BEATLES SONG BOOK

Tuesday, 17 October HOUSTON, TX

One day in, I'd say about Spring of 1965 - the Beatles being in high popularity and I having only recently acquired my first turntable in October of the previous year - decided to buy a Beatles album. By this time, the large store I went to that day stocked not one, but several Fab Four albums from which to choose!

Looking at the songs on the back of the jackets, I recognized a few tunes on each album.

The songs I liked were not all on any one single album, and I had only enough money for one. I could not afford all three or four albums I would need in order to acquire all of those songs.

Enter an album entitled "Beatles Song Book."

To my delight, it had EVERY single Beatles song I knew and liked!! That was it — the purchase made, I headed home the proud owner of my very first BEATLES album!!! 

Here are the songs it perported to have:

From Me To You 2:15

I Saw Her Standing There 2:40

Please Please Me 2:45

P.S. I Love You 2:11

Love Me Do 2:26

I Want To Hold Your Hand 2:24

Can't Buy Me Love 2:16

All My Loving 2:21

A Taste Of Honey 1:56

Do You Want To Know A Secret? 1:58

She Loves You! 2:28

• The very minute I entered the apartment, I rushed to turn on my little record player, and immediately put on the LP.  The familiar notes of "From Me to You" began to play, but not as I recalled them, and not only that, the Beatles did not sing a single note! Not John, not George, nor Paul, nor Ringo - nor anybody else, for that matter.... It was just orchestral music! We called it "elevator music."

Standing there listening to it, I felt like a real "Nowhere Man."

Upset, I picked up the album cover and read it more thoroughly than I had in the store earlier - only to find that, yes, this was the Beatles Songbook, but it was songs - my favorite ones, mind you - played by some orchestra called the Hollyridge Strings!  

The WHO??? The WHAT???

I was a thirteen-year-old punk kid then, and I had just spent about $4.°° of hard-earned money I made from redeeming soda pop bottles for this!! Now I had no money to buy even one of those other records I saw for sale.

Since I liked the songs, I made the best of a bad situation, and listened to the album, and enjoyed it immensely, despite my mistake.

I heard those early Beatles albums at friends' houses, and never managed to acquire a taste for many of the songs of the albums I did not buy that day - and so was happy now that I never bought them! I came to the realization that they were just filler songs.

The day I bought the wrong album turned out to be a lost chance to own a real Beatles album; Throughout my whole life, I never managed to buy a single first-line Beatles LP.  

Not one. 

I eventually bought the blue and red compilations, which by then included all, or most of my expanded list of Beatles favorites. 

I finally got my music!

I finally got my ticket to ride 

- (but she don't care!)