Traveling with the band that changed the course of popular music forever on their 1964 North American tour is the focus of Ventura author Ivor Davis’ book “The Beatles and Me On Tour”.
A noted entertainment journalist and columnist, Davis will give a talk and sign his recently released book on Tuesday, October 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Blanchard Community Library.
The library is going all out for Davis’ appearance in the 50th anniversary year that The Beatles first took the nation by storm and Beatlemania became part of the American vernacular. A Beatles stand-up will be displayed for posing for a fun photo opportunity and there will be other surprises including Xavier “Big X” Montes and his Strings students playing Beatles tunes.
Davis will talk about his experiences as he traveled with the “Fab Four” during their 1964 tour of North America, a series of concerts and appearances that stunned - and in some quarters alarmed - the already turbulent nation.
With John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, The Beatles became widely regarded as the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, although their first American monster hit was “I Want To Hold Your Hand” an ode to innocent love.
The Beatles were more than a band: they were the makers of memories.
“I remember hearing my little baby brother humming Hey Jude in his crib in the next room,” said Barbara Kroon of Santa Paula, who admitted that she thought she lived on “Penny Lane” and that the park next to her home was called “Strawberry Fields.”
Kroon’s love of the band’s music led her to select “All You Need is Love” as the theme of her multiple terms as president of Soroptimist International of Santa Paula.
“I remember being allowed to go to the theater for the first time with my older brothers and sister to see Yellow Submarine,” only Kroon noted, “because it was the Beatles!”
Children’s/Young Adult Librarian Ilene Gavenman agrees: “I loved the Beatles and still do! I was eight when the Beatles made their debut and I remember listening to their music on the radio in our kitchen and the tremendous thrill of watching them play on Ed Sullivan.”
She grew up in a kid-heavy neighborhood where they “played Beatles records night and day, sometimes loud enough to hear out in the street where we played badminton and sang along with our favorites, sometimes softly when we played card games in each other’s rooms and discussed the pressing matters of the day.”
One such pressing matter was the formation of a Beatles club by friends who were a bit older.
Said Gavenman, “I was George and I still have my original Beatle doll and pin of George,” as well as Beatles trading cards and albums.
The trading cards were taped to the wall, “so I could see them every minute I was home. If you were a true Beatles fan, you didn’t like Elvis, you didn’t like the Rolling Stones, you were 100 percent loyal and true to only the Beatles.
“Hearing a Beatles song today still fills me with joy,” said Gavenman who, “especially love the early ones... “
What youngsters and teens saw as a passion Davis at first thought of as a job: the book, receiving star reviews for its entertaining look by a real insider, tells the intimate, nonpublic happenings on the history-making tour.
According to a press release, Davis was assigned by the London Daily Express to chronicle the band’s adventures in America and through 34 days and 24 cities he traveled with the “Fab Four”, watching them make rock history. He enjoyed unrestricted access to the four musicians fresh from Liverpool - from their hotel suites to backstage at concert arenas to their private jet. He fended off excited girls, and their insistent mothers, attempts to hook up with the band.
Davis played all-night games of Monopoly with John Lennon, and became the ghostwriter of a newspaper column for George Harrison.
The leaders of the “British Invasion” of the United States pop market produced the innovative and widely influential albums Rubber Soul (1965), Revolver (1966), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album, 1968) and Abbey Road (1969).
The Beatles broke up in 1970 and each enjoyed successful solo musical careers. Lennon was shot and killed by a mentally unbalanced man in December 1980; Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001. McCartney and Starr, the surviving members, remain musically active.
“Just overall,” said Kroon, “I consider Beatles’ music as the soundtrack of my childhood. Everyone in our house loved them from my ‘Squaresville’ parents to my baby brother!”
Come take a magicial mystery tour to celebrate 50 years of The Beatles with acclaimed author Davis at Blanchard Community Library October 7.
