Don't hurt me, Ms. Crawford!!

Thanks for your interest in my 60s project. My goal is to make it entertaining enough that even if you didn't grow up in the 60s or were even alive in the 60s (or were alive in the 60s but not alive now) you'll find it fun reading. Here's the next installment. I may actually write more of them after this. Not this week 'cause I'm too consumed with the Christie Brinkley trial (my thoughts on that tomorrow) but soon.
The next day at school every boy tried to wear his hair like a Beatle. It wasn’t easy to do since we all had crewcuts. Combing it down over our foreheads we looked more like Julius Caesar than Paul McCartney.

The girls meanwhile, were practically walking into walls. They all had this dazed lovesick expression, which is great when it’s because of you but nauseating when it’s not. For all of us adolescent males with exploding hormones, the message was clear:

If you want to get girls, be a rock star.

I think that afternoon every cheap guitar in America was purchased along with every “How to” book and piece of Beatles sheet music. I imagine some guys were so obsessed they began German lessons.

The Beach Boys still had their staunch following – usually the tan blond great looking athletic types who knew at the end of the day it wasn’t talent that won over girls, it was how you looked with your shirt off. I was 6’, having grown an entire foot in a year, and weighed 130 pounds. In a bathing suit I looked like a Q-tip with eyes, so siding with the surfing camp was not an option.

I didn’t want to expend the time, effort, and money required to buy and learn how to play guitar but fortunately I found an easier, cheaper, and faster way to achieve the same ultimate goal. I bought a five-dollar harmonica.

John Lennon had played harmonica on “Love Me Do”. If was an official legitimate Beatles instrument. And it came with a three-page booklet teaching you how to use it. Forget that the instructions were in Japanese.

So like an idiot I would come home from school, lock myself in my room, and blow into this crappy piece of tin until I had a hernia. Little did I realize that even Polka bands were not interested in adding a harmonica player.

The Beatles appeared on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW again the next week (February 16th) but this time instead of playing to frenzied teenage girls in New York, they performed in Miami Beach for old Jews. The electricity just wasn’t the same playing to codgers in leisure suits with hearing aids who generally show their appreciation by clicking spoons. Charlie Brill & Mitzi McCall received a better ovation.

The following week they were on SULLIVAN again but this was a performance taped before their first appearance so there wasn’t that live “event” status that made their debut so memorable. Only ten million girls had their first orgasm as opposed to forty.

So where were the Beatles when that pre-recorded performance aired on February 23rd? Actually back in England I just learned. But at the time I thought they were right here in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. But where in Los Angeles? That was the big question.

Like kids everywhere, we followed the group’s U.S. exploits through the radio. Every Top 40 station in the country covered it, and every one seemed to have one d.j. who crowned himself “the fifth Beatle”. Yeah, like the Beatles are going to let only one person enter their exclusive inner circle and it’s going to be some pimple cream huckster from Modesto. Murray the K. Kaufman in New York was the most outspoken “fifth Beatle” but in Los Angeles it was Dave “the Hullabalooer” Hull. Dave did afternoons on KFWB’s chief rival, KRLA. He led his audience to believe that he and the boys were thick as thieves. If Dave needed a kidney, George Harrison would insist he take his.

So anyway, according to the Dave, the Beatles were holed up in a secluded mansion somewhere in Bel Air (Blue Jay Way??). I’m sure after his show Dave was going to go up there and maybe flip some burgers for the guys, unless the “fifth Beatle” from Kalamazoo got there first.

One day after school I visited a friend, Bobby Kaye, who lived in Bel Air and he had heard that the Beatles were staying with Capitol Records President, Alan Livingston, whose estate was right up the street. “Great!” I said, “Let’s go up there and meet ‘em.” Hey, we could always just say Dave sent us. So off we hiked up to Livingston’s house.

There was one tiny detail we had overlooked in our zeal. Bobby wasn’t exactly sure which house was Livingston’s. He knew it was one of like four but couldn’t say for sure which one. Swell! We’re going to pick the wrong place and Joan Crawford is going to beat the shit out of us with wire hangers.

We decided to go around to the back, climb fences, scope out backyards and try to surmise which was Location X. Maybe we’d get lucky and spot the Beatles catching some rays or playing Marco Polo in the pool with Elvis. We were such morons.

Our search ended when the Bel Air patrol arrived and threatened to arrest us for trespassing. Or let Joan Crawford go medieval on our asses.

So I never saw the Beatles that day. In later years I did meet John Lennon, passed George Harrison on the street once, and Ringo almost hit me with his car.

But by then they were just people.