Back to index of Beatles pages by Donald Sauter.

Introductory comments.
Abbreviations and conventions used.

1964 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1965 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1966 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1967 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1968 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1969 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1970 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1971 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
1972 JAN FEB

The intention here was to ferret out every mention of the Beatles in a certain, well-known periodical. It should be interesting and fun to have a look at Beatles history from a single point of view - a contemporaneous one that isn't corrupted by even a speck of revisionism.

Don't expect to learn many new Beatle facts - that's not the point. This study may give a clearer idea of how the Beatles fit into the grander scheme of pop culture. Or... it may give a terribly distorted idea, depending on the validity of Playboy's point of view. (Near the end, the story does get a bit heavily weighted in regards to Candy and Oh! Calcutta and other sordid material. If it were up to me, I would sweep it all under the rug, but, there's a job to be done...) Such is the business of trying to nail down history. Ah, well.

Why Playboy? Well, it's the only magazine for which I have access to a collection which completely spans Beatles history. Those magazines would hardly rate a PG-7 in this day and age so I am not unduly embarrassed. I'd even tell you how I gained access to the collection, but... well, that information is classified.

When somebody does this for Melody Maker or the Liverpool Echo, please give me a ring. It'd be fine with me if they outlawed writing or saying anything new about the Beatles until we've gathered up all the source material. (Except I hate laws. Still, we could smash the keyboards or microphones of people who try it.)

What counts as a Beatles reference? Besides mentions of the Beatles themselves, they include titles of songs, albums and movies, of course. The rule of thumb is that the Beatle mention must be explicit. A Frank Sinatra album in a record club ad that shows an included Beatles song will be documented, but if that album shows up in the jazz poll, say, without any mention of the Beatles song, it won't be documented here.

Likewise with people and issues that have a Beatles connection: Ravi Shankar, by his own admission, owed a great deal of his huge popularity to his association with George Harrison, but his references are documented only where there is an explicit Beatle mention.

People may have forgotten now what a big deal male hair length was in '60s. The furor raged well into the '70s, even, as can be seen in the Playboy Forum, for example. This all started with the Beatles shocking hairdos, but the hair issue is not documented except where there is a more-or-less clear Beatles tie-in.

Playboy is a magazine devoted mainly to pop culture. The Beatles were a pop phenomenon - one of the biggest. Therefore, Playboy should lavish attention on the Beatles, right? Wrong, actually. Until well into the '60s, Playboy's position was that the only music that counted was jazz. You can watch that barricade gradually crumble and collapse over a span of years due almost exclusively to the battering it took from the Beatles.

Only Beatles references are collected here, and that raises the question of context. I've always tried to supply enough surrounding material so that the Beatles reference makes sense, but to put this material wholly in context you would need the complete editions of all the magazines. Along with everything "Beatles", you ideally need everything "non-Beatles", as well. But, everyone having a complete collection - not to mention assimilating it all - is not practical, of course.

Trust me - for the first few years covered here, there were virtually no references of import to other pop music stars. The Beatles stood alone. Someone wanting to document the Beach Boys or the Supremes or the Rolling Stones in Playboy would find very thin gruel, indeed. (Actually, nearly all Rolling Stone/Mick Jagger references are included here, I would guess. If, like me, you suspect the Stones would not have had much of a pop music life without the Beatles to play the "bad boy" counterpart to, a study of Playboy wouldn't refute that notion. The Stones only pop up where the Beatles already are, latching on to the Beatles' pants leg like a pestiferous toy Chihuahua.)

An example of something you miss by getting "just Beatles" are big social trends - such as the emergence of the "Sixties". It's been said that the Sixties started in February, 1964, with the arrival of the Beatles. An examination of Playboy, at least, would suggest there was a lag of a few years. The men it portrayed, whether featured in articles or ads, were oh so mature, sophisticated, dignified... (To me, even now, they look old - though they're probably about half my present age.) The first ads showing longer male hair - and hip '60s clothes - are in the August 1966 issue. They are documented here because of their explicit Beatle mentions, but you wouldn't know that they represent firsts without examining "everything else".

Another example involves Beatle songs covered by other artists in the record club ads. This study seems to show the number growing and then declining - but there is a good reason for that. The ads started cramming more albums on the page and, to make room, stopped listing included songs under each one.

The search is complete through February 1972. This late date allows for the coverage of the transition from Beatles to solo Beatles. Also, the February 1972 issue gives the results of the previous "Jazz & Pop" poll, wherein the Beatles always make a grand showing, and has a letters column which wraps up the Allen Klein interview published 3 months earlier.

I have a good knowledge of the Beatles and know where one might expect obscure, little references to pop up. I scanned text (with my eyes and brain, not electronically) everywhere it seemed there could be even the tiniest chance of finding a Beatles nugget. My scanning capabilities are far from perfect and some references have certainly been missed. Let me know if you know of any that aren't documented here.

These extracts are fair use. Surely there is nothing morally wrong with gathering already publicly available, factual material for the benefit of everyone. There is nothing here to injure anyone's reputation or cause financial harm. A study such as this can only benefit Playboy by increasing interest in their magazine. I suggest Playboy take up the baton itself and make big money publishing likewise fascinating collections of reprinted material dealing with any number of topics - race relations in America, the JFK assassination, the evolution of audio equipment, and on and on.

Contact Donald Sauter: send an email; view guestbook; sign guestbook.

Parents, if you're considering tutoring or supplemental education for your child, you may be interested in my observations on Kumon.

Unless otherwise indicated, material is directly quoted from the magazine.

Comment: indicates a comment by me.

[Information and comments in brackets] are also my words.

... Tight dots indicate text deleted by me. This isn't used in a completely rigorous manner. I may show ... before an excerpt so you know that these aren't the opening words. I may show ... after an excerpt so you know that the original passage goes on. I also might not show an internal cut, such as the intervening material between two separated album reviews in the same article, and the record company supplied after an album title.

. . . Spaced dots are used to indicate ". . ." in the original magazine text (no matter how tight or spaced the dots were printed.)

More keywords: gives a list of other topics touched on in the original passage, but skipped over by me in the extract. The rationale was usually a combination of relative unimportance and a concern about not quoting too much. You'll have to dig up the original magazine.

Advertisements for record albums generally show tiny pictures of the albums, sometimes much simplified from the real album cover. Assume that a picture was supplied, unless otherwise specified.

Since we're coming at this from a pop music point of view, I've shown ALBUM TITLES in all upper-case letters.

All Other Titles, such as for songs, movies, books and articles (the context will make it clear which) have the first letter of each word upper-case.

Playboy: May 1964, page 60
Comment: If the date seems late for the first Beatles mention, bear in mind that the magazine contents are fixed two or three months before the cover date, and the magazine hits the stands a month before the cover date. Think of it like this: if you write a letter to Playboy in January about an article you just read in the February issue, the earliest it could show up in the magazine is the May issue, which appears at the beginning of April.
Comment: Wilder is Billy Wilder, writer-director for The Apartment, Some Like It Hot and Irma La Douce.

Lemmon: Be all this aggravation as it may, whenever Wilder wants me to do another picture - in a tub, in drag, in a Beatle wig - I'm his man.

Comment: There's an exchange on page 64 that looks like a Beatles reference, but is not. Lemmon says that Harry Cahn, head of Columbia Pictures, suggested that Lemmon change his name to Lennon. Such an incident would have predated Beatle fame. If anything, it could be a nod to the Lennon Sisters.

Playboy: August 1964, page 16,19
Comment: Note the two mistakes in the Beatles' first Capitol ad appearance. All My Loving is hacked, and She Loves You is not even on the album.
Comment: P.S. I Love You on the Kay Starr album is not the Beatles song.

MEET THE BEATLES! Their first album now a pop collector's classic! I Want To Hold Your Hand, All My Love, She Loves You, 9 others! $3.98
THE BEATLES SECOND ALBUM. Tops their first! Roll Over, Beethoven, Thank You Girl, I Call Your Name, Long Tall Sally, 7 more! $3.98

Playboy: September 1964, page 16,19

MEET THE BEATLES. [Same as 64AUGp16.]
THE BEATLES SECOND ALBUM. [Same as 64AUGp19.]

Playboy: October 1964, page 16

THE BEATLES SECOND ALBUM. [Similar to 64AUGp19. She Loves You replaces Long Tall Sally.]
MEET THE BEATLES! [Similar to 64AUGp16. All My Loving is corrected. Till There Was You replaces She Loves You.]

Playboy: November 1964, page 16,19

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. Special! The Original Sound Track of a Great Motion Picture. The Beatles Biggest Hit Album! Here they are! - the world's most popular foursome . . . singing and swinging all the hits from their sensational movie! It's the biggest album of the year . . . and you can begin your membership by purchasing it as your first selection...
BIG BAND BEATLEMANIA. Buddy Morrow. I Want To Hold Your Hand, Roll Over Beethoven, She Loves You, 9 more. Also: I Saw Her Standing There...

Playboy: November 1964, page 30,32

Those car stickers that read STAMP OUT BEATLES should disappear after A Hard Day's Night moves through the movie-house circuits... In fact [the Beatles would] be very bearable, indeed, were it not for the crowds of pudgy little teenage chicks at every showing... Grandpa helps set off a chain reaction of nonsensical incidents not unlike vintage Marx Brothers. The direction by Richard Lester adds a fillip of artistry to what might easily have been a just a cheesy exploitation number... There's plenty of their music, too, which probably is best described as topical.

Playboy: November 1964, page 196
Comment: This 9-page article had to have been inspired by the commotion over male hair caused by the Beatles. In spite of that, they are not mentioned in the article itself until the next to last paragraph.

As this brief history is being trimmed and manicured for the press, American teen types mimic the mop-top mode of the Beatles with overgrown soup-bowl styles that are the kookie counterparts of those worn by Henrys I through IV... [From the New York Times: ] "British 'his and her' hairdos blur 'him-her' line... The most commonly seen hairdo, acidly described as 'British togetherness', is marked by a thick Beatle fringe over the forehead, long sideburns that could be spit curls, and a shaggy shingle effect in the back... Older Britons smile wanly and blame the influence of popular singers, such as the Beatles (the best groomed), the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things, the Animals, the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five and the Daisies."

Playboy: December 1964, page 16,19

MEET THE BEATLES. I Want To Hold Your Hand, All My Loving, 10 other hits! $3.98 [Picture changed slightly from 64OCTp16.]
A WORLD WITHOUT LOVE. Peter and Gordon.

Playboy: January 1965, page 4

Aficionado Kenneth Tynan's "Beatle In The Bull Ring" unveils for Playboy readers the current corrida picture in Spain, focuses on El Cordobes, the first hip matador.

Playboy: January 1965, page 6

Beatle In The Bullring - article . . . Kenneth Tynan

Playboy: January 1965, page 8

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. [Text is shortened version of 64NOVp16 ad.]
BIG BAND BEATLEMANIA. [Same as 64NOVp19.]
MEET THE SEARCHERS. [Album title surely inspired by MEET THE BEATLES!]

Playboy: January 1965, page 36-37

As adults began to discover with the release of that antic film A Hard Day's Night, the Beatles are more than just another mechanical product of the pop-music industry... Yet... no one has convincingly explored their nature and the reasons for their typhoonlike impact. In his autobiography, "A Cellarful Of Noise" (Doubleday), Brian Epstein, the Beatles' discoverer and manager, has also tried to plumb the Beatles. He too has failed, but his slight book is interesting in other ways... Epstein failed early and often as he grew up... He was unable to fulfill either of his earliest ambitions - to become a dress designer and then an actor... He opened a record department in the [family] store, heard about the Beatles, and was soon prospering wildly... Still lonely and still colorless himself, Epstein obviously draws much emotional sustenance from his contact with these vivid youngsters [including his other acts]... He is too cautious to be candid about disc jockeys and recording executives... He writes... "My terms with the artists are well known - friendship and 25 percent..." "A Cellarful Of Noise" is an odd document - a tale of a "dead soul" guiding his very alive charges through the shrieks of teenage idolators who also have an emptiness which they look to others to fill... Epstein reveals... that he cannot conceive of ever disassociating himself from the Beatles. This is convincing - for they are his lifeline.

More keywords: furniture store, Liverpool, Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, Gerry and the Pacemakers.

Playboy: January 1965, page 101
Comment: Shows color cartoon picture of the Beatles.

The Beatles: This year we'll tour the U.S. - that's where the real money's to be made. But first we'll have to get haircuts; they're too hip over there to dig these crazy mops.

Playboy: January 1965, page 164,176
Writer: Kenneth Tynan
Comment: Beatle mention on the first page is in the title only. El Cordobes' hair is pictured. In spite of using the Beatles to draw in readers, there is only this one mention in the 5-page article.

I asked Chopera whether the Cordoban phenomenon could be compared in any way with the Beatles. "I suppose there's a connection," he said. "Manolo's hair is quite long and he causes sensations wherever he goes. And I expect he's heard their records... But there's one big difference. When Manolo performs, there's always the possibility of death."

Playboy: January 1965, page 238

A Playboy interview with the Beatles - an exclusive conversation with the hottest, hairiest performers in show business history.

Playboy: February 1965, cover

The Beatles interviewed by Jean Shepherd

Comment: Playboy covers get reproduced within the issue itself and sometimes in other issues. Reproductions of this cover aren't documented here since the Beatle mention is never big enough to be readable. Should this cover take on special significance for you as the "Playboy Beatles cover", note that Playboy Products sold the red and white striped nightgown and nightcap which is modeled here. There is an ad on page 27. The first ad for this nightgown and cap appeared in 58FEBp75 ("One size fits all. $4 each, postpaid") and ran occasionally until at least 72MAYp42. Imagine that, an outfit - and one sold by fashion conscious Playboy, no less - that stayed "in style" for over 14 years! To see another ad for the nightgown on a page with a Beatle mention, track down 67DECp71.

Playboy: February 1965, page 3

For Playboy's wildest interview to date, we shipped Jean Shepherd to England... Shepherd, still somewhat traumatized from his encounter with the legions of Beatlemaniacs who besieged his charges, tells us that, "...That universally held Marx Brothers, Boys-on-a-Perpetual-Go-to-Hell-Spree image that everyone has of them, and wants to be told about them, just wasn't there..."

More keywords: lion-maned, Epstein.

Playboy: February 1965, page 4

Playboy interview: The Beatles - candid conversation.

Playboy: February 1965, page 20,23

MEET THE BEATLES. [Same as 64DECp16.]
A WORLD WITHOUT LOVE. Peter & Gordon. [Same as 64DECp19.]

Playboy: February 1965, page 51-60
Comment: Shows photos of Paul, Ringo, George and John.
Comment: The interview took place in Torquay on October 28, 1964.

Our interviewer this month is the inimitable Jean Shepard...

"I joined the Beatles in Edinburgh... All of them looked up suspiciously as I walked in, then went back to eating, drinking and tuning guitars as though I didn't exist...

"I went along with them from Edinburgh to Plymouth, Bournemouth and half a dozen other towns...

"I began to have the uncomfortable feeling that all this fervor had nothing whatever to do with entertainment, or with talent... They are not prodigious talents by any yardstick, but like hula hoops and yo-yos, they are at the right place at the right time...

"They have managed somehow to remain remarkably human...

"Their unimaginable success... has left them... extremely guarded..., almost as though they're afraid that an extraloud sneeze will burst the bubble and they'll be back in reality like the rest of us...

"George Harrison... is also the most sarcastic and unquestionably the most egotistical; he fingers his hair a lot, and has a marked tendency to pause meaningfully and frequently before mirrors. Even so, he's a very likable chap... John Lennon... [is] far less hip than he's made out to be... Perhaps because [Ringo] wasn't their original drummer, he seems slightly apart from the rest, a loner...

"They all find it difficult to make any real contact with anybody outside of their immediate circle... So getting to know the Beatles, and draw them out, was a discouraging task at first..."

[Interview extracts start here.]

John: Ringo used to fill in sometimes if our drummer was ill. With his periodic illness.

Ringo: He took little pills to make him ill. [This comment provoked Pete Best's lawsuit.] ...

Paul: We were billed in the paper: "From Hamburg - The Beatles."

John: ... That's when we first, you know, stood there being cheered for the first time. ...

Playboy: When you first went to America you were doubtful you would make it over there.

John: That's true. We didn't think we were going to make it at all. It was only Brian telling us we were gonna make it. And George. Brian Epstein our manager, and George Harrison. ...

Playboy: There's been some dispute... whether you're primarily entertainers or musicians - or perhaps neither.

John: We're money-makers first; then we're entertainers.

Ringo: No, we're not.

John: What are we, then?

Ringo: Dunno. Entertainers first.

John: OK. ...

Paul: But we still enjoy making records, going onstage, making films, and all that business.

John: We love every minute of it, Beatle people! ...

Paul: Contrary to rumor, you see, none of us was brought up in any slums or in great degrees of poverty. ...

George: We never starved. Even Ringo hasn't.

Ringo: Even I. ...

Playboy: Do you have any sisters or brothers, George?

George: I've got two brothers.

John: And no sisters to speak of. [George has a sister, Louise.] ...

Paul: Derek, our press agent, who happened to be there at the time, hanging over my shoulder, giving me quotes, which happens at every press conference . . .

John: You better not say that.

Paul: Oh yes, that's not true, Beatle people! ...

Paul: I talked to her [Lily, a woman who insisted Paul should know her] afterward, and she said she got a vision from God and God had said to her . . .

John: "It's been a hard day's night." (Laughter) ...

Paul: I was trying to persuade her that she didn't in actual fact have a vision from God, that it was . . .

George: It was probably somebody disguised as God. ...

Playboy: You mean you're brave enough to venture out in the streets without a bodyguard?

Ringo: Sure.

George: We're always on the street. Staggering about.

Ringo: Floggin' our bodies.

George: You catch John sleeping in the gutter occasionally. ...

Playboy: Can you eat safely in restaurants? ...

George: Usually it's only Americans that'll bother you... If we go into a restaurant in London, there's always going to be couple of them eating there...

Ringo: The good thing when you go to a place where the people are such drags, such snobs, you see, is that they won't bother to come over to your table. They pretend they don't even know who you are, and you get away with an easy night.

George: And they think they're laughing at us, but really we're laughing at them. 'Cause we know they know who we are... They're not going to be like the rest and ask for autographs.

Ringo: And if they do we just swear at 'em.

George: Well, I don't, Beatle people. I sign the autograph and thank them profusely for coming over and offer them a piece of my chop.

John: If we're in the middle of a meal, I usually say, "Do you mind waiting till I'm finished?"

George: And then we keep eating until they give up and leave.

John: That's not true, Beatle people! ...

Paul: Some of those American girls have been great.

John: Like Joan Baez.

Paul: Joan Baez is good, yeah, very good.

John: She's the only one I like.

George: And Jayne Mansfield. Playboy made her. ...

Paul: Actually, she's a clot.

Ringo: Says Paul, the god of the Beatles.

Paul: I didn't mean it, Beatle people! Actually, I haven't even met her. But you won't print that anyway, of course, because Playboy is very pro-Mansfield. They think she's a rave. But she really is an old bag.

Playboy: By the way, what are Beatle people?

John: It's something they use in the fan mags in America. They all start out, "Hi there, Beatle people, 'spect you're wondering what the Fab Foursome are doing these days!" Now we use it all the time, too. ...

Playboy: Did you hear about the riot in Glasgow on the night of your last show there?

John: We heard about it after. ...

Playboy: There was an essay not long ago in a very serious commentary magazine, saying that before every major war in this century, there has been a major wave of public hysteria over certain specific entertainers...

John: Hold on! It's not our fault! ...

Ringo: If I was royal . . .

Paul: If I was royal I would crack long jokes and get a mighty laugh. If I was royal. ...

Paul: We're not anti-religious. We probably seem to be anti-religious because of the fact that none of us believe in God.

John: ... We're not quite sure what we are, but I know that we're more agnostic than atheistic.

Playboy: Are you speaking for the group or just for yourself?

John: For the group.

George: John's our official religious spokesman. ...

Paul: But believe it or not, we're not anti-Christ.

Ringo: Just anti-Pope and anti-Christian.

Paul: But you know, in America . . .

George: They were more shocked by us saying we were agnostics.

John: They went potty; they couldn't take it. Same as in Australia, where they couldn't stand us not liking sports. ...

Paul: Take Profumo, for example. He's just an ordinary... fellow who sleeps with women. Yet it's adultery in the eyes of the law, and it's an international incident. But in actual fact, if you check up on the statistics, you find that there are hardly any married men who have been completely faithful to their wives.

John: I have! Listen, Beatle people . . . ...

John: We did meet Christine Keeler. ...

Ringo: I got up in the Ad Lib the other night and a big handbag hit me in the gut. I thought it was somebody I knew; I didn't have any glasses on. [My italics.] I said, "Hello," and a bloody big worker "Arrgghh." So I ran into the bog. Because I'd heard about things like that. ...

Playboy: We heard a rumor that one of you was thinking of opening a club... Is there any truth to it?

Ringo: Well, yes. We was going to open one in Hollywood, but it fell through. ...

Playboy: Have you ever read the magazine?... Do you read [The Playboy] Philosophy, any of you?

Paul: Some of it. When the journey's really long and you can't last out the pictures, you start reading it. It's OK. ...

Playboy: Do you enjoy jazz, any of you?... Anyone?

John: Getz. But only because somebody gave me an album of his. With him and somebody called Iguana, or something like that.

Playboy: You mean Joao Gilberto?

John: I don't know. Some Mexican.

Playboy: He's Brazilian.

John: Oh. ...

Paul: It's become so easy to form a group nowadays, and to make a record... Whereas when we started, it took us a couple of years before the record companies would even listen to us, never mind give us a contract. But now, you just walk in and if they think you're OK, you're on.

Playboy: Do you think you had anything to do with bringing all this about?

John: It's a damn fact. ...

Playboy: Have you seen [Beatle dolls]?... Don't you feel honored to be immortalized in plastic? After all, there's no such thing as a Frank Sinatra doll or an Elvis Presley doll.

George: Who'd want an ugly old crap doll like that? ...

Paul: Well, they're making us into a cartoon, too, in the States. It's a series.

John: The highest achievement you could ever get.

Paul: We feel proud and humble. ...

Playboy: We've just about run out of steam, anyway.

John: Do you have all you need?

Playboy: Enough. Many thanks, fellas.

John: 'Course a lot of it you won't be able to use - "crap" and "bloody" and "t**" and "bastard" and all.

Playboy: Wait and see.

More keywords: Page 51: cigarette smoke, Glasgow, Dundee, Austin Princess, Scotch, Dr. Kildare. Page 52: Torquay, Exeter, Coke, Hamlet, Bunny girls, Liverpool, Hamburg. Page 54: Coke, Brian Epstein, America, Capitol, families. Page 57: Hitler, Rolling Stones, Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen. Page 58: Churchill, Hitler, Princess Margaret, Philip, royalty, homosexuality, April Ashley, Whiskey a GoGo. Page 60: Playboy Clubs, Scotch, America, England, Elvis, Everly Brothers, Army, records, Yogi Berra.

Playboy: February 1965, page 77, 148-149
Writer: Nat Hentoff
Comment: In each October issue, Playboy ran a Jazz Poll. The results were printed in the following February issue. By "jazz", Playboy meant jazz, plus a few folk-pop artists. A long list of candidates in each category was supplied on the ballot and the reader merely checked off his choices.

To the delight of everyone in the jazz world, 1964 was a period of greatly renewed popularity for Louis Armstrong. By the end of April, his recording of Hello Dolly! had displaced the long-reigning Beatles on the best-selling charts...

    Drums

 1. Joe Morella . . . 7840
    ...
22. Dave Bailey  . . . 161 [tie]
22. Sam Woodyard . . . 161 [tie]
24. Ringo Starr  . . . 160
25. Stan Levey . . . . 155


    Vocal group

 1. Peter, Paul & Mary . . . 6620
    ...
16. New Christy Minstrels . . 521
    ...
20. Weavers . . . . . . . . . 307
21. Beatles . . . . . . . . . 295 [tie]
21. Mary Kaye Trio  . . . . . 295 [tie]
23. Ink Spots . . . . . . . . 261

Comment: Ringo was one of only three drummers to gather enough write-in votes to make the final readers' choice list of the top 34. The Beatles were one of only two "vocal groups" to gather enough write-in votes to make the final top 29. The other was the New Christy Minstrels. Note that, even though the Beatles were a virtual non-entity in the jazz poll itself, Hentoff gave them a prominent mention in the very first page of the article.

Playboy: February 1965, page 125
Comment: Shows a photo of the Beatles (b&w) sitting on a speaker.

Playboy: March 1965, page 38

It may seem sort of silly, but things have reached the stage where I'm really getting a little worried. My daughter and a number of the other kids in the neighborhood have formed a real cult over the Beatles. They have built an altar in one girl's bedroom and they burn candles and recite Beatle prayers they have written. Now their project is a writing a Beatle Bible which starts out "In the beginning the Beatles created the rock and the roll." If they weren't so darned serious about this, it would be pretty funny. But when Susan doesn't go to church with us because they are having their own service in their Beatle church, I start to worry a little. Worst of all, we have to listen to that awful music over and over and over. What should we do? - M.D., San Francisco, California.

[Playboy replies:] "And this, too, shall pass away," said a sage about another plague at another time. We suggest you keep cool until the Beatle bugaboo likewise passes away, as it most assuredly will. In the meantime, when Susan plays her records, do your listening with earmuffs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Playboy: April 1965, page 7-8

Barnaby Conrad: ... I've enjoyed [Tynan's] intellectual and scholarly approach to "el Arte de Cuchares" enormously, and his Beatle In The Bull Ring in your January issue was no exception... [El Cordobes is] merely a talented, mopheaded acrobat.

Lois Rosen: ... I do want to thank Mr. Tynan for his article Beatle In The Bull Ring... Long after the Beatles and this "fraud" have been forgotten, we will be left with the true art.

Playboy: April 1965, page 72

[caption] The Peppermint Tree... offers... a Beatle-mopped rock-'n'-roll group...

Playboy: April 1965, page 125
Comment: Incredibly, the Beatles are NOT mentioned in this 6-page article. The writer, Jay Sebring, bends over backward to snub the Beatles by giving President Kennedy credit for "changing people's ideas about hair" (page 174).

Playboy: May 1965, page 9-10

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Robert W. Ruble: Your interview with the Beatles... topped all others.

Robert Price, Jr.: I am surprised to find Playboy wasting on the Beatles the section of the magazine designed to bring sophisticated young adults information through interviews with interesting people.

Robert Wood: Other than my own remarks, I've never laughed at anyone's humor as much as these four.

James W. Sanders III: Unintentionally and with no obvious malice aforethought, [Shepherd] has exposed the Beatles for what a lot of us have suspected them of being all along: rude, obnoxious and unsophisticated.

Gail Dow: It woke me up to the fact that... they don't give a damn whether their fans live or die... Someday they are going to wake up and find that their fans don't give a damn whether they live or die. I'm 16 years old and I'm still crazy about them, but somehow it's not the same.

Alan Altman, Marv Copperstein, Herb Altman: We felt that the interview did not measure up to literary standards that Playboy has met in the past... Their answers are all comprised of the same nonsense.

David Perkins, Jerome Liof: The Beatles successfully combine teenage vitality and sense of humor with adult perspective.

Lester Hackett: Playboy's interview with the mop tops was absolutely gear... but... - their ages. Can you enlighten me?

[Playboy:] John and Ringo are 24, Paul and George are 22.

More keywords: dirty young men, agnostic, ignorance, sophomoric, "where it's at", iconoclasm, recordings, movie, nonsense. Another letter comments on Beatle In The Bull Ring with no further Beatle tie-in.

Playboy: June 1965, page 8

Beatle Beat

Virginia M. Edwards: Paul McCartney's comments in the February issue of Playboy on "unbalanced maniac Americans" really ticked me off... I suggest that, next trip, he doesn't look for normal Americans at Beatle functions, where they are, understandably, in short supply.

Dr. John L. Swaney: I hate the Beatles (past tense - I hated the Beatles.) After reading your interview with them, I find I am a confirmed Beatle fan... Why the hell don't you let them take over The Playboy Philosophy for a while? As a professor of music, I'll have to add another B to the list: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms - and the Beatles.

Playboy: July 1965, page 10

20 TOP POP SONGS. She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, A Hard Day's Night. Recorded in England!

Playboy: July 1965, page 16

Scrambled egnostics

May I congratulate you on your interview with the beattles. Magazines of the type you print are not of interest to me. I sometimes examine them in order to learn what Hollywood pictures and tramps should be avoided...

At any rate, we had my daughter read the Beattles interview without any comments by us as neither of us had read it... About an hour later my daughter came down sporting a face a mile long and remarked, I hate the Beattles... She said, I sort of knew it but I just didn't want to believe it... They are EGNOSTICS! Imagine, egnostics! How could anyone who has been so fortunate as they even think of being an egnostic. God has been so good to them. Worse than that, one of them wears a St. Christopher medal! How could he?... And they drink Scotch, too much Scotch! My child is Protestant!

The next thing I note is she is on the phone calling all her friends... They decided to boycott the Beattles records and form an I don't like the Beattles, they're anti-God club!

Many, many thanks to Playboy. I've been trying for months to pound some sense in her head about these radicals making undeserved millions and you accomplished what I could not. In addition, she asked if would buy her a record of Chopin's. We've been desparately trying to get her to improve her taste for music, if one calls that jungle beat music, for over a year. God sure works in mysterious ways.

[Playboy:] Since you're concerned about the personal lives of the musicians your daughter listens to... we think you should know that Frederic Chopin spent several years living out of wedlock with novelist Madame George Sand, and still found time to write love letters to assorted young men.

Comment: Playboy's retention of the misspellings and clumsy and incorrect grammar to humiliate the writer was very uncharacteristic, if not unique. Also, running a letter on the same article for a 3rd month was very unusual, if not unique.

Playboy: August 1965, page 18,21

SWIM SWIM C'MON AND SWIM. Ray Anthony. A Hard Day's Night.
BEATLES SONG BOOK. Hollyridge Strings. Romantic instrumental versions of... I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There, All My Loving.
BEATLES '65. I Feel Fine, Mr. Moonlight, Baby's In Black, No Reply, Honey Don't and She's A Woman.
BEATLES SECOND ALBUM. [Different picture from 64OCTp16. Three different selections are listed.] You Can't Do That, Devil In Her Heart and I'll Get You.

Playboy: August 1965, page 24

The Knack And How To Get It... was... directed by Richard Lester, who made the Beatles' flick, A Hard Day's Night, into last year's happiest surprise.

Playboy: August 1965, page 26

Much of Half A Sixpence's success is due to its infectious star, Tommy Steele, a gangly, feather-haired Cockney with a cockeyed grin... Steele is new to America, but years ago, even before the Beatles, he achieved celebrity in England as its top rock-'n'-roll singer.

Playboy: August 1965, page 139
Writer: Robert Ruark
Comment: Was this line inspired by A Hard Day's Night movie?

"Mmmm," she said. "What a clean, sweet-smelling, lovely man."

Playboy: September 1965, page 23

TOP TEEN HITS. Brenda Lee. Can't Buy Me Love, He Loves You.

Playboy: September 1965, page 48

"Cavear emptor!" Sum scribtics wit of John Lennon's sirprizing fist cullsection of stormies, pombs, and drangings, In His Own Write. Udders disgust the snories and poobs and dribbings as sift they meerily imijaded far butter and far smartists. Bad weather rejoycing or leary, must innervitably grave into the didly temptimitation to wit about the wirk in Lennon's hone nonsentice, wicketty confamusing, butt sumptimes (aloss, too offan) simptly biffling and esoterribic linguage. Wee all sew plaid quilt. But from this point on we'll try to resist. At least long enough to report that Lennon's second bank - er, book - A Spaniard In The Works (Simon & Schuster), is at its best another dose of arsesnickers at convention, at its worst merely moron the same. His biting average remains a steady .275, no Stan Muscle or Joe L'Maggination but good enough to stay in the league... At times it seems like Ringo has been sneaking into his room in the middle of the night and changing the keys on his typewriter... It should be noted that many of the stories and drawings, in their profusion of scatological imagery, not only submit to but demand a psychiatrust's analalysis - the book could almost be subtitled "Phallus In Wonderland," or "Finneganus' Wake"... [Lennon's] writing is not so much purposeful reconstruction [of the language] as gratuitous mutilation.

More keywords: Wittgenstein, patent nonsense.

Playboy: September 1965, page 228
Writer: John Dempsey

[A religious kook carries a sign declaring,] The world is doomed! Yeah yeah yeah.

[Punchline:] "We're trying to reach the teenagers."

Comment: The "yeah yeah yeah" lyric from She Loves You, while maybe not original with the Beatles, was inextricably associated with the group. See, for example, 65MARp38, 65MAYp9 and 65DECp301-303.

Playboy: October 1965, page 10,13

BEATLES VI [color picture]. 8 Days A Week, Yes It Is.
A WORLD WITHOUT LOVE. Peter & Gordon.
PASS ME BY. Peggy Lee. A Hard Day's Night.
THE EARLY BEATLES [color picture].

Playboy: October 1965, page 26

The Beatles are good, but what's even better, they're lucky. Their luck is entitled Richard Lester (see this month's On The Scene), the chap who directed their first flick and has now noodled up the next, called Help!... The story, if that's the word, is about the Asians' attempt to regain the ring in a wild series of romps... [Ringo's] pals take him to a mad scientist to shrink his finger, but the scientist is more a stinker than a shrinker and joins the chase. Which leads to Scotland Yard, an army camp, and Switzerland, where the Asians try to bomb the Beatles - but heaven Alps those who Alp themselves... The film huffs and puffs sometimes to keep kookie, which the first one didn't need to do, but it has a lot going for it, and it really goes - proving that Lester and the Beatles were meant for each other, and for us. Help! doesn't need any.

More keywords: Bahamas.

Playboy: October 1965, page 134

Vocal Group (Please check one.)

Ames Brothers
Andy & the Bey Sisters
Beatles
Brothers Four
...

Comment: Other pop first-timers on this ballot were Herman's Hermits, New Christy Minstrels, Righteous Brothers, Rolling Stones and Supremes. No individual Beatles were nominated in any instrument or vocalist categories.

Playboy: October 1965, page 168-169
Comment: Shows photo of Lester, Beatles and bicycles in the Bahamas.

Lester has spent the last two years establishing firm claim to the title of cinematic clown prince... with a record of four financial hits in as many filmic attempts... Shortly after [The Mouse On The Moon], Beatle baiters the world over were confounded by Lester's A Hard Day's Night, wherein he managed to transform the famed quartet of torso-twisting troubadours into first-chair film comedians. His latest box-office bonanza, Help!, again places Lester in the redoubtable role of bossing the Beatles, a role he so enjoys that he switched tailors and showed up on location dressed in the latest Mods' menswear. "I like individualism," says Lester, explaining his prowess in handling England's notorious band of mop-topped minstrels, "so I'm inclined to be on the side of youth, of rebellion, of playfulness"...

Playboy: November 1965, page 18,21

GOLDFINGER. Teresa Brewer. A Hard Day's Night. Other great movie songs.
20 TOP POP SONG HITS. She Loves You... [Same as 65JULp10.]

Playboy: December 1965, page 6

Adding sparkle to our tree... the frantic misadventures of Little Annie Fanny with Ringo, Paul, John and George...

Playboy: December 1965, page 28,31

Nat King Cole * Nancy Wilson * Stan Kenton * Jackie Gleason * The Beatles * Only Capitol Record Club brings you all these great stars!

BEATLES VI. [Same as 65OCTp10, but with b&w picture.]
THE EARLY BEATLES. [Same as 65OCTp13, but with b&w picture.]
BEATLES SONG BOOK. [Same as 65AUGp18, but without song titles.]
Peggy Lee. A Hard Day's Night. [Same as 65OCTp10.]
HELP!
BEATLES '65. [Same as 65AUGp18, but with first 2 song titles only.]
MEET THE BEATLES. [Same as 64DECp16, but picture slightly changed.]
A WORLD WITHOUT LOVE. Peter & Gordon. [Same as 65OCTp10.]

Playboy: December 1965, page 124
Comment: The cartoon accompanying "To A Discotheque Partner" shows four guys with long-ish hair in Beatle-ish suits. Weak Beatles tie-in?

Playboy: December 1965, page 300-303
Comment: Shows numerous color cartoon pictures of the Bleatles, of course.
Comment: The story opens with Sugardaddy Bigbucks telling how he cornered the market on a certain postage stamp printed with an imperfection, only to have the post office run off millions more, bringing the value of his stamps down to their face value. He nonchalantly tosses the formerly-valuable stamps into the air.

Sugardaddy Bigbucks: You see, the value of an artifact is determined by rarity, scarcity. I'm not talking about true art... I'm talking about fad art whose worth is measured by popularity! Demand!... Op art! Pop art! Pop music! Bleatle records! Popular today, forgotten tomorrow!

Annie: The Bleatles' records a fad? Daddy B! Don't you know the Bleatles are artistes?

Sugardaddy Bigbucks: Sheer hysterical talk, my child... Wait till you've been exposed to them a little more.

Annie: Hysterical talk, leapin' lizards! I could never get tired of the Bleatles. They're so talented. They don't wiggle their hips and they're gentlemen...

Sugardaddy Bigbucks: Not hysterical, eh? It just so happens I invited them tonight, and here they are now!

Annie: EEEE! THE BLEATLES!

Sugardaddy Bigbucks: I'll tell you what, my dear - I've a large investment in these chaps and I'm sending them this very afternoon to tape one of those interviews that will stimulate interest in their latest mammoth tour... Perhaps you'd like to go along?

Annie: EE! THE BLEATLES!
...
Paul: They've snagged Ringo!

Ringo: I'm done chaps! My leg's caught! Carry on without me!

John: Hard cheese for Ringo!

Butler: Miss Annie, please to release Mr. Ringo's leg! You are with us!
...
Butler: Aiee! is not our driver. I fear we are being kidnapped.

Kidnapper [with beard disguise]: That's right!... If you are about to scream, save yourself the trouble. There isn't an ear for miles.

Annie: EE! THE BLEATLES!

Kidnapper: Ah, you are one of those girls who can never get tired of the Bleatles, eh? Very well, you will be confined with them in this room for ransom...

Butler: Have humble idea! We all escape through window -

Bleatles: From this height? Pop off! Ferry cross the Merzy!

Butler: with ropes made of ours and Miss Annie's clothes!

Bleatles: Yay yay yay!

Butler [hanging out the window]: Aaiee! Rope is too short! Need maybe three more feet!

Bleatles [in underwear]: Lor' luvva duck! Just about the size of an outstretched bra!

Bleatles [gawking at topless Annie, letting go of rope]: Yayayay!

Butler: Mr. Bleatles, please to take care to pay attention to the holding of the ROOOooooo Yi! [Thud.]

Annie: Oh dear! Here we are locked up in this isolated tower full of hay, all alone like this. What will we do?

Bleatles [leering expressions, light bulb above heads]: (* * IDEA * *)

Sugardaddy Bigbucks [days later, leading police]: All right boys, they must be behind this door. Annie, are you in there?

Annie: Hark! It's Sugardaddy Bigbucks!

Sugardaddy Bigbucks: Annie! And the Bleatles!! The whole world has been searching for you, boys! The demand for your tour has doubled since your disappearance! (Scarcity certainly does increase popularity, heheh!) And how did it feel, my dear, to spend a week with your favorite artistes?

Annie [with horrified expression]: EE! THE BLEATLES!

Annie: It was horrible! Locked up for days! No clothes! No nothing! Except (retch) Bleatles!

Bleatles: Yayayay!

Annie: And there was this terrible kidnapper with a beard -

Sugardaddy Bigbucks: A disguise, my child! See? He escaped but left his beard behind. Ahem. Do you still believe you could never get tired of the Bleatles?

Annie: Oh Daddy, you were so right! It was just like you once said about valuable postage stamps! It was like being locked up in a room full of valuable postage stamps! It was like being buried alive - like being saturated in valuable, smothering, sticky postage stamps -

Annie: Golly! That's strange. Here's one stuck right inside the beard.

Playboy: January 1966, page 12

FEELIN' GOOD. Lena Horne. And I Love Him.
ELLINGTON '66. Duke Ellington. All My Loving.

Playboy: January 1966, page 44

If you dig the Brazilian sound, we can't think of a more pleasant approach to it than through Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66... [They] run through a repertoire of South and North American numbers (and even a bit from Blighty - the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night) with engagingly youthful charm...

Playboy: January 1966, page 46
Comment: This is the first of a stream of Beatle songs appearing on jazz albums reviewed by Playboy. There is an irony here. While Playboy insists that only jazz is worthy of consideration and steadfastly ignores the pop/rock music scene, the jazz artists themselves seem to have no objection to pop tunes. They will make heavy use of Beatles' tunes in particular.

For the jazz aficionado there is... Gerry Mulligan/IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM! (in which the baritone saxophonist leads a quintet through jazz versions of pop favorites a la King Of The Road, I Know A Place and A Hard Day's Night)...

Playboy: February 1966, page 10,13

Duke Ellington. All My Loving. [Same as 66Janp12.]
Lena Horne. And I Love Him. [Same as 66JANp12.]

Playboy: February 1966, page 36

ELLA IN HAMBURG/Ella Fitzgerald... Whether she's softly swinging through an Ellington medley, belting out the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night... Ella is strictly wunderbar.

Playboy: February 1966, page 40

I have a routine complaint about a routine curse - baldness... My barber offers me no solution, nor does my doctor. As a result, I have become morose, withdrawn...

[Playboy:] ... Most [balding men] compensate for their lack with other assets: personality, physique... A winning personality can give a bald head as much appeal as a ringer for Ringo...

Playboy: February 1966, page 75,166
Writer: Robert L. Green

In London, the Savile Row establishment directly competes with such far-out, modern stylists as John Stephens of Soho... While he caters to the younger, swinging set that follows the British Beatle-oriented singing groups, Stephens includes in his list of clients such notables as Lord Snowden, the Duke of Bedford and Peter Sellers...

While the British Mods have patterned their clothing styles after those worn by Liverpool singing groups, the wild ye'-ye' Paris young men have identified with the American cowboy look.

Playboy: February 1966, page 166
Comment: A long-haired rock group has an indistinguishable girl member. The group isn't drawn particularly Beatle-ish, but this is-it-a-girl-or-a-boy hair humor began, of course, with the hoopla over the Beatles' hair.

Playboy: February 1966, page 182-187
Writer: Nat Hentoff
Comment: The jazz poll is confusing. It works like this. Each year there are actually two separate jazz polls. One is called the All-Star Readers' Poll in which the magazine readers vote for their favorite artists in categories simply called "Trumpet", "Drums", etc. The other poll is called the All-Star Musicians' Poll. The only people who vote in this poll are all of the winners in both of the polls from the previous year. The categories in the All-Star Musician's poll are the same as in the other, but gummed-up with the words "All-Star's All-Star". The voters in this poll are referred to as "Playboy's All-Stars' All-Stars".
        To simplify this, we will refer to the two polls as the "Reader Poll" and the "Winner Poll". The word "Winner" should bring to mind the exclusive poll in which only the previous year's winners in the Reader and Winner Polls get to vote.
        The Winner Poll is sort of strange; its winners make up at least half of next year's Winner Poll voters, depending on how much overlap there is between the winners in the two polls. For example, the Swingle Singers were the No. 1 vocal group in this Winner Poll and Peter, Paul & Mary were No. 1 in the Reader Poll. One representative from each group will vote in the 1967 Winner Poll.
        Also, keep in mind that the indicated year is always off by one. Thus, the article "Jazz '66" actually surveys the jazz scene of 1965, and only part of that. Most votes in the Reader Poll were probably cast in September since that is when the October issue appeared.

All-Star's All-Star [Winner Poll] Vocal Group: ... The Beatles and the Supremes showed up for the first time, tying for fifth.

1. Swingle Singers
2. Double Six of Paris
3. Four Freshman [tie]
3. Hi-Lo's       [tie]
5. Beatles  [tie]     
5. Supremes [tie]     

Comment: 5th is the last recognized position in the Winner Poll. Only 32 musicians were eligible to vote, as discussed above. It would be interesting to know precisely who voted for the Beatles in this jazz poll.

Comment: There were a few categories added to the Reader Poll for 1966. These are the Jazz Hall Of Fame and three "record of the year" categories: Best Big Band LP, Best Small Combo LP and Best Vocal LP.

Best Big Band LP: ELLINGTON '66. A royal romp, by the Duke and his men through a host of pop favorites such as All My Loving...

    Best Vocal LP  

 1. MY NAME IS BARBRA/Barbra Sreisand
 2. PEOPLE/Barbra Streisand
 3. THE NANCY WILSON SHOW!
 4. HELP!/The Beatles
 5. SEPTEMBER OF MY YEARS/Frank Sinatra
    ...
23. GENTLE IS MY LOVE/Nancy Wilson
24. THE BEATLES VI
25. FUNNY GIRL/Barbra Sreisand

Folkdom favorites Peter, Paul & Mary were our readers' choice for the third year in a row, but there were new faces among the also-rans. Blighty's Beatles edged out France's Swingles for the number-two spot...

    Guitar

 1. Charlie Byrd . . . 5679
    ...
23. Freddie Green . . . 136
24. George Harrison . . 132
25. Oscar Moore . . . . 124


    Drums

 1. Joe Morello . . . 6966
    ...
15. Louis Bellson  . . 372
16. Ringo Starr  . . . 321
17. Jo Jones . . . . . 307

Comment: Both George and Ringo were write-in candidates. Neither Paul nor John received enough (if any) write-in votes to place them within the top 36 Male Vocalists.

    Vocal Group

 1. Peter, Paul & Mary . . 3699
 2. Beatles  . . . . . . . 2983
 3. Swingle Singers  . . . 2814
    ...
 6. Supremes . . . . . . . 2002
    ...
 8. Rolling Stones . . . . 1536
    ...
17. Herman's Hermits  . . . 290

Comment: Compare Peter, Paul & Mary's showing in the Best Vocal LP category, No. 15 and 16, with the Beatles', No. 4 and 24. Note that the Beatles almost doubled the Rolling Stones' votes in the Vocal Group category, in spite of the (assumed) predominance of young, red-blooded male voters.

Playboy: March 1966, page 8

Clifford R. Terry: Your interview with Al Capp was undoubtedly the most nauseating example of pomposity and conceit I have ever read between the covers of Playboy. Al Capp's interview rates with those of Robert Shelton, Madalyn Murray and the Beatles, which showed the true and often surprising character make-up of these people.

Playboy: March 1966, page 18

In the same Brazilian bag is CHRIS CONNOR SINGS GENTLE BOSSA NOVA... She sticks to Tin-Pan-Alley-type tunes - A Hard Day's Night, Who Can I Turn To... which have been boss-novated... Chris' voice is low-key throughout...

Playboy: March 1966, page 42,139

Backed by the big beat of the new group, Dylan tours England with as much tumultuous success as he does America, and the air play for his single records in both countries is rivaled only by that of the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the Rolling Stones on the Top 40 deejay shows...

Playboy [Nat Hentoff]: Why do you think rock 'n' roll has become such an international phenomenon?

Dylan: ... Anyway, what does it mean, rock 'n' roll? Does it mean Beatles, does it mean John Lee Hooker, Bobby Vinton, Jerry Lewis' kid? ... Lawrence Welk... Ricky Nelson... I think it's fine to like Ricky Nelson; I couldn't care less if somebody likes Ricky Nelson. But I think we're getting off the track here. There isn't any Ricky Nelson. There isn't any Beatles; oh, I take that back; there are a lot of beetles. But there isn't any Bobby Vinton...

Playboy: ... And many of them seem to feel the same way about your long hair. But compared with the shoulder-length coiffures worn by some of the male singing groups these days, your tonsorial tastes are on the conservative side. How do you feel about these far-out hair styles?

Dylan: The thing that most people don't realize is that it's warmer to have long hair. Everybody wants to be warm. People with short hair freeze easily... and they get jealous of everybody that's warm...

Playboy: March 1966, page 155
Writer: Allan Seager
Comment: So who wants the fun of leading the effort to track down all the Beatles references in fiction?

Although his rugged, handsome countenance became as well known as Ringo's, not once during this spate of publicity did Tenorio reveal the strain he was undergoing.

Playboy: April 1966, page 23

You may have noticed that rock 'n' roll and folk-rock groups now clamoring for the national spotlight have begun to eschew such prosaic monikers as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in favor of such word-playful combination names as Paul Revere and the Raiders, Ivan and the Terribles... Dow Jones and the Industrials...

Playboy: April 1966, page 47

THE BAROQUE BEATLES BOOK has turned the clock back two centuries to embellish more than a dozen John Lennon-Paul McCartney madrigals with the musical adornments of that era. The Baroque Ensemble of the Merseyside Kammermusikgesellschaft under the baton of Joshua Rifkin melds Bach with Beatles in surprisingly compatible fashion. It is, verily, a palpable hit.

HANG ON RAMSEY!/The Ramsey Lewis Trio... [is] chock full of rhythmic goodies. [It] contains the group's smash singles of A Hard Day's Night and Hang On Sloopy, and seven other swinging affairs including another Beatle best seller, And I Love Her.

Playboy: May 1966, page 21-22

GYPSY '66/Gabor Szabo with Gary McFarland & Co... There's a powerful strain of the Magyar in Szabo's playing, which imparts a highly original flavor to a performance. Among the tunes on hand are a couple of Beatle ballads - Yesterday and If I Fell - and Burt Bacharach's... Walk On By...

JACK JONES FOR THE IN CROWD has all the proper ingredients for success: change of pace (from the country-and-westernish opener, What The World Needs Now, to the Beatle ballad Yesterday...), an honest approach to a lyric... Good show!

Playboy: May 1966, page 111,113

[caption] The girls take their first American coffee break while being interviewed in a waiting room by newsmen. "You'd have thought we were the Beatles!" Dolly said. "One chap kept asking how I liked America, even though I'd only been here 30 minutes."

Dolly also professes a penchant for... exotic foods. ("Fortunately, I can eat all I want and still keep my figure.") Good show! To say nothing of Gear and Fab.

Playboy: May 1966, page 184
Writer: Len Deighton

Writers are not cogs... Nor is a book a refrigerator. A house that contains a Bello can still use a Mailer... Time for Bach and time for Beatle...

Playboy: June 1966, page 13

RUBBER SOUL. [Simplified album cover without photo of Beatles.]

Playboy: July 1966, page 10,13

TOP POP SONG HITS VOL. 2. Ticket To Ride, Help!
ROY DRUSKY'S GREATEST HITS. Yesterday.
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF MOTION PICTURES. United Artists. A Hard Day's Night. Music directly from the soundtracks of 13 great movies.

Playboy: August 1966, page 2
Comment: This is the first Playboy ad showing longer male hair, and the first to show hip '60s clothes.

Maybe we made a mistake in 1776. We gave up plenty when we broke off with the land of Bond and the Beatles. We even had to create our own mod look and give it our own name: "Modnicks"...

Playboy: August 1966, page 8,11

WOMAN. Peter & Gordon.
RUBBER SOUL. [Same as 66JUNp13.]
BEATLES VI. [Same as 65DECp28.]
THE NEW BEATLES SONGBOOK. Hollyridge Strings. Nowhere Man, Michelle, Yesterday.
MICHELLE. Bud Shank. Yesterday, Girl.
BEST OF CHAD & JEREMY. From A Window.
A NEW SONG FOR YOUNG LOVE. The Letterman. Michelle.

Playboy: August 1966, page 30
Comment: Ad for shirt, slacks, hip hugger slacks and skirt, turtleneck.

Playboy: September 1966, page 8-9

GO AWAY FROM MY WORLD. Marianne Faithfull. Yesterday.
MARIANNE FAITHFULL. I'm A Loser.

Playboy: September 1966, page 27-28

One amused Englishman... Michael Frayn, has seen fit to skewer [American reporters making the "superfab Carnaby Street scene"]:
...
He turned to me and the doll.

"Greetings, British bird and British beatle!" he said very slowly, waving his hands about. "You - with it, yes? You - making scene, no?"

"I'm not making a scene," I replied nervously. "I was just set on by you all lot."

"He says he's set-on," reported Time magazine to the others. "That's the now-now phrase for switched-on."
...
"Where's he go-go-going to, Henry?" asked the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Annabel's? The Scotch?"

"British beatle," translated Time magazine to me, "where you make the scene along toward?"

"I said I was on my way to Oxford Circus Tube Station..."
...
"Suffering saints!" they cried. "This... opens up entirely fresh dimensions of fabness, and brings within the reach of a long-suffering mankind the hope of a whole gear universe of prime-quality grooviness!"
...

Playboy: September 1966, page 64,65

FEELIN' KINDA BLUES/Gerald Wilson Orchestra is big band jazz at its ebullient best... Wilson & Co. range through a repertoire as disparate as the Beatles' Yesterday, Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man...

Nancy Wilson/A TOUCH OF TODAY is yet another wonderful Wilson LP... Herein, Nancy turns her vocal attentions to current attractions The Shadow Of Your Smile, Yesterday, Call Me, And I Love Him, et al... She sounds as if she enjoys singing these songs; and that, dear friends, is half the battle won...

Playboy: September 1966, page 187

Thus, by some voodoo known only to [Carol] Doda..., Carol gives guys the red-hots whether she's accoutered in everything or practically nothing, breakfasting at New Joe's at three A.M. in Eton jacket and Beatle haircut or up on the Condor's airborne Baldwin piano in one of her five wigs...

Playboy: October 1966, page 32,33,34

TODAY/Herbie Mann finds the eminent flutist touching all jazz bases. There are two Ellington antiquities,... two Beatle tone poems, Yesterday and The Night Before... and a bossa nova beauty...

Sarah Vaughan/THE NEW SCENE... The Divine Sarah is in her usual fine fettle as she brings... Michelle,... What Now My Love and similar sonatas into the Vaughan vernacular.

Big band jazz at its best; that's OLIVER NELSON PLAYS MICHELLE. Arranger conductor and reed man Nelson has... brought an exciting, pulsating sound to vinyl. The tunes range from rock-'n'-rollers through jazz originals...

RAGA ROCK, performed by the Folkswingers and featuring Harihar Rao on sitar, is a musical harbinger of things to come... Here, the sitar is placed in the fore of a rocking guitar group... The tunes are rock-bound, but the flavor is exotic, especially on the Beatle ballad Norwegian Wood.

Playboy: October 1966, page 132
Comment: No individual Beatles are nominated in any ballot category, in spite of Ringo and George placing in the previous poll. The Rolling Stones and the Herman's Hermits are not nominated in the Vocal Group category in spite of their previous showing.

Vocal Group   (Please check one.)

Andy & the Bey Sisters 
Beatles
Brothers Four
Byrds
...

Playboy: October 1966, page 227
Comment: A protest group - which looks nothing like the Beatles - sings, "Yech, yech, yech, yech, ooooh!"

Playboy: November 1966, page 20-21

THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE. Andy Williams. Yesterday, Michelle.
THE TOUCH OF GOLD. Charlie Byrd. Michelle, Yesterday.
FILET OF SOUL. Jan and Dean. Michelle.
MY LOVE. Petula Clark. We Can Work It Out.
THE TOYS. Yesterday.
SOUND OF THE TIMES. Les and Larry Elgart. Michelle.
I'LL REMEMBER YOU. Roger Williams. Yesterday.

Playboy: November 1966, page 48

... CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'/Bud Shank picks up where the previous smash, MICHELLE, left off. Shank's liquid alto sax... [wends its] way through the lush orchestrations... The sound sometimes borders precariously on the saccharine... Among the subjects covered... the Beatles' Norwegian Wood... and Roger Miller's Husbands And Wives.

Playboy: November 1966, page 70

... Then it's a hop, skip and a "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" to record three - his arrangements of great Beatles hits like Yesterday, Michelle and Hard Day's Night...

CHET ATKINS PICKS ON THE BEATLES [with photo of album cover.]

Playboy: December 1966, page 32-33

MICHELLE. David & Jonathan. Yesterday.
RUBBER SOUL [album cover has photo of Beatles.]
Peter & Gordon. [Same as 66AUGp8.]
Bud Shank. [Same as 66AUGp11.]
The Lettermen. [Same as 66AUGp11.]
Chad & Jeremy. [Same as 66AUGp11.]
Hollyridge Strings. [Same as 66AUGp11.]
BEACH BOYS' PARTY. I Wish I Had Known Better [I Should Have...]
HELLO DOLLY! Ella Fitzgerald. Can't Buy Me Love.
MEET THE BEATLES. [Same as 65DECp31.]
BEATLES VI. [Same as 65DECp28.]

Playboy: December 1966, page 73-74

As popular music becomes ever more heterogeneous, the lines between folk and pop, between city and country, and even between Nashville and Motown are ever more difficult to draw. What is needed is a guide to the revels, and that we now have in Donald Myrus' Ballads, Blues And The Big Beat. Myrus covers a great deal of ground... from Moe Hill to Bob Dylan, from Elvis Presley to Ray Charles... Nor are the Beatles and the Supremes overlooked...

Playboy: December 1966, page 151-155,321-326

Understandably, London has been written about, photographed, filmed, televised, analyzed and almost inundated in a flood of phraseology such as switched on, with it, fab, gear and super.

[caption] At Raymond's Revuebar, if pedestaled nudes prove too tame... [Not a Beatles reference, but known to Beatle people from the Magical Mystery Tour film.]

[caption] A covey of wildly plumaged night owls flies high at Sibylla's... Owned by Beatle George Harrison and several of his friends, Sibylla's opened this past summer...

The Ad Lib, in Leicester Square, was once a Beatle hangout, but now their Mersey sound is translated by groups emphatically more pyrotechnical...

Off Picadilly, in Swallow Street, is Sibylla's, part owned by Beatle George Harrison...

A Hampstead pub called the Spaniard's [is] reputed to have been built in - and named for - the year of the Spanish Armada. This was one of Dickens' favorite pubs... Other literary figures who dropped in to seek the muse include Lamb, Shelley, Keats and, most recently, Beatle John Lennon.

Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum is camp of a high order. The basement is a series of tableaux of the world's most remembered murders, and upstairs the personages in wax range from Napolean to the Beatles.

Playboy: December 1966, page 180
Comment: References to real people in the Party Jokes are extremely rare; this is the only instance in issues dated 1966.

Our Unabashed Dictionary defines British atheist as one who doesn't believe in John Lennon.

Playboy: December 1966, page 190
Comment: Weak Beatles connection here? The cartoon Santa labeled "Carnaby Claus" looks somewhat Beatle-ish, with maybe George or Paul features. He has a guitar, as well.

Playboy: January 1967, page 24-25

TODAY'S GOLDEN HITS. Andre Kostelanetz. Michelle.
TRINI. Trini Lopez. Yesterday.
THE SHADOW OF YOUR SMILE. Johnny Mathis. Michelle, Yesterday.
HANG ON RAMSEY. Ramsey Lewis Trio. A Hard Day's Night, And I Love Her.
FOUR TOPS ON TOP. Michelle.
GOLDEN HITS, VOL.3. Jan & Dean. Yesterday.
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 66NOVp21.]
I HEAR A SYMPHONY. The Supremes. Yesterday.
Andy Williams. Yesterday, Michelle. [Same as 66NOVp20, but bigger.]

Playboy: January 1967, page 43

SERGIO MENDES & BRASIL '66 continues the winning ways of the bossa-nova group... There are now two girl singers and four instrumentalists... The Brazilian beat reigns throughout, although the repertoire currently includes a healthy smattering of pop tunes - The Joker, Going Out Of My Head and Daytripper [Day Tripper]. If you haven't caught these gifted cariocas yet, now's the time.

Playboy: January 1967, page 155
Comment: Shows color cartoon picture of the group.

John Lennon: I've got to learn to keep my mouth shut, for Christ's sake!

Playboy: February 1967, page 8-9

THE TIME OF MY LIFE. John Davidson. Michelle.
SERGIO MENDES & BRASIL '66. Day Tripper.
MATT MONROE'S BEST. Yesterday.
WADE IN THE WATER. Ramsey Lewis. Day Tripper.
Andy Williams. Yesterday... [Same as 66Novp20.]
Four Tops. Michelle. [Same as 67JANp24.]
Ramsey Lewis. A Hard Day's Night... [Same as 67JANp24.]
Andre Kostelanetz. Michelle. [Same as 67JANp24.]
Supremes. Yesterday. [Same as 67JANp25.]
Les & Larry Elgart. Michelle. [Same as 66NOVp21.]

Playboy: February 1967, page 18
Comment: Playboy's review of a Mamas & the Papa's album on this page is their first ever of a pop/rock album. This honor should have gone to the Beatles, who have been battering down Playboy's "no pop/rock" policy almost single-handedly for the last few years.

SIMPATICO/Gary McFarland and Gabor Szabo features the vibist and guitarist with rhythm... They wend their way through the likes of Norwegian Wood, Cool Water, The Word...

Playboy: February 1967, page 43
Comment: 4-track in those days meant 2 tracks in each direction on the tape.

Note: all tapes offered by the Club must be played back on 4-track stereo equipment.

Andre Kostelanetz. Michelle. [Same as 67JANp24.]
Andy Williams. Yesterday... [Same as 66NOVp20.]
Petula Clark. We Can Work It Out. [Same as 66NOVp21.]
Supremes. Yesterday. [Same as 67JANp25.]

Playboy: February 1967, page 97

The 20-year-old Kim, a full-time member of her eclectic, turned-on generation, is an occasional motorcyclist and a fervent follower of the latest musical imports from Great Britain...

Playboy: February 1967, page 144-149
Writer: Nat Hentoff

All-Star's All-Star [Winner Poll] Vocal Group: ... Nashville's Anita Kerr Singers are the only newcomers, replacing the Beatles and the Supremes, who tied for fifth last time out.

   Best Big Band LP

1. BASIE MEETS BOND
   ...
3. BASIE'S BEATLE BAG.
   ...
5. OLIVER NELSON PLAYS MICHELLE.  


   Best Vocal LP

1. STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT/Frank Sinatra
2. LIVE!/Lou Rawls
3. SEPTEMBER OF MY YEARS/Frank Sinatra
4. REVOLVER/Beatles
5. COLOR ME BARBRA/Barbra Streisand
6. SINATRA AT THE SANDS
7. RUBBER SOUL/Beatles
8. A MAN AND HIS MUSIC/Frank Sinatra

Finally, the other newcomers to the All-Stars - placing first in the vocal-group category - were the lovely and talented Supremes. The girls from Motown edged out the Beatles (who placed second) and Peter, Paul & Mary (last year's first-place winners...)

    Guitar

 1. Charlie Byrd . . . 3442
    ...
17. Johnny Smith  . . . 253
18. George Harrison . . 229
19. Luiz Bonfa  . . . . 170
    ...
26. Joe Pass  . . . . . 116
27. Paul McCartney  . . 112

    Drums

 1. Joe Morello  . . . 4262
    ...
16. Louis Bellson . . . 257
17. Ringo Star  . . . . 205
18. Grady Tate  . . . . 204


    Vocal Group

 1. Supremes . . . . . . . 2451
 2. Beatles  . . . . . . . 2306
 3. Peter, Paul & Mary . . 2087
    ...
 9. Rolling Stones  . . . . 404
    ...
16. Byrds . . . . . . . . . 283
    ...
18. Mama's & Papa's . . . . 265
    ...
28. Four Seasons  . . . . . 103

Playboy: March 1967, page 16-17
Comment: Album covers on the first page are in color. That includes the first three albums below.

YESTERDAY AND TODAY. Yesterday, We Can Work It Out, Day Tripper, others.
LIGHTLY LATIN. Perry Como. Yesterday.
TRINI. Trini Lopez. Yesterday. [Same album as in Columbia ad, 67JANp24.]
MARIANNE FAITHFULL. I'm A Loser. [Similar to 66SEPp9.]
HITS OF THE 60'S. The Bachelors. Michelle.

Playboy: March 1967, page 21

Petula Clark. We Can Work It Out. [Same as 66NOVp21.]
Supremes. Yesterday. [Same as 67JANp25.]
Andy Williams. Yesterday... [Same as 66NOVp20.]
Andre Kostelanetz. Michelle. [Same as 67JANp24.]

Playboy: March 1967, page 103,140
Writer: Calvin Tomkins

[The story begins:] The McElroys were swingers. They lived on Fifth Avenue in a big new duplex full of long white sofas and pop paintings, and they adored the Beatles, but they liked the Rolling stones even better.
...
"This sort of discussion is futile," Paul said. "No wonder the world's in a mess. Why don't you people grow up?" Paul went upstairs to his room. The McElroys went out to a Beatles movie, which they enjoyed even more than the last time.
...
Mr. and Mrs. McElroy found that they were spending all their time taking care of Virginia. Some mornings Mr. McElroy could not even get to his office. They hardly ever went out to a Beatles movie, or to other people's parties, or used their jazzy dark-green Jag, or even listened to the Rolling Stones on the radio - Virginia had decided the Rolling Stones were a drag.

Playboy: April 1967, page 38

Two much! Three new albums, each with a couple of great artists who just naturally swing together. Jazz up both sides of your stereo. Pick a pair!
...
Jackie & Roy! Bright new versions of tunes borrowed from The Beatles and The Lovin' Spoonful! CHANGES.

Playboy: May 1967, page 28-30
Comment: Playboy reviews its 2nd, 3rd and 4th pop/rock albums - by the Jefferson Airplane, Rolling Stones and Donovan, respectively.

The Seekers, meanwhile, demonstrate in GEORGY GIRL that, contrary to rumor, traditional pop-folk is not quite dead. The Australian quartet slides easily... from standard folk tunes... to such recent hits as Lennon and McCartney's Yesterday and Paul Simon's Red Rubber Ball.

[Implicit Beatles connection. The review of an album by Ali Akbar Khan begins:] Now that Indian instruments have become very much a part of the pop-folk-rock scene, one can appreciate them even more when they are played by virtuosi.

Playboy: May 1967, page 100,101

"Although I'm hardly an operatic soprano, my voice isn't bad. Last summer someone lent me a guitar and I immediately went out and bought a Beatles songbook. I've been taking lessons and now I can accompany myself."

[caption] After going through several Beatles Ballads, Anne, Johnnie and Ronnie [sing] Sweet Adeline.

Comment: In the photo, the word "Beatles" is just recognizable on the cover of the book Anne is playing from.

Playboy: May 1967, page 152-153
Comment: No Beatles references here. Playboy profiles Donovan, the Mamas & the Papas and Simon and Garfunkel.With this issue (see also Playboy After Hours - Recordings), Playboy finally surrenders itself over to pop music. Again (see 67FEBp18), I maintain it is a monumental oversight that the group that did almost all of the work breaking down this barrier over a period of years goes unmentioned, even incidentally, in these record reviews and artist profiles. On the other hand, maybe it's a bit more fun to be irate over this injustice than to have had a few lousy crumbs of recognition tossed the Beatles' way.

Playboy: June 1967, page 40

Peter and Gordon, meanwhile, have emerged from their long apprenticeship to the Everlys and the Beatles. In KNIGHT IN RUSTY ARMOUR, their seventh LP, they trip through a solid collection...

Playboy: June 1967, page 113

Joey's tastes in music also reflect her individualistic life style: "I started listening to Ravi Shankar years ago," she says, "and only recently, when the Beatles brought sitar music into their records, did I become a fan of theirs."

Playboy: June 1967, page 145

[A young female cartoon companion of Silverstein says:] "It's great to have another American to share London with! We can explore Westminster together, we can feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square together, you can introduce me to the Beatles, and after that I can manage on my own . . . "

Playboy: July 1967, page 24-25

RHAPSODIES FOR YOUNG LOVERS. Midnight String Quartet. Yesterday.
Ramsey Lewis. Day Tripper. [Same as 67FEBp8.]
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Day Tripper. [Same as 67FEBp8.]
BOOTS WITH STRINGS. Boots Randolph. Michelle, Yesterday.
Andy Williams. Yesterday... [Same as 66NOVp20.]
John Davidson. Michelle. [Same as 67FEBp8.]

Playboy: July 1967, page 30
Comment: NOT a Beatles reference. Playboy reviews The War Game, a movie depicting the horror of a nuclear attack. Brian Epstein viewed a copy of this at home in July, 1966, and was very impressed. Derek Taylor claims The War Game "changed John Lennon's life" (Fifty Years Adrift, page 287) - in which case it indirectly affected many other lives as well.

Playboy: July 1967, page 31

Boots Randolph. Michelle... [Same as page 25.]
Ramsey Lewis. A Hard Day's Night. [Same as 67JANp24.]
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 66NOVp21.]

Playboy: August 1967, page 10
Comment: NOT a direct Beatles reference.

James Gottlieb: I would like to congratulate Playboy on its recent recognition of popular music... I'm glad to see that today's sound is accepted by a magazine with the stature and respect of Playboy.

Playboy: August 1967, page 20

Nobody in the north England town of Bolton could ask for a nicer couple than Hayley Mills... and Hywel Bennett (a thin, handsome youth, with a striking resemblance to Paul McCartney); but Hywel's inability in the bedchamber becomes the talk and despair of the town. The Family Way is both the name of the movie and the condition Hayley will never get into unless the pair of them can get a house of their own...

Comment: A McCartney mention here was more or less expected, but the fact that it was not for his soundtrack music is a big surprise.

Playboy: August 1967, page 26

Featuring a brass choir conducted by Warren Kime, [BRASS IMPACT] is musically exciting. [The] scorings employ onomatopoeic vocalizing by three girl singers... Among the items... Eleanor Rigby and Baubles, Bangles And Beads.

Playboy: August 1967, page 35

Playboy Interviews [book]: Sixteen bold, bracing dialogues between Playboy and... Martin Luther King... Ayn Rand, Malcolm X... Madalyn Murray... the Beatles... and Timothy Leary.

Comment: Ringo is pictured on the cover. I may have missed earlier ads for this book.

Playboy: August 1967, page 49

Ramsey Lewis. Day Tripper. [Same as 67FEBp8.]

Playboy: August 1967, page 96
Writer: Jacob Brackman

Most often, the new rebel papers might be writing about another planet altogether. Where the establishment press has L.B.J... the underground papers have Staughton Lynd... The establishment makes folk heroes of Bob Hope, Natalie Wood, Sinatra, Twiggy, Jackie, the Beatles... The underground does the same of Ken Kesey, the Grateful Dead, USCO, Madalyn Murray... Meher Baba, Che Guevara, Ravi Shankar...

Playboy: September 1967, page 20-21

I'LL REMEMBER YOU. Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same album as in Columbia ad, 66NOVp21.]
Trini Lopez. Yesterday. [Same as 67MARp16.]
WACK WACK. The Young Holt Trio. Yesterday.
A HEART FILLED WITH SONG. John Gary. Yesterday.
GAMES THAT PEOPLE PLAY. Eddie Fisher. Yesterday.
RHAPSODIES FOR YOUNG LOVERS. Midnight String Quartet. Yesterday. [Same album as in Columbia ad, 67JULp24.]
The Bachelors. Michelle. [On post card insert. Same as 67MARp17.]

Playboy: September 1967, page 44,46,51
Comment: Finally! But, hey, why wasn't REVOLVER reviewed if it was so great?

While coming nowhere near their earlier REVOLVER album as a radical departure in popular music, the Beatles' new SGT. PEPPER LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND is an exciting LP and an advance over what they have achieved thus far. Within You Without You is a further extension of George Harrison's experiments with Eastern music; A Little Help From My Friends is in gentle, joyful praise of getting high; the title item proves a rousing parody of rural community entertainment; Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is a further development of the techniques introduced in Eleanor Rigby; and A Day In The Life chillingly evokes modern life. The Beatles have outdone themselves again and, happily, they show no sign of stopping.

Comment: And here Playboy makes up, perhaps consciously, for the lack of recognition it has given the Beatles since opening up to pop/rock music. . . .

The children of the Beatles have been at work at home and abroad. THE HOLLIES' GREATEST HITS features the Beatle-influenced quintet on a number of favorites such as Bus Stop... Somewhat closer to the Beatles is HERE COMES MY BABY, in which the Tremeloes render the hit title song... [Regarding I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW by Tommy James and the Shondells:] James' group sings in an out-of-date, late-Fifties style that was a heavy influence on the early Beatles... At the opposite end of the Beatles bag are the Buckinghams, who, on TIME & CHANGES, engage in a compendium of deliberate experiments in pop sound... The Beatles' current rivals for teen popularity, The Monkees, have come up with HEADQUARTERS, the quartet's first album on its own, in which it moves away from Beatle imitating to a more individual folk-rock style. [Also reviewed in this group without a separate Beatle mention was ELECTRIC MUSIC FOR THE MIND AND BODY by Country Joe and the Fish.]

The new king of soul is Otis Redding... The introverted young bluesman has built a list of recordings that ranks with the works of Ray Charles, B. B. King, and Lou Rawls. In COMPLETE AND UNBELIEVABLE/THE OTIS REDDING DICTIONARY OF SOUL, he takes command of 12 superb vehicles, from his own... Hawg For You to the Beatles' Day Tripper...

The Easybeats' PR man refers to the quintet somewhat unfairly as "the Beatles of Australia." In FRIDAY ON MY MIND, the Aussies reveal that they have been more profoundly influenced by the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones and by such early Liverpudlian groups as The Searchers...

Playboy: October 1967, page 36,37

A wild new thing is about to happen: the mad, mod scene is about to witness the birth of a fantastic new magazine destined for greatness. Its name is Avant Garde.
...
Perhaps the best way to describe Avant Garde is to list the kinds of articles it will print:

... Bob Dylan's suppressed - and pithiest - song lyrics.
...
The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh.
...
Poets at war - bitter anti-war verse by GI's in Vietnam.

John Lennon as a master of prose.

Ingenious - and perfectly legal - new ways around abortion laws.

Playboy: October 1967, page 42,44

Onetime folky ODETTA uses a jazz rhythm section... to stamp her unique personality on Little Girl Blue, the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever and others.

There's something unusual happening on RAY CHARLES INVITES YOU TO LISTEN, and it's something that takes a bit of adjusting to. The ten tunes are all ballads, ranging from the melancholy Lennon-McCartney Yesterday to the nitty-gritty Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You, and Charles sings almost all of them falsetto-fashion. The effect is rather startling at first...

Playboy: October 1967, page 111
Writer: Buck Brown

Comment: A group of blacks carrying the signs on the left is greeted by a neighborhood of cheering whites with the banner on the right.

    Open      Equal         Get      We shall          Welcome Neighbors!
    housing   opportunity   off my   overcome          We can work it out
                            back     baby!

[Punchline: One black warns another:] "It must be a trap!"

Playboy: October 1967, page 121-125
Comment: This year's revised, renamed and expanded poll reflects Playboy's new-found acceptance of pop/rock music. They are not willing to admit, however, that they have been sorely out of touch and they try to cover themselves with the excuse that the boundary between jazz and pop/rock has become very hazy. They will repeat this stuff for years.
Comment: Small photos of Paul and Ringo are shown along with 14 other faces of rock performers.

A top jazz leader has recorded an album called IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM!, in which he does songs out of the pop-rock-folk bag of such luminaries as Petula Clark, Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Many rock groups are making jazz-like improvisations central to their acts...

Guitar (Please check one.)  [57 nominees.]
George Harrison 

Drums (Please check one.)  [59 nominees.]
Ringo Starr 

Misc. Instrument (Please check one.)  [77 nominees.]
George Harrison, sitar
Paul McCartney, electric bass

Comment: Miscellaneous Instrument also includes vibes, flute, violin, organ, harmonica, bongos, accordion, etc.

Male Vocalist (Please check one.)  [Can't count 'em all.]
Paul McCartney.  

Vocal Group (Please check one.)
Beatles 

Comment: Note that John Lennon was not nominated in any category.

Playboy: October 1967, page 133,136,140,195-196,203
Writer: Herbert Gold
Comment: I challenge anyone to read this article all the way through.

[caption] Ravi Shankar, whose music has influenced the Beatles, brings the good vibrations of his sensuous sitar playing to the Monterey Pop Festival...

They say they seek a world unfettered by money, rules or cops. As the Beatles tell it, they want to go down to Strawberry Fields Forever, where "nothing is real, and nothing to get hung about."...

The revolver of Evtushenko and Mayakovsky is the revolver of angry, hasty, wasteful youth; and an echo of it can be found in the name of the Beatle album filled with sweet love songs and ironic nudges: REVOLVER...

Late last year, there was a massive summit confrontation between the hard-line hippies... and the then mysterious Diggers... Everyone unrioted. Teeth, smiles, cool. Buddha directed traffic and the bus moved on.

We all live in a yellow submarine,
a yellow submarine,
a yellow submarine...

The song swept down the street. It was December 17. It was a merry Christmas coming. Love, love, love...

Rock music came to life from a Negro tradition, blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll, after a sea change in Liverpool before it was shipped back by the Beatles, who have now been canonized through a habit of the times of producing Instant Tradition.

Other groups have taken the torch passed by the Beatles and Bobby Dylan while these torchbearing wave makers are still in their middle 20s and still actively creating, but perhaps being made to feel a little like fathers and uncles...

"Cool," says the fading teeny bopper with the copy of John Lennon, the clipping about Bobby Dylan's accident, the Ban The Bomb sticker on her miniskirt.

Playboy: October 1967, page 189
Comment: Shows pictures of slacks in 8 different styles.

Playboy: November 1967, page 19
Comment: Beatles tie-in? The ad tells a little story of "mopless" Martians with shaved heads.

Playboy: November 1967, page 29
Comment: In these record club ads, there are occasionally songs that are not Beatle-composed but have a weak Beatles connection, usually in that the Beatles performed the song, too. On this page we find a song with a funny sort of tie-in: the song Linda on Buddy Clark's album was written for the baby Linda Eastman. That's the story, anyhow.

CLAUDINE. Claudine Longet. Here, There And Everywhere.
THE SANDPIPERS. Michelle.
Andre Kostelanetz. Michelle. [Same as 67JANp24.]
Boots Randolph. Michelle. [Same as 67Julp25.]

Playboy: November 1967, page 40,42

Carmen McRae, a singer for all seasons, has abandoned the standards that fill her songbook for a go at some lesser-known entries as she debuts on Atlantic with FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE. It was a master stroke. She concentrates on such au courant attractions as... Lennon and McCartney's Got To Get You Into My Life and the Brian Wilson-Tony Asher gem I Just Wasn't Made For These Times.

CHRIS CONNOR NOW! finds the longtime songstress in a decidedly contemporary bag as she turns her attention to tone poems of today - Goin' Out Of My Head, I'm Telling You Now, Nowhere Man and Carnival. The husky throb in Miss Connor's voice is... as evocative as ever.

The Hollies EVOLUTION takes the quintet another step forward, as it reveals Beatles- and Stones-type chutzpah in assured handling of such tough ditties as Carrie-Anne...

Playboy: November 1967, page 117

[caption] Following a hard day's night at the photo lab... Kaya takes a dip...

Playboy: November 1967, page 195
Comment: Same interview book as 67AUGp35. Different ad layout. Beatles not listed among the interviewees. Ringo pictured.

Playboy: December 1967, page 27
Comment: A turned-on parody of A Night Before Cristmas:

... As the convoy careened through the delicate, shuddering inner space of my forebrain - lighting each neuron in pinball rainbows of jelly-bean energy colors - I heard the master hailing his holy men by name: "Now, Jagger! McCartney! Now, Pig Pen and Lennon! On, Ginsberg! On, Burroughs! On, Frodo and Alpert! To the end of ego, to the light of the void! Smash through your game roles, smash through them all!"...

Playboy: December 1967, page 38-39
Comment: Ad near-dentical to, and Lennon reference same as in 67OCTp37.

Playboy: December 1967, page 68-71,74

ANOTHER SHADE OF LANA [Cantrell], her second LP, is even more commanding than her debut recording... Variety and versatility are the keynotes... The high point for us, however, is Lana's pitch-perfect handling of the poignant Lennon-McCartney opus She's leaving Home, in which the amazing Miss Cantrell harmonizes with herself by means of overdubbing. A vinyl encore that rates bravos.

A Peter, Paul & Mary etching is always an adventure, and ALBUM 1700 is no exception. P. P. & M. radiate good fun as they tackle some fine material, such as... Bob Dylan's Dream... and a funny parody - of the Mamas and the Papas, Donovan and the Beatles - titled I Dig Rock And Roll Music...

As we listened to BEE GEE'S 1ST, the initial album by the most interesting group to come out of Britain in more than a year, we were struck by the quintet's eclecticism. Here are blends of post-REVOLVER Beatles... Gene Pitney... Spencer Davis... Motown... big band... baroque... But as we listened to... the Eleanor Rigby-like Cucumber Castle... we were struck by an even more insistent influence... - that of the Everly Brothers.

Comment: While you're here, page 71 also has an ad for the "Playboy Beatle-interview issue cover girl" nightie. See 65FEB, cover.

Joan Baez' eighth LP is a change of pace for the queen of folk music... Also included on JOAN are works by Donovan, McCartney and Lennon, Jaques Brel....

Playboy: December 1967, page 243
Writer: Jack Newfield and Howard Smith

The Perfect Teeny Bopper: ... In front of the Vatican, her boyfriend Frodo is waiting with her. They are dressed exactly alike: Beatle boots, black bell-bottom hip-hugging Viet Cong pajama bottoms and Fifth Fleet pea jackets... They look like twins, except that he's wearing two earrings and she's wearing one.

Playboy: January 1968, page 16-17

OUR SONG. Jack Jones. Michelle.
JOAN. Joan Baez. Eleanor Rigby.
A DAY IN THE LIFE. Wes Montgomery. Eleanor Rigby.
Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. Day Tripper. [Same as 67FEBp8.]
Sandpipers. Michelle. [Same as 67NOVp29.]
THE LOOK OF LOVE. Claudine Longet. Good Day Sunshine.

Playboy: January 1968, page 38

When a movie sets out to lampoon war... as does Richard Lester's How I Won The War, it has to be better than just good... Unfortunately, Lester's new film is so far from good that he is bound to get it from both sides [jingoists and sympathizers]. After the flash and panache of A Hard Day's Night and The Knack, he seems to feel that his freewheeling narrative form is appropriate to all themes and occasions... Although [Michael] Crawford keeps a sparrowlike eye cocked for the safest way to win the War, somehow his best-laid battle plans always end up with somebody - usually one of his own men - getting killed, and generally gorily. Even John Lennon, on temporary leave from the Beatles, dies suddenly and ingloriously in action - before he's had a chance to prove his capabilities as an actor - his guts ripped open by enemy gunfire... Add to this an almost unintelligible soundtrack - even the English are said to have difficulty understanding it... "If I were hit by a truck tomorrow," [Lester] stated in one such interview, "I'd wish to be judged on this film." We wish him better than that.

Playboy: January 1968, page 45

GOLDEN HITS. Roger Williams. Yesterday.
Joan Baez. Eleanor Rigby. [Same as page 16.]

Playboy: January 1968, page 137

[caption] Mimi... and Connie ignore the tv in favor of a serious chat, before bedding down after a hard day's night.

Playboy: January 1968, page 181
Writer: John Clellan Holmes
Comment: The opening paragraph is a barrage of one-sentence examples of this "modern female". No names are given, but they all seem to refer to real women. The last example reads:

A young socialite... appears in underground movies, pals around with working class minstrels from Liverpool and... leads the march of Park Avenue down to the East Village.

Comment: Is this a reference to the Beatles? Who is the woman?

Playboy: February 1968, page 24

VANILLA FUDGE. Eleanor Rigby, Ticket To Ride.
Sandpipers. Michelle. [Same as 67NOVp29.]
Joan Baez. Eleanor Rigby. [Same as 68JANp16.]
Jack Jones. Michelle. [Same as 68JANp16.]
Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. Day Tripper. [Same as 67FEBp8.]
Claudine Longet. Good Day Sunshine. [Similar to 68JANp17.]

Playboy: February 1968, page 28

A DAY IN THE LIFE spotlights the wondrous Wes Montgomery with an outsized aggregation. In addition to the title Beatles treat, Wes has a go at their Eleanor Rigby and assorted odes ranging... to the funky When A Man Loves A Woman. A notable triumph.

On MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, the Beatles eschew further experimentation in favor of consolidating their gains. One side of the LP offers a half-dozen moody, melodic songs from the television film of the same title (the other side is a program of previous Lennon-McCartney hits, such as Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever). An uncanny blend of sound and sense is sustained throughout, and the group seems even more self-assured than in the past; the high point of the set is the powerfully nihilistic I Am The Walrus. A booklet of color photos is included for the quartet's more rabid fans.

Comment: On this page, Playboy calls the Doors the "best pop group to appear in eons." This raises two questions: What's an eon? And how many?

Playboy: February 1968, page
Comment: Ad near-identical to, and same Lennon reference as in 67OCTp36-37, except reduced here to fit on one page.

Playboy: February 1968, page 93,99

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian mystic who has introduced the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Mia Farrow Sinatra, among others, to the joys of contemplation, can also count Nancy Harwood among his followers...

Like so many of her tuned-in generation, Nancy grooves to the varied sounds of today's many-splendored pop musical world - Hugh Masekela, Wes Montgomery, the Beatles, the Stones and Ravi Shankar.

Playboy: February 1968, page 136-153
Writer: Nat Hentoff

More and more combos pulsate with this exuberant musical ecumenicity... A characteristic boundary-breaker, bassist Christopher Darrow of The Kaleidoscope, a West Coast combo, lists as his favorite composers Bach, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker. A young tenor saxophonist until recently in Woody Herman's band, Steve Marcus, is described by Down Beat as having roots in "Coltrane, Ravi Shankar and the Beatles."

And it is the evolution of the Beatles, climaxed in the most influential album of the year, SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND, that symbolizes the growing seriousness with which the joy of the new music is being welcomed by musicians and listeners leaping free of categories. As Hungarian-born jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo, who now doubles on sitar and plays Beatles songs as well as jazz originals, says of the SGT. PEPPER phenomenon: "The music, together with the lyrics and performance, is something nobody has come close to in freshness. The album as a whole is a composition; it starts, it develops and it ends. It's funny and it's scary at times; it's romantic and it has lyrical quality and, of course, the throbbing beat. It's the message of 1967; everything is in there."

The lines between jazz and pop have not dissolved entirely - not yet, anyway. Albert Aylor and Cecil Taylor, for example, are not... among the jazz combos that include Beatles tunes in their repertory. But the listener involved in contemporary sounds now finds it necessary - and pleasurable - to follow the Grateful Dead, the Cream, Janis Ian, Aretha Franklin, the Jefferson Airplane and, of course, the Beatles along with Aylor, Taylor, Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

It was, therefore, not particularly surprising to those who know their current music when the Beatles, toward the end of the year, after finishing a television show (the first they had completely assembled and produced themselve), announced that they would spend a month in India studying with a mystic, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Also in context with the life-expanding imperatives of the new music was the appearance, as an actor, of Beatle John Lennon in Richard Lester's antiwar film How I Won The War...

The 1968 Playboy All-Star Band

Beatles, vocal group.  

Even more swift [than jazz] in its spread is the new pop music... Toward the end of the year... the Beatles' All You Need Is Love topped the charts in Argentina...

In Moscow in late fall, the Beatles began communicating instantly with Russian teenagers when, for the first time, one of their records, Girl, went on public sale (although in a pirated version, for Russians don't pay royalties to foreign pop groups). On that Beatles Day, hundreds of Russian youngsters lined up before the store opened.

In several respects, SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND is the apotheosis of current electronic expansion of musical possibilities. In Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite, for example, John Lennon taped a track on Hammond organ, recorded it at different speeds, mixed in montages of other organ sounds with an overlay of electronic echoes, and then cut all those tapes up and recombined them...

In the pop field, Brian Epstein, "the fifth Beatle," died...

Elsewhere, guitarist Gabor Szabo... proclaim[ed] the advent of a new international music: "... We are now just World, Earth. The music definitely reflects this. In the SGT. PEPPER album, the Beatles have already started something that is going to be the future."

As if in echo, George Harrison spoke not only for the Beatles but for the best of all the young explorers in the new pop and jazz: "We haven't really started yet. We've only just discovered what we can do as musicians, what thresholds we can cross. The future stretches out beyond our imagination."

Comment: The Beatles do not place anywhere in the Winner Poll.

Comment: This is the third year for Playboy's Jazz Hall of Fame. Each year the readers vote for who they think deserves entrance. The top three vote-getters each year are inducted. These winners are excluded from future Hall of Fame votes. This is the first year that any Beatles made the top 25.

There are... a number of newcomers... Also missing from last year's list were... Paul McCartney... and John Lennon.

 1. Ray Charles
    ...
19. Charlie Parker
20. Paul McCartney
21. Sammy Davis, Jr.
22. Bob Dylan
23. Ramsey Lewis
24. Cannonball Adderley
25. John Lennon

Comment: This is John's first separate appearance in the Playboy Jazz Polls.

Best Vocal LP: SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND/The Beatles. This was much more than a vocal LP, as the imaginative M.B.E.s went out on a limb with pointed lyrics and wild electronic effects. The LP, which contained the smash hit A Day In The Life, provoked a rash of articles and reviews by critics, who hailed it as a serious and unified work of art.

    Best Big Band LP

18. BASIE'S BEATLE BAG.  

Comment: This album placed 3rd in the 1967 poll. It is the only repeater in this category from 1967.

   Best Vocal LP

1. SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND/The Beatles
2. FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA AND ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM
3. SURREALISTIC PILLOW/Jefferson Airplane

Giant steps were taken [in the guitar category] by George Harrison, from 18th to 4th...

[In the drum category] Ringo Starr joined Gene Krupa and Sandy Nelson in the top 5...

The big story in the miscellany department was Ravi Shankar... The pop world was well represented as Beatles Paul McCartney and George Harrison... entered the top ten...

The unpredictable Beatles predictably took the top vocal-group spot. [Why "predictably"? The Beatles had never won in previous years and do not even make a showing in this year's Winner Poll.] ...

    Guitar
 1. Chet Atkins . . . . 1688
 2. Charlie Byrd  . . . 1617
 3. Wes Montgomery  . . 1549
 4. George Harrison . . 1200
 5. Joao Gilberto  . . . 662


    Drums
 1. Buddy Rich  . . . 2847
 2. Joe Morello . . . 1649 
 3. Gene Krupa  . . . 1295
 4. Ringo Starr . . . 1112
 5. Sandy Nelson . . . 937


    Miscellaneous Instrument 
 1. Ravi Shankar, sitar  . . . . . . 1737
    ...
 4. Jimmy Smith, organ . . . . . . . 1028
 5. George Harrison, sitar  . . . . . 658
 6. Paul McCartney, electric bass . . 625
 7. Booker T., organ  . . . . . . . . 583 


    Male Vocalist
 1. Frank Sinatra  . . 2265 
    ...
 7. Bob Dylan . . . . . 423
 8. Paul McCartney  . . 386
 9. Johnny Mathis . . . 357


    Vocal Group 
 1. Beatles  . . . . . . . . . . . . 2060
 2. Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 . . 1043
 3. Diana Ross and the Supremes . . . 980
    ...
 9. Rolling Stones  . . . . . . . . . 327
    ...
20. Beach Boys  . . . . . . . . . . . 150
    ...
28. Monkees . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Comment: The Beatles omnipresence in this poll is such that only 2 of the 17 pages making up this article are missing Beatles references.

Playboy: March 1968, page 1

Will your next portable radio tape a broadcast of the Beatles?...

Playboy: March 1968, page 29

A DAY IN THE LIFE. Wes Montgomery. [Bigger, different picture from 68JANp16.]
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 68JANp45.]
Claudine Longet. Good Day Sunshine. [Same as 68FEBp24.]

Playboy: March 1968, page 30

The second LP by The 5th Dimension, THE MAGIC GARDEN, is even better than its initial effort... The group achieves an unearthly sound on the title ballad... Included also are the Dimension's whimsical Paper Cup and a gutsy version of the Beatles' Ticket To Ride.

Ira Sullivan, a daring young man on a variety of instruments, is at his freewheeling best on HORIZONS. Ira plays trumpet [etc.]... as he moves from his own experimental E Flat Tuba G to the Lennon-McCartney Norwegian Wood...

Playboy: March 1968, page 122

Among his thousands of converts are such noted musicians as violinist Yehudi Menuhin, jazzman Dave Brubeck and, of course, Beatle George Harrison. The Beatles adopted Ravi with a reverence that permeated his classroom when he was a visiting professor at the City College of New York last fall and that was everywhere at hand during his just-ended tenth American tour... (More sitars were sold in the U.S. this past year than in India)...

Playboy: March 1968, page 166

Capote: ... I like today's younger generation... I particularly like their music... It's extraordinary and far better than most of the so-called serious music being produced either here or in Europe. Just the other day, I was passing one of those little stores where you buy pop posters and I saw this poster of me together with all the Beatles and a lot of other youngsters. I was delighted; I've never been more flattered.

Playboy: April 1968, page 44,46

Jack Jones/OUR SONG is not quite in the same league as the above [Tony Bennett, for example], but the Jones boy's batting average is still high as he tackles a brace of ballads from Doctor Dolittle, the Lennon-McCartney lovely Michelle...

Playboy: April 1968, page 215
Writer: Dan Greenburg

... Use phrases such as "Sock it to me, baby" and call everyone "Brother" or "Sister." OK comment: "The Beatles? Sheee-it."

Playboy: May 1968, page 16

Thom Trunnell: ... The fact that Charlie Byrd and Wes Montgomery appear in the same "top ten" with George Harrison and Mike Bloomfield is, indeed, proof of an increasing awareness that terms such as "jazz" and "rock" simply describe different kinds of creativity. This trend is evident throughout the poll: Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett sharing honors with Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger; Gene Krupa, with Ringo Starr; ... the domination of the "Vocal Group" category by groups who, a couple of years ago, were considered no-account screamers.

Playboy: May 1968, page 42

Undergraduate mating rituals are the whole point of Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, a Modly precocious comedy taken from Hunter Davies' novel... Britain's pacesetting youth, careening along the primrose path with both boots jammed on the accelerator, is represented winningly by Barry Evans, a movie newcomer whose Beatleish charm mirrors Paul McCartney's...

Playboy: June 1968, page 18

ENCORE! Henry Mancini. Featuring: Portrait Of The Beatles...

Playboy: June 1968, page 34

Given a more straightforward treatment, Petulia would be twice as interesting as the mannered movie that director Richard Lester has wrought... Stylistically, Lester continues to lark about, abusing the freedom of form that helped him apotheosize the Beatles and cinematize The Knack.

Playboy: June 1968, page 40,42

A TODAY KIND OF THING carries that longtime favorite foursome [the Four Freshmen] into contemporary waters and it's smooth sailing all the way. Among the "now" numbers: ... Happy Together, She's leaving Home and Michelle.

The Anita Kerr Singers have always been on top of the current scene. ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE exemplifies the nifty Nashville-bred group's full-bodied approach to musical matters of the moment. Tunes of the... Look Of Love ilk abound on this recording... Tuneful and intelligible at the same time.

Playboy: June 1968, page 84,90
Writer: Herbert Gold

"Do you like music, maybe?" she suggested. One toe moved as if to prod him off the bed toward his rig.

"Yes, sure."

"You got any raga-rock? The Four Tops freak-out of Reach Out I'll Be There? Any folk backlash soul? The Ballad Of The Green Bra?"

"Uh," he said, "the Jean-Paul Kreder Ensemble doing Chants De La Renaissance? There's Perdre Le Sens Devant Vous, there's . . . "

Silence. "Well, any Beatle record is OK. Rubber Soul."

There would always be the danger with this girl of her taking over. That was the second danger. The first was that she would just disappear into thin unamplified raga-rock in the distant air.

Playboy: July 1968, page 26-27

GARY PUCKETT AND THE UNION GAP. Lady Madonna.
MISTY ROSES. The Sandpipers. And I Love Her.
$1,000,000 WEEKEND. The Ventures. Yesterday.
THE MAGIC GARDEN. The 5th Dimension. Ticket To Ride.
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life... [Same as 68JANp16.]
Joan Baez. Eleanor Rigby. [Same as 68JANp16.]
LOVE IS BLUE. Johnny Mathis. Yesterday.
BLOOMING HITS. Paul Mauriat and his orchestra. Penny Lane.
LULU SINGS TO SIR WITH LOVE. Day Tripper.

Playboy: July 1968, page 31

Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life... [Same as 68JANp16.]
Paul Mauriat. Penny Lane. [Similar to page 27.]
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 68JANp45.]

Playboy: July 1968, page 36,38

THE BEAT GOES ON is a survey of musical and political history through the eyes and ears of Vanilla Fudge. Example: a reconstruction of high and low points in popular music styles from Mozart through Lennon-McCartney. Holding it all together is the title tune, played in a variety of styles...

Steve Marcus is a tenor and soprano saxophonist who uses pop material and elaborates on it in a Coltranesque manner; on TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS, the results are chaotic but sometimes compelling, as he tears into the Byrds' Eight Miles High, Donovan's Mellow Yellow and the Lennon-McCartney title tune.

Playboy: July 1968, page 198
Writer: Arthur Knight and Hollis Alpert

The reasons behind this seeming leniency toward film making in England are many... For another, the moment a Joe Osborne... breaks new dramatic ground in the theater, the moment a novel by John Baine... sets in motion a new current in literature or when a Paul McCartney creates a new sound in music... these people are promptly brought into the studios and given their head - as opposed to Hollywood, where the tendency is still to take new talents and set them to work on old-fashioned properties.

Comment: Is this a reference to the Beatles' movies or McCartney's soundtrack for The Family Way? I found no explicit mention of the latter in Playboy.

Playboy: August 1968, page 31

Paul Mauriat. Penny Lane. [Similar to 68JULp31.]

Playboy: September 1968, page 15
Comment: Ad makes plays on other song titles, as well.

The Blue Gurus, Groovin' in the sky with jackets.

Playboy: September 1968, page 38
Comment: Contains implicit Beatles reference. Sounds emanating from the tape recorders include:

... music music music jazz music music music soul soul yeh, yeh, ye[h]

Playboy: September 1968, page 45

Gary Puckett. Lady Madonna. [Same as 68JULp26.]
Paul Mauriat. Penny Lane. [Same as 68AUGp31.]

Playboy: September 1968, page 50

What you eat is what you are, according to You Are What You Eat, which apotheosizes its title with an idyllic sequence in which flower people sit around simply eating flowers... Numerous V.I.P.s identified with the Soul generation appear for testimonials at least fleetingly - The Beatles on the run, Tiny Tim singing I Got You Babe...

Playboy: September 1968, page 56,61
Comment: There is another "Beatle nightie" ad on page 61. See 65FEB cover.

Beautiful sounds pour forth in awesome profusion on DOES THE SUN REALLY SHINE ON THE MOON? The source of those sounds is Gary McFarland & Co., a septet dedicated to the proposition that jazz, pop and rock are all part of the same eminently playable bag. By The Time I Get To Phoenix... shares equal billing with... Here, There And Everywhere... and the musicianship is superb.

THE WATTS 103RD STREET RHYTHM BAND... doesn't develop its material melodically, but the rhythm sparkles on the funky... Brown Sugar... and the surprisingly Beatlelike Yellow Submarine.

Playboy: September 1968, page 126,127
Comment: Close scrutiny of the pile of about 10 LPs on the floor reveals THE EARLY BEATLES, THE BEATLES' SECOND ALBUM, BEATLES VI and MEET THE BEATLES. The visible fragments are George's face, "THE SECOND" (upside-down), "VI" and Ringo's chin, respectively.

[caption] On a visit home, Dru and her sister Lynn rummage through the record collection - mostly rhythm and blues - and settle down for a long musical session with Cokes and conversation.

Playboy: September 1968, page 169

Oberlin College. Campus ambience: books, Bartok and Beatles.

Playboy: October 1968, page 3

Herein, the internationally acclaimed guru [Ravi Shankar] to the Beatles demonstrates his literary talents with My Music, My Life...

Playboy: October 1968, page 27
Comment: Shows color picture of SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND among a batch of other LPs. The disc with the Capitol logo would probably be SGT. PEPPER, if the discs correspond to the pictured album covers.

Playboy: October 1968, page 53
Comment: A fragment of the MEET THE BEATLES! album cover can be seen twice in the messy piles of records.

Playboy: October 1968, page 59

THE ELECTRIC JACKIE & ROY/GRASS is one of the best things the dynamic duo [Cain & Kral] has ever put on vinyl... Roy chart[s] the way through such modern objets d'art as... Lady Madonna and Most Peculiar Man. The effects achieved... are startling both in scope and imagination. A must-hear LP.

Playboy: October 1968, page 134-138
Comment: The Beatles, represented by Paul, join the nominating board by virtue of winning the Vocal Group category in the previous poll.

A Nominating Board composed of music editors, critics, representatives of the major recording companies and winners of last year's poll has selected the artists it considers to be the most outstanding and/or popular of the year. These nominations... should serve solely as an aid to your recollection... not as a guide on how to vote.

Nominating Board: Cannonball Adderley, ... Paul McCartney (Beatles), ...

Guitar (Please check one.)
George Harrison

Drums (Please check one.)
Ringo Starr

Misc. Instrument (Please check one.)
George Harrison, sitar
Paul McCartney, electric bass

Male Vocalist (Please check one.)
Paul McCartney 

Vocal Group (Please check one.)
Beatles

Comment: John Lennon is the only person who made the previous poll's Hall of Fame list of finalists (and still alive in 1968) who is not explicitly nominated in any category in this poll.

Playboy: October 1968, page 237-238
Writer: Ravi Shankar

What I call the great sitar explosion began in early 1966 - at least, that is when I became aware of it, when I went to Britain. The special attraction to sitar suddenly came about when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and some other pop groups used it in recordings of their songs. Until then, I had never heard any records of these groups, but only knew vaguely that they were young popular singers.

Then I met George Harrison and Paul McCartney of the Beatles in June 1966, at a friend's house in London. I found them to be very charming and polite young men - not at all what I had expected. George came and talked to me about sitar. He said that he had been very much impressed with the instrument and its sound and my playing of it since he first heard me. I told him that after hearing so much about his accomplishments, I would like him to show me what he had done with the sitar. With an awkward and childlike expression, he said shyly that it was really not very much. And it was then that I was struck by his deep humility. George explained to me that he had had no real sitar training but had done some experiments with it on his own, using his knowledge of the guitar as a background. He expressed, very sincerely, his desire to learn sitar from me. I carefully explained to him that one must undergo many long years of study and practice of the basics before one can play even a single note properly. He understood all this perfectly and said he was prepared to go through the years of discipline. I invited him to come to India with his wife Pattie to study and spend some time with me. He accepted enthusiastically. He asked me to his beautiful house in Esher, outside London; and in the few days before I had to leave England, I gave George his first lesson in Indian music.

After I returned to India, George wrote and said he would be able to come and spend six weeks with me. I was pleased and wrote back, telling him to grow a mustache and cut his hair a bit so that he would not be recognized immediately. When we went to pick up George at the airport, we found the mustache trick worked - no one recognized either him or Pattie at first, although there had been a lot of publicity in the papers about their visit. They registered for a suite at the Taj Mahal hotel under a false name. But one young Christian pageboy happened to recognize them and truly, within 24 hours, almost all Bombay came to know that George Harrison was there. Huge crowds of teenagers gathered in front of the hotel, headlines appeared in the papers about George's arrival and my telephone started to ring nonstop.

I could not believe it when I saw this mad frenzy of young people, mostly girls from 12 to about 17. I would have believed it in London or Tokyo or New York - but in India! And I realized that young people in our big cities like Bombay or Delhi are no different from any of the other young people of the world. Some of these people stood for eight to ten hours outside the hotel, screaming at me to send George down and furiously yelling for him. After a few days, I knew the situation was going to get even worse. I couldn't teach and George couldn't practice with all those young people screaming down in the streets. Things reached such a state that we had to call a press conference to explain that George had not come as a Beatle but as my disciple, and he asked to be left in peace to work on his music with me. Then we went to Kashmir and Benares and a few other places and spent the rest of his visit in relative quiet. In his lessons, I had George practice all the correct positions of sitting and some of the basic exercises. This was the most that one could do in six weeks, considering that a disciple usually spends years learning these basics. Even so, George came to understand the discipline involved and since then, he has realized how difficult it is to play the sitar and has said that it would take him 40 years to learn to play it properly...

Personally, I do not feel it is truly our [Indian] music that one finds in pop songs but just the sound of the sitar... Those who sincerely love Indian music as classical music should not be upset by this...

The Beatles scene and the sitar explosion brought me immediately into a position of immense popularity with young people...

Playboy: November 1968, page 16-17

Gary Puckett. Lady Madonna. [Similar to 68JULp26.]
Boots Randolph. Michelle. [Same as 67JULp25.]
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 68JANp45.]
MAIDEN VOYAGE. Ramsey Lewis. Lady Madonna.
TONY BENNETT. Yesterday.
D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Tammy Wynette. Yesterday.
Paul Mauriat. Penny Lane. [Same as 68AUGp31.]
Claudine Longet. Good Day Sunshine. [Same as 68FEBp24.]
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life... [Same as 68JANp16.]

Playboy: November 1968, page 32

The Beatles, The Real Story, by Julius Fast, and The Beatles, The Authorized Biography, by Hunter Davies, set out to do much the same job - to delineate each Beatle, trace the group's career and provide some interpretation of their personal pleasures, their hang-ups and their musical accomplishments; and both books have much the same set of facts and basic structure forced upon them by the nature of the project. Yet one is far superior to the other. Julius Fast's Real Story is barely a couple of cuts above routine "celebrity personality" stuff. It reads as if it had been pieced together from thousands of newspaper and magazine clippings. [Can't believe what a magazine says, now can we?] Hunter Davies book, on the other hand, vibrates with reality and immediacy. And no wonder; for the British novelist and scenarist had the cooperation of John, Paul, George and Ringo, along with their wives, parents, friends, boyhood chums and business associates... Davies has produced a surprisingly insightful, illuminating and objective book... It raises difficult questions and often comes up with not altogether pleasant answers... Davies probes the minds beneath the hairdos... The book is filled with striking journalistic set pieces: the Beatles' early experiences playing 12 hours a night, every night, in a small night club; the efforts of their late manager, Brian Epstein, to get them their first big break; typical songwriting and recording sessions; an almost stream-of-consciousness appraisal, by each Beatle, of his own life, his relations with the group and his thoughts on the future. One leaves Davies' Beatles with a new respect for these young-old, happy-sad men, tinged with pity, perhaps - and with some wonder at the durability of their remarkable symbiosis.

Playboy: November 1968, page 59,60

The Soulful Strings' combination of funky rhythms, jazz solos and orchestral arrangements pays big dividends on ANOTHER EXPOSURE. [The] charts suitably transform... Otis Redding's On The Dock Of The Bay and the Beatles' Inner Light into ear-filling nonverbal adventures.

LANA! refers, of course, to the sensational Miss Cantrell... Lana leans into The Sound Of Silence, The Fool On The Hill... The material varies but never the quality.

Cheers for Fats Domino. In an era of pretentious pop stars, it's a joy to hear FATS IS BACK... The Fat Man's barrelhouse piano and his earthy but delicate vocals have never sounded better than on My Old Friend... and a pair of Lennon-McCartney songs, Lady Madonna and Lovely Rita.

Playboy: November 1968, page 213
Comment: Same interview book as 67AUGp35; different ad layout. Ringo photo on cover. Beatles not listed among the interviewees.

Playboy: December 1968, page 16
Comment: The quote is in a balloon above a picture of McCartney.

"We want to have a happy organization where everyone gets a decent share of the profits. I suppose it will be a sort of Western Communism." - Paul McCartney, Beatle, Charter Issue, Careers Today.

Playboy: December 1968, page 37-38

India's musical phenomenon Ravi Shankar... also shows the patience of Buddha in describing the unwanted fame thrust upon him as the man who taught Beatle George Harrison to play the sitar... Of Harrison's six-week crash course, he drily remarks, "He is a Beatle first. We shall see how much of himself he devotes to the sitar." A cool, dry Hindu-cosmopolitan intelligence animates Shankar's My Music, My Life, a portion of which enriched these pages in October...

Playboy: December 1968, page 50

An incurable case of Beatlemania is prerequisite for all-out enjoyment of Yellow Submarine, a zany cartoon feature loosely drawn from the popular Beatles tune and as uninhibited as finger painting. Under designer Heinz Edelmann, scores of artists went berserk creating an op-pop adventure set in a pipe dream called Pepperland... Some obstreperous blobs known as the Blue Meanies... invade Pepperland... Much of this is grand nonsense for sophisticated kiddies; but we shudder in anticipation of the heavy think pieces it may inspire among grown-up social critics... If significance must be found, one might suggest that Submarine depicts the Beatles as messiahs for a whole resurgent generation. There's more fun, though, in taking the film on its own terms as an amiably unpretentious fantasy... The visual and verbal puns, reminiscent of Beatle Lennon's own literary style, are seemingly inexhaustible - but an adult movie-goer's patience is not... The Yellow Submarine is available in book form, too - presumably for those who don't like movies.

More keywords: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Liverpool, Alice In Wonderland, Sigmund Freud, Butterfly Stompers, Sea of Holes.

Playboy: December 1968, page 68

There's a very special quality in Morgana King's voice, a certain I've-paid-my-dues aura... The tunes on I KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO BE LONELY are almost all top caliber, with Lennon and McCartney, Simon, Webb and Donovan making major contributions...

Playboy: December 1968, page 133
Writer: Marshall McLuhan

In the TV age, the Beatles seem to have made the most effective response to this "cool" medium. [I think he's talking about Negro jazz. Don't ask me.] They have gone Oriental, even as the East goes West... The famous family of Stein (Gert, Ep and Ein) presents a good cross section of the new tribalism created by the radio environment. [Uh huh.]

Playboy: December 1968, page 175

[caption] Ai Li King is already established as a movie star in Taiwan... Ai Li collects dolls, miniskirts and Beatles records.

Playboy: January 1969, page cover
Comment: Note the coincidence of the embossed, almost-completely-white cover with that of THE BEATLES white album. Just five words, "Playboy fifteenth holiday anniversary issue," are printed, and that in gold. The bunny logo and all other text are embossed, as was "THE BEATLES" album title. The album was released November 25, 1968, so these two white covers would have appeared within days of each other.

Playboy: January 1969, page 16-17

Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life... [Same as 68JANp16.]
Gary Puckett. Lady Madonna. [Same as 68NOVp16.]
Tammy Wynette. Yesterday. [Same as 68NOVp17.]
Sergio Mendes. Day Tripper. [Same as 67FEBp8.]
MAURIAT MAGIC. Paul Mauriat. Michelle.
FOR THE YOUNG AT HEART. Andre Kostelanetz. Lady Madonna.
Ramsey Lewis. Lady Madonna. [Same as 68NOVp17.]

Playboy: January 1969, page 34
Comment: Playboy reviews Only When I Larf. Did the writer pick up the word "larf" from Lennon's books, where it sees some prominent use? See, for example, Araminta Ditch.

Playboy: January 1969, page 65

Gary Puckett. Lady Madonna. [Same as 68NOVp16.]
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 68JANp45.]
Andre Kostelanetz. Lady Madonna. [Same as page 17.]

Playboy: January 1969, page 153
Writer: Judith Wax
Comment: Shows color cartoon of John Lennon.

Where have all your powers gone,
Maharishi Yogi?
The Beatles and the Beach Boys say
You're just a rich old fogy.

Beatle Lennon had a wife,
He left her by the phono.
And now her former master's voice
Sings just for Yoko Ono.

Playboy: February 1969, page 16-17

Tammy Wynette. Yesterday. [Same as 68NOVp17.]
Gary Puckett. Lady Madonna. [Same as 68NOVp16.]
Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 68JANp45.]
SHADES OF DEEP PURPLE. Help[!]
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life... [Same as 68JANp16.]

Playboy: February 1969, page 35
Comment: Wouldn't it be fun to hook the following reviewer up to a lie detector these three decades [plus] later, play him all the melodies from the white album, and see how many he truly can't remember?

There are 29 new songs (Revolution is also included) on the Beatles' latest twin-LP effort - inexplicably titled THE BEATLES - and, as might be expected, there's a fair amount of waste: satire that undercuts itself, unmemorable melodies, etc. The material - drawn from all the far-flung territories the M.B.E.s have explored in their vinyl voyages - includes enough musical high spots (Blackbird), comic low spots (Why Don't We Do It In The Road?) and combinations of the two (Happiness Is A Warm Gun) to have filled one solid LP.

The late Wes Montgomery's last LP, ROAD SONG, is a fitting tribute to the guitarist's outsized talent... Wes proceeds to demonstrate - with that spare, no-frills-attached style of his - the jazz nuances of such diverse attractions as... Yesterday and the English folk ditties Greensleeves and Scarborough Fair.

Playboy: February 1969, page 121-130, 154-161
Writer: Nat Hentoff

The Rolling Stones returned to the raw energy of hard rock in BEGGARS' BANQUET; the Beatles focused on lyric simplicity in Hey Jude; and Bob Dylan emerged from his long sabbatical with the spare, elemental John Wesley Harding.

The 1969 Playboy All-Star Band

Beatles, vocal group.  

Last June, [Wes] Montgomery... died suddenly... of a heart attack at the age of 45... Near the end of the year, three of his LPs (A DAY IN THE LIFE...) were still among America's top ten jazz best sellers...

And from Cuba, toward the end of the year, came the news of a growing number of rebellious youths with long hair, wearing beads, who, according to an official spokesman, had been "debauched by the Beatles and that other epileptic music, which is also perversion."

On the secular scene, the Beatles, having lost spiritual touch with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, established their own kingdom on earth, Apple Corps, Ltd., a world-wide group of companies with divisions for films, electronics, merchandising and music. The music principality includes recordings, music publishing, the management of artists and recording studios. In process was a London studio intended to be the most comprehensively modern in the world. In the first batch of Apple Corps record releases in August was a hit, Mary Hopkin's Those Were The Days. Toward the end of the year, other releases included a double LP by the Beatles themselves, George Harrison's film-score for Wonderwall, and the first album by the Modern Jazz Quartet in its new affiliation with the Beatles' empire.

The setting up of that empire did not appear to have changed the Beatles' impatience with the ordinary and the predictable. Having, established, for instance, an Apple Boutique in London, the Beatles closed it down after seven months. Paul McCartney explained, "The shop was to have been a beautiful place where you could buy beautiful things, but it was in danger of becoming an ordinary chain store." And instead of holding a closing sale, the Beatles simply gave away all the beautiful things left in stock. "We didn't want people to think," McCartney added, "we had become mercenary." Also in character, the Beatles turned down a Command Performance before Queen Elizabeth in April. The reason: they were not yet ready to appear again in live performance; and, said Ringo, "It's better to say no to all than yes to one and no to 99 others."

Among the Beatles' recent ventures was a feature-length animated cartoon, Yellow Submarine, which, along with their movie A Magical Mystery Tour, was released in the United States late in the same year. A play by John Lennon, In His Own Write, was staged in London by the National Theater. He also appeared in a movie made by his close friend Yoko Ono, in which he simply smiles for 90 minutes. But although a magnate and an artist, John Lennon was not entirely immune to the sudden reverses that afflict other mortals. In October, he and Miss Ono were busted in London on charges of possessing marijuana.

While the Beatles forged ahead in many directions, there was also continuous expansion and experimentation elsewhere...

Each year our incumbent All-Stars are asked to select their own All-Star band. The 1968 medal winners eligible to participate in the voting were... Paul McCartney (Beatles)...

Comment: Did Paul submit a ballot? Who did he vote for? The Beatles do not place anywhere in this Winner Poll, but Paul may have cast votes in some or all of the categories. Probably of most interest to pop fans, the top 5 in the Vocal Group category were: 5th Dimension, Four Freshman, Double Six of Paris, Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, and Simon and Garfunkel.

    Best Big Band LP
 8. A DAY IN THE LIFE/Wes Montgomery 


    Best Vocal LP 
 1. BOOKENDS/Simon and Garfunkel
    ...
 7. FELICIANO!/Jose Feliciano
 8. A TRAMP SHINING/Richard Harris                [tie]
 8. SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND/Beatles [tie]
10. ORPHEUS ASCENDING/Orpheus
11. ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?/The Jimi Hendrix Experience
12. MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR/Beatles
13. JOHN WESLEY HARDING/Bob Dylan


    Jazz Hall of Fame
 1. Wes Montgomery
    ...
 4. Henry Mancini 
 5. Paul McCartney
 6. Otis Redding
    ...
 9. Bob Dylan
10. Barbra Strreisand
11. John Lennon
12. Dizzy Gillespie

The Beatles, still changing with the times, held onto first place among vocal groups... Based on the setbacks suffered by the Mamas and the Papas, The Association, the Rolling Stones and the Jefferson Airplane, it appears as though any pop group will find it difficult to maintain dominance in that constantly shifting scene. [With one exception, of course . . .]

Comment: Starting this year, Playboy no longer supplies the vote counts. Phooey.

    Guitar
 1. Jimi Hendrix
    ...
 4. Charlie Byrd
 5. George Harrison
 6. Kenny Burrell


    Drums
 1. Buddy Rich
 2. Ginger Baker
 3. Ringo Starr
 4. Joe Morello


    Miscellaneous Instrument
 1. Ravi Shankar, sitar
    ...
 5. Booker T., organ
 6. Paul McCartney, electric bass
 7. Bob Dylan, harmonica
    ...
14. Earl Grant, organ
15. George Harrison, sitar
16. Gary Burton, vibes


    Male Vocalist
 1. Frank Sinatra
 2. Glenn Campbell
 3. Lou Rawls
 4. Paul McCartney 
 5. Jim Morrison


    Vocal Group 
 1. Beatles
 2. Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66
 3. Simon & Garfunkel
    ...
19. Rolling Stones
    ...
24. Beach Boys

Playboy: February 1969, page 222
Comment: Weak Beatles tie-in? A long-haired rock group wearing suits in a discotheque sings "Yay! Yayay! Yay! Yay!"

Playboy: March 1969, page 26
Comment: The book Candy and its author Terry Southern have been mentioned occasionally prior to this movie review. See, for example, 64JUNp37 for a review of the book.

Candy meets a film fate even worse than that meted out to Barbarella... Neither [director Christian Marquand] nor scenarist Buck Henry... adds any luster to the Terry Southern-Mason Hoffenberg spoof of sex in these United States. Ewa Aulin, a delectable nymphet from Scandinavia, whispers the title role... First and funniest of the heroine's assailants is Richard Burton... Marlon Brando, John Huston, Charles Aznavour, Ringo Starr and Walter Matthau are less fortunate in their lines, most of which sound like satire aimed at an audience of slow-witted morons...

Comment: Curiously, there is a photo of an Ewa Aulin - the same one? - in a San Francisco Examiner from a few years earlier, August 29, 1966, page 6. This is the day and city of the Beatles' last concert. She is described as a teenage queen and a blonde beauty. She is shown at a voting machine casting votes on teen-related questions. The article is titled "Beatles Lose Out to Grubby Stones."

Playboy: March 1969, page 32

FUNKY BUT! by the Young-Holt Unlimited really has no buts about it. It's a fine batch of funk... They take a couple of Paul McCartney-John Lennon ditties, add a soupcon of standards, spice it up with a handful of originals...

Playboy: March 1969, page 47

Roger Williams. Yesterday. [Same as 68JANp45.]

Playboy: April 1969, page 236

Playboy: What made you go to Chicago in the first place? Surely you're not that interested in party politics.

Ginsberg: Well, the original fantasy was to hold a Festival of Light... Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman began the idea, and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Dylan were supposed to be invited to celebrate, as well as all the swamis and Hari Krishna singers in America and anybody else with a nongrasping nature and a constructive demeanor...

Playboy: May 1969, page 44

... Greetings [movie] begins touching all the usual bases, from the anti-draft, screw-the-Army sentiments mocked in the title to the ritual gags about computer dating, pop art... Though the amateur performers are mostly atrocious and the camerawork resembles a student director's homage to A Hard Day's Night, many of the ideas... show a smoldering talent for satire...

Playboy: May 1969, page 243
Comment: Weak Beatles tie-in? Cartoon character has Beatle-ish hair and wears round, wire-frame glasses like those associated with Lennon.

Playboy: June 1969, page 25
Comment: This mention of Elephant's Memory predates their work with John and Yoko by a couple of years.

An even larger percentage of rock groups have followed the example of the Beatles by totemistically declaring their affinity with particular animal species: the Iron Butterfly, the Moray Eels, Rhinoceros, the Yardbirds, the Elephant's Memory, the Insect Trust, Steppenwolf and Serpent Power, among many others...

Playboy: June 1969, page 46

To be young, hip and Indian in modern Bombay means swinging with the rhythms of Western pop culture, from Beatlesong to Home On The Range. To be a young Westerner in search of spiritual satisfaction or sitar lessons means finding oneself learning strange ways in unimaginable places. From that potential conflict of cultures, The Guru flings out filaments of silk-spun satire... Particularly fine is the guru himself (Utpal Dutt, a ringer for Ravi Shankar), torn between impatience with his celebrated disciple's undisciplined life and scarcely concealed envy of the rewards that materialistic decadence can bring...

Playboy: June 1969, page 52

There are no Beatles songs on the M.J.Q.'s first Apple release, UNDER THE JASMINE TREE. All four compositions are, happily, by John Lewis, and the predominent influence is Oriental...

Playboy: June 1969, page 154
Writer: Frank M. Robinson

The stereo had been programed for early Glenn Miller at the start - good for mood music as well as a laugh - then an old Beatles tape, plus some country rock around midnight, when everybody was stoned out of his gourd on grass or wine, and to finish up with some harpsichord tracks when people wanted to make out.

Comment: The title is an obvious play on "a day in the life". The Beatles were not the first to say that, of course, but it seems plausible that in this case the writer may have had the Beatles on his mind when he put it down, given the Beatles mention on page 154. The artwork also shows a face that may have some Beatle-ish characteristics. (John's nose? George's cheeks? Paul's moustache? You may disagree.) Other occurrences of this story title in the magazine have not been cataloged, nor have prose appearances of "a day in the life".

Playboy: July 1969, page 16-17

MOTHER NATURE'S SON. Ramsey Lewis. Julia.
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life. [Same as 68JANp16, but no Eleanor Rigby.]
DOING MY THING. Paul Mauriat and his orch. Hey Jude.
FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE. O. C. Smith. Hey Jude.
FOOL ON THE HILL. Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66.
Joan Baez. Eleanor Rigby. [Same as 68JANp16.]

Playboy: July 1969, page 26

One of the effects of the rock explosion is the rock-critic explosion. Anyone can be an expert. As Arnold Shaw writes in The Rock Revolution, "the unbridled rave is an earmark of rock criticism..." So, he might have added, is the unbridled pan. Blast the Beatles, step on the Stones, bury the Grateful Dead, cream the Cream, slam the Doors, make a name.

Among the more impertinent of the... rock watchers is... Nik Cohn, author of Rock From The Beginning. The first time he saw Ray Charles, he was so moved by him, he threw up. But he quickly makes clear that he doesn't "spew for everyone." Certainly not for the Beatles, who have sunk to "ultimate inanity," nor for Dylan, who "bores me stiff"...

More valuable than either of these two books is The Age Of Rock, a compilation of essays, articles... There is also an excellent study by Michael Wood of John Lennon's lyrics and how they're influenced by his school days [and] a probing interview with Paul McCartney by Alan Aldridge...

Playboy: July 1969, page 35,36

The ubiquitous Gabor Szabo is with us once again on MORE SORCERY... The LP has Szabo stretching out in a quintet context. There are three Gabor originals on hand and such diverse items as Merrill-Styne's People and Lennon-McCartney's Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, all of which are handled with innate good taste.

Mary Hopkin shows on POST CARD (Apple; also available on stereo tape) that she fully deserves the Beatles' support. Whether she's singing Welsh folk tunes or old rock ballads, her voice is refreshingly pure and her intonation flawless. She's most effective, however, when the material is commensurate with her abilities, as on Donovan's Lord Of The Reedy River or on Lullaby Of The Leaves, which receives an appropriately jazzy treatment.

It would be nice to review Roslyn Kind's first LP, GIVE ME YOU, without mentioning that she's Barbra Streisand's stepsister... A lot of Barbra is in Roslyn... We particularly like what she does with The Fool On The Hill and the Jim Webb jewel If You Must Leave My Life.

A slew of soft sounds to help while away the evening hours - that's what you'll find on EXTENSIONS, the latest offering of The Mystic Moods Orchestra, an organization dedicated to the proposition that easy listening still has a place in this ultra-amplified world. Such items as California Dreamin', Norwegian Wood, MacArthur Park and Bookends put orchestra and voices to good use.

Frank Sinatra's MY WAY is very much the right way... He's helped in no small measure by conductor Don Costa's charts, which add further glitter to the likes of Yesterday, All My Tomorrows and A Day In The Life Of A Fool.

Playboy: July 1969, page 69

THE BEATLES - Part 1. [Picture of cassette case.]

Playboy: July 1969, page 90
Writer: Evan Hunter
Comment: Anybody notice any problem with the following scene?

We began talking about Kennedy then, both of us realizing with a sudden shock that he had been killed just a year ago, and then doing what people inevitably did when talking about that day in November, remembering with almost total recall exactly where they were and what they were doing when the news broke... Dana had been in her father's office, necking on his couch with a boy from CCNY, Friday being Dr. Castelli's day at Manhattan General, where he worked with addicts on the narcotics service. The radio had been tuned to WABC, Bob Dayton spewing machine-gun chatter and canned goodies from the Beatles, when the announcer broke in to say that Kennedy's motorcade had been fired upon, the news causing Dana to leap up from the couch not a moment too soon, being as she was in a somewhat vulnerable position just then.

Playboy: July 1969, page 219,221
Comment: The plot concerns Annie and Wanda shopping for a see-through dress. In one frame, the nude picture of John and Yoko from the TWO VIRGINS album cover is shown adorning a paper dress. In another frame there is psychedelic artwork on the outside of the Electric Boutique. It might bring to mind the Fool's artwork on the outside of the Apple Boutique, or maybe the MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR album cover art.

Playboy: August 1969, page 32,34

Joel Grey/BLACK SHEEP BOY is a long way from the talented young man's nostalgic efforts in Cabaret and George M. BLACK SHEEP BOY is right now, with tunes by Tim Hardin... Nilsson, Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel, and Lennon and McCartney... Grey convey[s] words and music with convincing force.

The Friends of Distinction... should win a lot of friends in a hurry. On GRAZIN', the supersmooth quartet unveils a distinctive soul style as it breezes through... Grazing In The Grass, Laura Nyro's Eli's Comin' and the Beatles' And I Love Him.

Lana Cantrell continues to pursue matters musical in her own very special way - which is perfectly fine with us. THE NOW OF THEN! has a little something for nostalgiacs, campniks, Broadwayites, Beatlemanes and just plain old-fashioned music lovers... Those Were The Days... and Falling In Love Again are part of the... package.

Playboy: August 1969, page 108

The Beatles are indisputably tops among the pops, as far as she's concerned, but Debbie also responds to the pulsating sound of Credence Clearwater Revival, a West Coast rock-and-soul combo...

Playboy: August 1969, page 182,186
Writer: Richard Warren Lewis

Together with his personal managers... [Tommy Smothers] formed KSFI, Incorporated - an ambitious conglomerate of eight companies involved in public relations, music publishing, TV production, film production, convention and merchandising services. The staff consisted mainly of young, inexperienced people installed by Tommy. KSFI's problems soon paralleled on a smaller scale those of the Beatles' shaky Apple Corps., Ltd. - and required an increasing amount of Tommy's time. When the KFSI venture was finally dissolved, its failure had cost him more than $135,000...

... The 707's wheels touched down on the damp asphalt runway at Washington's Dulles International Airport, more than two hours late, accompanied by the canned strains of Eleanor Rigby on the P.A. system. Tommy's eyes seemed glazed...

Playboy: September 1969, page 24
Comment: The colorful painting of fantastic animals, flowers and butterflies bears a very strong resemblance to the Yellow Submarine movie artwork.

Playboy: September 1969, page 54,55,59-60

... THE BOOKER T. SET (Stax), wherein the MG's apply their usual soft touch to 11 top tunes, including Michelle and Mrs. Robinson; Steve Cropper's WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS (Volt), which finds the MG's' self-effacing guitarist fronting a large aggregation of powerhouse blues; ...

BLOWIN' GOLD features John Klemmer's electrified tenor in a program of pop tunes such as Hey Jude and Jimi Hendrix' Third Stone From the Sun, plus originals... The rhythm section... is solid rock.

Judging from George Harrison's ELECTRONIC SOUND and the second John Lennon-Yoko Ono release, UNFINISHED MUSIC NO. 2: LIFE WITH THE LIONS (both Zapple), it appears that George and John have emphatically rejected music as a means of expression. One side of the Lennon-Ono opus features 26 1/2 minutes of wordless screaming by Yoko, recorded in concert; the flip side bears such gems as Two Minutes Silence, which is precisely what it claims to be, and Radio Play, which is 12 1/2 minutes of static. The Harrison LP contains two sidelong collages of abstract sound - or as the inside jacket aptly describes it, "noise." We can only hope that the chutzpah shown by John and George is matched by the patience of their fans.

Playboy: September 1969, page 60

Oh! Calcutta is good nudes... In the course of the action they [the five woman and five man cast] are naked - totally, unblushingly naked - about half the time... To add further class, he [Kenneth Tynan] employed as contributors Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer, Dan Greenburg, John Lennon... One may be disappointed that the show doesn't quite achieve the heights promised by the stellar list of contributors, but no one can fault the intention...

Playboy: September 1969, page 73

Rock Is A Capitalist Plot

Moscow - If the Beatles and rock-'n'-roll music are part of an insidious Communist plot to corrupt American youth, as John Birchers have claimed, the plot has backfired. A Soviet newspaper, Lenin's Banner, is dismayed to find that rock music and modern dances are instead corrupting Russion youngsters with decadent Western thoughts and sexual immorality: "The boys are shaking their bodies as if their pants are nailed to a fence and they are trying to tear them off. After such a hot dance, the worn-out partners return to their places and embrace." This makes for premature marriage and frequent divorce, according to the paper.

Playboy: October 1969, page 29

REVOLVER. Beatles. Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby. [With simplified picture of the album.]
SOULFUL. Dionne Warwick. Hey Jude.

Playboy: October 1969, page 156,158-159

Nominating Board: ... Paul McCartney (representing the Beatles), ...

Guitar (Please check one.)
George Harrison 

Bass/Electric Bass (Please check one.)  [New category this year.]
Paul McCartney 

Drums (Please check one.)
Ringo Starr

Other Instruments (Please check one.)
George Harrison, sitar 

Vocal Group (Please check one.)
Beatles 

Songwriter-Composer (Please check one.)  [New category this year.]
John Lennon-Paul McCartney

Comment: Paul is absent from the Male Vocalist category this year. Perhaps an individual Beatle in this category was viewed as redundant with the Beatles' inclusion in the Vocal Group category. The trouble with that theory is that Mick Jagger is listed under Male Vocalists while the Rolling Stones are listed under Vocal Group.

Playboy: October 1969, page 167,170,171

In what must be the ultimate gesture of critical scorn, first-stringer John Chapman of the New York Daily News refused to review the show... According to Chapman, Tynan is a literary pimp and the contributing writers a pack of whores - illustrious whores at that, the list ranging from from Samuel Beckett to Jules Feiffer to John Lennon, none specifically credited in the playbill or program with the sketch he wrote - perhaps because, in some cases, the writing consisted of no more than a few lines, such as any normally horny genius might scribble down about his sexual fantasies.

[caption to photo of Four In Hand scene] In Four In Hand, based on an idea by John Lennon, the single-minded members of a masturbation society tune themselves to a projection machine that screens their most titillating fantasies.

Comment: In the book The Life Of Kenneth Tynan by Kathleen Tynan, this scene is called the Liverpool Wank (page 364).

Playboy: October 1969, page 197
Writer: Saul Braun

The dialectic postulated in in Peter Weiss' play Marat/Sade is the same tension that exists between SDS radicals on the one hand - who want to turn over our system and take our place... - and the new young on the other hand, who are evolving through pot and psychedelics... "You say you'll change the Constitution," sing the Beatles, "Well, you know we all want to change your head. You tell me it's the institution, Well, you know you better free you mind instead." The radical activists are the same old noise, but the others are new, and, friends, they are turning.

Playboy: November 1969, page 16

SUPER ROCK. Hey Jude. 30 of of today's biggest hits!
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Fool On The Hill. [Same as 69JULp17.]
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life. [Same as 69JULp16.]

Playboy: November 1969, page 50,52,53

Not that anyone has ever doubted it, but Barbra Streisand proves she's very with it on the young-in-heart WHAT ABOUT TODAY. There are items by... Lennon and McCartney, Paul Simon...

Peter Schickele, who has put together Bach concert put-ons, serious stuff and the music for that nude awakening, Oh! Calcutta!, shows another string in his bow on GOOD-TIME TICKET, a highly satisfying instrumental recording that has a Schickele-led orchestra performing a half dozen of his own tunes and a like number of Beatle-dominated ditties. There are bright, inventive twists all over the place and an engagingly cohesive effect.

It may sound unlikely, but we had no difficulty at all digesting Arif Mardin's GLASS ONION, an instrumental set that shows off the skills of an extremely deft arranger. Assisted by some sure-fingered musicians, Mardin gives a Middle Eastern flavor to the Rascals' How Can I Be Sure, bestows a taste of country twang on the Lennon-McCartney title opus...

Comment: Mardin later produced some of Ringo's solo albums.

Playboy: November 1969, page 161
Comment: The text of this article extends over 7 pages without a single mention of the Beatles. Was the writer being cool, or did Jagger insist, "No gear-fabbing"?

Playboy: November 1969, page 212
Comment: Above a bedful of hippies a poster reads:

Bring the boys home from Oohblahdee.

Playboy: November 1969, page 260
Writer: Arthur Knight and Hollis Alpert
Comment: Includes photos and other references to Candy and The Magic Christian that do not involve Ringo.

Even more significant than those films in which nudity is incidental, however, is the increasing number of pictures from major studios in which nudity seems to be their raison d'etre. Candy, for example, would have been wholly unthinkable only a few years ago... [partly] because it reveals so much of baby-faced Ewa Aulin's well-stacked anatomy, as she distributes her favors among Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Ringo Starr, et al.

Playboy: December 1969, page 58

Sweden has produced a fair share of jazz and rock rock musicians, and Rune Gustafsson, as evidenced by his immaculate guitar work on RUNE AT THE TOP, is a master of both styles... When Gustafsson gets off - as on Waltz-A-Nova or The Fool On The Hill - he'd be hard for any guitar man to catch.

Playboy: December 1969, page 224
Writer: Timothy Leary

The complex tasks of harnessing electronic-psychedelic energies to the new social structure now could be left to younger and more technically talented prophets, such as the Beatles, Tom O'Horgan, Tiny Tim, Stanley Kubrick, the righteous dealers and the underground alchemists. I nominated John Lennon as my successor and dropped out of the Pied Piper business.

Playboy: December 1969, page 256
Writer: Leslie A. Fielder

Even more spectacular [than Bob Dylan's musical twists and turns], however, is the case of John Lennon, who, coming into view first as merely one of the Beatles, then just another rock group from Liverpool, has revealed himself stage by stage as novelist, playwright, moviemaker, guru, sculptor, etc. There is a special pathos in his example, since, though initially inspired by American models, he has tried to work out his essentially American strategies in English idioms and in growing isolation on the generally dismal English scene. He has refused to become the prisoner of his special talent as a musician, venturing into other realms, where he has as little authority as anyone else. He thus provides one more model for the young who, without any special gift or calling, in the name of mere possibility, insist on making tens of thousands of records, movies, collections of verse, paintings, junk sculptures, even novels in complete contempt of professional standards.

Playboy: January 1970, page 16-17

Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Fool On The Hill. [Same as 69JULp17.]
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life. [Same as 68JULp16.]
WHAT ABOUT TODAY? Barbra Streisand. With A Little Help From My Friends.

Playboy: January 1970, page 30

Goodbye Baby & Amen: A Saraband For The Sixties offers tricky shots [by Cockney photographer David Bailey] of Christine Keeler, Twiggy... the Beatles, the Rolling Stones... and a batch of other in-today, where-tomorrow people, along with some harmless comments about them [by Peter Evans].

Playboy: January 1970, page 45

Barbra Streisand. With A Little Help From My Friends. [Same as page 17.]

Playboy: January 1970, page 46

Verily, the Beatles have been touched by the Lord. On ABBEY ROAD (Apple; also available on stereo tape) - possibly their best LP to date - they demonstrate unsuspected vocal and instrumental virtuosity as they deliver some of their toughest hard rock (Come Together, I Want You), mellowest melodies (Something, Because) and keenest satire (Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Polythene Pam). Another strange and groovy fruit from Apple... is Billy Preston's THAT'S THE WAY GOD PLANNED IT, on which the singer-pianist-organist, formerly Ray Charles's side-kick, gets the benefit of George Harrison's production... The charts, full of Beatlesque turns, provide proper support for the honest Afro-American soul that's out front.

Playboy: January 1970, page 123
Comment: Judith Wax
Comment: Shows color cartoon picture of John and Yoko.

John and Yoko's famous pose
Should faze no music lover,
For, naked though the Lennons are,
The record's got a cover.

Playboy: January 1970, page 173
Comment: The third page (of four) of the collage uses a photo of the Beatles with the Maharishi.

Playboy: February 1970, page 18-19

Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. The Fool On The Hill. [Same as 69JULp17.]
Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life. [Same as 68JULp16.]
Barbra Streisand. With A Little Help From My Friends. [Same as 70JANp17.]

Playboy: February 1970, page 47

THE BEATLES [Picture of tape cartridge.]

Playboy: February 1970, page 156-159,179,182-185
Writer: Nat Hentoff

The 1970 Playboy All-Star Band

Beatles, vocal group.  
Paul McCartney, electric bass, songwriter/composer.  
John Lennon, songwriter/composer.  

Comment: Shows color cartoon picture of the Beatles. John has taken off his clothes. Paul is covering John with his bass. As always, let me reiterate that there are many other musicians in the All-Star band.

... The music was in a continuous state of flux... Another new group, The Flock, from Chicago, spans rock, Coltranelike jazz, classical music, blues and radiations from the Beatles... There were many more examples of continuous cross-fertilization, all exemplifying the credo best expressed by Paul McCartney: "We're feeling for many things, and in many directions. We're looking into new sounds and not looking down on anything."

This year, our readers selected three young giants from the pop-rock world; significantly, all are most famous for their skills as composers, and all have produced some of the most relevant songs of our time.

John Lennon. The Beatles, despite constant rumors that they are about to break up, apparently have no such intention; yet, while they continue to record and make films together, the individual members of the group get ever more involved in their own trips. For John Lennon - actor, author, guitarist and lyricist - the past year has been a fantastic voyage undertaken with his unconventional artist wife, Yoko Ono. Together, they held a weeklong bed-in in a Toronto hotel room, where - with a cluster of celebrities, including Tom Smothers and Tim Leary - they recorded Give Peace A Chance; the song was a best seller, as was The Ballad Of John And Yoko, which cast Lennon as a Christ figure. Making the surreal real, John and Yoko sent acorns to the world's heads of state to distract them from war. They recorded a series of unique albums chronicling their misadventures with unprecedented intimacy; their initial effort, Two Virgins, bore a front-view photograph of the couple in all their undressed splendor. John's stature, however, is still due to his role in creating the Beatles' repertoire; and he made his credo clear when he told a revolution-minded critic that bombing buildings wasn't his shtick: "You destroy it [the establishment]; I'll build around it."

Paul McCartney. He would have been the last to know, a tongue-in-cheek Paul McCartney assured the world, if he had really died. Yet it wasn't until a magazine reporter cornered him - and secured a statement to the effect that it was all "bloody stupid," he only wanted to be with his family, and if he had something to say, he would write a song - that the thousands of mourners were assured. The McCartney death flap had been sustained by a bizarre web of "evidence" that would have fascinated Edgar Allen Poe: mystic signs of demise discovered in the illustrations of Beatle albums; ominous messages in the lyrics of their songs; a montage that, when played backward, was shown to contain the sounds of an autobile accident; word that a McCartney look-alike had been sought, found and never revealed. It was all a dramatic illustration of the amazing degree to which the real or imagined events in the life of a Beatle - even a levelheaded, businesslike, retiring one like Paul - can affect the lives of young people around the world. The source of that power? As Paul implied, it's the good music that the Beatles continue to create - and there is no more vital element in the group's musical make-up than Paul's delicate, unpredictable melodies.

Comment: Bob Dylan was the other of the three new Hall of Famers. There are photos of clay busts of Dylan, Lennon and McCartney.

[Rock's] historical significance is shown by all the barriers of the past it has transcended; for in it is blended so much of the past - country, blues, Gospel, jazz - with the future entirely open-ended. What the music keeps saying in essence is, as in the Beatles' Revolution, "Free your mind."

In the spring of the year, Catholic Archbishop Don Helder Camara of Brazil used the Beatles as his text in speaking to 1300 students from 32 countries at a meeting in Manchester, England. "You must complete the message of the Beatles," he said. "You must eliminate racism and neocolonialism and promote the development of all mankind."

One of the Beatles, John Lennon, spent much of the year with his wife, Yoko, in bed-ins for peace in various cities. "We're all responsible for war," he said. "We all must do something, no matter what - by growing our hair long, standing on one leg, having bed-ins - to change the attitudes. The people must be made aware that it's up to them."

Eligible to vote were the medal winners of 1969: ... the Beatles...

All-stars' All-star [Winner Poll] Vocal Group. The 5th Dimension copped first again, but there was much jostling elsewhere as the Association, the Beatles, the Hi-Lo's and the now-parted Diana Ross & the Supremes all moved upward.

1. 5th Dimension
2. Four Freshman
3. Hi-Lo's 
4. Association
5. Beatles                   [tie]
5. Double Six of Paris       [tie]
5. Simon and Garfunkel       [tie]
5. Diana Ross & the Supremes [tie]

Comment: It seems odd that Playboy pronounces, "to nobody's surprise, the Duke was the winner" in the new songwriter-composer category of the Winner Poll. In the reader poll, Lennon-McCartney placed 1st and Ellington placed 11th.

Best Vocal LP: THE BEATLES (Apple). This four-sided, profusely illustrated venture by the M.B.E.s contained plenty of merrie melodies and loony tunes, plus such hits as Revolution and Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. ["Merrie melodies"??? What transformed the "unmemorable melodies" and "fair amount of waste" noted by Playboy's Feb 1969 reviewer?]

    Best Small Combo LP
 1. MEMPHIS UNDERGROUND/Herbie Mann
 2. HAWAII FIVE-O/The Ventures
 3. WARM/Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass [tie]
 3. IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA/Iron Butterfly    [tie]
 5. THE BEATLES
 6. LED ZEPPELIN
    ...
14. MOTHER NATURE'S SON/Ramsey Lewis
    ...
18. ELECTRIC LADYLAND/The Jimi Hendrix Experience
19. WONDERWALL MUSIC/George Harrison
20. BAYOU COUNTRY/Creedence Clearwater Revival

Comment: It's unlikely that Playboy intended for the readers to vote for pop/rock albums in their Small Combo LP poll.

    Best Vocal LP
 1. THE BEATLES 
 2. NASHVILLE SKYLINE/Bob Dylan
 3. CROSBY, STILLS & NASH


    Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame
 1. Bob Dylan
 2. John Lennon
 3. Paul McCartney
 4. Buddy Rich
    ...
 8. Johnny Cash  [tie]
 8. Jimi Hendrix [tie]
10. Beatles
11. Donovan
    ...
24. Mick Jagger

Comment: I think it would be very interesting to see the vote tallies here; better yet, to study the ballots themselves. Notice the Beatles at No. 10. I'm sure Playboy intended the Hall of Fame for individual musicians, not groups. Not surprisingly, this is the only instance of a group making a showing in the Hall of Fame final tally up to that time, probably ever. I think the readers who voted for John and/or Paul would refrain from voting for the Beatles, and vice versa. I think the typical mind would view that as redundant. So then the question is, how would the voting have turned out if the Beatle backers did not view it as either/or, and cast their three votes for Lennon, McCartney, and Beatles more or less down the line? Would that have pulled the Beatles into the top 3? Being the only group voted into Playboy's Hall of Fame would have made a really cool feather in the Beatles' hat. (Although, now that I think about it, I suppose it would have just opened the floodgates for every other pop group that hangs in there long enough.) In any case, with the induction of John and Paul into the Hall of Fame, it never again occurred to fans to think of voting for the Beatles as an entity. Hey, Playboy, do you still have the 1970 ballots in storage? It's only fair that you go back and apply an extra vote towards the Beatles for any ballot that had votes for Lennon and McCartney. Sez me.

Beatle Paul McCartney, transferred from the other-instruments category (where, as an electrified performer, he had previously been listed), took first bass man's chair from Charles Mingus. The percussionists were fairly stable below the top, as Ringo Starr, Gene Krupa... and Charlie Watts all repeated in the top ten... Following McCartney into the upper bracket among the bass players were electrified rocksters Jack Bruce...

The vocal group category proved much more mercurial; while the Beatles retained first place, no fewer than 11 groups jumped onto the list...

The Beatles also showed strength in the new songwriter-composer competition, as the John Lennon-Paul McCartney team sprinted away from a formidable pack.

The other-instruments category, depleted by the creation of the organ and vibes departments, was again headed by Ravi Shankar, followed by... another sitarist, George Harrison...

    Guitar
 1. Jimi Hendrix
    ...
 5. Chet Atkins
 6. George Harrison
 7. Charlie Byrd


    Bass/Electric Bass
 1. Paul McCartney
 2. Jack Bruce
 3. Charles Mingus


    Drums
 1. Ginger Baker
 2. Buddy Rich 
 3. Ringo Starr
 4. Gene Krupa


    Other Instruments
 1. Ravi Shankar, sitar
 2. Herbie Mann, flute
 3. Bob Dylan, harmonica
 4. Paul Butterfield, hormonica
 5. George Harrison, sitar
 6. Dick Hyman, Moog


    Male Vocalist
 1. Tom Jones
    ...
21. Paul McCartney [tie]
21. Johnny Rivers  [tie]
21. Mel Torme      [tie]

Comment: Recall that McCartney was not listed on the ballot; all of his votes were write-in.

    Vocal Group
 1. Beatles
 2. 5th Dimension
 3. Creedence Clearwater Revival
    ...
 8. Rolling Stones
    ...
25. Beach Boys           [tie]
25. Mothers of Invention [tie]
25. Who                  [tie]


    Songwriter-Composer
 1. John Lennon-Paul McCartney 
 2. Burt Bacharach-Hal David
 3. Bob Dylan
    ...
 7. Mick Jagger-Keith Richard

Playboy: March 1970, page 21

Barbra Streisand. With A Little Help From My Friends. [Same as 70JANp17.]
SUPER ROCK. Hey Jude. [Same as 69NOVp16.]

Playboy: March 1970, page 36

The Beatles, the late Malcolm X, Robert Goulet and a weirdo known to the boxing world as Evil Eye Finkel are among the celebrities mustered opposite Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, erstwhile world heavyweight champ and poetaster, whose ringside manner inspired the title as well as the impressive vital statistics for Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee... - a documentary devoted to his career from February 1964, when he took the boxing crown, until May 1965, when he was retired... after beating Sonny Liston in a controversial rematch...

Playboy: March 1970, page 69

Playboy: Today, in what might be called the post-Beatle era, many white groups have gone in for full-blooded adaptations of blues styles - the Muddy Waters-B. B. King-Howlin' Wolf approach - coupled with an abundance of electronic amplification. What about the blend?

Charles: White kids will never feel about Muddy or B. B. the way they feel about the Rolling Stones or Blood, Sweat and Tears. They've got to have entertainers from their own race to idolize, it seems. Negroes have been singing rhythm-and-blues, or soul music, as it's called now, more or less as you hear it today, since before I was born... Then along came Elvis Presley and the white kids had a hero. All that talk about rock 'n' roll began then, but black musicians started to get a little play, too. When the English boys came on the scene, they admitted where they got their inspiration and that caused even more interest in the real blues. I'm glad to see the youngsters doing our music...

Playboy: April 1970, page 35

Barbra Streisand. With A Little Help From My Friends. [Same as 70JANp17.]

Playboy: April 1970, page 44

One of the best offerings in a long time from Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 is YE-ME-LE, a beautiful blend of bossa nova, funk, pop, rock, et al. The principal ingredients in this sonic stew are Wichita Lineman, Norwegian Wood...

Playboy: April 1970, page 45

MY WAY. Frank Sinatra. Yesterday.

Playboy: April 1970, page 183

Jann Wenner, stone mason. ... Wenner approached jazz-rock columnist Ralph Gleason... Gleason matched Wenner's $3000, and the budget for the project [a rock publication] totaled $7500 after a little help from their friends... A put-on review praising a nonexistent album by "the Masked Marauders" as an authentic jam of such artists as John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger stirred so much comment that a group of pseudonymous mimics decided to cash in by recording the LP. They did; it sold 100,000 copies...

Playboy: April 1970, page 239

Come Together. 42x35. Only $2.98. [Poster shows peace sign and marijuana.]

Playboy: May 1970, page 16-17

Barbra Streisand. With A Little Help From My Friends. [Same as 70JANp17.]
SUPER ROCK. Hey Jude. [Same as 69NOVp16.]

Playboy: May 1970, page 36,40

Ringo Starr walks amiably through The Magic Christian in the company of Peter Sellers, who co-authored this makeshift adaptation of Terry Southern's satirical novel. Deep fried and Southern style, the comedy turns on the adventures of Guy Grand (Sellers), an eccentric billionaire who adopts a vagrant lad (Ringo) just for the hell of it and strikes out to prove that mankind - the most corruptible of all species - will do anything for money, if the price is right. So will actors, it seems, since quite a number of big names join Ringo and Peter in miniscule comic bits, of which a few are genuinely funny. The jolliest scenes bring on... London favorite Spike Milligan as a gloriously craven traffic cop... Somehow the gags come across better on paper than on the screen...

Playboy: May 1970, page 48,50,52

Aretha Franklin may be somewhat misrepresented by the title of THIS GIRL'S IN LOVE WITH YOU, but her voice and piano are formidable, indeed, on such vehicles as... the churchy Lennon-McCartney opus Let It be.

Ruth Brown, soul queen of another era, makes a strong comeback on BLACK IS BROWN AND BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL; Gary McFarland's restrained charts provide the right milieu for Ruth's dramatic storytelling on "Miss Brown's Blues" and Yesterday.

Of the younger Nashville stars, there's none better than singer-guitarist Jerry Reed; and on COOKIN', he applies a masterful touch to pop ballads... hard rock... Beatlesque satire (Aunt Maudie's Fun Garden)... and straightforward country music.

Eric Satie... had a cool elegance and a bizarre sense of the absurd that seems eminently apropos in the age of Mailer, Fellini and the Beatles. A well-rounded sampling of the composer's piano works is offered on MASSELOS PLAYS SATIE.

It's called THE BEATLES AGAIN (Apple; also available on stereo tape), and it's a revenue-minded gesture that contains a few tunes previously issued as singles (Hey Jude), a few brash oldies (Can't Buy Me Love) and a couple of gems (Old Brown Shoe and Don't Let Me Down). Meanwhile, the Plastic Ono Band - John, Yoko, Eric Clapton and a rhythm section - has etched LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO 1969 (Apple; also available on stereo tape); included are a 17-minute scream by Yoko, some lightweight rock performances by John and the 1970 John and Yoko calendar.

Playboy: May 1970, page 112
Writer: Herbert Gold

"You know tvist?" she [Zoya] asked.

"Tvist?"

"Tvistovat," she said. "Chobby Checker, Beatle, Rollingstone."

"Oh," he said gravely, "twist, yes. A few years ago."

"I know easily to pronounce vee and doubleyou," she said, "only I make mistake sometimes when I don't know."

Playboy: May 1970, page 186

Buckley: It's a commonplace that there is no such thing as an irreligious society. The need for religion being a part of the nature of man, people will continue to seek religion. You see the Beatles rushing off to listen to the platitudes of that Indian quack, Maharishi-what's-his-name, but they'd rather be caught dead than reading Saint Paul. Young people who have active minds tend to be dissatisfied with the ersatz religions they pick up, and yet so formal is the contemporary commitment to agnosticism - or even to atheism - that they absolutely refuse to plumb Christianity's extraordinary reservoirs of rationality. I doubt if you could get one of these kids... who will go to any guru... to read Orthodoxy by Chesterton or any book by C. S. Lewis.

Playboy: June 1970, page 20

We felt our arteries hardening after receiving a publicity release about a British skinhead rock group called Slade. Skinheads, by the way, are between 12 and 21 and get their name from wearing closely cropped hair. The thing that sent us looking for our rocking chair was a statement that the skinheads "find nothing wrong with Beatle music, except that for many it is the music of their parents' generation."

Playboy: June 1970, page 42

The irrepressible Bola Sete is more and more breaking out of his native Brazilian milieu. With WORKIN' ON A GROOVY THING, the guitarist has almost completely severed the silver cord that bound him to bossa nova. Backed by a rhythm section, plus strings on several of the tunes, Sete tackles... Little Green Apples, Golden Slumbers and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes...

Yea, verily, the Count of Red Bank has gotten together with English royalty and come up with a winner on BASIE ON THE BEATLES. The Basie men... apply themselves with relish to a Beatles songbook that includes Norwegian Wood, With A Little Help From My Friends and Eleanor Rigby. The Count even gets in a little organ work...

Playboy: June 1970, page 45

Last year, I bought a two-record album of pirated Bob Dylan songs called Great White Wonder. Now I understand that more pirated albums have appeared. Who are they by and where can I get them?

[Playboy:] As of this writing, a total of seven unauthorized Bob Dylan albums have appeared; some of these duplicate material on the others. A bootlegged Beatles album was reportedly taped from the broadcast of an acetate of an unreleased disc of theirs, and the Rolling Stones have been honored with an unauthorized record of their Oakland, California, concert. Some record stores carry the bootlegged albums; others, claiming respect for the artist - who gets no royalties from the unauthorized pressings - refuse to do so. Price and quality of the bootlegged records vary considerably; there is no honor among thieves and other pressers sometimes counterfeit a bootlegged disc, degrading further the the usually inferior sound. We suggest you forgo purchasing any pirated LPs.

Playboy: June 1970, page 55

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
ABBEY ROAD. Beattles [sic. Otherwise listing same as 70FEBp47.]
FOOL ON THE HILL. Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66. [Same as 70FEBp47.]

Playboy: July 1970, page 3

Playmate Carol Willis radiates good vibrations in Good Day, Sunshine...

Playboy: July 1970, page 4

Good Day, Sunshine - Playboy's Playmate of the month . . . 96

Playboy: July 1970, page 16

LIVE IN LAS VEGAS. Tom Jones. Yesterday, Hey Jude.
JOE COCKER! She Came In Through The Bathroom Window.
GREATEST HITS. Wes Montgomery. A Day In The Life.

Playboy: July 1970, page 19

"John Lennon is the true revolutionary," [Leslie] Fiedler replied to a man in his 50s who had agreed with Paul Goodman that the young are not political enough. "He is the true revolutionary because he is changing people's sensibilities."

Playboy: July 1970, page 30

It's quite obvious that the best element of the Beatles has been isolated and defined at last by MCCARTNEY, a well-paced program of 14 disarmingly simple tunes on which Paul plays all the instruments and on most of which he sings (with wife Linda harmonizing on occasion). The fare includes hard rock (Oo You), subtle ballads (Junk), soul (Maybe I'm Amazed) and instrumentals (Momma Miss America). There isn't an arbitrary note or a cheap sentiment anywhere and Paul - despite his lack of virtuosity - is fully in control of each instrument he essays.

Playboy: July 1970, page 64,154

Playboy: There's one area in your concern about the sanctity of life that seems somewhat unclear. During the parade in Berkeley for the People's Park in the spring of 1969, John Lennon called KPFA, a local radio station, to encourage the march. He also said that the marchers should keep their cool and realize that there are no principles worth dying for. You objected publicly to that last line. Why?

Baez: I don't think I was being inconsistent. I called KPFA and said that I didn't think any principle is worth killing for, but obviously there are things worth dying for. Not necessarily the People's Park, but there are times when you may be willing to face death if you're acting for life.

Playboy: What do you hear that you especially like?

Baez: Johnny Cash... The Band... The Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet was magnificent. And, of course, the Beatles - not so much some of the recent stuff but certainly SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND. I can't put into words why that affected me so, except to say that it was like a whole picture, everything coming together.

Playboy: July 1970, page 97

Playboy: July 1970, page 196,197
Writer: C. Robert Jennings

The silence and solemnity of the moment were almost palpable; and sensing they had gone far enough, Margo switched the William Tell Overture to full gain and deliberately shattered the mood. Yelps and laughter rent the musty air. Then the men simulated masturbation, as they do in a scene from the show, John Lennon's puerile Four In Hand - in which the new member of an onanist society is turned on by the Lone Ranger, the show's lone nod to homosexuality.

Mike Thoma... assembled his players for the first round of cast notes. "...In Four In Hand, everybody stops thinking about their fantasies when the Lone Ranger comes in..."

Playboy: July 1970, page 202

"All She Needs Is Love" - which is why Janis Joplin has to get on stage and belt it out.

Playboy: August 1970, page 3

John Bowers went on the road with soul singer Janis Joplin... to write All She Needs Is Love...

Playboy: August 1970, page 4

All She Needs Is Love - personality . . . 114

Playboy: August 1970, page 28

True-blue Beatlemaniacs who never have enough of John, Paul, George and Ringo will be pleased to learn that there is virtually nothing else in Let It Be, a kind of visual aid to the album of the same title, but pallid in comparison with one or two earlier documentaries about the foursome (particularly the Maysles brothers' What's Happeining! The Beatles In The U.S.A.). The only supporting player of note is John Lennon's lady, Yoko Ono, who sits beside or near Lennon throughout the rehearsal and recording sessions - a silent and inscrutable alter ego. With the Beatles disbanded as of last report, Let It Be becomes a nostalgic social document for historians of the Sixties. It is interesting to note that despite its fine, solid sound, the group looks tired - all, perhaps, except for Paul McCartney, who emerges on film as the Beatles blithest spirit - like a quartet of friendly but weary pros who have traveled a long, long road since their youth and ebullience first brightened the cinematic landscape with A Hard Day's Night and Help! As Beatles movies go, Let It Be amounts to little more than a lazy way out of a contractual obligation. It comes to a cheeky climax, though, with a session on the rooftop of the Apple company's home office in London - a major happening that stops trafic, disrupts business for blocks around and brings uniformed bobbies to the scene. The cops, of course, are helpless against this disturbance of the peace and might as well lodge a complaint against earth tremors.

Playboy: August 1970, page 31,32

LENA & GABOR has got to be one of the most refreshing LPs to surface in a long time. Singer Horne and guitarist Szabo... put an additional sheen on such contemporary odes as Something, Everybody's Talkin', Yesterday When I Was Young and The Fool On The Hill.

Another singing group of unusual versatilty is showcased in STAIRSTEPS; a family in real life, the 'Steps show true togetherness as they limn a pair of Lennon-McCartney items, Getting Better and Dear Prudence, plus a number of engaging originals.

MCLEMORE AVENUE is the thoroughfare in Memphis on which Stax records is located; it's also Booker T. and the MG's' answer to the Beatles. All the material from ABBEY ROAD is here, arranged in three well-knit medleys, with a separate version of Something. For the MG's, it's a significant departure from their customary three-minute formula; Booker T... feels it's the best thing he's done, and we're inclined to agree.

Playboy: August 1970, page 114
Writer: John Bowers
Comment: Article title is based on All You Need Is Love, of course. The title is shortened to All She Needs on continuation page 172.

Playboy: September 1970, page 45

MCCARTNEY. Apple 8-track stereo.

Comment: The catalog items below are listed without pictures. Regular prices are $6.98 each; members price, $4.66.

MCCARTNEY
LET IT BE - Beatles.
HEY JUDE - Beatles.

Playboy: September 1970, page 60

Sax man extraordinaire Bud Shank joins forces with the Bob Alcivar Singers on LET IT BE and the merger is a decided success. Shank's alto sax and the beautiful harmonies... display a right-on rapport through the likes of the gospel-flavored title tune, George Harrison's Something... and Games People Play.

Playboy: September 1970, page 95

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]

HEY JUDE, The Beatles (Apple) . . . 6.98

Playboy: September 1970, page 96,98

Fonda: When I was ten, I shot myself in the stomach with a 22-caliber pistol. I was in a hospital for four weeks under intensive care.

Playboy: Why did you do it?

Fonda: I blanked that completely. I can remember everything else about it, though... I'm not sure if I was really trying to kill myself or not, but I do recall that after I shot myself, I didn't want to die - and I came very close to dying. Jane tells me that the doctor came out of the operating room and said I was dead, that my heart had stopped beating. My sister is prone to dramatize, as I am... Regardless of what the doctor said, that's how she took it. She thought it was all over for me... They were giving me shots for gangrene and and shock and pain and I was beginning to get a little dopey... I remember looking down at the floor and seeing all these legs walking by all the time... and then suddenly there was a set of legs with mud-covered hunting boots on. He had just come back from duckhunting... Anyway, the cat saved my life.

Comment: Fonda insisted on telling John Lennon about this experience at a party. That exchange provided the initial inspiration for She Said She Said.

Playboy: September 1970, page 228,232
Writer: Michael Horowitz

"Why don't you ever talk to your students?" Sada asked at the reception. Sada was Marcuse's short, fat, old, lovable secretary, for whom Brandeis alumni swear the Beatles' Sexy Sadie was written.

"But I do talk to them!" Marcuse insisted...

Marcuse replie[s], throwing up his hands, "Who can plan anything anymore?"

That was the finale. "Who can plan anything anymore?" I'm just a wayfaring German professor whose hard life has suddenly turned to gold and I know as little about what's coming off as you do. Maybe I'll become a professor in Berlin, maybe I'll join the Apple Corps, maybe I'm Paul Goebbels in disguise...

Playboy: September 1970, page 263

Love Is All You Need. Silkscreen. Dayglo. 35x23. Only 1.49.

Playboy: October 1970, page 28-29

Enjoy albums by headliners like Tom Jones... The Beatles... and hundreds more!

THE BEATLES IN THE BEGINNING. Ain't She Sweet.
BLOOD, SWEAT AND BRASS. The Phoenix Authority. Come Together.

[On tear-out post card:] Capitol Record Club brings you great stars... The Beatles... from all the top labels... Capitol... Polydor...

WE MADE IT HAPPEN. Englebert Humperdinck. Something.

Playboy: October 1970, page 32

The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll [by Charlie Gillett] is the most ambitious historical survey so far of the many intersecting changes in American pop music (and British as well) during the past 30 years... Much of the time, his musical judgments are reasonable, though he underrates the Beatles and is rather superficial in his understanding of Bob Dylan...

Playboy: October 1970, page 43

Frank Sinatra. Yesterday. [Same as 70APRp45.]

Playboy: October 1970, page 44

BOB DYLAN SELF PORTRAIT, a double album, might well be called "Bob Dylan and Friends"... Highlights of this new chapter in Dylan's "get-back" period include Blue Moon...

ALEGRIA is an engaging introduction to Bossa Rio, a Brazilian sextet that's been nurtured under the wing of Brasil '66's Sergio Mendes... Eleanor Rigby, Spinning Wheel... reflect the senior organization's repertoire, but Bossa Rio still retains enough sparkling individuality...

Playboy: October 1970, page 142

[caption] Vivi Knudsten and Lone Frydenberg are Danish schoolgirls earning college-tuition money by making stag films in their spare time; no moral stigma is attached and the pay is much better than that of a secretary. When Lone poses for stills, it's all in a hard day's work.

Playboy: October 1970, page 161-167 including tear-out ballot
Comment: Shows color drawing of McCartney.

Guitar
George Harrison

Bass
Paul McCartney

Drums
Ringo Starr

Other Instruments
George Harrison, sitar

Male Vocalist
Paul McCartney 

Vocal Group 
Beatles

Songwriter-Composer 
John Lennon
Paul McCartney 

Artists previously elected (...John Lennon, Paul McCartney...) are not eligible.

Any instrumentalist or vocalist, living or dead, is eligible for the Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame, except those [fifteen] previously elected: ... John Lennon, Paul McCartney...

Nominating Board: ... John Lennon, Henry Mancini, Paul McCartney...

Playboy: October 1970, page EA 4 (precedes page 229)

Come Together. Nude figures in sunlit meadow; full color photo reproduction on board. 14" x 9". Only 2.98.

Playboy: October 1970, page 235

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
HEY JUDE. [Same as 70SEPp95.]

Playboy: November 1970, page 14
Comment: Reader letters comment on All She Needs Is Love. See 70AUGp114.

Playboy: November 1970, page 16

GREATEST HITS. Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Fool On The Hill.
Joe Cocker. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. [Same as 70JULp16.]

Playboy: November 1970, page 44

A summit of major importance - that's organist Richard "Groove" Holmes's teaming up with the tenor man Ernie Watts on COME TOGETHER. The communication is intense, whether it's the lead-off Lennon-McCartney title tune... pop-rock opuses... or the two Watts originals...

Listening to Miss [Miriam] Makeba is never less than a moving experience and KEEP ME IN MIND manages to insinuate itself into your soul. Whether the songs are her own Africa-based creations or the Lennon-McCartney In My Life... the results are uniformly spectacular.

Charlie Byrd... is with us once more on LET IT BE and good taste is again abroad in the land. A thinking man's guitarist, Byrd never forsakes a melodic line arbitrarily... On LET IT BE, Charlie merges blues, bossa nova, pop, rock and assorted unclassifiables into a beautiful whole, some parts of which are... Bridge Over Troubled Water, the title melody...

Playboy: November 1970, page 59

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]

Playboy: November 1970, page 89

Let It Be. 21x33. Only 1.98.
Come Together. [Same as 70OCTpEA4.]

Playboy: November 1970, page 113
Comment: No Beatles reference here - a missed opportunity. This pictorial on Jane Birkin mentions her film work, but not Wonderwall.

Playboy: December 1970, page 64

With THE RILL THING, Little Richard comes back - but he was never gone, just waiting for Beatle fans to get back to the creator. It's fitting that he should include in this album one of the first Lennon-McCartney tunes, I Saw Her Standing There. Richard produced this one himself...

Playboy: January 1971, page 16-17

Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Fool On The Hill. [Same as 70NOVp16.]
THE BEATLES ALBUM. The Percy Faith Strings.
Joe Cocker. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. [Same as 70JULp16.]

Playboy: January 1971, page 23

Lucy In The Sky. Dayglo blue, green... on black. 21" x 33". Only 1.98.

Comment: The Love Is Real poster can not have been inspired by John's song Love. This issue was on newsstands before the PLASTIC ONO BAND album was released - December 11, 1970.

Playboy: January 1971, page 24-25

COME TOGETHER. Ike & Tina Turner.

The Beatles - LET IT BE. Apple. List price=6.98. Half price=3.49.
Paul McCartney - MCCARTNEY. Apple. List price=5.98. Half price=2.99.

Playboy: January 1971, page 31

THE BEATLES ALBUM. Percy Faith Strings. [Same as page 17.]

Playboy: January 1971, page 44

Since the Beatles went their separate ways, Ringo Starr has been pursuing his interest in country-and-western music. BEAUCOUPS OF BLUES (Apple) is his latest effort - singing, not drumming - in that vein and, accepting the premise that most listeners probably wouldn't expect more than mediocrity from Ringo, he has surpassed expectations. Taken in their musical context, the 12 tunes on the album are rather nice. They were recorded in Nashville with that town's top session men and produced by Pete Drake, with the writing credits for the songs shared by the sidemen. The material is straight country and western, with titles such as Fastest Growing Heartache In The West, Women [sic] Of The Night and Loser's Lounge. Ringo once sang, "They're gonna make a big star outa me, and all I gotta do is act naturally," and that's what he does on this album.

Playboy: January 1971, page 63

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
MCCARTNEY. [Same as 70NOVp59.]
LET IT BE. [Same as 70NOVp59.]

Playboy: February 1971, page 17

THE BEATLES ALBUM. Percy Faith Strings. [Same as 71JANp17.]
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Fool On The Hill. [Same as 70NOVp16.]

Playboy: February 1971, page 32

THE BEATLES ALBUM. Percy Faith Strings. [Same as 71JANp17.]

Playboy: February 1971, page 36,38

Clapton's DEREK AND THE DOMINOES [is] a double LP collection of "Layla and other assorted love songs"... [Layla] starts off as a marriage of British blues and American rhythm and blues, then slips into a mixture of Clapton's early-Beatles, adolescent-love-is-sad guitar and Jim Gordon's classic piano...

The irrepressible, ebullient pianist par extraordinaire, Errol Gardner, demonstrates on FEELING IS BELIEVING that he can still put it all together in grand fashion... Burnished to a brilliant hue are For Once In My Life, Yesterday...

Playboy: February 1971, page 57

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
MCCARTNEY. [Same as 70NOVp59.]
LET IT BE. [Same as 70NOVp59.]

Playboy: February 1971, page 152-158,170-175
Writer: Nat Hentoff

The 1971 Playboy All-Star Band

Paul McCartney, bass.  

Comment: Shows cartoon picture of McCartney among rest of All-Star Band.

For the sixth year, we asked our readers to select a trio of musicians whose stature would merit their addition to the Playboy Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame. The winners will be joining... such diverse musical giants as... last year's top threesome - Bob Dylan... John Lennon, ex-Liverpool tough turned Beatle turned peacenik; and Paul McCartney, another ex-Beatle who, with Lennon, penned much of the music that shook the Sixties...

Comment: Shows photos of sculptures of Lennon and McCartney.

Eric Clapton has underlined the present uncertainty: "There was a time when we would wait around and hope for some leader, like Lennon or Dylan, to tell us what to do... Those days are gone..."

The Beatles, equally influential along with Dylan in the recent past, did not last out the year. There was a new album, LET IT BE (the title of a Beatles' film also released in 1970), but the group finally broke apart. And, apparently, nothing can ever put it back together again. Why the break? Said Paul McCartney: "Personal differences, business differences, musical differences." Each has gone on to cut albums of his own. As for the future, McCartney, presumably speaking only for himself, answers: "My only plan is to grow up."

Eligible to vote were the 1970 medal winners: ... John Lennon... Paul McCartney.

    All-Stars'All-Star [Winner Poll] songwriter/composer

 1. Burt Bacharach-Hal David
 2. Jim Webb
 3. Michel LeGrande
 4. John Lennon    [tie]
 4. Johnny Mandel  [tie]
 4. Paul McCartney [tie]

After its British tour, Chicago was rated above the Beatles and the Rolling Stones by most English music critics...

    Best Big-Band LP
21. BASIE ON THE BEATLES 


    Best Small-Combo LP
 1. CHICAGO
    ...
13. MCLEMORE AVENUE/Booker T. and the MG's
14. BURNT WEENY SANDWICH/Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
15. ABBEY ROAD/Beatles 
16. JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE/Traffic
17. MCCARTNEY/Paul McCartney
18. LET IT BE/Beatles
19. LET IT BLEED/Rolling Stones


    Best Vocal LP
 1. DEJA VU/Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
 2. BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER/Simon & Garfunkel
 3. MCCARTNEY/Paul McCartney
 4. WOODSTOCK
 5. LET IT BE/Beatles
 6. ABBEY ROAD/Beatles
 7. COSMO'S FACTORY/Creedence Clearwater Revival

Eight more "new" faces make their debuts in our current collection of contenders: ... George Harrison... The pop-rock complex continued to gain strength... Previous winners - ... John Lennon and Paul McCartney - were ineligible. Following are this year's top 25:

 1. Jimi Hendrix
    ...
11. Barbara Streisand
12. George Harrison
13. Frank Zappa

Paul McCartney also advanced [in the male-vocalist category], as a result of his first solo album.

The vocal-group section saw Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young advance from seventh to take the laurels from the scattered Beatles.

In the songwriter/composer competition, John Lennon and Paul McCartney weren't quite as powerful as singles and slid down the list, their crown being taken by the Burt Bacharach-Hal David powerhouse.

    Guitar
 1. Eric Clapton
 2. Jose Feliciano
 3. George Harrison
 4. Mason Williams


    Bass 
 1. Paul McCartney 
 2. Jack Bruce
 3. Charles Mingus


    Drums
 1. Ginger Baker
 2. Buddy Rich
 3. Ringo Starr
 4. Gene Krupa


    Other Instruments
 1. Herbie Mann, flute
    ...
 4. Ravi Shankar, sitar
 5. George Harrison, sitar.  [Good grief.  How long must this go on???]
 6. Paul Butterfield, harmonica


    Male Vocalist
 1. Joe Cocker
 2. Paul McCartney 
 3. Tom Jones


    Vocal Group
 1. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
 2. Beatles
 3. Creedence Clearwater Revival
    ...
 8. Rolling Stones

Comment: Remember that the readers were filling out ballots in September, 1970. How many thought the Beatles' split was permanent, and how many thought it was temporary? How many, like me, took it as seriously as the idiotic Paul Is Dead hoax? Paul himself didn't know if the split was permanent in his MCCARTNEY interview in April, 1970. His suit to dissolve the Beatles was filed on December 31, 1970.

    Songwriter/Composer 
 1. Burt Bacharach-Hal David
 2. Paul McCartney
 3. Bob Dylan
    ...
 6. Mick Jagger-Keith Richards
 7. John Lennon 
 8. Frank Zappa

Comment: Remember that the readers voted long before John's first solo album appeared.

Playboy: March 1971, page 36

What can you say about a beautiful 25-year-old girl who dies? "That she loved Mozart, Bach, the Beatles and me..." So gently muses Ryan O'Neal, the hero of Erich Segal's best-selling LOVE STORY.

Playboy: March 1971, page 40

Another funk-soul eminence is Junior Mance, and his latest LP, WITH A LOTTA HELP FROM MY FRIENDS... is suffused with freewheeling joy.

Emitt Rhodes has just turned out his first album and it's practically a one-man show... The songs are movingly beautiful and that's one of the problems. Unlike Paul McCartney's solo effort - which this album resembles - there are no drivers, and the "pretty" sound can begin to wear thin and dull.

At the fore of the impending God-rock movement, George Harrison has come up with a three-LP set, ALL THINGS MUST PASS. Two of the records contain such rocking inspirational stuff as his hit single, My Sweet Lord - and the third, labeled Apple Jam, is an improvised workout that boasts such blue-ribbon sidemen as Ringo Starr, Pete Drake, Eric Clapton and Dave Mason. The jam is mainly a bonus, though. What we're really getting here is a deeply personal statement by Harrison - an expression of his positive outlook on life, of his faith in the old Indian belief that music has the power to change human destiny and of his religion itself. The effort was coproduced by Phil Spector, who, for once, has abandoned his heavy-handed wall-of-sound style in favor of a lighter touch. Hear Me Lord, the last song, wraps up the set well and is just about where the whole trip is at. It's an old-fashioned religious confessional delivered in revival-meeting style.

Playboy: April 1971, page 31

THE BEATLES ALBUM. Percy Faith Strings. [Same as 71JANp17.]

Playboy: April 1971, page 32

John Lennon's latest effort, JOHN LENNON/PLASTIC ONO BAND, is much more of a personal statement than anything he ever did with the Beatles. Accompanied by music that is honed to the barest essentials, the lyrics are so simple as to almost be inane, but they do manage to deliver just enough to provide basic, beautiful communication. The cut that stands out is God, which seems to be an obituary for the whole Beatles trip... It's been said that John became bitter after his mother died and his father deserted him when he was young, and the opening [Mother] and ending [My Mummy's Dead] cuts... concern this traumatic event...

Richie Havens/ALARM CLOCK shows Richie is still one of the last troubadours... Richie has put together a set of nine songs that includes an interesting treatment of the Beatles' Here Comes The Sun, recorded live at the Cellar Door in Washington, D.C.

Playboy: April 1971, page 59

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
MCCARTNEY. [Same as 70NOVp59.]
LET IT BE. [Same as 70NOVp59.]

Playboy: April 1971, page 79

Frank Sinatra. Yesterday. [Same as 70APRp45.]

Playboy: April 1971, page 104-107
Writer: David Standish and Craig Vetter

4. [Shows photo of man with missing teeth and beat-up cowboy hat.] This person is:

a. Yoko Ono
b. Phil Spector's mother ...
d. Wavy Gravy.
e. Some of the above.

11. The age of "dooby... bop bop baby" rock lyrics is long dead; today, the lyrics speak sensitively... To prove you're listening, identify the following lines from classic rock poems.

a. "Found my coat and grabbed my hat." ...
d. "That big fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon."

Answers:

4. d and e.
11. a. Beatles, A Day In The Life.

False. Rod McKuen has 60 pounds on her, easy. [Shows photo of Yoko.]

Playboy: April 1971, page 159

The celebrated and controversial French director tells about the momen in his life, from Brigitte Bardot to the young movie hopefuls who appear in his first American film.

Brigitte was the first free, insolent international star, in the manner later to be adopted by the Beatles.

Playboy: May 1971, page 16

THEM CHANGES. Ramsey Lewis. Something.
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66. Fool On The Hill. [Same as 70NOVp16.]
THE BEATLES ALBUM. Percy Faith Strings. [Same as 71JANp17.]

Playboy: May 1971, page 48,50,52

MELTING POT is the latest from Mr. Booker T. Jones and the MG's... It's a good, workmanlike performance, but, curiously, lacks excitement... The band gets out of its rut on Sunny Monday, which brings in an effective string section along with suggestions of Here Comes The Sun in Steve Cropper's guitar chords.

ODETTA SINGS is an obvious redundancy, since Odetta is synonymous with singing... The opening track... Take Me To The Pilot sets the mood for the album and it will lift you right out of your chair. Also on tap: Paul McCartney's Every Night...

Still another British group testifies to the continuing fertility of the London rock scene... MCDONALD AND GILES [is] a really delightful, eclectic stew, impeccably performed. Touches of jazz, electronics, the Fifties' sounds, old acoustical recordings, honking country saxes, movie music, skiffle bands and blues combine in two extended pieces: Birdman... and Suite In C... The approach derives from SGT. PEPPER, but it's more relaxed and intimate.

Peggy Lee... has a new LP, MAKE IT WITH YOU, that is super-right. The material ranges from the lovely Lennon-McCartney tune The Long And Winding Road through the lilting title ode...

Playboy: May 1971, page 49

Come Together. [Same as 70OCTpEA4.]

Playboy: May 1971, page 63

With a little help from a friend . . . you can host the perfect party... Call the friendly Catering Manager at any Playboy Club...

Playboy: May 1971, page 148
Writer: Geoffrey Norman

There are those who insist that poetry isn't dead, that it is as strong as ever, that the Wordsworths of our time have been the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Such assertions prove only that precision in language is a dusty virtue; Dylan and the Beatles obviously have written songs, but what is the real measure? Who writes poems?

Playboy: May 1971, page 159

[caption] Her father is a career Army man, but Nikki [Minick] idolizes John Lennon for his pacifist leanings. "We're all entirely different in our outlook on life," she says of her family, "yet, we have remained very close."

Playboy: June 1971, page 16

EVERYTHING'S GOOD ABOUT YOU. The Lettermen. Something.
THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD. Wayne Newton.
REVOLVER. Beatles. Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby.

Playboy: June 1971, page 46

For some time now, the Hollies have been one of the tightest, strongest vocal groups in rock. Their new album [is] MOVING FINGER... Though the group sometimes explores the middle-period Beatles style (Confessions Of A Mind), it is most at home with the sounds and sentiments of Fifties rock...

Playboy: June 1971, page 65

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
LET IT BE. [Same as 70NOVp59.]

Playboy: July 1971, page 14

Tony Davis: "True Or False? Yoko Ono Is Heavier Than Rod McKuen", your quiz... did what it announced it would do - "unzip the facade from even the spaciest of freaks" - and then some. Maybe it will bring down some of the hip elite from their hipper-than-thou trips...

Playboy: July 1971, page 16

LOVE STORY. Andy Williams. My Sweet Lord.
LOVE STORY. Johnny Mathis. My Sweet Lord.

Playboy: July 1971, page 28,30
Comment: The review of Albert Goldman's book Freakshow, about the '60s' rock and pop-culture scene, has no Beatle references.

Playboy: July 1971, page 34

Wess, an all-around reed man, has a great advertisement for himself in WESS TO MEMPHIS... It's a nitty-gritty affair... The alto sax of Eli Fountain is featured on Ooh Child and Fool On The Hill...

Playboy: July 1971, page 41

As a person who is left-handed, I find myself continually handicapped by products that are designed for right-handed people...

[Playboy:] Playing cards for left-handed people are no put-on... Also available for the left-handed are special scissors, diaper pins... guitars (left-handed Paul McCartney had to go to Germany to find one)...

Playboy: July 1971, page 43

Lucy In The Sky. [Same as 71JANp23.]
Come Together. Two figures superimposed on peace symbol in dayglo. 22 3/4 x 30 3/4. Only 1.98
Come Together. [Meadow. Same as 70NOVp89.]
Come Together Thing. Perls' "Do your thing... But if by chance we should come together, then let it be - it'll be beautiful." Dayglo. 1.98.

Playboy: July 1971, page 50

BEATLES' MILLION SELLER HITS. 101 Strings.

Playboy: July 1971, page 168
Writer: Donn Pearce

As if in answer to that pig dangling from the edge of the moon, El Djamila [club in Algeria] broke out with the camel-****-kicker version of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. Simultaneously, a large billow of smoke came belching out of Leary's room...

Playboy: August 1971, page 21

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
LET IT BE. [Same as 70NOVp59.]
FROM ME TO YOU. Charlie Pride. [Same as 71JUNp65.]

Playboy: August 1971, page 24,26
Comment: Playboy reviews a book called Panthermania. It begins by discussing the dictionary definition of "mania." This is the first example of a coined "-mania" word, other than "Beatlemania", that I found in this study. There were "-mania" words before "Beatlemania", of course. In another area of interest of mine, there was an outbreak of "guitaromanie" in Paris in the 1820s. My American Heritage dictionary gives the example "balletomania". (Do you think they were dancing around something, ha ha?) But how common were these "-mania" words prior to "Beatlemania"? Did "Beatlemania" set the stage for a rash of future creations? If such words were commonplace, why has such a big deal been made of the coining of the word "Beatlemania" by the British press in 1963? In the decades following Beatlemania, was it possible for the human brain to coin a "-mania" word without thoughts of "Beatlemania"?

Playboy: August 1971, page 34

Jimmy McGriff is a superfunky organist and Junior Parker, a vocalist of electric intensity. Together on THE DUDES DOIN' BUSINESS, they've created a package that steams from beginning to end. It includes... the Lennon-McCartney Oh! Darling and George Harrison's The Inner Light...

Playboy: August 1971, page 34

HC: [JAK] is worried that too much sexual frankness will take the excitement out of sex... I doubt that...

Playboy: August 1971, page 74,100,198
Writer: Hal Bennett

But N...town excited me, crammed so exotically with dogs and buildings and very black people, and the jukeboxes are all playing the same hit song: Revolution Revolution Revolution. Men as gaunt as mummies. Rubbery-legged children dancing the funky chicken up and down the filthy street. Women misshapen by the burden of too many children born alive. The militant young primping arrogant Afros. Revolution Revolution. Drug addicts crumpled in doorways...

I sucked in lungsful of the sex-drenched air... and stumbled on like a drunken child behind the black undulations of my mother's enormous, shelf-shaped butt. Revolution. It was the last I heard of the jukeboxes, for we went on into Glen Oaks, like taking an actual step up onto a green oasis...

I walked on over into N...town and I knew what it smelled like now... The brightly colored jukeboxes thundered like cannons. Revolution Revolution...

Playboy: September 1971, page 45

Come Together. [Meadow. Same as 70OCTpEA4.]
Come Together. [2 figures. Same as 71JULp43.]
Come Together. [Thing. Same as 71JULp43.]

Playboy: September 1971, page 51

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]

Playboy: September 1971, page 56

Paul McCartney may have found love, but judging from RAM, his second solo LP, he hasn't found out where his head is musically. The album consists of several dozen bits and pieces, covering most of the known pop world, spliced often uncomfortably into 12 cuts. Typical is Back Seat Of My Car, which shifts from hard Fifites' rock to syrupy Hugo Winterhalter violins to Mel Torme crooning (complete with cocktail piano) and back to Fifties' rock again - all without much success. And the inventory for Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey includes a wiggly Biff Rose vocal, strings, French horns, bird whistles, a Beach Boys imitation, changing tempos and a thunderstorm. There are some nice moments, especially on a fundamental rocker called Smile Away, but it mostly seems to amount to Paul's substituting facility for any real substance. It's like watching somebody juggle five guitars; It's fairly impressive, but you keep wondering why he bothers.

Leon Russell didn't get to be the World's Champion Hip Okie by accident. He earned it on Stones sessions, by writing Give Peace A Chance, by teaming up with Joe Cocker - and he's just paid more dues with LEON RUSSELL AND THE SHELTER PEOPLE, one of the best rock albums so far this year...

Aretha Franklin has enough soul for any three people, and on ARETHA LIVE AT FILLMORE WEST, it just spills over... She's got the whole audience in the palm of her hand as she lays into Otis Redding's Respect, the Lennon-McCartney Eleanor Rigby...

Playboy: October 1971, page 17

REVOLVER. Beatles. Yellow Submarine, Eleanor Rigby. [Picture is negative of the one shown in Citadel ad, 71JUNp16.]

Playboy: October 1971, page 63

Come Together. [Painting by Ryer. Looks like a man strangling a woman.]

Playboy: October 1971, page 132
Comment: Neiman cartoon shows a Beatles album.

Playboy: October 1971, page 161-165 including tear-out ballot

Guitar
George Harrison
John Lennon [nominated for the first time]


Bass
Paul McCartney 


Drums 
Ringo Starr


Other Instruments
George Harrison, sitar 


Male Vocalist
George Harrison [nominated for the first time]
John Lennon [nominated for the first time]
Paul McCartney 
Ringo Starr [nominated for the first time]


Songwriter-Composer 
George Harrison
John Lennon
Paul McCartney

Artists previously elected (...John Lennon, Paul McCartney...) are not eligible.

The only performers ineligible... for the Hall of Fame are those already voted in... John Lennon, Paul McCartney...

Nominating Board: ... Paul McCartney... [John not listed because he did not place first in any category last year.]

Playboy: October 1971, page 192

Together or apart, the Beatles are newsmakers. So there was predictably high interest in a work of art recently offered for sale by Zarach, a London furniture store, when people discovered its creator was none other than Ringo Starr. Zarach calls the piece a kinetic sculpture and, thanks to mass production, prices it at only 60-144 [pounds]. It consists of a clear Perspex rectangular box with mercury-filled discs inside that wind down a zigzag course, then spiral upward to repeat an interminable trip (with the help of a small motor in the opaque-lit base.) If his subsequent pieces are as well designed as this one, some critics are saying that Ringo, to paraphrase some lyrics he once sang, is going to be a big Starr in the world of kinetic art. [Shows picture of Ringo and the art object.]

Playboy: October 1971, page 197

you can host the perfect party... [Similar to 71MAYp63.]

Playboy: October 1971, page 230
Writer: Larry Tritten

... Think Paul is still cute, but wonder if poor John has gone crazy...

Playboy: November 1971, page 3

In this issue, we pass the centenary with our 101st interview: the Beatles' embattled manager, Allen Klein. Staff writer Craig Vetter caught up with Klein on a 150-foot yacht off the coast of Spain.

Playboy: November 1971, page 4

Playboy interview: Allen Klein . . . 89

Playboy: November 1971, page 49

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
ALL THINGS MUST PASS. [Same as 71SEPp51.]
FROM ME TO YOU. Charlie Pride. [Same as 71JUNp65.]

Playboy: November 1971, page 61

Come Together. [Meadow. Same as 70OCTpEA4.]
Come Together. [2 figures. Same as 71JULp43.]
Come Together. [Thing. Same as 71JULp43.]

Playboy: November 1971, page 64,66

Nothing she [Nina Simone] has done could be considered surfacy or shallow, and HERE COMES THE SUN is no exception. The title ballad, Just Like A Woman, Mr. Bojangles... are sterling examples of her hauntingly evocative... approach to a song...

Comment: Playboy reviews the Byrds' album BYRDMANIAX, the second example of a coined "-mania" word found in this study. See the discussion under 71AUGp24.

Playboy: November 1971, page 89-106

Not long ago, John Lennon and Yoko Ono decided that the walls in Allen Klein's new offices needed decorating... so [they] began hanging golden records (over 100 of them...) that the groups Klein has managed have picked up over the years. Down the first hallway... at the end is ALL THINGS MUST PASS... LET IT BE... PLASTIC ONO BAND... MCCARTNEY and RAM...

In January of 1969, while he was still managing the Stones, John Lennon hired Klein to be his financial manager and shortly after that, George Harrison and Ringo Starr signed up, too. Paul McCartney was conspicuous by his absence... and the fight climaxed in England's High Court of Justice, where Paul McCartney initiated proceedings to dissolve the most brilliant partnership rock 'n' roll had ever seen... The case has not yet come to trial... [Klein] is the veteran of almost as many lawsuits as he has gold records.

Vetter then flew to Almeria, Spain, where Klein was on location producing a spaghetti Western called Blindman, co-starring Ringo Starr...

Later John told me, "Allen's really beautiful. He handles everything, and I can trust him..."

At the opening-day press party [for Blindman]... journalists... reeled seasick... And Ringo sat on the afterdeck telling stories about his five horrible weeks in the merchant marine and prefacing his advice to the guests, "Keep your knees apart and loose . . . focus on the land..." with... "Take it from an old sea dog, mate . . ."

(Klein doesn't drink)... I asked if he [Klein] thought they would ever play together again...

"You must say yes, Allen," [Ringo] said, "because there's no reason we shouldn't all play together again if we want to..."

Klein had kept saying that he wanted me to meet Ringo, John and George, so that I could see for myself that they were happier with their lives and their careers than they had ever been...

Klein: Yoko told me that when she and John came to me, they were looking for a real shark - someone to keep the other sharks away. Now she says sometimes I'm too moral...

Playboy: How nasty has the game with the Eastmans become?

Klein: Very damn nasty, I'll tell you. With Lee Eastman ranting around a hotel room in London calling me the lowest form of scum in the world. He did that in front of the Beatles... I just sat there and let him come out of the woodwork...

Playboy: Paul claims you started the trouble.

Klein: I'm sure he does... But it's not true... When I got to Apple, things were in a shambles: The Beatles and Apple had nothing; they were broke... Ringo or George or John [will] tell you I got them out of trouble, not into it.

Playboy: John told friends he was afraid to go to you. Why?

Klein: He knew I'd said years before... that I was going to have the Beatles one day. That scared him. I think. It was like I was clairvoyant... I was driving across a bridge out of New York and I heard on the radio that Epstein had died and I said to myself, "I got 'em." ...

Playboy: Did you get in touch with John, or did he call you?

Klein: I called John... He had made a statement... saying that if the Beatles didn't do something soon, Apple would be broke in six months. That was my opening.

Klein: And John's very generous with his money. Too generous... And there were... times when he's given away like 25,000 [pounds] out of his own pocket. Because of taxes, he's got to make 250,000 [pounds] to give away 25,000, you know...

Klein: But they [Eastmans] wanted to continue to manage the Beatles, which they had been doing for a month, so it became a question of who was to do what. And all four boys agreed that I was going to look into the finances and that Johnny Eastman should act as a lawyer. But that became impossible after a while...

Klein: We were trying to get control of Northern Songs... The problem was that the Beatles never controlled Northern. All John and Paul had was 15 percent each... Dick James... owned 35 percent and most of the rest was held by the public.

Playboy: Why didn't Lennon and McCartney own the rights to their own songs?

Klein: I don't know. Ask Brian Epstein. He made the deal. Not me...

Comment: This seems a curious response from a man who claims, "I'm the best. I know more about this business than anybody else" (page 92). In the pre-Beatle days, music publishers performed an actual service by matching up songs with performers. When musical acts - such as the Beatles - that wrote their own material began to appear, worried music publishers assured these artists that they needed to sign their songs over to an "established" publisher. See, for example, Music Publishing - A Songwriter's Guide by Randy Poe, page 10.

Playboy: What finally happened in the Northern Songs negotiations?

Klein: We finally just sold our shares to ATV. We made a lot of money, but it wasn't the best we could have done.

Playboy: Did Paul sign the deal?

Klein: Hell, yes, he signed them all. All the deals I worked out.

The [record] contract said that the Beatles owed EMI nine years and 70 sides. The boys thought it said nine years or 70 sides. They'd already done 70 sides, so they thought they were out of that contract. But they weren't... But we had EMI over a barrel... [The Beatles] could have just sat on their [butts] and not done another song for the period of the contract... We had 'em. So we worked out a new contract...

Playboy: John has said that... you had him sit down and figure out exactly which lyrics he had written... Why?

Klein: I thought John was losing self-confidence in himself... He'd forgotten a lot of what he contributed and had assumed, say, on Michelle, that because Paul sang lead, Paul had written it. Well, John wrote the entire middle eight for Michelle and 60 or 70 percent of the lyric on Eleanor Rigby... And he pointed out a lot of things that George had contributed that no one knew about...

Playboy: And you wanted Let It Be to be their third [contract-filling] film?

Klein: Sure. Originally, the boys... had intended it to be a TV film. But I had some of my people look at a rough cut and we decided it would work as a general-release motion picture... Paul didn't like the idea, but he said, "You have a majority, so go ahead." ... Then Ringo went to ask Paul to hold the release of his solo album until after the LET IT BE album came out, so there wouldn't be confusion. Paul told Ringo that since there was no definite release date for the film, he was going ahead. Ringo told him that the release date was set and then Paul really let him have it. He said he was going to ruin Ringo...

Playboy: What do you do for your 20 percent?

Klein: I'm their business manager. I invented that term... It really started when I managed Sam Cooke... [Artists] just don't want the constant involvement of handling the business... It's not that they don't have an awareness of it... George Harrison... really reads every damn document. And he understands them... Ringo knows exactly what he has in the bank...

Playboy: What do you feel you've really accomplished for them?

Klein: Under Epstein - by the way, he took 25 percent - when they were touring, selling millions of records, making movies, they made 6,500,00 [pounds] in six years. With me, they've earned 9,000,000 [pounds] in 19 months... They've also put out more albums than they did in those previous six years. That's productivity, and it comes from frredom. Artistic freedom...

Playboy: Do you get involved musically with the groups you handle?

Klein: Yes. That's one of my strengths. Sometimes John or George or Ringo will come in and want to play a song for me that they've just written. And I'll tell them what I think... I even gave John a line for one of the songs on his new album, IMAGINE... There's a line that goes, "The only thing you did was yesterday," and the line that followed was: "And you probably pinched that bitch anyway." I thought it was too strong, not worthy of him, so I suggested, "Since you've gone you're just another day." And he loved it.

Klein: Before George did his [concert for Bangladesh], he called Paul and asked him if he wanted to come and play. Paul said, "Sure, I'll come - if you'll dissolve the partnership." ...

Playboy: How did George react?

Klein: It made him sad. Just sad...

Playboy: What do you do for an encore after having managed the Beatles and the Stones at the same time?

Klein: Ringo suggested that maybe I ought to manage America...

More keywords: Page 89: Hudson River, Abkco, Eastman, Apple. Page 90: Abkco files, Yoko, McCartney's lawyers, Bowery, Madison Square Garden benefit. Page 102: Stones, Apple, James Taylor, Peter Asher. Page 104: England, Epstein, McCartney.

Playboy: November 1971, page 199

... He recorded PANDEMONIUM SHADOW SHOW, which won the acclaim of John Lennon.

Playboy: December 1971, page 17

THE BEATLES. [Picture and listing same as 70FEBp47.]
ALL THINGS MUST PASS. [Same as 71SEPp51.]
FROM ME TO YOU. Charlie Pride. [Same as 71JUNp65.]

Playboy: December 1971, page 62

[On] BARBRA JOAN STREISAND... Miss Streisand continues her exploration of the current musical modes. There's a trio of songs by Carole King... a pair by John Lennon (Love and Mother) and a Bacharach-David medley...

Playboy: December 1971, page 75
Comment: Shows cartoon pictures of the Beatles from the Yellow Submarine movie.

Playboy: December 1971, page 82

FJCH: I was going to berate The Playboy Forum for publishing [HC's] letter in the August issue [page 43] without any critical comment, but I decided that the title you gave it, "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" is criticism enough...

Playboy: December 1971, page 330
Writer: Alan Harrington

"With the bankers and things like that . . . I did a job on this banker that we were using, and on a few other people, and on the Beatles. How do you describe the job? . . . I maneuver people... It is a deliberate and thought out maneuver of how to get a situation the way we want it... There's nothing ashamed about it... It's just owning up... not going around saying 'God bless you, brother,' pretending there is no vested interest . . .

"You have to be a bastard to make it, that's a fact, and the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth."

John Lennon
Rolling Stone interview (1971)

Playboy: January 1972, page 26,28

Another valuable document in the history of contemporary popular music is Lennon Remembers, an interview with the unreconstructed Beatle, originally published in two parts in Rolling Stone. Occasionally boring, prolix and incomprehensible, the book is nonetheless full of good stuff. Lennon tells about life on the road: "You know, the Beatles' tours were like Fellini's Satyricon..." For Beatle fanciers, the most interesting passages have to do with John's feud with Paul McCartney, their rival managers and the breaking up of the fabled foursome. One might wish that Lennon had been asked more about the early days, and how the group grew out of its Liverpool background, but there is more than enough here to fuel the dying fires of Beatlemania.

Playboy: January 1972, page 36

STAN KENTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA LIVE AT REDLANDS UNIVERSITY is filled with original jazz compositions and such stalwart standards as... MacArthur Park and the McCartney-Lennon Hey Jude...

Playboy: January 1972, page 38

ALARM CLOCK. Richie Havens. Here Comes The Sun.

Playboy: January 1972, page 47-48

RW: John Lennon evidently asked an important question in his song Why Don't We Do It In The Road? The letters from [JAK] and [HC, 71AUGp43] both assume that current trends will soon lead to widespread public nudity [etc.], which [JAK] regards with revulsion and [HC] accepts with rationalistic tolerance...

In short, the answer to Lennon's question is that we don't do it in the road because the road was built by puritans and its end is still a long way off.

Playboy: January 1972, page 50

BEATLES' MILLION SELLERS [no picture]. 101 Strings.
Paul McCartney - RAM [no picture]. Apple. List price=5.98. Average club price=2.04.

Playboy: February 1972, page 11,12

Orlando Barone: ... Like all fools before them, including the Fool on the Hill, they [Catholic radicals?] will fail and die, only to be followed by a new generation of fools who will swear that they have risen.

John Bright: What Allen Klein reveals in his harshly candid interview is... a society cancerous with greed. Simply put, the music of the Beatles transmogrified the world, made it cleaner and less unbearable, giving an entire generation joy and hope. Yet what happened is sickening history. Not only were the Beatles exploited into near bankruptancy, their genius was corrupted in the process. All are stumbling up blind alleys. Starr is attempting absurdly to be an actor, Lennon is an exhibitionist, McCartney is a stubborn loner and Harrison stews in his own juices. Only Klein... has survived intact. He and the Eastmans... share responsibility for the exploitation of the artist. If the Beatles could reason as well as vibrate, they'd get together again, re-electrify the world and jettison all the vultures, including Klein.

[Composer-producer] Jeff Barry: It seems the situations Klein describes are much more complex than the cut-and-dried pictures he paints. Anyway, I would love to hear or read what John Eastman has to say.

Earl Duke: [Klein's] been into legal games for so long that he must have a hard time talking straight. But Vetter seemed really to get the truth out of him...

Alfred Rosenstein: As an attorney in the entertainment field and a business manager of talent [Joe Cocker, Elton John, Eric Clapton], I can readily sympathize with many of Allen Klein's comments... It is quite true that we were scorned by record companies when we fought for the best deals for our clients, but this was years before the industry reached its present level of sophistication. I would now prefer dealing with any major record company than with many of the so-called blue-chip concerns. However, when interviewed in the capacity of record-company executive, Klein did an about-face. Suddenly, "[vulgarity] lawyers" were always seeking to make trouble. Doesn't he think there are others besides himself who seek to protect their artists?... And then, of course, there is the reference to the amount of money Klein made for the Beatles as compared with what Brian Epstein earned for them. This... is comparable with a recent sale of an apartment building in Manhattan as compared with the $24 purchase price of Manhattan Island from the Indians...

Bobby Branton: I'm glad Klein spoke. It certainly is nice to know that such good people as the Beatles are being cared for by one so apparently capable - even if he does seem a bit full of [vulgarity].

Playboy: February 1972, page 17

ARTHUR FIEDLER "SUPERSTAR". Let It Be.
GREATEST HITS. Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66. Fool On The Hill.

Playboy: February 1972, page 19

Come Together. [Meadow. Same as 70OCTpEA4.]
Come Together. [2 figures. Same as 71JULp43.]

Playboy: February 1972, page 36

You don't have to be under 30 to fully appreciate 200 Motels, but you must be willing to suspend the customary rules of taste and judgment in favor of almost anything new or freaky or far-far out. Squares old enough to remember the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night are apt to grow wistful when Ringo Starr, playing a character identifed here as Larry the Dwarf says [something vulgar]... This optically cockeyed wonder suggests an uninhibited home movie superimposed over a psychedelic light show - featuring the Mothers, with guest shots by Ringo, Theodore Bikel and some befuddled members of Britain's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra...

Playboy: February 1972, page 37

THE BEATLES. [Listing same as 70FEBp47. No picture.]
ALL THINGS MUST PASS. [Same as 71SEPp51.]
FROM ME TO YOU. Charlie Pride. [Same as 71JUNp65.]

IMAGINE. John Lennon (Apple) . . . 6.98

Playboy: February 1972, page 42

RAM [Same as 72JANp50.]
BEATLES' MILLION SELLERS. 101 Strings. [Same as 72JANp50.]

Playboy: February 1972, page 152,156-159,208-213
Writer: Nat Hentoff

And for his only live appearance of the year, Dylan chose a life-giving event, an August concert at New York's Madison Square Garden to raise money for East Pakistan refugees. Playing in public with Dylan for the first time were the organizer of the event, George Harrison, and another ex-Beatle, Ringo Starr.

The 1972 Playboy All-Star Band

Paul McCartney, bass. [Shows cartoon picture.]

In the seven years that we've been asking our readers to name three artists to our Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame, their tastes have changed considerably. From... Sinatra... Ellington... Basie, they have moved to rock musicians... This year the rock train kept rolling... Mick Jagger... Jim Morrison... and George Harrison, late of the Beatles.

[Shows photos of sculptures of Lennon and McCartney.]

George Harrison. If any good at all has come from the quarrelsome breakup of the Beatles, it may be the emergence of George Harrison as a serious musician with his own direction and identity... As a Beatle, he often seemed like the Invisible Kid... Not until HELP! - their eighth American album - did his name appear as songwriter. [Hentoff overlooks the early Harrison song Don't Bother Me.] ... [In 1966] he traveled to India to study the native music, but he got more than sitar licks while he was there - and he came back with a contagious fascination for Indian spiritualism... By the time of the breakup, his head had seemingly moved farther from mop-top days than any of the rest. His three-LP post-Beatles album, ALL THINGS MUST PASS, was packed with fine music... and tracks such as My Sweet Lord, with chorus shifting from "Hallelujah" to "Hare Krishna" showed George was walking wider paths all the time. Then last August came the Bangla Desh benefit, a good-vibe bash that... raised $250,000 for East Pakistan refugees. He's come a long way from teaching chords to Lennon in Liverpool.

A member of an English table-tennis team visiting China... exposed a large number of Chinese... to [a] Moody Blues' album... And a press agent for The Moody Blues, with the straightest of faces, proclaims that these Chinese listeners (who had never heard of the Beatles, Presley nor the Rolling Stones) were... "doubly appreciative of the Moodys' music because of what they regarded as its revolutionary content."

Eligible to vote were the 1971 medal-winners... Paul McCartney...

Comment: There were no Beatle references among the Winner Poll categories.

    Best Small-Combo LP
 1. ABRAXAS/Santana
    ...
16. CHICAGO II
17. ALL THINGS MUST PASS/George Harrison
18. 4 WAY STREET/Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young


    Best Vocal LP
 1. TAPESTRY/Carole King  [Tapestry?  Carole King???  Who's reading this magazine, anyway?]
 2. ALL THINGS MUST PASS/George Harrison
 3. 4 WAY STREET/Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
 4. STICKY FINGERS/The Rolling Stones
 5. EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY/Rod Stewart
 6. JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
 7. RAM/Paul and Linda McCartney
 8. TEA FOR THE TILLERMAN/Cat Stevens
    ...
20. SWEET BABY JAMES/James Taylor
21. IMAGINE/John Lennon
22. CHAPTER TWO/Roberta Flack

Eight other newcomers [besides deceased Jim Morrison and King Curtiss] debuted in the 1972 Hall of Fame competition: Carole King... and Ringo Starr. But George Harrison, who came from 12th, and Mick Jagger, from fourth, both joined Morrison in the Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame, as they climbed to first and third, respectively... Previous winners are... John Lennon, Paul McCartney...

 1. George Harrison 
 2. Jim Morrison
 3. Mick Jagger
    ...
23. Neil Diamond
24. Ringo Starr
25. Joe Cocker

George Harrison, Gordon Lightfoot and Kris Kristofferson were notable newcomers [in the songwriter-composer category.] Breakups, more than any other factor, figured in the volatility of our readers' vocal-group choices. Simon & Garfunkel; Peter, Paul & Mary; and, of course, the Beatles, were ineligible...

Finally, the explosive Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney took guitar and bass laurels, again, in races that featured the breakthrough of new faces and a trend away from jazz to harder rock.

    Guitar
 1. Eric Clapton
 2. George Harrison
 3. Jose Feliciano


    Bass
 1. Paul McCartney 
 2. Jack Bruce
 3. Jack Casady


    Drums
 1. Buddy Rich
 2. Ginger Baker
 3. Ringo Starr
 4. Keith Moon


    Other Instruments
 1. Ian Anderson, flute
    ...
 4. Keith Emerson, Moog
 5. George Harrison, sitar
 6. Ravi Shankar, sitar


    Male Vocalist
 1. Rod Stewart
    ...
 4. Neil Young
 5. Paul McCartney 
 6. Neil Diamond
    ...
13. Tom Jones
14. George Harrison 
15. Isaac Hayes
    ...
18. Gordon Lightfoot
19. John Lennon
20. Sammy Davis, Jr.


    Songwriter-Composer
 1. Burt Bacharach-Hal David
 2. Carole King
 3. Neil Young
 4. George Harrison
 5. Mick Jagger-Keith Richard
 6. Paul McCartney 
 7. Bob Dylan
 8. John Lennon
 9. Elton John-Bernie Taupin

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