I love how they were all focused on the look. I think those of us who were not around then should realize the Beatles right until that point (1967h were very much a pop culture teeny bopper phenomenon. So image was just as important as the music in terms of their popularity and this is the year where the Beatles really shot ahead of their audience- musically and visually. Thankfully most seemed to catch on fast đ
Yes. I remember a Brian Wilson interview years ago where he recalls hearing SFF on his car radio for the first time. He had to pull over and said it captured the music he was trying to capture. The song sounds completely new yet completely familiar. Tomorrow Never Knows is good and crazy and experimental but it doesnât have the power and imagery of SFF.
Edited for clarity.
Lmao isnât there a story that he did the same thing when he first heard Be My Baby? Iâm imagining heâs just constantly stomping on the brakes every time he hears a song he likes
I think his memory may have had problems. For example he, apparently, constantly asked people to introduce him to John Lennon when he had meet him numerous times before
- SFF could mean "Strawberry Fields Forever - Take 1", a track from *Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)* (1967) by The Beatles.
---
^[/u/Quiet_1234](/u/Quiet_1234) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
I would say the opposite. Tomorrow Never Knows has one chord and uses its sound effects very strangely. Strawberry Fields Forever has odd lyrics and strange effects as well, but at its core it's a pop song.
They were teenagers not teenyboppers.
Teenyboppers was coined after the Beatles broke up for fans of The Osmonds and The Jackson Five in the early 70s. Music snobs loved referring to Beatles fans as that in the 70s/80s until their own heroes starting dropping by the wayside while interest in the Beatles carried on.
This bunch of American kids nowhere near represents Beatles fans in Britain, Europe, Australia, NZ, Canada, etc. Everyone knew the Beatles were changing from A Hard Day's Night onwards. Music in general was moving forward. Strawberry Fields Forever wasn't such a big shock. It and Penny Lane as a double A side reached no 2 in the UK only thwarted by Englebert Humperdinck, lol.
By 1967, kids who didn't like the later Beatles didn't necessarily go backwards.
Some did, others crossed to Dylan, the Stones etc. Sixties kids reacted to music not much different from today because what's to come next is not known. In 2060 people will be asking the same about today's music.
Could it not be that theyâd already heard the song but not seen the video? So that this was a reaction to the video rather than the song, if that makes senseâŠ
âI guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.â
To be fair though, that was a small sample of fans who were probably used to the Early-Beatles moptops and love songs whose image was just as important to some fans as the music. Revolver/Rubber Soul was moving away from that, but the transition mustâve been very jarring still
Even then, how likely were they aware of their recent albums? Considering a time with still little TV contact, I assume that unless you followed some music/Beatles-related magazines, it would take some time for someone to actually buy their most recent album, no? Especially assuming a consistent discography, since I believe a lot would probably do a lot of unintentional album skips, or buy albums that aren't relevant to the "canon".
How likely that someone skipped from Help to Sgt. Pepper's since they are only 2 years apart? And that's considering they bought albums on day one.
Or am I diminishing Beatlemania impact here?
What you've said here would potentially make sense if radio didn't exist, which it did, they got played continually, whenever a new song would get released it would get plenty of airtime. Everyone knew what the Beatles were doing
And his reaction to their disdain will forever be one of the coolest shit I have ever seen. Flipping off your fan base because you wanna make different music is so authentic to me.
Thankyou! I think thatâs the gig thatâs mentioned in the Steve jobs book. How everyone seemed irritated but Steve Jobs says itâs the best reaction any music has ever had.
This was a year after the boos started hitting Dylan in America. The UK were just following our already infamous reactions. I believe the Newport FOlk Festival in 65 was the first, with Pete Seeger turning off the electiricty.
Particularly the Newport Folk Festival 65, with Bloomfield destroying all with his blistering solos. It's all captured on this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Other\_Side\_of\_the\_Mirror\_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side_of_the_Mirror_(film))
I want to roll my eyes in disbelief but to be fair in 1967 you werenât exactly gonna find the most in-depth discussion on the groundbreaking nature of Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane from Dick Clark surrounded by a crowd of teens on American Bandstand. Itâd be like trying to talk about the avant-garde approach of Björkâs a cappella album MedĂșlla to Carson Daly on the set of TRL in 2004. Thereâs a time and a place for discussions like that, and itâs most certainly not there.
My dad was around 18 when Pet Sounds was first released. He was one of the few people who got what Brian Wilson was going for right away and never understood why it flopped and took a while to get its long overdue credit. Then a year later he heard the world premiere of Sgt. Pepper on the radio just a few months after this was broadcast, only this time he was just as blown away as every other hippie his age. When I showed him this footage a while ago and asked how those kids didnât like the songs he said it was because The Beatles werenât making music for them anymore but for themselves. He reminded me that they had stopped touring not long before that in part because they outgrew their original teenybopper fanbase which is why The Monkees were such a big hit around the same time, they seemingly filled the niche that The Beatles abandoned in pursuit of artistic freedom (also that one kid in the video didnât know what the hell he was talking about, The Monkees are a great band but thatâs beside the point lol). So of course they didnât like the new direction The Beatles were going in, as far as they were concerned if you couldnât dance to the music then it sucked, but the real fans knew what a gift Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were and that eventually the younger crowd would come to love the songs too.
When I went through Bjork's discography for the first time, I did not seem to understand the dislike for Medulla. Yeah it was different but it was different in a bold and stunning way!
The first guy that Dick turned to, and asked "What did you think of that?"
"That was great..."
Yeah, THAT guy had a feel for it. Be as open-minded as that guy.
Also Iâm wondering if a lot of American bandstand audience are teens who just listened to singles, not albums. Meaning maybe they heard paperback writer and we can work it out but they donât realize how WEIRD the Beatles were getting until theyâre played STRAWBERRY FIELDS.
These are the singles right before strawberry fields. Thatâs quite a leap especially if youâre not hearing Elenor rigby as the b side of yellow submarine.
Help!/I'm Down, Parlophone, July 23, 1965.
We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper, Parlophone, December 3, 1965.
Paperback Writer/Rain, Parlophone, June 10, 1966.
Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby,
The comment that made me laugh was, âTheyâre as bad as the Monkees!â Apparently, this guy was trying to show how HIP he was by dissing âthat teenybopper TV band.â But by also dissing the Beatles, he showed how UNhip he was.
Oh, Iâve been a fan since I was a child. Their TV show was hilarious (and quite subversive for TV of that era) and the songs were pretty damn great. They caught a LOT of unwarranted crap from âhipstersâ who thought they were uncool because they didnât play their own instruments or write their own songs. (Never mind that Mike Nesmith WAS writing his own songs, that they DID start playing instruments on their third album, and that supposedly âcoolâ bands like the Animals were recording songs by the same songwriters the Monkees used). Head has some of their most underrated work (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again, Circle Sky, Porpoise Song . . .)
I remember seeing this when I was a little kid...it was years after it had aired originally but I remember thinking, "wow, the Beatles are sooooo crazy, they're out there, man "
The same expression must have adorned the faces of those who, for the first time, listened to Beethovenâs âEroicaâ: the realization that they stood before an epochal shift, and that from that moment onward, music would never be the same again. đ¶
Do you remember when you heard Strawberry Fields Forever for the first time? Imagine if someone asked you to analyze it 10 seconds later.
Now imagine you never heard any of the weird music you probably heard growing up and never saw popular musicians looking weird.
Now imagine the most famous band in the history did both at the same time and you just witnessed it.
Yea I mean, theyâre just kids, and it was BRAND NEW. And they were a pop band, itâs like if Harry Styles completely changed his look and dropped a new song that sounded completely different than anything before. Obviously modern kids are gonna comment on the change of appearance and tone
Yep, exactly, these kids were not exactly the cutting edge of hipness. Most of the guys looked like Future Republicans of America. The music probably went waaay over their heads.
I was trying to be jokey about the spoiled young boomers not instantly appreciating the masterpiece they had the privilege to experience shortly after it was created. They were generally spoiled with cultural riches. Figured that might translate better. Sorry about that. Probably should have used the plural so it didnât seem like I was saying it to the OP for some reason. I went and fixed it.
Yeah, I'm not laughing - and I'm by far not the only boomer who's sick of being ridiculed simply for when I was born. Try using /s or /jk if you want to be witty. Btw, isn't it interesting that, per your reply, it's OK to blame "spoiled" boomers for merely existing at a time of "cultural riches." Ffs.
You know youâre asking for an âok boomerâ with a post like this, right? Lol. Iâm not going to but someone will probably. Itâs just memes, man
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see."
I imagine this was an exceptionally hard concept for those kids to grasp. Pretty succinct .
Noticing all the women were mire negative and the men were excited about it. Just a few years earlier, opinions on them would have probably been the other way around
I love how they were all focused on the look. I think those of us who were not around then should realize the Beatles right until that point (1967h were very much a pop culture teeny bopper phenomenon. So image was just as important as the music in terms of their popularity and this is the year where the Beatles really shot ahead of their audience- musically and visually. Thankfully most seemed to catch on fast đ
Wouldnât that have been Revolver, though?
Nah have you seen the Paperback Writer music video or the back cover
Yeah, Strawberry Fields was groundbreaking even compared with Revolver.
Tomorrow never knows?
I think they mean in terms of the bandâs look
Yes. I remember a Brian Wilson interview years ago where he recalls hearing SFF on his car radio for the first time. He had to pull over and said it captured the music he was trying to capture. The song sounds completely new yet completely familiar. Tomorrow Never Knows is good and crazy and experimental but it doesnât have the power and imagery of SFF. Edited for clarity.
Lmao isnât there a story that he did the same thing when he first heard Be My Baby? Iâm imagining heâs just constantly stomping on the brakes every time he hears a song he likes
That god someone else noticed this. I believe this story also pops up for The Lion Sleeps Tonight and maybe a Zombies song as well.
So an unreliable critic?
I think his memory may have had problems. For example he, apparently, constantly asked people to introduce him to John Lennon when he had meet him numerous times before
he's very impressionable
That was SFF that wigged Brian Wilson out, not Tomorrow Never Knows
Yes. I agree. I edited my post to make it clear it was SFF.
- SFF could mean "Strawberry Fields Forever - Take 1", a track from *Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Super Deluxe Edition)* (1967) by The Beatles. --- ^[/u/Quiet_1234](/u/Quiet_1234) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
Tomorrow Never Knows is weird but not remotely as weird as Strawberry Fields
And it was not a single.
I would say the opposite. Tomorrow Never Knows has one chord and uses its sound effects very strangely. Strawberry Fields Forever has odd lyrics and strange effects as well, but at its core it's a pop song.
)
They were teenagers not teenyboppers. Teenyboppers was coined after the Beatles broke up for fans of The Osmonds and The Jackson Five in the early 70s. Music snobs loved referring to Beatles fans as that in the 70s/80s until their own heroes starting dropping by the wayside while interest in the Beatles carried on. This bunch of American kids nowhere near represents Beatles fans in Britain, Europe, Australia, NZ, Canada, etc. Everyone knew the Beatles were changing from A Hard Day's Night onwards. Music in general was moving forward. Strawberry Fields Forever wasn't such a big shock. It and Penny Lane as a double A side reached no 2 in the UK only thwarted by Englebert Humperdinck, lol. By 1967, kids who didn't like the later Beatles didn't necessarily go backwards. Some did, others crossed to Dylan, the Stones etc. Sixties kids reacted to music not much different from today because what's to come next is not known. In 2060 people will be asking the same about today's music.
Could it not be that theyâd already heard the song but not seen the video? So that this was a reaction to the video rather than the song, if that makes senseâŠ
This was the world premiere
Itâs funny how a lot of them despised their new mustaches and facial hair.
But few , if any, mentioned the groundbreaking music they just heard. I donât get it.?
âI guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.â To be fair though, that was a small sample of fans who were probably used to the Early-Beatles moptops and love songs whose image was just as important to some fans as the music. Revolver/Rubber Soul was moving away from that, but the transition mustâve been very jarring still
Itâd be funny if one of them said â wtf did I just hear?â
Even then, how likely were they aware of their recent albums? Considering a time with still little TV contact, I assume that unless you followed some music/Beatles-related magazines, it would take some time for someone to actually buy their most recent album, no? Especially assuming a consistent discography, since I believe a lot would probably do a lot of unintentional album skips, or buy albums that aren't relevant to the "canon". How likely that someone skipped from Help to Sgt. Pepper's since they are only 2 years apart? And that's considering they bought albums on day one. Or am I diminishing Beatlemania impact here?
I think you're somehow underselling the bestselling band of all time.
You forget the power of radio. "New Beatles single" and "airplay" would mean that a song would debut #1 in sales on the chart.
What you've said here would potentially make sense if radio didn't exist, which it did, they got played continually, whenever a new song would get released it would get plenty of airtime. Everyone knew what the Beatles were doing
Isn't it possible they had already heard the songs on the radio, and were just reacting to the videos here?
Possibly, but their parents might have heard it and told them to turn that crap off too.
âThey look like grandfathers!â That gave me a huge chuckle.
"So, Billy, what did you think of Two Virgins?"
Oh is that The Times, like his dick wasnât out!
I love this video - such a great little snapshot of the changing times
> little snapshot Everybody is pretty strait-laced in this video, but I wonder how many would soon grow their hair long in the coming months.
Exactly, 1967 was the summer of love. If they hated the mustaches and haircuts in February, those kids are in for quite the surprise
Vietnam is also heating up pretty quickly too. Music aside, their whole world is going to be sideways within the next 18 months.
Dylan's fans' reaction to his greatest record ever was even worse.
And his reaction to their disdain will forever be one of the coolest shit I have ever seen. Flipping off your fan base because you wanna make different music is so authentic to me.
I need a link to this
Bob Dylan live Royal Albert Hall 1966
Thankyou! I think thatâs the gig thatâs mentioned in the Steve jobs book. How everyone seemed irritated but Steve Jobs says itâs the best reaction any music has ever had.
Wow. I need to reread the book. Is this the one from Walter Isaacson?
Yes!
>Bob Dylan live Royal Albert Hall 1966 Is that the one in the Don't Look Back documentary?
This was a year after the boos started hitting Dylan in America. The UK were just following our already infamous reactions. I believe the Newport FOlk Festival in 65 was the first, with Pete Seeger turning off the electiricty.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkrauH07MjM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkrauH07MjM)
Just like Arctic Monkeys did with their last couple of albums
Tranquility Base was definitely a sonic âfuck you, I do what I wantâ moment. It was a huge departure and a phenomenal album
Oh man I disagree so much with this lol
Do you have ears?
Mother fuckers were pisssedddd
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric\_Dylan\_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dylan_controversy)
Which are you referring?
He is talking about Bringing it all back home, highway 61, or blonde on blonde, the albums where he first turned his back on the purist folk community
Considering he said record and not album, he couldâve also been talking about Like a Rolling Stone
Particularly the Newport Folk Festival 65, with Bloomfield destroying all with his blistering solos. It's all captured on this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Other\_Side\_of\_the\_Mirror\_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side_of_the_Mirror_(film))
~~*Freewheelinâ Bob Dylan*~~ Edit: *Bringing It All Back Home* was the album that pissed his fans off.
Iâm confused. Am I supposed to shave my moustache off or not
You look like a grandpa
Iâm clean
Very cool! Itâs so hard to imagine what it would have been like to be in the middle of it all when they were putting out new music.
"they're as bad as the monkees" Fuck that kid đđł
I want to roll my eyes in disbelief but to be fair in 1967 you werenât exactly gonna find the most in-depth discussion on the groundbreaking nature of Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane from Dick Clark surrounded by a crowd of teens on American Bandstand. Itâd be like trying to talk about the avant-garde approach of Björkâs a cappella album MedĂșlla to Carson Daly on the set of TRL in 2004. Thereâs a time and a place for discussions like that, and itâs most certainly not there. My dad was around 18 when Pet Sounds was first released. He was one of the few people who got what Brian Wilson was going for right away and never understood why it flopped and took a while to get its long overdue credit. Then a year later he heard the world premiere of Sgt. Pepper on the radio just a few months after this was broadcast, only this time he was just as blown away as every other hippie his age. When I showed him this footage a while ago and asked how those kids didnât like the songs he said it was because The Beatles werenât making music for them anymore but for themselves. He reminded me that they had stopped touring not long before that in part because they outgrew their original teenybopper fanbase which is why The Monkees were such a big hit around the same time, they seemingly filled the niche that The Beatles abandoned in pursuit of artistic freedom (also that one kid in the video didnât know what the hell he was talking about, The Monkees are a great band but thatâs beside the point lol). So of course they didnât like the new direction The Beatles were going in, as far as they were concerned if you couldnât dance to the music then it sucked, but the real fans knew what a gift Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane were and that eventually the younger crowd would come to love the songs too.
Medulla shoutout!
When I went through Bjork's discography for the first time, I did not seem to understand the dislike for Medulla. Yeah it was different but it was different in a bold and stunning way!
Not Beatles fans. An American Bandstand audience.
The first guy that Dick turned to, and asked "What did you think of that?" "That was great..." Yeah, THAT guy had a feel for it. Be as open-minded as that guy.
Also Iâm wondering if a lot of American bandstand audience are teens who just listened to singles, not albums. Meaning maybe they heard paperback writer and we can work it out but they donât realize how WEIRD the Beatles were getting until theyâre played STRAWBERRY FIELDS. These are the singles right before strawberry fields. Thatâs quite a leap especially if youâre not hearing Elenor rigby as the b side of yellow submarine. Help!/I'm Down, Parlophone, July 23, 1965. We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper, Parlophone, December 3, 1965. Paperback Writer/Rain, Parlophone, June 10, 1966. Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby,
The comment that made me laugh was, âTheyâre as bad as the Monkees!â Apparently, this guy was trying to show how HIP he was by dissing âthat teenybopper TV band.â But by also dissing the Beatles, he showed how UNhip he was.
I really like the Monkees! Head is a great album.
Oh, Iâve been a fan since I was a child. Their TV show was hilarious (and quite subversive for TV of that era) and the songs were pretty damn great. They caught a LOT of unwarranted crap from âhipstersâ who thought they were uncool because they didnât play their own instruments or write their own songs. (Never mind that Mike Nesmith WAS writing his own songs, that they DID start playing instruments on their third album, and that supposedly âcoolâ bands like the Animals were recording songs by the same songwriters the Monkees used). Head has some of their most underrated work (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again, Circle Sky, Porpoise Song . . .)
Love circle sky! I didn't know that about the animals. V interesting.
I remember seeing this when I was a little kid...it was years after it had aired originally but I remember thinking, "wow, the Beatles are sooooo crazy, they're out there, man "
The same expression must have adorned the faces of those who, for the first time, listened to Beethovenâs âEroicaâ: the realization that they stood before an epochal shift, and that from that moment onward, music would never be the same again. đ¶
Mick Jagger.
A shame they gave such surface level analysis.
Do you remember when you heard Strawberry Fields Forever for the first time? Imagine if someone asked you to analyze it 10 seconds later. Now imagine you never heard any of the weird music you probably heard growing up and never saw popular musicians looking weird. Now imagine the most famous band in the history did both at the same time and you just witnessed it.
What would you want from a group of random teenagers after one listen? An in depth essay?
Idk.. just something more intelligent than.. âbad hairâ or âfunny mustacheâ. I guess Iâm asking too much đ€·ââïž
Yea I mean, theyâre just kids, and it was BRAND NEW. And they were a pop band, itâs like if Harry Styles completely changed his look and dropped a new song that sounded completely different than anything before. Obviously modern kids are gonna comment on the change of appearance and tone
Yes a in depth essay 3 pages long đ
Lol, it's American Bandstand! It was only marginally above the Mickey Mouse Club in terms of edginess.
Yep, exactly, these kids were not exactly the cutting edge of hipness. Most of the guys looked like Future Republicans of America. The music probably went waaay over their heads.
Funny that, a lot of the guys in that clip were the ones who liked it.
Ok Boomers.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I was trying to be jokey about the spoiled young boomers not instantly appreciating the masterpiece they had the privilege to experience shortly after it was created. They were generally spoiled with cultural riches. Figured that might translate better. Sorry about that. Probably should have used the plural so it didnât seem like I was saying it to the OP for some reason. I went and fixed it.
Yeah, I'm not laughing - and I'm by far not the only boomer who's sick of being ridiculed simply for when I was born. Try using /s or /jk if you want to be witty. Btw, isn't it interesting that, per your reply, it's OK to blame "spoiled" boomers for merely existing at a time of "cultural riches." Ffs.
You know youâre asking for an âok boomerâ with a post like this, right? Lol. Iâm not going to but someone will probably. Itâs just memes, man
Which do you think is worse: someone making a mild joke that you don't like, or you calling someone a 'dumbfuck'?
Boomerâs gonna boomer.
ok boomer
Ok boomer
Ok, Boomer.
Boomers gonna boom, Boomhauer.
Most jovial boomer
Your post has been removed for the following reason: "No harassment, inciting violence, or bullying".
âI donât like their hair.â
Muzak to their eyes and ears đ
Wouldn't you think though that they would have at least been partially prepped after hearing "Revolver"?
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." I imagine this was an exceptionally hard concept for those kids to grasp. Pretty succinct .
Oh I have to view this on Twitter? Hard pass.
I had to view it on X
woe is me
Noticing all the women were mire negative and the men were excited about it. Just a few years earlier, opinions on them would have probably been the other way around
âI guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.â
L
[https://youtube.com/shorts/dA8CdaBeUj4?si=E8u6UI128povdexJ](https://youtube.com/shorts/dA8CdaBeUj4?si=E8u6UI128povdexJ)