Had I lived through the 1960s, I can’t help but feel as though I would have been struck by an overwhelming catch-22.
I am a fan of The Beatles who largely listens to songs from 1965 onwards. With a few exceptions like ‘Help’, I’m a staunch believer that their greatest music came when they embraced the experimental, when the studio no longer became a pit stop and instead became a fully fledged hotel.
All of this brilliance came at the expense of touring, which, had they continued doing through the later parts of the decade, may have deprived us fans from the sort of experimental genius we would therefore be treated to.
Because up until 1965, they were on a relentless touring-come-recording schedule that sought to capitalise on the eyewatering mania they generated. Given how prolific Paul McCartney and John Lennon were as songwriters, they would enter the studio doors armed with songs that would be turned around in an instant, to then head out on their next world tour that satiated the seemingly never ending appetite of fans.
But it quickly became untenable. Questions of whether or not this was down to the music or not were consistently raised, as their hits were drowned out by the deafening sounds of screaming fans.
“In 1966 the road was getting pretty boring,” Ringo Starr recalled in the Beatles Anthology documentary. “It was coming to the end for me. Nobody was listening at the shows. That was OK at the beginning, but we were playing really bad,” he added.
The wide eyed smiles that adorned the sleeves of their early records were starting to disintegrate and they looked visibly taxed. The short term charm of being teenage heroes wore off and the burning desire to achieve something musical remained, but it wasn’t being stimulated on tour.
“We’d always tried to keep some fun in it for ourselves. In anything you do you have to do that, and we’d been pretty good at it,” said McCartney, according to Ultimate Classic Rock. “But now even America was beginning to pall because of the conditions of touring and because we’d done it so many times.”
So like that, they called time on their touring lives and permanently camped out in the studio. It was an outrageously brazen move that is relatively unprecedented in the modern world, but one that proved their intentions were clear. The music meant more than the stardom.
But had they continued touring, the possibilities of who could have continued to open for them in the late 1960s were endless. Perhaps there was a world where The Beach Boys opened or maybe even Bob Dylan?
Of course, neither of those artists joined them on the bill and with just a few years of touring under their belt, the list of names who joined them are relatively slim and undoubtedly privileged. But in keeping with the misogynistic times of the mid-century, only one female outfit was ever granted the opportunity to open up.
Who was the band in question?
The Ronettes were the only girl band to have opened for the Fab Four, who joined them on 14 occasions during the 1966 North American dates, before splitting up in 1967.
The legendary pop group had a standout hit that is widely considered to have inspired a Beatles track. The instantly recognisable ‘Be My Baby’ struck a chord with McCartney so much that he even ripped off the drum introduction in his own version, ‘What You’re Doing’.
While The Ronnettes were subjected to a support slot, their influence can not be understated. Their historic song was produced by notorious producer and future Lennon collaborator Phil Spector, in a piece that epitomised the “wall of sound” technique, where multiple instruments are layered, playing the same parts, to create an almost orchestral sound. The sort of sound The Beatles would master later on in the decade.
