October 5th, 1962: The day that counterculture truly arrived?
Technically speaking, the 1960s started on January 1st, 1960. Culturally, however, the decade didn’t become a phenomenon until some time later. In the late 1950s, ‘The Day the Music Died’ and Elvis Presley’s transformative time in the US Army may have impacted what was to occur in the following decade, but according to one account, the 1960s counterculture truly began on one singular day. That one day is an incredible reflection of the haphazard nature of life, one which saw some of the decade’s leading lights, including The Beatles and Bob Dylan, arrive amidst a musical big bang.
The day in question is Friday, October 5th, 1962, and according to The Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn, that day saw a highly concentrated volume music’s future luminaries arrive at once. That evening, The Beatles played in Nuneaton, and according to David ‘Biffo’ Beech, the drummer of their local support group, The Beatles refrained from the traditional covers and, instead, did their own thing, something of extraordinary significance given the time. Everyone in the room knew that they were witnessing a special moment.
Beech recalled: “We did our little bit – covers of Cliff and stuff like that – but as soon as they came on, the whole place stopped. They sounded so different to blokes like us who were doing the usual thing. People just stood there and thought, ‘Crikey, who are these?'” It must be noted that The Beatles were already more accomplished than many of their peers at this point, and although they still had a long way to go creatively, they had just spent the best part of two years cutting their teeth in Hamburg.
Some 120 miles south of Nuneaton, R&B proponents The Rolling Stones were playing their tenth show to an audience of two people in the backroom of the Woodstock pub in North Cheam, Surrey. At the time, it was Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated who were being tipped to lead the British wave of R&B; after a while, it would be The Rolling Stones, a group who, ironically, had their first booking replacing them at The Marquee Club in London, as Korner’s band made their radio debut on the BBC.
Remarkably, on the same Friday (October 5th) that The Beatles started to make waves in Nuneaton and The Rolling Stones turned heads, EMI released its first record by The Beach Boys. It was the classic ‘Surfin’ Safari’. That day, The Beatles also released their debut single, ‘Love Me Do’, and according to Lewisohn, the advert for The Beach Boys single took a place in EMI’s Record Retailer, sitting directly opposite Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s full-page advert for his band’s debut.
In another strange similarity between the two West Coast groups, Lewisohn points out that Murry Wilson, the father and abuser of the three brothers in The Beach Boys, signed their contract with Capitol Records on May 10th, the day after George Martin offered Brian Epstein a Parlophone contract for The Beatles.
‘Surfin’ Safari’ was a success in America, reaching number ten on Cash Box and 14 on Billboard. This meant it was then given a British release by EMI, with the song earning a similar critical response to ‘Love Me Do’. They were all, according to reports, “generally positive, hardly overwhelming – and had the same battle to be heard.” However, apart from a handful of plays on the storied Radio Luxembourg, the track didn’t crack the British charts as it had across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, it did point to a coming sea change. When commenting on The Beach Boys, Record Retailer wrote: “Another group that is new to us”. I imagine that phrase would become almost obsolete in the years that followed.
Of course, it wasn’t just rock ‘n’ roll that was coming. The pivotal folk music of the decade was starting to pierce the cultural fabric more deeply than its energetic, electrified counterpart. On October 6th, 1962, ‘If I Had A Hammer’ by soon-to-be eminent acoustic trio Peter, Paul and Mary sat at 13 on the Cash Box top 100. While they might have appealed to a slightly different and marginally older market, with more money to spend on albums, their rise showed that folk and protest music was about to break America and the rest of the world. It would go on to capture the spirit of the era better than any other genre.
Songs not in the pop realm but primarily poetic efforts that concentrated on society’s ills were the name of the game in this genre, performed to a literate audience on college campuses and in coffee houses. What was originally music for the Beatniks was taking hold with a different audience, which would then spread to the mainstream. While Peter, Paul and Mary might have been the first group to score hits, it was another managed by Albert Grossman that would become the most culturally vital in folk.
This was the 21-year-old Bob Dylan, who was already making waves. In another fascinating piece of evidence that October 5th, 1962, really was the day the decade arrived, that evening, the Minnesotan topped the bill at one of his most important early shows in New York. Dubbed ‘The Travelling Hootenanny’ at the Town Hall on West 43rd Street, that night, the final track of the four Dylan played was new and yet to be recorded, the timeless ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’.
In a quote utilised by Lewisohn in his original piece, future Dylan biographer Robert Shelton was at the show and would write of its significance: “Those who doubted Dylan’s poetic gift began to see what all the fuss was about”. Pop now had potent meaning.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.