Tag Archives: 1965

Beatles, Classic Concert, Concert films

August 15: The Beatles played at Shea Stadium in 1965

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August 15: The Beatles played at Shea Stadium in 1965

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, honoured by their country, decorated by their Queen, loved here in America, here are The Beatles!”
– Ed Sullivan

The Shea Stadium concert on 15 August was record-breaking and one of the most famous concert events of its era.  Over 55,000 people saw the concert.  “Beatlemania” was at one of its highest marks at the Shea show. Film footage taken at the concert shows many teenagers and women crying, screaming, and even fainting. The crowd noise was such that security guards can be seen covering their ears as The Beatles enter the field.

Shea2

 

The Beatles interview before Shea Stadium:

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Beatles, Great albums

August 6: The Beatles released “Help!” in 1965

The_Beatles-Help_-Frontal

.. a big step forward, exploring doubt, loneliness, alienation, adult sexual longing, acoustic guitars, electric piano, bongos, castanets, and the finest George songs known to man. … Help! was utterly ruined in its U.S. version, which cut half the songs and added worthless orchestral soundtrack filler, so it’s always been underrated. But Help! is the first chapter in the astounding creative takeoff the Beatles were just beginning: the soulful bereavement of “Ticket to Ride,” the impossibly erotic gentleness of “Tell Me What You See,” the desperate falsetto and electric punch of “You’re Going to Lose That Girl.”
~rollingstone.com

…. the album’s masterpiece is McCartney’s brooding, deceptively simple chamber-pop ballad “Yesterday.” …  it’s compositionally complex, one of the first major pop songs to draw directly from classical music, juxtaposing acoustic guitar with a string quartet, shifting from minor to major chords. It set the stage for one of the most groundbreaking and innovative periods in The Beatles’ career, not to mention pop music in general.
~Mark Kemp (pastemagazine.com)

From Wikipedia:

Released 6 August 1965
Recorded 15–19 February, 13 April, 10 May& 14–17 June 1965,
EMI Studios, London
Genre Rock
Length 34:20
Label Parlophone
Producer George Martin

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Great albums, Music Calendar, Van Morrison

June 11: Them released their debut album The Angry Young Them in 1965

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Them- The Angry Young- Frontal

June 11: Them released their debut album The Angry Young Them in 1965

“These five young rebels are outrageously true to themselves. Defiant! Angry! Sad! They are honest to the point of insult!” (original liner notes)

The Angry Young Them is Them’s  first album. The album was released in the UK on 11th of  June 1965. The band’s lead singer and songwriter was of course Van “The Man”  Morrison. He was with Them on only two albums before deciding to go solo.

Them

The opening track Mystic Eyes was from an 8 or 9 minute jam originally, a long intense  jam session in the studio with Van making the words up on the spur of the moment. Oh why didn’t they use the long take? Anyway, a good opener.

If You And I Could Be As Two is the next song and it opens with Van’s spoken voice talking (rather angrily) before this wonderful soul ballad continues. Then it is Little Girl which is about watching a 14-year-old (!) school girl on her way to school,  not very acceptable these days but we need to remember that Van Morrison was only a teenager himself when he sang these words (still no excuse, I know).

Just A Little Bit by Roscoe Gordon is the next one out, Morrison sings great and it is my favorite song of the non Van Morrison penned tracks. Fantastic song!

Then we are in for the weakest track on the album, I Gave My Love a Diamond. That is not a put-down, because it’s a good sixties ballad, it just pales compared to the other songs on the album.

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylans's best songs

Bob Dylan’s best songs: It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

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bob dylan

 

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

—

CM: It’s not the same Blue as in It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue?
BD: No, no. That’s a different Blue. That’s a character right off the haywagon. That Baby
Blue is from right upstairs at the barbers shop, y’know, off the street… a different Baby
Blue, I haven’t run into her in a long time, long time.
CM: You’re being serious?
BD: Yeah, I’ve never looked at Joan Baez as being Baby Blue.
~Craig McGregor Interview (March 1978)

I had carried that song around in my head for a long time and I remember that when I was writing it, I’d remembered a Gene Vincent song. It had always been one of my favorites, Baby Blue… ‘ It was one of the songs I used to sing back in high school. Of course, I was singing about a different Baby Blue.”
~Bob Dylan (Biograph)

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan recording sessions

50 years ago: Bob Dylan – The first recording session for “Bringing It All Back Home”

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Bob Dylan - bringing it all back home

I never wanted to write topical songs,…. Have you heard my last two records, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61? It’s all there. That’s the real Dylan.
~Bob Dylan (Frances Taylor Interview, Aug. 1965)

50 years ago – 13 January 1965 – Bob Dylan entered Studio A, Columbia Recording Studios, NYC for the first of three seminal days in the studio… It was time to show the “real” Dylan on record.

Wikipedia:

Bringing It All Back Home is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released in March 1965 by Columbia Records. The album is divided into an electric and an acoustic side. On side one of the original LP, Dylan is backed by an electric rock and roll band—a move that further alienated him from some of his former peers in the folk song community. Likewise, on the acoustic second side of the album, he distanced himself from the protest songs with which he had become closely identified (such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”), as his lyrics continued their trend towards the abstract and personal.

The album reached No. 6 on Billboard’s Pop Albums chart, the first of Dylan’s LPs to break into the US top 10. It also topped the UK charts later that Spring. The lead-off track, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, became Dylan’s first single to chart in the US, peaking at #39.

bd-65-studio
Photo by Columbia Records photgrapher Don Hunstein

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