurred for the Beatles that sent them in a whole different direction that eventually spawned the epitome of "psychedelia" and Swinging London. They were meeting Bob Dylan in his hotel room in New York and while waiting for a bottle of wine, Bob asked the group if they wanted to smoke some pot. After a few awkward moments, Brian Epstein admitted they had never smoked it before. Bob was shocked and asked," But what about that song where you say, "when I touch you, I get high, I get high, I get high" and John admitted that the lyric was actually "I can't hide" 

Amused, Bob rolled the first joint. Some of the Beatles had been exposed to weed in 1960 but it didn't make any big impression. Apparently, Dylan had some great weed. He passed it to John, how passed it to his "royal taster" Ringo. Ringo didn't know the etiquette of puff,puff,pass and just smoked the whole thing. 

"We first got marijuana from an older drummer with another group in Liverpool. We didn't actually try it until after we'd been to Hamburg. I remember we smoked it in the band room in a gig in Southport and we all learnt to do the Twist that night, which was popular at the time. We were all seeing if we could do it. Everybody was saying, 'This stuff isn't doing anything.' It was like that old joke where a party is going on and two hippies are up floating on the ceiling, and one is saying to the other, 'This stuff doesn't work, man.'"

-George Harrison,  Anthology

Bemused, Dylan and his friend, writer Al Aronowitz, started rolling more for each of the other people in the room.

"I don't remember much what we talked about. We were smoking dope, drinking wine and generally being rock'n'rollers and having a laugh, you know, and surrealism. It was party time."

John Lennon Anthology

The Beatles spent the next few hours in hysterics as Dylan watched over the proceedings with amusement.  Brien Epstein kept repeating," I'm so high. I'm so high, I'm on the ceiling. I'm up on the ceiling."

Paul McCartney, was convinced he had figured out how the world worked and had road manager Mal Evans, follow him around with a pencil and paper. He would tell anyone who would listen," he was thinking, really thinking for the first time." 

"I remember asking Mal, our road manager, for what seemed like years and years, 'Have you got a pencil?' But of course everyone was so stoned they couldn't produce a pencil, let alone a combination of pencil and paper.

I'd been going through this thing of levels, during the evening. And at each level I'd meet all these people again. 'Hahaha! It's you!' And then I'd metamorphose on to another level. Anyway, Mal gave me this little slip of paper in the morning, and written on it was, 'There are seven levels!' Actually it wasn't bad. Not bad for an amateur. And we pissed ourselves laughing. I mean, 'What the fuck's that? What the fuck are the seven levels?' But looking back, it's actually a pretty succinct comment; it ties in with a lot of major religions but I didn't know that then."  

                                                                 -Paul McCartney

Evans kept the notebooks until 1976 when he died, the LA police dept. took possession of them  and naturally, lost them. 

In 1965 Dylan tore the folk world apart by putting down the acoustic for a couple songs on Bringing It All Back Home, putting out a half/acoustic and half/electric album and the infamous Newport Folk Festival incident. Later, in 1966 Dylan faced down hostile crowds for a whole tour of Australia and England that were an acoustic solo set followed by a fiery, electric set by Dylan and the Band. It doesn't seem like a big deal now but keep in mind, his sound system was probably the loudest thing these people had ever heard. The decibel level the Band cranked out matched a plane taking off. 

There is a short reel of film that shows,John Lennon and Bob Dylan in a limousine in which a clearly green-hued Dylan slurred about "feeling sick and just throwing up into the camera" while Lennon looked on nervously and tried to keep up a banter to the obviously wasted Dylan. 

Before the party started. From "Eat the Document"

Later it was stated they had to carry Dylan into his hotel. The rumors are these shows were heroin to get ready for the first set and speed to pop up and face down the crowds for the second set. Both Dylan and the Beatles went through their speed stages. These tales of partying hard on the road lend credence to the story that Dylan's motorcycle crash was used as a cover to give him time to kick and rest up and "get back to where he once belonged" and sure enough, he started one of the most fruitful periods of his life with the Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding. While he was getting back to roots, ever the iconoclast, the Beatles, Hendrix and the Grateful Dead were all deep in psychedelic territory. 

These bands soon turned down Dylan's street after Nashville Skyline and released Let It Be, Workingman's Dead. John Lennon also went through his hard drugs period and it also showed in his work but in the end, Dylan was the pied piper for the Beatles who were a juggernaut of cultural influence and today, in 1964, the best songwriter and the best songwriting team in history got together and had a smoke session that changed the world.

Bob Dylan and George Harrison during the "New Morning" sessions

© 2016 Gratefu Music LLC

On Today's Date in 1962, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band Played Together as the Fab Four for the First TIme

It was on today's date in 1962, two days after Pete Best was fired, that Ringo Starr took over the drumming duties for what was soon to be the most popular band in history.

 

After just two hours of rehearsal, the new "official" lineup of John, Paul, George and Ringo was unveiled at the Horticultural Society Dance, in Birkenhead. The previous drummer, Pete Best was fired two days earlier and the band hired Richard Starkey aka "Ringo Starr". He had already been playing around Liverpool with other bands so they knew about him and he had a reputation as a solid drummer. The fans weren't so happy though.  Holding signs and screaming, "Pete is Best" was the welcome the new drummer received. Imagine if that's how Deadheads greeted Keith or Brent or god help us, Vince. 

This was the very first time the lineup we know as The Beatles had ever played in public. By 1966, the Beatles had become too big to play in public anymore and ended their tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. They had gone through the maelstrom of Beatlemania for more than enough time. The band members are on record as saying, they would mime the songs, or play different songs, or sing different lyrics and it didn't matter because no one could hear anything over the sound of people screaming. Ringo was upset mainly because they had just become a crap band. They couldn't hear each other playing and their gigs rarely went the whole time because of riots in the early days. They just weren't functioning as a band anymore. They were just personalities.

Ringo became the "lead" character in all of the Beatles film attempts. "A Hard Day's Night" is still a great film and holds up even today. That was the classic Fab Four. It did drive the perception of them as one-dimensional characters though. Ringo contributed a song or two to each album, singing lead in the cover of Buck Owen's "Act Naturally" and was mainly confined to one or two songs per record. He wrote "Octopus's Garden" after a fishing trip in which the fisherman caught an octopus and he had a suspicion that there was more to the weird sea creature than appears on the surface. It's funny how scientists have now come to believe that octopi are one of the smartest sea creatures and have a startlingly high intelligence to what we previously believed to be be true. That's besides the point though.

What is generally not known is that Ringo was the first Beatle to quit the band. After being relegated to the sidelines for most of the Sgt. Pepper/White Album sessions, he had grown tired of being pushed around by Paul and the passive-aggressive treatment by John and the constant presence of Yoko. He stormed out and when he came back, George had surrounded his drum kit with flowers to welcome him back. Not to long after that, Paul went to the media and said the dream was over. The famous rooftop concert was in 1969. The biggest band in the world only lasted about ten years. Oh, but what years they were. They managed to create the singer/songwriter template, the artist owning their own material trend, and revolutionized the way that bands used the studio instead of just merely recording there. Not to mention, the group released some of the catchiest, most melodic, most transcendent pop music the world has ever seen and they managed to do that underneath a microscope of fame that no one, maybe Elvis or Dylan, has ever had to endure. So, on the day that Augustus Caesar died so many years ago, another completely different but incredibly influential cultural icon was born.
Written by Greg Heffelfinger

the Last Beatles live rooftop performance w/ Billy Preston on keys
Jan. 30th 1969

Setlist:

Get Back

Don't Let Me Down

I've Got a Feeling

One After 909

Dig a Pony

Get Back reprise " Thanks folks and I hoped we passed the audition"-John Lennon

This was the edited version for the film of the event. Alan Parsons recorded it in the basement and Micheal Lindsey-Hogg directed, including getting footage of people on the street, If you were there here is the setlist.

Real Setlist: (wikipedia)

1. Get Back—sound check, jam
2. Get Back—"rehearsal"
3. Get Back; I Want You*; Don't Let Me Down—jam
4. Get Back
5. Don't Let Me Down
6. I've Got a Feeling; Ooh! My Soul—tease (Richard Penniman)
7. One After 909—jam
8. One After 909
9. Danny Boy—tease (Ernestine Schumann-Heink)
10. Dig a Pony—tuning up, jam
11. Dig a Pony—false start; Dig a Pony
12. God Save the Queen —impromptu few bars jam (Thomas Arne)
13. I've Got a Feeling; Rainy Day Women #12 & 35—single line "Everybody must get stoned" sung twice by Lennon (Bob Dylan)
14. A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody—tease (Irving Berlin)
15. Get Back—false start
16. Don't Let Me Down
17. Get Back

*This song's title became I Want You (She's So Heavy) in August 1969.

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