Neil Wynn – Fifty Years Ago Today

Fifty Years Ago Today

…I was sitting on a bus going to school in Edinburgh and my pals Tumsh (a Scottish thing – Turnbull!) and Ginge were talking about this record they had heard by a group with the strange name, the Beatles. the record was ‘Love Me Do’ not a number one hit, but the begining of a significant shift in popular music. What was it about the song, and the others that followed, that caught on? Was it the interesting harmonica opening, the bass line? the Everlys’ type harmony buit with a different accent? Or was it the strange mixture of black American music with British skiffle/rythm n’ blues styles? Whatever, it was, it had an enromous impact on a generation and was quickly followed by the emergence of other groups with the Liverpool sound (Mersey Beat), then as rhythm and blues spread from the Rolling Stones to the Animals (and even to a little known group called Tiny and the Titans in Edinburgh), African American-based music was re-discovered and exported back across the Atlantic. This didn’t begin with the Beatles, but they certainly took it to a new level. Who would have thought for example, that the words of another Beatles’ song, “When I get older losing my hair, Many years from now”, would have such resonance to those who were riding the buses in 1962?? Just doesn’t seem that long ago ….