Clash of the Titans

 

There’s the way I feel now about, say, the Beatles and the Beach Boys … in retrospect, can’t stand John Lennon’s manner and ideas, not so hot on Mike Love either … but that was not the case in the early 60s when we believed that there really were screaming hordes of young females mobbing them, out of their minds … at least far more than there were.

This is interesting, maybe a bit envious … which is silly really as the two bands were chalk and cheese …

Part one (1100)

The major thing I recall, particularly in summer, was that DJs were endlessly on about Elvis versus The Beatles and even as a kid, I was thinking … why? Why must there be some comparative clash thing? Even in comments under the youtube, commenters just had to form bleedin’ camps again, didn’t they? Always bleedin’ camps … why can’t people just appreciate both … or not.

Buddy Holly was another Titan, Dion, Eddy Cochrane had faded by then, Ricky Nelson made the girls swoon but not us. The rest of the “British Invasion” followed in the States … now here’s the thing … I wasn’t all that crazy for those plaintive voices such as Gerry Marsden, I liked Bus Stop and I’m Onto Something Good but there was a sameness to them, even Dave Clark … Spencer Davis’s singer was a bit different. Dave Dee, Dozy etc. … nice but there was a sameness.

Depends where you were at the time … my three places were mainly England, Oz, the US. In Oz, with its beach culture, summers were very much the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, The Ventures, the Tornadoes. England did not have that culture, it was seaside, amusement parlours, the piers … a bit different, musically. Put them all together and music was everywhere.

One song very special to me was I Wanna Hold Your Hand, plus Last Time … yes, the Stones were mega too … endless comparisons again on radio … which was “better” … I was sick of it then, I’m sick of it now.

Not much later, at the beach, my mate said this girl wants to ask you something about my boat. Girl? As in female? I’d forgotten what they were. Yeah, all right.

I was knocked out, that moment approached that evening … I really did ask do you wanna hold my hand and she said yes. Yes? To me? But she was a total honey. Became my sailing crewgirl.

There were so many great bands at the time, great songs.

Part two (1312)

Been off doing chores, came back and listened to Do It Again and I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

Now, not wishing to labour this too much, given that y’all have your own pasts, your own faves, plus much of mine would not make a lot of sense unless you knew my age and which country I was in at the time … I’ll still give it a try.

In primary school, we as boys were primarily into kicking balls around, being obnoxious spotty herberts etc. etc. … cheeky faces. Girls really were girls, a different species. What wrecked the scene from Grease where one set stood en masse in front of the other set, all posing and being cool … was that that had never been my set of experiences … my first gf was from 4 to 8 and so there was no great hunger that all the love songs went on about … I’d always had mates who were male, some who were female.

True, the females had some strange ideas of fun but basically, we were mates, plus I was never effeminate, I was a spotty herbert with grazed knees, into everything going. The girl was often quite feminine but I really liked her all the same. So I Wanna Hold Your Hand was really my growing up point where it did become needing more from her. Hence coming onto those two nineteen year olds on the overnight bus when I was fourteen, with not the slightest reticence.

The Beach Boys could not write any song without that girls motif and we knew all the songs by heart. Thus (see Wiki link), when Do It Again came out in 1968, it resonated in Britain, going n1 on the charts, not so in the States. The Beach Boys were stunned.

So, at a much later date (going coy here), during my decade and a half of flying London, LA, Melbourne every year, at one point, my American host and I were in Del Mar, just past Oceanside and he wanted a shot of me with those famous California girls. So there’s me in the beach shirt I’d borrowed from my Vancouver mate and mine host had coopted half a dozen California beach babes to surround me for the shot, not wearing a lot in their case. All one’s birthdays?

Listening to this again just now 👇🏻 brought it back … that California beach was almost a nostalgia trip, though in 1968 it was within the songs alone, wasn’t it, how many thousands of miles away?

And in the past ten minutes now, a girl from t’other side of the country and another from Germany have just written while I was listening to Do It Again.