I can remember where I was the first time I saw and heard Sgt. Pepper. I’m not going into any detail about stances … neither circum nor sub … but I’ll admit to a drummer named Charlie and some really pretty colors that drifted around as “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” premiered in my head FORTY years ago this month.
Excuse me? Can that be right?
Well, of course it can.
It was June, 1967, and I was just about to turn sixteen. I’d recently been relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to a hell of a Hooterville in Northern California called Red Bluff.
There was no doubt that I was too cool for school, and was even the subject of a call-in radio show on KBLF (K-bluff? Perfect … ), where hick parents accused me of wearing tights to ‘hide the needle marks in my legs’ … yes, that’s how much they knew about drug use — morons … and worried that I was out to corrupt the heck out of their drunken, redneck, brawling, screwing darlings with my peacenick ways and long-haired friends from out of town.
Yes, I had, thankfully managed to locate some hippies after my own heart in the bigger town up I-5 — Redding.
Days in the upper Central Valley in June are hot, and the heat lingers long after the sun takes its 9 pm dive over the horizon. It was an expanse of grass in someone’s front yard that seemed the ideal place to stretch out with Charlie and listen to the brand new Beatle’s album.
It was magic … total, complete, compelling, enthralling magic. Every track amazed in new ways, and with a little help from my friends who popped out with a new doobie every few minutes, Charlie and I were swimming in harmony, beat, notes, riffs and lyrics.
Who now doesn’t know all the words to “When I’m Sixty-four”, end any mention of “It was 20 years ago today … ” with anything other than, “Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play”, and hasn’t woken up more than once with the special refrain of “Good Morning Good Morning”, a la the Fab Four running through the brain along with a bit of chicken talkin’?
Back then, however, it was all new, and it was breathtaking.
Paul McCartney is almost more than sixty-four now, and though I doubt he got many Valentines this year … being in the throes of a messy divorce and all … he does still have hair.
Heck, John Lennon has been dead for twenty-seven-and-a-half years, a thought that still makes me so very sad at the loss the world suffered on the 8th of December in 1980.
I’m weeks away from hitting the downhill slide from 55.
June 2007. Forty years after Sgt. Pepper. Wow.
And here’s a thought … it’s almost half way to 2008 already.
I well remember the first time I heard the Beatles – 1964 – my senior year in high school – we gathered around a television to watch Ed Sullivan. A classmate was in the audience. Changed a large part of my life.
MDQ
Ahhh… 1967. A very interesting time for living in Red Bluff. White ozzly, orange sunshine, purple double-dome and more. The house on Rio street and the flowers that smiled when you walked past them.
Who’s still living in Red Bluff?
Hi Sandy, You probably don’t remember me. I had been reading the reunion posts at the RBUHS reunion site when I saw your post from a number of years ago. A search on google turned up your blog and when you commented on being in Red Bluff in 1967 it reminded me of some of my favorite things I enjoyed doing way back then…
-AL Gossett email: photoservices@sbcglobal.net
Al, I just looked you up in the yearbook. Amazing how handy those are even all these years later.
Just heard from my mom that it was 111F in RB yesterday. Whew. Red Bluff summers haven’t changed a bit.
Glad you found me here.
I found your website while looking for RBUHS 40th reunion information. Of course these entries are from a few years ago. I hope this still gets to you. I would love to hear about what you have been doing over the last 40 years.
Charlotte Storie Hoewing