For the children in the audience . . . .
I was 12 years old and attending elementary school in Beaumont, Texas. Remember this is a much smaller world: Three TV stations, AM-only Top 40 radio, even a long distance phone call was a big deal. Satellite communication was an adolescent technology, we're even a few years before eight tracks.
Yet we all KNEW the day this record was coming out. We did not know what it was going to be, but something BIG was coming, I could just feel it. It was foreshadowed by two singles that sure didn't sound like 'I Saw Her Standing There': 'Penny Lane', shot through with its inherent 'Paul-ness', but deep in found sounds and imagery, and John's 'I Am the Walrus', a swirling dose of 'what the hell was that?', the obvious settlement of a lot of arrangement hammering between John and George Martin. Certainly different, but fine. In a way though, you could see them going in a different direction through 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver', as well.
Her mother bought it (The first day it was available) while we were at school, went straight to her house from school and here's this album cover with them in mustaches and satin military band outfits. ? . ? And the rest of the people in the cover montage . . . Ripped it open, played it through, and was dumbstruck. Godsmacked. My world changed sitting in her room listening to that record.
At a time when they owned the world, it would have been real easy to play it safe. Even easier to aim for something different and come back with something way too experimental that nobody got or liked, like a lot of their later solo projects. For them to walk into the void, come out with that, was/is a work of spontaneous genius and huge courage I've never seen matched before or since. EVERYTHING was different after that one.
But you know . . . I've always wished for an alarm clock that would BLAST 'Good Morning, Good Morning!' to wake me up every day.
J o e y
