Nineteen sixty-four was quite the year for me. Sixty years ago this year. The Sixties reached their peak for the time being, The Beatles came to the Netherlands, and The Rolling Stones. How did I, then eighteen years old, experience that period? In a series of stories I reflect on large and small things that stirred the homeland at the time. Part 6: Listening to ‘With The Beatles’ in a stuffy cabin with the partner in my record marriage.
Sixty years after With The Beatles. That beautiful cover, and the opening song did the rest
By Martin Rep
In a few weeks we were going to see The Beatles, and we didn’t even know all the songs from their new record. We now absolutely had to get the LP With The Beatles to buy. It had to be done, even though an LP was very expensive, as much as eighteen guilders; if you wanted the stereo version, even twenty-one guilders, but who had a stereo system?
Bee Please Please Me, The Beatles’ first LP, we had gone about it a bit wrong. We had bought separate EPs containing songs from that record. An EP (extended play) had the same size as a single and was also played at 45 rpm, but instead of one song per side, it usually contained two. Such an EPEE only cost 6.25 guilders, far below the eighteen guilders for an LP.
But it had become a mess. For example, I had the EPEE Twist and Shout purchased, with four issues of Please Please Me. Twist and Shout had been in the English Top Twenty as an EP and had even reached fourth place, which was unique. My friend Rob Berghege had bought another EPEE in the Bijenkorf in Amsterdam, a German pressing with I Saw Her Standing There and three more tracks from the LP. He also already had the hit single From Me To Youbut then another EP with songs from Please Please Me popped up, All My Loving, we did some careful calculations and discovered that the LP would have been cheaper. It’s stupid that we hadn’t thought of that before.
The Beatles in the Netherlands
And now The Beatles came to the Netherlands. How did we get tickets for their performance? I didn’t write it down anywhere and I don’t remember it. Perhaps at the ‘well-known addresses’ where you bought tickets for ZFC or Ajax matches in the 1960s, lottery tickets for the Staatsloterij and handed in your completed football lottery form. The ‘well-known addresses’ were usually cigar shops. You had to go there yourself and pay in cash. Ordering by telephone and then paying by giro, that didn’t exist yet.
The two performances by The Beatles were advertised on Radio Veronica. These were to take place on Saturday, June 6, 1964 in the auction hall ‘Op Hoop van Zegen’ in Blokker, where concerts were often given. The stage and stands consisted of empty auction boxes, so that a blind horse could not do any harm.
Anyway. So we had tickets, Rob and I. By the way, I didn’t keep those tickets, I certainly threw them away immediately after the performance – how stupid can a person be. Now that LP With The Beatles yet. We had heard most of the songs, but by no means all, on the radio. With The Beatles had even managed to get into the Top Twenty of Radio Luxembourg around Christmas last year, just among the hit singles, an LP had never done something like this before.
With The Beatles had been out for almost six months when Rob and I walked onto the Gedempte Gracht in Zaandam on a Saturday afternoon in May 1964 on the way to our favorite record store. We had a record marriage. One didn’t buy a record without knowing the other in it. That record marriage was born out of necessity. Records were expensive, and besides, only the Berghege family had a record player. In our home there was no willingness to spend the 155 guilders needed to purchase a Philips record player AG4356 ‘Cocktail’ with a speaker in the lid, which was in the back room of the Berghege family. After all, you could hear music for free on the radio. My counterargument that good music was only played there once a week (Herman Stok on Saturday afternoon, with Tijd Voor Teenagers) carried no weight.
A cabin of one m2
Mr. Koopman nodded kindly to us as we walked into the store. It was already busy in his shop, the listening bar was full of young people pressing earphones to their heads to listen to records. The shop girls were busy putting and turning the records on the turntables. But we came today for the better work. In the bins that were set up in the store, we quickly found The Beatles under the B, and there were actually three copies of them With The Beatles.
I examined the covers critically. I had never seen such a beautiful record cover: a black-and-white photo of four half-exposed faces against a black background. I selected the most beautiful of the three and presented it to Koopman. “We would like to hear this.” You had to listen to a single for 3.45 guilders through earphones, but for such an expensive LP you could use one of the sound booths in the store.
We barely fit into the cabin, which was just over a square meter in size. Koopman preceded us. In my opinion, he pulled the record out of the sleeve a little too carelessly, he folded the sleeve half open to do so. Fortunately, his fingers did not touch the surface of the record as he carefully placed it down and lowered the needle onto it.
He closed the door.
At the same moment I was completely blown away. I wanted to pack the LP right away and take it with me.
We already knew several songs from the album. All My Loving was played a lot on the radio. Roll Over Beethoven we knew from Chuck Berry, I had heard the much better version of The Beatles a few times on Radio Luxembourg. But we didn’t know number 1 from side 1. I will never forget those first seconds, in that stuffy cabin at the Koopman music store on the Gedempte Gracht in Zaandam. It was as if the Merseybeat from Liverpool came rushing straight into this dull shopping street. It Won’t Be Long boomed from the speakers above our heads, from second to zero: the singing and counter-singing of John and Paul, the guitars, the drums. A stunning song full of energy. What the hell was this?
It won’t be long, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah! It won’t be long, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah! It won’t be long, yeah yeah, until I belong to you…
It Won’t Be Long has forever remained one of my favorite Beatle songs since this moment on this afternoon in 1964. My decision was already made at that moment: I would soon hand over those eighteen guilders to Mr. Koopman. I didn’t let the next song fool me, All I’ve Got To Do. Not everything The Beatles do is equally good, I thought at the time. “We can actually skip this one,” said Rob. We had lit a cigarette, there was an ashtray in the cabin. But touching the record, let alone operating the arm of the record player to skip this song, was not allowed. Luckily it only lasted a good two minutes.
Don’t turn around yourself!
Number three: All My Loving. A well-known song, one of the most played from the LP; it would enter the Top 10 of Tijd voor Teenagers that month. Nice song, we thought, well put together. Than Don’t bother me – George Harrison’s own composition for the first time. The lyrics appealed to me: a boy who has lost his sweetheart and doesn’t want to know anything about another girl who insists: ‘don’t bother me’. George emerged as a cynical yet vulnerable soul.
Little Child – sounded good, with nice outbursts on harmonica. Definitely John Lennon. Rob and I looked at each other and nodded. We had more trouble with the next song. Till There Was You. A dull love song that we think had nothing to do with The Beatles. Get rid of it, the next one was a lot better: Please Mr. Postman. Nice soul, singing from the back of the throat.
Then: silence. The needle stuttered a few times, it was the end of side 1.
There was no way we were allowed to turn the plate ourselves, but before we could open the door, Mr. Koopman pulled it open. He already knew that we would walk out the door with his record.
Number 1 of side 2. Roll Over Beethoven. Fantastic, we already knew this song. From interviews with The Beatles we had already understood that the American black rocker Chuck Berry was an important source of inspiration for them. We already knew him as the composer of Brown Eyed Handsome Man by Buddy Holly, which had only recently reached the English Top Twenty. Great to hear this performed by George Harrison, in duet with – himself? That was special.
Hold Me Tight. Ah, nice again. “Looks like a sequel to It Won’t Be Long,” said Rob. I completely agreed with him. Same stormy entrance. The next song, You Really Got a Hold on Mewe found another song to skip.
Just like the following: I Wanna Be Your Man. We knew that from The Rolling Stones and of course we knew that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had written it for them. But if we had thought that The Beatles would perform their own song better than The Stones, we would have been disappointed. What a crappy, tame song. Ringo Starr, who sang this song, was not our favorite Beatle anyway, but they should not have put this on the record at all. With The Stones, Brian Jones’ guitar rips straight through the speakers, here it became a weak B-side.
Devil In Her Hearta nice song with singing and counter singing, George on one side and John and Paul on the other. Not A Second Time… Meh, the album goes to a bit of a weak end.
But then, fortunately: Money (That’s What I Want). A real American rocker, just as thunderous a bouncer as Twist And Shout that had been from their first LP.
Eight original songs, six covers. Nine excellent songs, five clearly inferior ones. But I didn’t do those kinds of statistics. What was good was so incredibly beautiful that it didn’t matter that there were less good songs on it. Whatever the outcome, it didn’t matter.
Sticker
I checked to see if Koopman had not made a crease in the sleeve when he took the record out. Luckily that wasn’t too bad. I would carefully scrape off the Muziekhandel Koopman sticker on the back of the cover at home with a razor blade.
Sixty years later I still own the LP, as well as a remastered edition on CD. I listened to the vinyl version as well as the CD a few times before writing this review after sixty years. It is not The Beatles’ very best LP, but what dynamics, what energy. A love forever.
Previous episodes:
Also read what we wrote on De Orkaan in November 2018 about the Zaanse pop history: 3.95 for a single…
By means of Martin Rep.
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