Bill O’Boyle: '60s music still 'echoes' in my mind

Feb. 18—WILKES-BARRE — Just about anybody who was a teenager in the 1960s will tell you that the music was the best there ever was.

And they are correct.

Just listen, for example, to The Byrds greatest hits. It's all there. The Byrds took meaningful lyrics, added electric guitars and literally changed music forever.

And you thought I was going to say it was The Beatles.

I still long for the day when I can hold a yellow Rickenbacker guitar just like Roger McGuinn's and plug in and start playing.

But, as The Byrds sang, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

As kids like me were rapidly passing through puberty and all that accompanies that, it was the music that got us through to the other side, man.

Yes, life was so much simpler before Feb. 9, 1964. That's when a 13-year-old kid struggling with the newness of puberty and uncertainty of life itself, watched "The Ed Sullivan Show" on that Sunday night and it really was exhilarating.

Prior to that night, we had heard a few songs by The Beatles, but we had not seen them. We couldn't wait to see what this fuss — this Beatlemania — was all about.

What it was, was far more than anyone ever could have ever imagined.

As I sat on our living room floor, eyes glued to the black-and-white, Admiral TV with Mom and Dad firmly planted on the couch and the recliner, my eyes and my perspective on life opened wide.

"All My Loving," "Til There Was You," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand." It was exhausting.

In that one hour, from 8-9 p.m., and over the next six years, The Beatles and all that followed literally changed the world.

Obviously, music changed that night. We had really never heard anything like that before. We were still lost in a world of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and movies like "Beach Blanket Bingo."

Fashion also changed that night, along with attitudes. We were embarking on finishing a decade that was already marred by the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Vietnam would escalate and protests, sometimes fatal, would arise on college campuses and in southern cities.

Authority was being challenged. Drugs, such as marijuana and LSD, would surface, and the decade would be culminated by the world's largest rock concert — the August 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, N.Y.

The British Invasion, as it was dubbed, brought more incredible music from the likes of The Animals, The Hollies, The Kinks, and the forever bad boys of rock 'n' roll, the Rolling Stones. Every time a new song from these groups and many others blasted from your transistor AM radio, it was an experience.

As we continued on from Feb. 9, 1964, we changed. Our clothes looked different, our hair grew longer, we became more defiant, we developed our personalities and we all wanted to be in a rock 'n' roll band. After all, if these four lads from Liverpool, England, could do it, why not me and my pals from Plymouth?

We took guitar lessons and drum lessons. We played at places such as St. Mary's Youth Center on Willow Street. It was as much about the music as it was about being cool.

We wanted the girls — a species whose existence before all of this we rarely would even acknowledge — to like us. To come and watch us play.

Actually, we stunk, and they knew it, but we still participated — both species, boys and girls.

On Friday evening, I again watched the documentary film "Echo in the Canyon," that "celebrates the popular music that came out of L.A.'s Laurel Canyon neighborhood in the mid-1960s as folk went electric and the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and the Mamas and the Papas cemented the California Sound."

As the film clearly shows, many bands landed in Los Angeles with the same plan my pals and I had in Plymouth — to be like John. Paul, George and Ringo. What happened was far more than anyone could have expected as Laurel Canyon became a musical hotbed of creativity and collaboration that has transcended every generation since.

Hosted by Jakob Dylan — son of Bob — "the film explores the Laurel Canyon scene via never-before-heard personal details behind the bands and their songs and how that music continues to inspire today."

Echo in the Canyon contains candid conversations and performances with Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys), Michelle Phillips (The Mamas & the Papas), Stephen Stills (Buffalo Springfield), David Crosby (The Byrds), Roger McGuinn (The Byrds), their contemporaries Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Graham Nash and slightly younger followers Jackson Browne and Tom Petty (in his last film interview).

The film takes you back to the days when that music was being made every day, hit after hit, and it gives insight into how it all happened.

I was transfixed — again.

I wish I had that yellow Rickenbacker guitar to plug in and play along.

Reach Bill O'Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.