'1964' - Jaap Klein
And then it turned June 1964: 3 Beatles came to Holland!! Ringo was in hospital and John, Paul and George had hired Jimmy Nicol on drums. I tracked their boat trip that was shown “all over the world” on my bike. Just a few minutes from our home and there the boat passed the Nieuwe Amstelbrug.. Dozens of boys jumping into the water in an attempt to get to the boat made the news. For us, street urchins from the eastern district, who were used to swimming in the Amstel and diving from bridges, this was less special than it may have appeared. It was “just” a matter of wanting to touch a real Beatle .... I cycled along quite a stretch of their route and that night I stood watch at the Doelen Hotel. Our heroes spent the night there and performed a “balcony scene”. It was only in the wee hours that the city finally dozed off...... The nerves caused by the release of a new L.P. became almost too much for me to bear. Restless for weeks I would pop in daily at the record store. And if, for instance, the LP Help was to be released in August 1965, I seriously believed I could manage to purchase the record in July. It was only after the White Album that I lost that weird urge.... Help, by the way, was the 1st record I bought with my own money (holiday job). When in December of that same year, that wonderful single, We Can Work It Out/Day tripper, was released, the Beatles had become a definitive and permanent fixture in my existence. For example: when I was doing my round as a paperboy, I heard in every street, in every square, from lots of windows the tune of that hit single We Can Work It Out and subconsciously one knew this was not only the case in Amsterdam but in every village, in every big city, not a hamlet in the world wasn’t touched by this: and Lennon was indeed right: The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.... Many years have passed, the inevitable split-up, the woeful fights, John´s terrible end, the bizarre assault on George. Seriously injured and saved by his wife who struck the burglar, who was caught red-handed, with a candlestick. Fortunately, we can play their music at any time and listen to it and we all have a memory of The Beatles. Which one is my favourite? John Lennon, in the late nineteen-sixties (?) on the VPRO radio. A bit tipsy he was being interviewed and the mood was cheerful (fortunately I had switched on my tape recorder). He even started to sing; first a heartrending version of: “Don’t let me down” followed by “Those where the days”, the hit song of Mary Hopkins, who had been “discovered” by Paul.. It’s a pity that I lost the recording, but Lennon performed the song in his very own way ... Perhaps the most beautiful one?? During/for my work I have read/scanned some 5 morning papers on a daily basis for over 30 years. This is to sift the news, but for some reason or other in 1993 I was struck by a “classified ad” in Holland’s most popular morning paper. Normally I would never even look at those pages, but anyway. FREE TICKETS for a concert by Paul Mc Cartney. Unbelievable. They needed people to hand out booklets to the audience for a show in Ahoy, Rotterdam, in November ´93. In exchange one got a free ticket, “how many tickets did I think I needed??” Some ninety minutes before the show was about to begin a good friend of mine and I were waiting in a well-nigh-empty Ahoy at the upper-most level, carrying a sizeable pile of booklets. The audience was waiting outside for the concert that was solidly sold out. And who was getting warmed up for the show?? Sir Paul himself and he was clearly enjoying himself very much. Incredible: an empty stadium, the Band that started the song C Moon twice, three times and finished it off the third time in a splendid fashion (it wasn’t even performed during the show that night!) and only a handful of people in the whole stadium. Paul was simply playing there privately for one of his biggest fans and that felt so right! |
In the eastern part of Amsterdam, where I was enjoying a wonderful youth, the black-and-white gloss photographs of a variety of (new) artists were in great demand. Rob de Nijs, at the time in his early twenties and dating a girl living opposite us by the name of Lidia Exter(?) once pressed a fat pile of promo pictures in my hands. Busy on working to become a famous Dutchman, he told me: “Hand these out among your school pals”.... But I had different plans; I sold those 25 photos to my sister and with the 50 cents thus earned I was able to buy 10 packages of Beatles chewing gum. In other words: 10 new Beatles chewing gum pictures!!