The beats of different drummers
1962-1963
In this episode we talk about some of the confident eccentrics who influenced the Beatles, fellow travelers who marched to the beats of different drummers.
The Beatles were quite busy in the winter of 1962/63, as we’ve talked about before. A Pair of two-week stints in Hamburg, radio and television appearances, recording sessions, ‘Love Me Do’ rising in the charts. And as the winter turned into the Big Freeze, called the worst winter weather since 1739, there was more than just the beginnings of ‘Beatlemania’ happening in the UK.
The other side of the Big Freeze would bring with it a flowering of modern culture. Women wore shorter skirts and mod hairstyles. The Profumo Affair scandalized an already weak establishment. A decade-plus of Tory government would be ending. Fashion, scandal, and the pill were turning the UK into something different. The Beatles would be a large part of the transition.
Links
Little Richard’s in the kitchen, playing spoons and plates. He's telling the waitress he’s great!
Anticyclonic weather conditions
A Social History of Early Rock N' Roll in Germany Hamburg From Burlesque To The Beatles, 1956-69 PDF
We are the Mods’: A Transnational History of a Youth Culture
1963: from the Stones to Dr Strangelove, a year of social and cultural upheaval
Juliet Nicolson: Frostquake (1963)
November 1962 in Hamburg: Little Richard, Astrid Kirchherr, the Beatles
