For me, the Beatles' career bookended my teen years. Since then, I've often wondered why the Beatles were so much a part of the DNA of our generation – the next several generations, in fact. We had the requisite Beatle hair cut, with bangs. Our repertoire included some pop tunes and, of course, several Beatles songs. Borrowing amplifiers from classmates, we played for a few class functions and once for the entire school in the gymnasium. Jon played lead on his new Fender Jazzmaster. He told me that he had been in a group back home and how at one of their shows a girl had jumped up and touched his guitar. Even though we were only in our mid-teens, Jon and I had decided to form a band that year at the private school we attended in the Midwest. The Beatles have never quite left me since that night. Eleven days later, they played their last public concert, in San Francisco, and retired from touring to focus on recording. It turns out we caught the caboose of Beatle mania. After finishing the last of 11 songs – "Long Tall Sally" – the Fab Four waved, jumped in their limos, and drove into the night. Harrison's guitar work on his sunburst Epiphone Casino offered beautiful embroidery to "Day Tripper" and "Nowhere Man." Ringo nailed each song with his rock-steady beat.Īlas, our show lasted a mere 35 minutes. The vocal harmony of Lennon's baritone and McCartney's tenor has never ceased to amaze me. By the fourth song, the girls had exhausted themselves and the squeals subsided. My first thought: I am going to master the guitar. She never took her eyes off the Beatles as she dictated instructions. The girl next to me held out a camera and asked, screaming, if I would stand on my chair and take a picture of the stage.
Those proved to be the operative words of the evening – if only we could hear. John Lennon belted out the first lyrics – "Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music." – sending the place into controlled pandemonium. Jon, his dad, and I stood surrounded in the center section, perhaps 225 feet from the stage, like the silent nucleus of an atomic mob. If you've never heard 15,000 teenage girls (give or take a few thousand) shriek, you've missed one of life's phenomena. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were in the house. Warm-up acts – the Remains, Bobby Hebb, the Cyrkle, and the Ronettes – drew appreciative applause, but the evening began when the crowd caught sight of a line of black limousines making its way down the track toward the stage.
The crowd of 25,000 sat facing a small wood-frame stage set up on the dirt raceway. 18, 1966, to be exact – a warm summer evening that crackled with excitement as my best friend's dad, a prominent Boston lawyer wanting to experience his son's Beatle mania firsthand, drove the three of us to Suffolk Downs racetrack.
It was 40 years ago today that Sergeant Pepper came to Boston to play.