By Harvey Kubernik © 2024
“Hollywood and the Beatles were the two greatest romances of the 20th century,” suggests writer, poet and deejay Dr. James Cushing. “What did they have in common? How did they intersect? How did one of these great affairs learn from the other?”
It’s not a secret why the Beatles had an emotional, musical, physical, and spiritual relationship to Hollywood and Southern California.
In the mid-seventies John Lennon moved to Los Angeles, liked it too much, and returned to New York to retire. Paul, George, and Ringo all purchased homes in Los Angeles County; George died in 2001 and cremated at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. His funeral was held in Pacific Palisades at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.
Yoko Ono, John Lennon Ringo Starr photo by Brad Elterman
“I think Hollywood–the town and the industry–really set the stage for Beatlemania,” asserts UCLA graduate, and novelist Daniel Weizmann, “by raising a generation on Anglophilic fun from Alice in Wonderland to Peter Pan to all the Hayley Mills classics. The daughter of actor Sir John Mills and novelist-playwright, Mary Hayley Bell, Hayley Mills was every local boy’s British dream girl.
“Her big hit single “Let’s Get Together” for The Parent Trap, written by Disney employees Robert and Richard Sherman, was cut on Sunset Boulevard with producer Tutti Camarata at his Sunset Sound Recorders.
“It’s almost impossible to overstate how Anglophilic Hollywood was in those days–and not just on the big screen. From the faux Tudor architecture to actors wearing ascots to even the street names…I myself grew up on Ben Lomond Place–5,000 miles from the loch!
“It was a funny post-war exchange, this Angeleno /Anglo connection, parodied in Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy. L.A. hungered for English sophistication, but the actual Brits who came here were seeking the new thing, sunburst electric innocence.
“European intellectuals like Reyner Banham, Christopher Isherwood, and Aldous Huxley travelled to the Far West as a way of escaping Western Civilization. They wanted to dig the future, in all its surf-crazy, open-hearted glory. The Beatles, raised not just on American R&B but also on Honey Pie’s Hollywood Dreams, are the ne plus ultra of this exchange.
“They played the Hollywood Bowl on August 23, 1964 to roaring crowds. Exactly four days later, on August 27th, Mary Poppins–featuring classic songs like ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ also written by the Shermans—premiered at Grauman’s Chinese on Hollywood Blvd. The world was getting smaller, faster than anybody could have predicted.
“A year later, at Walt’s request, the Shermans wrote ‘It’s a Small World.’”
Before the Beatles’ debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, their 1961-1963 stage show and recorded repertoire implemented numerous tunes with origins from the United States, specifically Los Angeles and Hollywood. Based on their club act, Decca Records demo, and ‘63 BBC radio broadcasts, they could at times, be perceived as an L.A. music cover band.
The Beatles had vinyl library cards from the branches of regional record companies Specialty, Modern, Aladdin, Capitol, Arvee, Dore, Imperial, Philles, Liberty, Dot, Lute, and Del-Fi. Capitol Records in Hollywood on Vine Street, would eventually manufacture their catalog.
We all know what hearing the Ken Nelson–produced “Be-Bop-a-Lula” by Gene Vincent issued by Capitol during 1956 meant to John Lennon.
When McCartney saw Lennon with the Quarrymen for the very first time in 1957, John was singing (and free-styling his own lyrics to replace the ones he couldn’t decipher or recall) the Del-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me,” a Dot single from Tennessean Randy Wood’s Sunset and Vine-based company, distributed in the UK by the London logo. The Beatles cut the Dot Records of Arthur Alexander: “Soldier of Love,” “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues” and “Anna (Go to Him).”
Paul auditioned for John’s band with a word-perfect, impromptu performance of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock,” recorded in 1956 at Gold Star Studios on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine Street in 1956.
McCartney found Chan Romero’s “Hippy Hippy Shake,” another Gold Star session, on Del-Fi, forming a crucial part of most each and every set at Liverpool’s Cavern Club and the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, as an opener or closer.
“Till There Was You,” first sung by Paul with the Beatles in Germany, was written by Meredith Wilson in 1957 for The Music Man, a 1962 feature film was first a cast album recording for Capitol in 1957, produced by Nelson Riddle, before a Broadway run in New York.
Buck Owens recorded his “Act Naturally” at the Capitol Records studios in February ’63, and future label mate Ringo Starr sang it.
Keyboardist Billy Preston was an L.A. fixture. Billy met the Beatles in Germany when the band were the opening act for Little Richard and Preston was the star’s pianist. He is later key to Let It Be sessions.
During the Beatles’ late 1962 residency in Hamburg, Germany, a Ringo stage number was the Hollywood Argyles’ hit “Alley Oop,” produced and published by Kim Fowley and Gary Paxton.
“Shimmy Shimmy Kate,” a production from L.A. natives Fred Smith and Clifford Goldsmith on their popular song by the Olympics, named after a street in L.A., was performed live by the Beatles in Hamburg in 1962-and released years later on an album of questionable legality The Beatles Live! at The Star-Club In Hamburg, Germany; 1962.
Lafayette, Louisiana–born and Los Angeles–raised blues guitarist Bobby Parker, who worked with the Specialty Records’ L.A. duo Don & Dewey and Sam Cooke as a teenager, earned a chart single in 1961 with “Watch Your Step.” The Beatles ’61 live sets included it.
In the documentary John Lennon’s Jukebox, Lennon acknowledged Parker’s opening guitar riff inspiring his “I Feel Fine” lead part. In a 1974 WNEW-FM radio interview, Lennon confessed Parker’s lick aiding the beginning of “Day Tripper” as well.
After the Beatles’ 1962 lunchtime sets at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, it was Ketty Lester’s rendition of “Love Letters” that played afternoons inside that venue. The disc was produced by Hollywood High School and Four Preps’ member Ed Cobb, in 1961 for the Era label in L.A.
There are hints of Walt Disney in “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” A Billboard No. 2 single released on Vee-Jay, from the Please Please Me ’63 album, sung by George Harrison. It has its origins in Disney’s “I’m Wishing” copyright off the animated 1937 Snow White movie. “Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell” and colored this Lennon/McCartney effort.
This song also launched fellow Epstein-managed Liverpudlian Billy J. Kramer’s recording career: It was released in April of ’63, hitting No. 2 on the UK charts, making it the first cover of a Lennon/McCartney composition to become a genuine hit.
“John, Paul, and George first developed their ‘This Boy’ and ‘Yes It Is’ three-part harmonies from ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ in Hamburg, thanks to Fairfax High’s own Philip Spector,” posed Beatlemaniac Gary Pig Gold.
“Meanwhile, Larry Williams was indeed the savage young Beatles’ second-favorite Specialty recording artist, and Coasters’ songs, including Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Three Cool Cats’ featured prominently in the band’s, albeit, unsuccessful, January 1, 1962, Decca Records audition.”
“I heard the Spector record ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ in the UK like the Beatles did,” recalled record producer, author, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Andrew Loog Oldham in a 2014 interview I conducted.
“It made an impact because of the use of room. The usage of tape delay. You knew something was going on even if you didn’t know what it was.
“Later, after, say I’ve recorded the Rolling Stones with ‘Not Fade Away,’ let’s say ‘Little Red Rooster,’ you realize which was us recording in England and similar mono circumstances in Regent Sound as opposed to Gold Star or where ever. You realize there is a time in all our lives when there’s passion takes a back seat to innocents and purity. Then when you get good at your job passion takes over. Of course, later it becomes desperation.
“The record of ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him.’ Basically, how can anybody who knows three and a half chords resist doing those backgrounds? It’s just there. It’s a George Harrison part as opposed to a John and Paul part. Meaning that it’s pretty bland. Maybe one of the things that drew me to the record that did it was there was a subliminal audio text that we didn’t know what it was but it was from Eddie Cochran records. Eddie had already recorded ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ in the same Gold Star. So, we didn’t know but you know, man.”
“When I was the lead guitarist of the Everly Brothers 1961–1963 we rotated nights with the Beatles in Germany,” Los Angeles High School alum Don Peake reminded me during a 2023 interview.
“John and Paul watched our shows. I always liked the Beatles and I knew they would be successful just like the Rolling Stones, who opened for us on a tour of England in 1963.
“I’m on the John Lennon Rock ’n’ Roll album Phil Spector produced in 1973. John remembered me at the sessions.”
If you think all of Keith Richards’ guitar lessons were gleaned from the Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry playbooks, along with riffs on the Chess, Sun, Motown, and Stax record labels, this is what Keith said to New Musical Express in 1963.
“I have picked up as many hints on guitar playing as I can from Don Peake, who is the Everly Brothers guitarist. He really is a fantastic guitarist, and the great thing about him is that he is always ready to show me a few tricks.”
Actress, dancer and singer Ann-Margret, an RCA Records recording artist, had a Billboard Top 20 hit in 1961 with “I Just Don’t Understand,” later included on a Beatles’ BBC radio broadcast.
Live at the BBC and the 2013 On Air—Live at the BBC Volume 2, besides demonstrating their fondness for Spector, Romero, and Little Richard’s “Lucille,” houses the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Their “Young Blood,” “Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey” medley, and “Some Other Guy,” coupled with Larry Williams’ “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” “Bad Boy,” and “Slow Down.”
In a 1998 office interview with Los Angeles composers/independent record producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, I asked Mike about “Some Other Guy.”
“It was a song we wrote with Richard Barrett, who we worked with at Red Bird records. He was a musician and producer. We were recording Richard. He was involved with the Chantels. He produced them, and I guess he wrote a lot of their songs, I don’t remember. He was a very capable producer and writer on his own. He wanted to do a session as an artist. We produced that, and we were going to put it out on our own label.
“I can’t exactly remember what year it was, but we ended up, I think, leasing it to Atlantic Records. Two sides, that’s all we did with him. ‘Some Other Guy’ and a thing called ‘Tricky Dickey,’ and I guess it found its way to Liverpool. It was not a hit.”
Leiber, Stoller and Doc Pomus co-wrote “Youngblood.”
“Jerry Wexler at Atlantic said ‘Doc has this great title. Would you like to take a crack at it?’ I was smart but very naïve at the same time. I didn’t know I was being hustled into a thing. [Laughs]. ‘Sure.’”
“We were later sitting in Atlantic’s recording studio and we were mixing something else and Jerry gave me the song on a legal pad and I wrote the music,” underscored Stoller.
“We wrote it in New York and came to L.A. and recorded it on Fairfax Avenue. ‘Youngblood’ and three others including ‘Searchin.’”
“We wrote ‘Kansas City/Hey!-Hey!-Hey!-Hey!,” clarified Fairfax High School alum Jerry Leiber.
“When we did that with Little Willie Littlefield it was all right. Later, Wilbert Harrison’s version came out; it sounded right.”
“Between the Beatles records and Paul McCartney’s recordings there is a vast array of versions,” added Belmont High’s Stoller.
“But the first version was taken from Little Richard’s version, which came out in the US right after Wilbert Harrison’s record came out. It just said “Kansas City.” Little Richard did the four ‘hey hey’s.
“I liked Paul McCartney as a vocalist, and especially loved him in those melodic things he wrote. Between him and John Lennon, that was the sixties as far as I’m concerned. And I loved the way he sang our songs. Just beautiful.”
“Ringo is one of rock’s all-time great drummers,” reinforced drummer Jim Keltner in a 2004 interview. “All you have to do is listen to the Beatles records, of course, especially, the Live at the BBC. Rock and roll drumming, doesn’t get any better than that. Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Gary Chester, Fred Below, and David ‘Panama’ Francis, great early rock and R&B drummers, and Ringo fit right in there with those guys. Listen to the Live at the BBC tapes and you’ll hear what I’m saying.”
The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl, songs curated from three shows recorded at the Hollywood Bowl in August 1964 and August 1965, was taped by Capitol Records arranger/producer Voyle Gilmore, employing the Wally Heider’s mobile studio truck and engineer Bill Halverson. George Martin mixed and sequenced an album issued in May 1977.
Audience screams culled from one of the Beatles Hollywood Bowl concerts are in the sound collage Jack Nitzsche and Neil Young implemented for Young’s “Broken Arrow” track on Buffalo Springfield Again.
In 1964, Nitzsche cut an LP, Dance to the Hits of the Beatles. That year, Jack’s pal, arranger/producer, H.B. Barnum, a child prodigy from the Manual Arts Hight School music program, reconnected with the Beatles on their ’64 US trek.
Barnum in 1961 was on tour as a singer in Europe, when he caught the Beatles live in Germany with Pete Best on drums. H.B. subsequently attended the recording session in Hamburg for The Savage Young Beatles. Barnum was a member of the Robins, wrote songs and arranged for Little Richard, and collaborated with David Axelrod at Capitol Records.
At a Capitol label function around a ‘64 Beatles press conference, Paul spotted H.B. Barnum in the crowd and spent time together. (Decades later McCartney wanted Barnum to do some arrangements for an album but H.B. was musical director for Aretha Franklin and had to pass on the gig).
On that August visit, McCartney made a trip over to the residence of Capitol Records staff producer Nik Venet, who signed the Beach Boys and produced their first two albums for the label.
During August 24, 1964, Alan Livingston, the President of Capitol Records and his wife Nancy Olson arranged a charity fund raiser for the Beatles in Brentwood the day after their Hollywood Bowl recital.
Guests paid $25.00 and were required to bring a child to the gathering raising ten grand for the Haemophilia Foundation of Southern California.
Among those in the celebrity throng: Rock Hudson, Angela Cartwright, Dean Martin, Donald O’Connor, Groucho Marx, John Forsythe, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, Ray Walston, Jack Palance, columnist Hedda Hopper, Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson, Eddie Fisher, Barbara Rush, Gary Lewis, Lloyd Bridges with his kids Jeff and Cindy, and Eva Marie Saint with her son Darrell and daughter Laurette.
My mother Hilda’s Israeli hairdresser Tovah was invited. She worked at a salon across the street from Canter’s Delicatessen on Fairfax Avenue. Tovah showed our family photos of the party.
The evening of August 24th, Paul, Ringo, George, Neil Aspinall, Derek Taylor, Mal Evans and agent Roy Gerber went to actor Burt Lancaster’s home to watch the movie A Shot In The Dark.
On November 23, 1964, Capitol Records released a double documentary album The Beatles’ Story, produced by Roger Christian, a Hollywood deejay on station KFWB, who was also a lyricist (Beach Boys, Jan & Dean), along with songwriter (Beach Boys) and record producer (Hondells, Surfaris), Gary Usher.
The double pocket LP housed interviews and press conferences of the Beatles, with snippets from orchestrated arrangements of Beatles songs. The album reached number 7 on the Billboard Top LPs chart.
One overlooked association the Beatles established on Prospect Avenue in Hollywood was their unfading live broadcast from a UK theater of “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey,” “Boys” and “I’m a Loser,” shown on the October 7th, 1965 Shindig! ABC-TV series and never screened on UK television.
In an interview with journalist Kirk Silsbee in the August 28, 2003, L.A. CityBeat, Steven Van Zandt, deejay, actor and guitarist in Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, emphasized the affiliation the Beatles had on America, Hollywood and Los Angeles.
“After World War II, everybody moved to the suburbs. In the late ’50s, for the first time, teenagers became a demographic with money to spend. Rock ’n’ roll captured the imagination in a way that took your mind away from the goal of getting a job and a career. Momentarily, anyway. Rock ’n’ roll suggested the possibility of getting a job in rock ’n’ roll.
“Before the Beatles, there were no bands, except the Crickets—Buddy Holly’s band. On February 13, 1964, there were no bands. On February 14, everybody wanted to start a band.”
Before songwriter, record producer, music publisher and SiriusXM satellite radio DJ on Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel Kim Fowley went to England in 1964, after the Beatles owned the US record charts that year, he heard the Beatles for the first time in Southern California on KRLA.
“In 1963 I was driving with Danny Hutton on the way to the beach, and the Beatles’ ‘Please Please Me’ came on the radio, and we both said, ‘The Everly Brothers with a third harmony part and Carole King and Gerry Goffin melodies. This works!’
“I was with Danny when I saw them on Ed Sullivan. It was in West L.A., Pacific Palisades or Brentwood, with some girls and their family watching TV.
“It was four guys dressed alike with the same haircut doing uniformity rock. It was like a miniature army up there. They had catchy songs on television with yelling girls. It was fine. I’d been on TV before and I had also seen crowd bedlam around black R&B shows I was at. But they were white and they had clothing and hair from somewhere else. Some other universe.
“The whole thing was new. Even though it wasn’t new to a lot of people.
“In Record World in 1964, the third music trade magazine in the US behind Billboard and Cash Box, I had just produced the No. 1 hit ‘Popsicles and Icicles’ by the Murmaids. The next week ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ replaced me. So, I figured everybody was knocked out. Only people like Terry Stafford with ‘Suspicion,’ ‘Dawn’ by the Four Seasons and Louis Armstrong with ‘What a Wonderful World’ had hits. So, I went to England to learn what it was that caused everything to change. That’s all reflex.
“When the Beatles arrived and charted in America, everything became different. One day it changed, just like one day it changed when Elvis Presley arrived. One day it changed when Frank Sinatra arrived. One day it changed when Enrico Caruso arrived. And when Alexander’s Ragtime Band arrived. I mean, they are certain musical moments that arrived without notice, and if you were in the industry or the media or the public you dealt with it. Whether you wanted to or not. And you had to co-exist with it and interact with it and rebuild around the change. Just like the horse to the horse-and-buggy and then the locomotive. Black-and-white television turning into color. Same-sex marriage.
“America and Hollywood in late 1963 was dealing with the loss of John F. Kennedy. When the Beatles took over the charts and AM radio playlists, I was a guy who had three hit records already. On the day JFK died, I sold 88,000 copies of the Murmaids’ ‘Popsicles and Icicles.’ People were really sad and needed a 45rpm.
“All during 1963 a lot of regional labels passed on the Beatles. The Hollywood and L.A. record companies still had a shirt-and-tie vibe. They really didn’t want to let foreigners into their offices.
“Before the Beatles scored big with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ I had been at Capitol Records. Some of the record executives were very hateful. They looked down on everything. Nobody cared.
“Record companies always hate the artist, and publishing companies always despise the writer, bartenders always hate the bands, housewives always hate the employees of the husband. It’s just a big list of dislikes that go on,” sighed Fowley.
“Then in 1964 I was at Dick James Music office in England hustling. They were the Beatles’ original music publishers via Northern Songs. Here come the four Beatles in suits with the neckties, and Brian Epstein, their manager, ran in and said, ‘Everybody stand up and applaud the boys.’ And they walked in the door.
“I met Ringo on two different occasions,” Fowley rhapsodizes. “Once in 1964 at the Ad Lib Club when I was introduced to him as the co-producer and co-publisher of ‘Alley Oop’ by the Hollywood Argyles. He told me that the Beatles played my tune ‘Alley Oop’ on stage in Germany.
“It was in 1964 when Murray Deutsch of the music division from United Artists Records came in, who didn’t care about the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night, they just wanted the soundtrack override. That’s what he said to me. Murray had worked with Buddy Holly and now had the James Bond franchise. Mike Stewart of United Artists Records in America got the rights domestically, even though, as you know, the Beatles were on Capitol Records, and the soundtrack on United Artists.
“A Hard Day’s Night was a big, important moment in the development and the evolution of the rock song in film and the movie soundtrack as a retail item and stand-alone product itself.
“In 1966 at the Ad Lib Paul McCartney was there, disguised and dressed as an Arab and walking around. I also met him at a party he politely crashed in St. John’s Wood down the street from him. Paul saw a bunch of cars parked and he dropped in to take a look, jumped back in his own car and split.
“Also in 1966, I spent some time with John and Paul in London. Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys was in town doing advance publicity for the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and had an acetate pressing with him. I was asked to bring the Who’s Keith Moon over, who brought John and Paul to the hotel room. They were both very impressed by the recording, left the hotel and went into the recording studio the next day and did ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ for Revolver. The both of them were able to digest and gauge the whole essence of Pet Sounds in one listening.
“I did meet Brian Epstein once time. It was in an underground garage at a hotel after a party and cars were being brought around. I said, ‘What is the secret of the Beatles’ success?’ And he replied, ‘Surround your phenomena with specialists. It’s a line in my book, A Cellarful of Noise. Why don’t you buy it and read it?’
“Their record producer George Martin was the catalyst for the embryonic dreams of Lennon, McCartney, Starkey and Harrison. Martin was able to consolidate an expand their anticipation. He was a great editor.”
“In Hollywood in August of 1964 I was one of the very few people with long hair on Sunset Boulevard,” chortled Robert Marchese, the former (1970–1980) manager of Doug Weston’s Troubadour and a Grammy Award-winning record producer of the Richard Pryor’s live recording from the venue.
“I knew Elmer Valentine, who owned the Whisky a Go Go, and he called me and said the Beatles were coming by his club to see Johnny Rivers and he knew it was gonna be crazy. Elmer paid me and two other guys from England with long hair to dress up in suits like the Beatles and pull up in front of the Whisky in a car so the Beatles could run in through the back door. We were a decoy and got mobbed in the front so some of the band members could get into the club. Crazed chicks who I thought were gonna kill us. Not so much that we got mobbed but when they found out we weren’t them. The limo driver pulled us back in and off we went.
“Then in 1965 the Rolling Stones returned to town and they jammed one night at the Action club. It looked like 10,000 people had long hair. I said to myself, ‘Jesus Christ. All of these people had been hiding.’ They came out of the woodwork. Musicians and artists like Wallace Berman. It was crazy. I was stunned. ‘Now it’s time for the revolution, I guess.’ We took all this shit from everybody for having long hair and digging the Beatles and the Stones, and now the cat was out of the bag.
“I went to the 1964 Beatles Hollywood Bowl. All the KRLA DJs jointly introduced them from the stage. I was sitting in reserved box seats in front of the pond. Same seats I had in 1968 when I saw the Jimi Hendrix Experience and sat with Dave Mason.
“The Beatles had this aura about them. And L.A. and Hollywood were Beatle towns. That and the Rolling Stones. In 1964 when the Beatles invaded America, I knew it was the step after Elvis. Until the Beatles arrived in Hollywood, the record business was Frank Sinatra. It changed quickly. Sunset Boulevard and then the hippies.
“The Beatles and Brian Epstein also had PR guru Derek Taylor. Great guy. Bright man. He had contacts with newspapers and key AM radio stations in L.A. that were very important in positioning the Beatles locally which planted seeds nationally. Derek gave the scoops to DJs like Dave Hull at KRLA and the British DJs in town, KFWB’s Lord Tim and Tommy Vance on KHJ.
“L.A. and Hollywood were the epicenter in the US for Beatles activities. We know it started in Hollywood and spread to New York and all over the country. Plenty of great musical shit always began in Hollywood and L.A.”
“I can’t remember whether it was mono or stereo that I first heard the Beatles, I just know that it was different and it was good,” cited native Angelino and drummer/chronicler Paul Body.
“First heard them on KRLA or KFWB, I think in the middle of 1963. “The song ‘From Me To You’ was pick of the week or something like that. I remember that it sounded kind of neat. Remember, this was a time that nothing was happening on the teenage channels. You had to go down the dial to KGFJ to get the real deal!” he exclaims.
“‘From Me To You’ was quickly forgotten and then a few months later in the fall, there they were in Newsweek, a whole article about them. By now they were huge in England. It was the first time that I got to see the hairdos and see in print the name Ringo Starr, which sounded like a gunfighter’s name. I was beginning to get intrigued.
“Then Kennedy was killed, the country was plunged into a major depression. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ came out after that, I dug it. It was being played all over the radio. Then there was that little clip on The Jack Paar Show around New Year’s Eve—wow. They were something. That was the first time I ever heard ‘She Loves You.’ The pump was being primed.
“Then came February 9, 1964. The world sort of changed that night. I remember that a cat named Kenny Smith had the Beatles’ album before anybody else, and we played it in music class. It sounded pretty good. Don’t know if it was stereo or mono but it was damn fine.
“So, from 1964, they have been in our DNA, never would have thought something like that back in 1963. For some reason they had something that Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele and Adam Faith didn’t have. For some reason they captured our imagination and have never let go.
“As great as they were and are, I still have to go down the dial to dig some Garnet Mimms and Enchanters, the Impressions, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, James, Motown, Stax and all of the other stuff that was played on KGFJ. That stuff has stood the test of time too—mono or stereo, it doesn’t matter, because it rocked and it meant something. So did those Liverpool lads. What a glorious time to live in the same time as the Beatles and Willie Mays.”
In a December 2023 email correspondence with British-born writer/producer and Beatles expert, Martin Lewis, he assessed the SoCal music tan on the complexion of the Beatles’ early repertoire.
“That is because it was rarely consciously L.A. per se, it was VERY consciously American all the time. But – until they became more educated, they didn’t draw much distinction between the sounds and influences of the different US cities. They were all from the glamorous, glorious Technicolor US of A. So, they gobbled it all up. And remember that the names and locations of recording studios didn’t become widely known until album jackets started printing that kind of info – late 60s on. In 1962 no one in Liverpool knew that kind of detail. They knew they loved the sound. But had little point of geographical reference.”
When the Turtles finally reached London on the heels of their hit record “Happy Together,” Paul McCartney and the group’s singer Howard Kaylan traded verses one night on legendary L.A. duo Don & Dewey’s “Justine” at the Speakeasy Club. Howard told me, “Paul loved the song and Ringo played the spoons with us on the tabletop.”
The honorary fifth Beatle, in the Southern California radio market, was Dave “The Hullabalooer” Hull at 50,000-watt station KRLA (1110 AM) in Pasadena, California.
There is one important Beatles on American television 1964 moment that seems to be underserved in history which made an indelible mark in the country, courtesy of the monumental 1964-1966 ABC-TV series Shindig! taped in Hollywood.
Due to the popularity of the program and the Beatles reverence with British producer Jack Good, who they grew up with watching on English television, arrangements were made for a Shindig! crew and host Jimmy O’Neil to fly to London and to tape an episode. They band agreed to perform on October 3, 1964 after two days of rehearsal for a union fee of $1,400.00.
Members of the London Beatles Fan Club were invited to the Granville Studio where the group played three songs live: “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey,” “Boys” and “I’m a Loser.”
O’Neil’s introduction of the Beatles in ’64 said it all, “The entertainment phenomena of the century!”
The records of “Kansas City” and “I’m A Loser” were not issued in the States for many months later. US deejays had a field day, as they had a Beatles scoop, as they recorded the 2 songs off the Shindig! broadcast. Capitol eventually stopped them from playing the 2 songs!
This Shindig! Goes To London packaged other acts for this special occasion: Sandie Shaw, Tommy Quickly, PJ Proby, Sounds Incorporated, Lyn Cornell and the Karl Denver Trio.
This edition of Shindig! was broadcast on October 7, 1964, but never seen in Britain. It’s the only US show that had the Beatles on live TV (not film clips) other than The Ed Sullivan Show!
In 2010 I appeared with Jimmy O’Neil on KCET-TV’s Things That Aren’t Here Anymore filmed at the former ABC-TV studios in Hollywood where Shindig! was lensed and I attended tapings.
Jimmy, a former deejay in Hollywood on stations KRLA, KFWB and KDAY enthused, “It was an amazing experience that I’ll never forget because it happened at a time when they did Shindig! right at the peak of Beatlemania.”
In my 2014 book, Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll in Los Angeles 1956-1972, Hull explained the audio bond KRLA had with the Beatles and devoted listeners.
“KRLA and I supported the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In 1964 and ’65, [KRLA DJ] Bob Eubanks presented the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, and Eubanks produced the Dodger Stadium concert in 1966.
“It’s important to note that earlier, back in 1961 and ’62, KRLA played records from England that were hits: Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger on the Shore,’ Kenny Ball’s ‘Midnight in Moscow,’ and Hayley Mills’ ‘Let’s Get Together.’
“I first heard the Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ as a promotional record in 1963 on WVKO in Ohio.
“I was close for a bit with Paul McCartney and Brian Epstein, through Derek Taylor. The relationship with them went beyond press conferences and show intros at the Hollywood Bowl and Dodger Stadium.
“I would see the Beatles at the places they rented in town. The closeness I had with the Beatles was owed to Louise Harrison, George’s sister, who was the one that gave me inside information, because she wanted her brother George to be part of a famous group. Brian Epstein was the best, but Derek Taylor as his publicity man—he really knew how to advance anyone and go into a market, and press release stuff that would make people want to know the answers to questions before he’d leave town. He was brilliant.
“I came from a world that started with the 45 RPM. The single. They didn’t care about the B-side, just the A-side, and played the poop out of it. Then the LP, the long player, arrived, helped immensely by the Beatles. KRLA was on AM radio.
“One thing about the Beatles, they brought one important thing to the American and worldwide music scene that nobody else did. Before them, like Frank Sinatra, one or two songs, maybe that were gonna be hits, the rest of it, filler. When it came to the Beatles, everything they did was great.
“Therefore, you were forced by the Beatles to play the albums, and selections like ‘If I Fell’ and ‘Girl.’ All of these things were not singles but taken out first by KRLA and played on the air to become hits with the market and no one could ever see that coming.”
Harrison’s relationship with Dave Hull and KRLA continued into 1968.
In mid-October ‘68, George began a nearly six- week stay in L.A. and visited Capitol Records. An executive handed Harrison an advance lacquer pressing planned for the North American release of the White Album.
George was a bit miffed at the sound of the reference disc he heard, and definitely not pleased by subtle changes in EQ and compression the mastering engineers at the US division had applied to the Abbey Road source tape.
It was then arranged for George over a two-day period to personally supervise a remastering process of a two-track stereo tape on the Capitol premises.
On November 15, 1968, Harrison drove to KRLA spinning tracks live on the air with Dave Hull from his now slightly tweaked acetate copy of the upcoming double LP.
After programming “Yer Blues,” Harrison teased the listeners with this wry comment, “You never knew we were really from Chicago, did ya? I mean, we learned all the basic blues rhythms and patterns when we were young lads living in Chicago. So, we just thought we’d get back into it again.”
Harrison then introduced “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” telling his rapt audience that “it reminds me a little of Brian Wilson.”
After “Revolution No. 1” was tracked, Harrison commented, “That was recorded before the other side of ‘Hey Jude.’ Less attack. Not as much as a revolution. More of the Glenn Miller version.”
About “Honey Pie,” Harrison said, “This, I’m sure, a lot of the Hollywood people, the California people, will identify with this one. Very typical of that era.”
Following the airing of “Bungalow Bill,” George told Dave Hull, “Bill is very interesting. Very interesting. We meet plenty of Bungalow Bills in our travels on the highway of life.”
Regarding the numbers “Don’t Pass Me By,” “Rocky Raccoon,” and “Piggies,” Harrison back-announced, “Ringo wrote that one. Very nice. Ringo has always been very countryand-western-influenced. ‘Rocky Raccoon’ is very famous in our minds. I’m sure Rocky is the guy in all those westerns. ‘Piggies’ is written, really, two and a half years ago. It just seems funny that it’s come out now.”
He gave kudos to Ringo, Paul and John, Harrison, obviously well aware of the very recent and tragic June 1968 murder of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, slotted “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” and elaborated about the song’s origins. “‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun’ seemed to come by an American gun magazine after Kennedy, the second Kennedy, was killed. British newspapers printed ads for American gun mags. And one of the selling things was ‘Happiness is a warm gun.”’
George then left the station after signing off with, “This is George Harrison. KRLA. Believe it or not.”
“While in town, Harrison taped a brief, but most impactful appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” recalls faithful viewer Gary Pig Gold, “making note that it was on Tom and Dick’s show – not, as had been the case up until then, via The Ed Sullivan Show – that the Beatles had just aired their ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Revolution’ promotional videos: It was understood by the Fabs, courtesy of their L.A.-savvy publicist Derek Taylor, that the Smothers’ hour was the hip outlet for North American television viewers at the time, due in no small part to the good taste and good ears of musical director Tommy Smothers. Speaking of whom, six months later a recently fired from CBS Television Tom was a most welcome guest at John and Yoko’s Montreal Bed-In, rapping about censorship, current events, and then adding his guitar and vocals to ‘Give Peace a Chance.'”
On January 28, 1964, the Beatles encountered Phil Spector and the Ronettes at a party at the Green Street home of deejay and Decca Records promoter, Tony Hall. Phil was a passenger on the airplane with the Beatles when they landed in New York on February 7, 1964.
“We met a few people through Phil Spector,” remembered Paul McCartney in the Beatles’ Anthology.
“We met the Ronettes, which was very exciting, and various others, such as Jackie DeShannon, a great songwriter, and Diana Ross and the rest of the Supremes. They were people we admired and as we went on, we met them all-all the people who were coming up as we were coming up. It was a matey sort of thing.”
In 1961, when Spector was living in New York and apprenticing at Atlantic Records under Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun, he produced a Teddy Randazzo arrangement of the first version of “Twist and Shout,” a Bert Berns and Phil Medley song, recorded by the Top Notes which flopped.
Berns went into the studio in 1962, producing his variation on the Isley Brothers. The Beatles copied it from his R&B-tinged anthem.
I interviewed Phil Spector in 1975 for the now defunct Melody Maker at his Beverly Hills mansion.
“I met John and the boys years and years ago and they used to ask me, ‘Phil, how did you make all those consecutive hit records in a row, what’d you do?’ I said, ‘Well, I listen to everything around. I listen to what I’m making or just made and I’d say if it’s better or not, and then I’d put it out and it becomes No. 1.’ And they said, ‘That’s how we made our early albums. That’s how we did it.’
“So, while there was a secret to the extent of how it was made, there was no secret to disguise that it’s really hard work. I was mainly interested in singles and establishing a reputation in the record business, and they were interested only in making albums, and that’s why so much of it that we did was really good, because we listened to what was around us and we compared.”
In our 1975 interview, Spector praised guitarist, Barney Kessel, first call studio musician on three Larry Williams sides the Beatles would wax.
I mentioned to Phil in 1974 I went to a playback party for the John Lennon-produced Harry Nilsson album Pussy Cats held at actor Peter Lawford’s house in Santa Monica. John and I had a short conversation about Williams and Lennon’s frenzied “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” at the Beatles 1965 Shea Stadium concert.
Spector then cited his propulsive production on the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me.
“That was an experimental record,” Phil revealed over a meal of steak tartar dipped in a cold jar of mayonnaise.
“John told me the Beatles got the idea to use a 12-string guitar that Barney Kessel played from that record. But I thought it was too spaced out. I was against it coming out. I was gonna can it.
“It was very easy to work with John Lennon,” mused the Let It Be record producer.
“There was no problem working with him. I think he is one of the greatest singers in music. I honestly believe that. I feel the same way about Paul as a singer. They are in a league with few others. I don’t feel the same way about George or Ringo. John and Paul are great rock ’n’ roll singers,” summarized Spector.
We shouldn’t forget the recording and fashion tips singer Chris Montez of “Let’s Dance” fame had on the Beatles on their joint 1963 UK tour. “Let’s Dance” was a selection on 1961’s The Savage Young Beatles.
I met Chris in 2023, who was born Ezekiel Christopher Montanez. He grew up in the South Bay area of Southern California, graduating from Hawthorne High School. Montez is a childhood friend of Olivia Trinadad Harrison, maiden name Arias, also a Hawthorne alum, who was married George Harrison.
Olivia met George in Hollywood at A&M Records in Hollywood when his Dark Horse record label was distributed by the Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert company. Montez had two big hits, “Call Me” and “The More I See You,” with Alpert co-producing his debut LP. That first album had rather tongue-in-cheek liner notes by Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor who at the time was working for A&M.
Ravi Shankar’s Stateside recording catalog in the early 1960’s was cut at the World Pacific Studios on 3rd Street in L.A. with label owner/producer Richard Bock. The sitarist had a following in town before the Byrds, Doors and Beatles discovered his musicianship.
Musician/songwriter Chris Darrow remembers Ravi playing The Ash Grove club on Melrose Avenue in the late fifties. The Lakshmi Indian restaurant presented Shankar’s first Los Angeles recital. In 1967 Shankar founded the Los Angeles chapter of The Kinnara School of Music in West L.A. on Robertson Boulevard.
During 1998, I interviewed George Harrison and Ravi Shankar.
Harrison described his earliest attempt playing the sitar.
“Very rudimentary,” George said. “I didn’t know how to tune it properly, and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with. So ‘Norwegian Wood’ was very much an early experiment. By the time we recorded ‘Love You To’ I had made some strides.
“That was the environment in the band, everybody was very open to bringing in new ideas. We were listening to all sorts of things, Stockhausen, avant-garde music, whatever, and most of it made its way onto our records.”
Beatles’ scholar Martin Lewis reminds us that it was a Harrison composition that really cemented the Beatles connection to L.A.
“Between 1962-1966 there was not a single lyric written by John, Paul, George or Ringo that referenced any geographic location outside of England. In fact, very few places were mentioned at all before Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane in early 1967. And no American locales made it to a Beatle-written lyric in those years.
“Certainly, they sang lyrics that referenced Americana but those were their covers of American compositions. In 1968 – their lyrics went global – with references to Miami, Moscow and Chairman Mao et al. But the lead-in to all that travel and multiculturalism started on 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour
“And it was George who gave that first Fab shout-out to the USA – and Los Angeles in particular. With his song Blue Jay Way. With its opening line ‘there’s a fog up on L.A…’”
Guitarist and bassist Carol Kaye also provides data about SoCal’s bio-regional recordings informing the Beatles sonic legacy and awe-inspiring pathway.
In a November 2023 dinner conversation, after interviewing Carol for a music documentary about her remarkable studio career, Carol is heard on thousands of recording sessions, including “La Bamba,” “Let’s Dance” and “Then he Kissed Me,” I asked if she met any of the Beatles.
Carol put down her fork, and replied, “Paul McCartney called me many years ago when he found out I played on the ‘Good Vibrations’ sessions. We traded picks.”
Kaye also played numerous studio dates with guitarist Barney Kessel.
I spoke with Barney’s musician sons Dan and David Kessel about his work on the recordings Paul McCartney and George Harrison cherished, and John Lennon’s fascination with the musical heritage of Southern California.
Guitarists Dan, David and Barney all appear on the John Lennon Rock ‘N’ Roll album that Phil Spector produced.
“Barney invited Brian Wilson to a jazz club in Hollywood one night where he was gigging as a trio with a theremin player,” remembered David Kessel. “Brian liked what he saw and instrument was introduced on Pet Sounds on ‘I Wasn’t Made for These Times’ and featured on ‘Good Vibrations’ from Smiley Smile.
“Years before the Lennon Rock ‘N’ Roll sessions, John had a question to Phil about guitar pickups. Phil played several of my dad’s albums at his Beverly Hills mansion for John Lennon before the Beatles recorded Abbey Road. John said to Phil, ‘How the heck can I get a sound like that?’ Phil told him to send his Les Paul guitar and [road manager] Mal Evans over to Barney Kessel’s Music World store on Vine St. in Hollywood, which was right across from their American label Capitol Records, and have Milt Owen, the guitar tech, put some Charlie Christian pickups on it to get the specific sound. They were pre-World War 2 metal pickups.
“You can hear the deep tones from John’s guitar on Abbey Road. It’s kind of more jazz than a rock sound. Charlie is the original electric guitar genius. Barney met him in Oklahoma at a gig and jammed with him.
“I have a funny story about Barney, Phil and George Harrison in 1974. Phil phoned Barney and invited him to dinner with George who wanted to meet Barney. But my father had to politely decline the offer as he explained he had a 7:00 am studio session at Warner Bros for a cartoon date and those gigs were first takes and there is a lot of notes to sight read on the page. He really needed to get a good night’s sleep on those bookings.”
“My brother David and I had already met John Lennon on a couple of occasions back in summer 1966 and early ’67 in London with Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, and people like that,” recalled Dan Kessel. “We ran into John and George Harrison as well as the Byrds at Barney Kessel’s Music World.
“Throughout the Rock ‘N’ Roll recording sessions, I’d talk to John whenever feasible, during breaks and between takes. He fell in love with my customized Gibson Everly Brothers guitar when we recorded ‘Angel Baby,’ so I let him use it during the session. In fact, I told him after the session that I’d be honored for him to keep my guitar. He accepted on the condition the I accept his, which I gladly did.
“John and I were easily able to agree that ‘Angel Baby’ by Rosie and the Originals, was one of the greatest records of all time, for many different reasons, which we discussed at great length. And, after drinking quite a bit, we got all excited and emotional, even crying tears about it and the genius of the B-side, ‘Give Me Love’ too, and about how we wished we could have been in the Originals.
“John was eager to hear anything I had to say about Ritchie Valens and groups like Little Caesar and the Romans and listened with serious, rapt attention when I shared stories with him about the El Monte Legion Stadium.
“I can even remember John smiling and talking with my friend, Blake Xolton, (a solid musician, who was helping as my equipment tech), as they discussed the L.A. T-Birds roller derby team, and some of the key players like Ralphie Valladares, Danny Reilly, Judy Sowinski, Toni Tagg and others. John said he remembered those names from watching late night TV in Los Angeles as a Beatle, in the mid-sixties.”
“Barney’s wife, and my step-mother, B.J. Baker, sang background on the Hollywood Argyles’ ‘Alley Oop,’ a song Gary Paxton and Kim Fowley produced,” shared David Kessel. “Ringo sang it at shows by the Beatles in late 1962.”
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015’s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016’s Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017’s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.
Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His book Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll Television Moments) is scheduled for 2025 publication.
Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.
During 2006 Harvey spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 Kubernik appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their heralded Distinguished Speakers Series).
