A Good Day's Night

It's July 6. It's the 187th day of the year.

On this day in history, the first All-Star game was played in Chicago. Babe Ruth (who else?) hit the first home run in All-Star history.

Anne Frank in her family went into hiding in 1942.

The Hartford circus fire killed over 160 people in 1944.

Althea Gibson became the first black athlete to win Wimbledon in 1957.

And John Winston Lennon, playing in a skiffle band called The Quarrymen (or Quarry Men) at a church fete at St Peter's Church, Woolton, Liverpool, met James Paul McCartney.

The world had no idea, but music changed forever.

A mutual friend -- "called" (so British to say that) Ivan Vaughan -- introduced to the musicians.

According to The Beatles Bible:

"The pair chatted for a few minutes, and McCartney showed Lennon how to tune a guitar – the instruments owned by Lennon and Griffiths were in G banjo tuning. McCartney then sang Eddie Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock" and Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula," along with a medley of songs by Little Richard."

Each one was impressed with the other, and roughly two weeks later, McCartney joined The Quarrymen. Lennon and McCartney (hey, that sounds good like that) soon began writing music together. George Harrison joined the Quarrymen on February 6, 1958, after auditioning for Lennon by playing a song called "Raunchy."

Soon, Johnny and the Moondogs (as they were known) would add Stuart Sutcliffe and, later, Pete Best and go through a few name revisions before settling on The Beatles.

The last piece would be adding Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr, on August 18, 1962. Starr was a well-regarded Liverpool-based drummer from Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. They guys knew them from their travels around Hamburg, Germany.

Beatlemania was now building and would explode with the sonic boom on February 9, 1964, on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Pop culture had forever changed.

But that's not all that happened on July 6. Exactly seven years after Lennon met McCartney, and only five months after "Sullivan," the premiere of A Hard Day's Night was held at the Pavilion Theatre in London.

It is not unfair to say that no better musical or music-based movie has ever been made. It is on many "best of" lists, including topping Rotten Tomatoes' list of the Top Ten Certified Fresh Musicals.

From a personal perspective, the opening credits are enough to evoke stroke emotions of pure joy.

 

A favorite scene is where we first meet Paul's grandfather (who is "very clean").



The line of being "very clean" was an inside joke regarding Wilfrid Brambell, who played Paul's grandfather. Brambell was the co-star of a popular British TV show called Steptoe and Son, and his character -- Albert Steptoe -- was known as a "dirty old man."

More trivia: Steptoe and Son came to the United States in 1972 and became Sanford and Son with Red Foxx in the title role.

Another note: blink and you'll miss Phil Collins, pre-Genesis, as The Beatles perform on TV in the movie.

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I'll leave with one last thing. The movie debuted on American TV on October 24, 1967, on NBC. Those of us old enough to remember will tell you that NBC opened their programming with the famed peacock while an announcer intoned, "The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC."

Well that night, as I Dream of Jeannie and The Jerry Lewis Show got the night off...



But it all started on this day in 1957.

P.S. Ringo celebrates his 79th birthday tomorrow and, away from The Beatles, the brilliant Joao Gilberto died today at the age of 88. Gilberto was known as "The Father of Bossa Nova."