September 24 – Did Renee Turn Around When She Heard Song?

Most lovelorn teenagers listen to sad pop music. Michael Brown decided to make sad pop music instead! His New York band The Left Banke hit the American top 40 this day in 1966 with their biggie, “Walk Away Renee.” The song would make it up to #5, and #3 in Canada…not bad for a debut by essentially a high school band.

The Left Banke had formed the year before, with Brown on keyboards and their main writer, and four others including singer Steve Martin – no, not the “wild and crazy guy” – who later added his real last name, Caro to avoid confusion. Bassist Tom Finn had a girlfriend, Renee, whom 16 year-old Brown had the fortune or misfortune of being infatuated with. He wrote the song for her, as well as their two latter, less successful hits, “Pretty Ballerina” and “She May Call You Tonight.” Brown said besides the lovely but unavailable Renee, he was also inspired by the Mamas and the Papas sound-wise on the song.

Luckily for the Left Banke, Michael’s dad, Harry Lookofsky (don’t ask me…Lookofsky’s son Brown?) was a talented violinist and he took control of the band, managing them and producing their record. He played the violin on the string-heavy selection and got his classical music friends to add other strings and flutes, creating one of the better examples of classical-tinged pop or “baroque rock.” Surprisingly, some of their other racks came closer to the Byrds or Buffalo Springfield in sound, but “Walk Away Renee” was the one people fixed on.

Not surprisingly, given the kids’ age and their small record label, it wasn’t an instant runaway hit. In fact by the time it hit the charts, Brown had replaced the others (his thing for Renee may have hastened the bassist’s departure one might think) with new musicians including Michael McKean, who years later we’d come to know as an actor. When the song started zooming up Billboard though, he got the original quintet back together to tour a little and put out one more album, which didn’t generate much interest or follow-up hit singles. They packed it in briefly, but reconvened, put out one more album in the ’80s and have worked together more years than not since. Steve Martin Caro passed away recently at age 71. Renee, meanwhile is apparently Renee Fladen-Kamm, who went to the West Coast to teach singing and arts. Perhaps one of the song’s she teaches her students is the one Rolling Stone list among their 300 greatest songs of all-time, the one written about her.

September 21 – Riley Taught The PTA A Thing Or Two

A country song, a “novel”, influenced and inspired by a novel made into a TV show… one of the more interesting songs of the ’60s hit #1 fifty years ago. And from then on, “Harper Valley PTA” would be a codeword for conservative hypocrites.

Not quite 23 years old, aspiring Nashville singer Jeannie C. Riley became the first female to have a song top the regular Billboard charts and the country ones at the same time … and it did the same in Canada and Australia too, for good measure.

The 1968 song was written by Tom T. Hall, an aspiring novelist who never quite made it as that, but had plenty of success writing country music tunes (including his own 1973 hit “I Love” and the theme for so many of us, “I Like Beer”!) but he says of “Harper Valley PTA” “this is my novel.” A novel, no, but it packs a lot of story into less than 4 mnutes. The song deals with a small town single mom who’s chastised for being a bad influence by the uptight school PTA… and her turning the tables on them.

“Mrs. Johnson, you’re wearing your dresses way too high/ it’s been reported you’ve been drinking and runnin’ around with men…” the second verse begins, a letter to the mother from the school board. She in turn went to the school meeting and pointed out the hypocrisy of the members like Bobby Taylor who’d asked her out seven times and Shirley Thompson with the gin on her breath…before calling them out on it and calling it a “Peyton Place”. The latter was no coincidence as the song and the theme seem to borrow heavily from the massively-popular 1950s novel (which also deals with a single mother in a staunchly conservative town) which had been made into a TV show around the time Riley recorded this one. Surprisingly enough – or maybe not- “Harper Valley PTA” itself was later made into a film and an NBC sitcom which ran for three years with Barbara Eden starring as Mrs. Johnson. Among the cast was Fannie Flagg, who’d go on to write the book and screenplay, Fried Green Tomatoes.

As for the humble 7” single that hit #1 in 1968, it at the time set a record by jumping 74 spaces on Billboard in one week and went on to sell an incredible six million copies . Riley won a Grammy for best female country performance for it and was nominated for Record of the Year. Although she’d go on to have five more significant country hits in the ’70s, none of them had the appeal or crossed over onto pop/rock radio. In the late-’70s she became a Born Again Christian and has since kept singing but limited herself primarily to the Christian music market.

By the way, if you listen to it and say to yourself, “wait, it’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe”... but it’s not,” you’re not alone. Many figure that Hall pretty much fit his lyrics into the Bobby Gentry hit (which also eventually was made into a movie) the year before, but despite the similarities, Hall never credited her in the writing credits nor, from all reports was ever confronted by her over it.

September 17 – The Curious Case Of ?

File under “Q”? One of the more enigmatic and difficult to file One Hit Wonders made the U.S. top 40 for the first time this day in 1966 with a song that’s become a rock staple. The song, “96 Tears”, the band, ? & the Mysterians.

? and the Mysterians were a band from Michigan, comprising mainly of Hispanic sons of migrant farmers. There was Robert Martinez on drums, Bobby Balderrama and Larry Borjos on guitars, Frank Rodriguez on the Vox organ that made the song so distinctive and most prominently, a guy who was probably Robert’s brother, Rudy Martinez. Although he claimed to be called ? and be from Mars, where he’d been born about 10000 years ago. Rudy/? was the sunglasses-wearing lead singer who wrote the tune. He said he chose “96” because it has “deep philosophical meaning” to him, though he apparently hasn’t chosen to elaborate on what that is.

The band had started in 1962, and eventually got signed to a small indie label, Pa-Go-Go. This song was one of the first they recorded, and Pa-Go-Go put it out as a single in some markets – largely their homestate of Michigan. Initially it was the B-side to “Midnight Hour”, but as often happened back then, DJs there and across the border in Windsor, Ontario flipped it over and began playing “96 Tears” instead. Soon it went to #1 in those markets. That caught the attention of Philadelphia label Cameo Parkway, who bought the rights to it and distributed it more widely.

That was a mixed blessing for the band. On the one hand, it made them stars, briefly at least, with the song being a smash. On the other hand, although they got a couple of albums recorded with Cameo, by 1968 the Feds had shut the company down for “stock manipulation.” The Mysterians lost a lot of money due them, their contract and momentum that they never regained.

But a smash it was. It’s appeal stretched well beyond Detroit-Bay City, with it hitting #1 nationwide, and in Canada. It made it to #7 in France and barely scratched into the top 40 in the UK. At home, it was the fifth biggest song of ’66. As Peter Watts of The Times put it, people loved the organ-driven rock and “ignored the slightly sinister revenge fantasy of the lyrics”. It’s largely credited with being one of the seminal songs that influenced numerous garage rock acts years later. Bruce Springsteen played it in concert once in 2009 on a dare from an audience member and in Britain, garage-rock loving The Stranglers had a top 20 hit with it in 1990 with a slightly muscled-up version of it.

“96 Tears” was clearly ? & the Mysterians moment in the sun, but it wasn’t strictly their only hit. The follow-up, “I Need Someone” did make it to #22 in the U.S., and although it wasn’t a major hit for them, their song “Can’t Get Enough Of You Baby” was made into a 1997 hit for Smash Mouth. Meanwhile, ? & the Mysterians are still around. Maybe that singer really is a 10 000 year-old Martian.

September 12 – People Went Bananas Over Monkees

Hey hey, here they came, right onto your TV screen… the Monkees Their TV show premiered on this night on NBC back in 1966. Although it only ran two seasons and 50-odd episodes, it was ground-breaking both in TV and music.

Seeing success the Beatles had with their “mockumentary” A Hard Day’s Night, producer Bob Rafelson realized there was strong potential to merge the visual with the sounds of the burgeoning rock scene. He came up with the concept of a sitcom about the daily lives of a fictitious, successful rock band who lived together (in a life full of amusing highjinks of course) that could have some music mixed in. The show of course paved the way for rock videos (of which the band would typically perform at least one, out of context of the show itself per episode) as well as “broke the Fourth Wall” by speaking directly at the camera and viewer…ground-breaking back then, four decades or more before it became a standard device on Modern Family and The Office. The resulting slapstick about a struggling band won an Emmy in ’67 for Best Comedy, beating out such stalwards as Andy Griffith and Bewitched. On the music scene, the band hastily thrown together (after the producer’s original idea of using up-and-coming Lovin’ Spoonful fell through) would go on to be the biggest-sellers of 1967, even ahead of the Beatles, and quickly throw out five platinum or better albums (in the U.S.) and a trio of #1 singles (“Last Train To Clarksville”, “I’m A Believer” and “Daydream Believer”). In Canada it was six, all in two years!

After the show’s cancelation, the Monkees continued to perform for several years and even began writing some of their own material. They scored a top 20, comeback hit in 1986 (“That Was Then, This Is Now”) and continued to tour semi-regularly even after Davy Jones death in 2012. However, the more recent passing away of Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith leave only Micky Dolenz standing and the band effectively retired.

September 10 – When Classical Guitars Meet Acid Rock Good Things Happened

Happy birthday to a man who’s a household name in a lot of households in many different countries. And why not since, as his website puts it he’s “synonymous with a presence that has bridged musical styles in a way that has never been equaled.” Jose Feliciano is 77 today.

There were lots of popular folkie singer/songwriter types around in the late-’60s but Jose stood out. One, he was a better guitarist than most. Two, he was multi-lingual and often sang in Spanish. And three, he did all that while being blind, often with his trusty guide dog by his side! That’s the type of thing that makes people remember your name.

Feliciano was born, blind, in Puerto Rico, but his family moved to New York City – Spanish Harlem more specifically – when he was about five. He seemingly had a musical family and by age seven he’d taught himself to play accordion, but his future was really set when he was given a guitar at age nine. He practiced incessantly, while listening to classical, jazz, early rock as well as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke records. He taught himself to play quite well, then was sent for formal classical guitar lessons as a young teen. By 18, he was beginning to become popular playing coffee houses at home and in Vancouver, and RCA took note and signed him in 1964. He recorded his first album, in English, in 1965, but when he went to do an appearance in Argentina, singing in Spanish, the following year, RCA suggested he do an album in that language. He did, and since then he’s become one of the biggest Latin artists with a huge following in places such as there, Spain and even Portuguese-speaking Brazil. He’s had a series of hits in those markets on and off since, including a Spanish #1 hit , “Para Decir Adios” in ’82 and an Italian hit to boot, “Che Sara.” Little wonder he won Billboard‘s El Premio Award – a Latin music lifetime award – in 1996.

All that would not likely make his name known through much of the States, Canada or Britain though were it not for a few noteworthy records and TV appearances. And perhaps a bit of a scandal for good measure.

The big break for him was his total reimagining of The Doors hit “Light My Fire.” Originally it was the b-side to another cover of a popular hit of the day, “California Dreaming,” but many DJs liked “Light My Fire” better and began playing it. Good thing for Jose, in retrospect. The song went to #3…and actually was a #1 hit in Canada, one of three countries (along with Brazil and Britain) where it got him a gold record. That helped him win a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1968 as well as Best Male Pop Performance…and win the ear of famous baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell. Harwell apparently loved it and got Feliciano invited to sing the national anthem at a World Series game in Detroit that year.

He took liberties with the song, if you will, as he did with the Doors song, playing it considerably slower and with a Latin flavor. Unlike his hit single, the reworking wasn’t wildly popular. Many protested, accusing him of being unpatriotic and disrespectful (this was the pre-Roseanne Barr era after all!) whereas he figured he was only adding his personal touch to the sound and trying to get people to actually listen and pay attention to it for once. In the long run, he was probably right. Baseball has actually included his rendition of the anthem in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame and for the 50^th anniversary of the event, he was invited to be a keynote speaker at a swearing in for new citizens in Washington. An added bonus for Jose about the baseball appearance – he met his future wife! She was a friend of Harwell’s family and he introduced them to one another there.

He also got attention for creating the theme song to the TV sitcom Chico & The Man, which he had a walk-on role in one episode. Yet still, for all that, Jose usually brings to mind one thing to most people – Ho Ho Ho. His cheery Christmas song “Felix Navidad” has entered the realm of a true cultural cornerstone of the season. Mixing Spanish and English makes it unusual, and its upbeat nature seems to strike a chord with millions every December. The song has been a top 10 on Billboard’s Holiday Chart since they began publishing the seasonal list in 2011, and last year actually hit the overall top 10 singles chart for the first time…over 50 years after its release.

Feliciano lives with his wife Susan in Connecticut these days. He’s the subject of a new documentary which premiered last month, Jose Feliciano Behind the Guitar, with another Latin-mainstream crossover success, Santana, among its producers.

September 9 – Respect Still There For Mr. ‘Dock Of The Bay’

Remembering one of the great voices of soul – Otis Redding. The great Georgian singer would’ve turned 81 today, had he not sadly died at a young 26 in a plane crash.

Otis honed his musical skills as a child in his Dad’s Macon-area Baptist church and won numerous talent contests as a teen. After dropping out of school at 15 to help pay his family bills, he soon started playing piano for bar bands and won a radio talent contest which led to him getting a contract with Memphis’ famous Stax label. After concerts at the Apollo Theater in 1963 with the likes of Ben E. King and the Coasters he became a significant soul star, with eight R&B chart top 10s prior to his death, including “Try a Little Tenderness” and a cover of the Stones’ “Satisfaction”, but none had major mainstream impact. His 1967 appearance at Monterrey Pop exposed him to a much wider, and Whiter, audience. Apparently he was quite impressed and influenced by Sgt. Pepper that year and on Dock of the Bay he tried to expand his sound. The result was a success; the album was a #1 hit in the UK – the first ever posthumous one there – and led to his biggest single “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” That tune was his only #1 hit at home and is currently ranked among Rolling Stone’s 30 greatest songs of all-time… although below “Respect”, Aretha Franklin’s hit that was written by Otis.

Otis’ reputation has grown through the years, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. They note “some singers had his power, some had a bigger range. No one had Otis Redding’s emotion.” He’s also honored with a statue of him playing a guitar in Macon.

August 30 – Texas Said If NY Can Do It, So Can We

Everything’s bigger in Texas? Well, not always, despite what the Lone Star residents would like to think, but it usually is pretty big anyway. Case in point, this day in 1969 when it held its own version of Woodstock – the Texas International Pop Festival. It didn’t quite rival the upstate New York event of a couple of weeks earlier in crowd size, number of star acts or historical importance, but it was still a pretty big deal.

The event was probably not actually inspired by Woodstock as much as by another 1969 live music event, the Atlanta International Pop Festival at the start of the summer. In attendance there was Angus Wynne III, part of the family who owned the Six Flags amusement parks. He wanted to do something similar in his Dallas area, and quickly put together a pretty good three-day event.

They held it in an open field beside the Dallas Motor Speedway, close to a large campground. They advertised free camping at the camp, which had a little lake as a bonus for over-heated revelers, and brought in a good lineup of mixed musical talent, which went on stage at 4PM Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Grand Funk Railroad opened up each of the three nights, and B.B. King was also on stage for each night, apparently doing not only the same songs but offering up the same patter and jokes. He mistakenly thought each day had its own new audience, but in fact people came for the long weekend and were essentially all the same bodies for each night. And there were a lot of those bodies… no official attendance was released but most estimate it to be around 125 000, perhaps a little more.

Besides Grand Funk and B.B., they got to see Chicago on two nights (then billed as Chicago Transit Authority), local Johnny Winter, Nazz featuring a young Todd Rundgren, Janis Joplin and quite a few more. The first night Sam & Dave were the final act, the Sunday it was Santana, and the final show Tony Joe White. Also, perhaps suspiciously in light of future events, also on the bill were both Spirit and Led Zeppelin. Many will recall that Zep got sued by Spirit (or families of the members of) for plagiarizing a Spirit song to come up with the melody for “Stairway to Heaven”. Though Zep prevailed, few could really deny that there did seem something borrowed there, and despite some claims that Page and Plant never heard of, or anything by Spirit, they showed up on the same stage only hours apart.

The campground had a free stage as well, for secondary acts or main ones warming up and on there was poet Hugh Romney… who B.B. King listened to and nicknamed “Wavy Gravy” that day.

The event seemed to come out well, and as at Woodstock, no violent crimes were committed and people seemed to have a good time although once again weather wasn’t the fans friend. In Woodstock of course, cold rain dampened spirits and created a quagmire of mud; in Texas the opposite was the problem. Dallas is still very hot in late August (normal high still well above 90F) and standing out on an open field for hours isn’t a great idea. One person died of heatstroke.

Although it played second fiddle to Woodstock, it is perhaps surprising so little is recorded of, or about the show. There is a bootleg tape of some popularity going around with Zeppelin’s set, which is said to be of high quality, but there didn’t seem to be any sort of official release of footage or recordings. If you search online though, you will come across a DVD of the event, which seems to also be bootleg. It has about 19 tracks, although some – bizarrely – are studio recordings of acts who didn’t play the show like Linda Ronstadt, and some of the footage of the concert seems to have been dubbed in later with studio music. But you will get an idea of the scope of the concert and see things like an opening welcome from the local police chief, Chicago doing “I’m A Man”, Tony Joe White performing his one hit “Polk Salad Annie” and an apparently good segment of Led Zeppelin doing “Dazed and Confused.”

The event was a one-off, and now the site is a commuter rail station (Hebron St.) which has a plaque commemorating it. However, it did set a trend perhaps as later on Dallas would host annual one-day, big name artist concerts dubbed “Texxas Jam.” they were held annually from 1978-88, almost always in Dallas but occasionally in Houston instead. Headliners there included, through the years, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, Heart, Foreigner, Journey, Rush, Aerosmith and Van Halen among others.

August 15 – Beatles Saw A Mountain Of Fans

Seems like it’s a good day for a big show if you are in New York. For starters, on this day back in 1965 The Beatles played the biggest concert of their career and ushered in a new era. That was when they started an all-important North American tour with a sell-out at Shea Stadium in the Big Apple. With about 55 600 in attendance, it was not only their biggest crowd, it was the first really big stadium rock concert.

The show came only a year and a half after they first visited the U.S., bursting on the scene with their famous Ed Sullivan appearance. In the time between, they’d scored an incredible seven #1 songs and were riding high on the success of Help, which had just been released. It was according to some of their biographers, “the ultimate pinnacle of Beatlemania.”

They had to be helicoptered in, and John Lennon would later say “at Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain.” Ringo Starr said “what I remember most about the concert was that we were so far away from the crowd…it was very big and very strange.” Indeed, as unlike most modern concerts in such venues, the crowd was limited to the actual stands – there was no on-field seating or standing. So with the stage placed in the shallow outfield area, some of the more distant seats were in the range of 400 feet away!

The Young Rascals acted as an opening act, and then Ed Sullivan himself introduced the Fab Four, saying “now, ladies and gentlemen, honored by their country, decorated by the Queen and loved here in America, here are the Beatles!” The 55 000 fans (including Keith Richards and Mick Jagger) went wild and stayed loud throughout the 12-song show, often drowning out the actual music which was being played on a rather small and inferior sound system. They opened with “Twist and Shout” and did early classics like “I Feel Fine”, “Ticket to Ride” and “Help” before finishig with “I’m Down.” While predictably Paul and John dominated the set, both Ringo and George got a turn to have the spotlight, the former singing “Act Naturally” (later in the tour he’d do “I Wanna Be Your Man” instead) and the latter singing “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.”

They’d spend the rest of the month doing shows in eight more American cities as well as Toronto, typically playing the same set list. In Atlanta and Chicago they played similar baseball stadiums but to smaller crowds; in other cities they played smaller outdoor venues or indoor arenas.

For those who wanted to relive the New York show, a 50-minute video was made and debuted on the BBC in 1966, then shown on ABC in the States a year later. It contained many of the songs they performed as well as little clips of them on their way into the stadium and getting ready in the baseball clubhouse. Due to the noise of the crowd during the concert, producers had them overdub some tracks and the audio from “Act Naturally” was scrapped totally and replaced with the original studio recording.

The Beatles would play Shea once more, almost a year to the day later, but to a somewhat smaller and perhaps less enthusiastic crowd. That was the famous tour in which they had death threats and were met with protests in the South due to John Lennon’s statements regarding them being more popular than Jesus. It would then be over 40 years before a Beatle would be doing a concert at the home of the Mets; Paul McCartney was a guest at Billy Joel’s concert there which closed the stadium in 2008.

Perhaps the ’65 show gave promoters an idea. As we mentioned, August 15 seems a popular day for concerts in the Empire State. Woodstock kicked off upstate on the date in 1969 and in 1991, something in the range of 600 000 people went to Central Park in the city to attend a free Paul Simon concert.

August 13 – Fans Thought Donovan Was Super, Man

Psychedelia met folk and the world met the “new Dylan.” Donovan Leitch’s “Sunshine Superman” hit the U.S, top 40 this day in 1966 ; his first significant hit in North America.

The 20 year-old Scot had already scored a trio of top 10 hits in the UK the previous year and had just signed to Epic Records, the first artist signed by then-young Clive Davis (who recalls Donovan being “like his music – gentle, smart and engaging”). Although many compared him to Bob Dylan, Donovan – who went by just his first name – had a voice of his own and blended musical genres in a way highly-appropriate for a year when #1 songs ranged from Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” to Motown to “96 Tears”. This record had some star power making people feel good – John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page were studio musicians on it! Little wonder then that later Donovan referred to it as “my masterwork” and admitted he was worried about The Beatles hearing it because he thought Paul McCartney would plagiarize it. He may have been close on that; The Beatles were fans and showed the record on a turntable in a video they made for “A Day in the Life.” Like many songs in the psychedelic ’60s, it was one with multiple interpretations. While on one hand it was a simple love song he wrote for his new girlfriend at the time and an expression of joy at a nice day with her, on the other there was a counter-culture aspect as well. “Sunshine is a nickname for acid,” he admitted, “and the superman is the person capable of entering the higher state because it’s not easy to go into the fourth dimension.”

Probably not Honda had in mind when they used it in a car ad years later! The song would end up being Donovan’s only #1 hit in the U.S. (it topped out at #2 in the UK, Canada and other countries) although he came ever-so-close months later with the #2 hit “Mellow Yellow.”

August 5 – Beatles Set Sail With ’66’s Super-single

If about four years in it seemed like The Beatles were a band for everyone, the Fab Four seemed to want to make sure no one felt excluded. Not even little children. So they set out to remedy that possible previous oversight on this day in 1966 with the release of the single “Yellow Submarine.” It was the first single off the great Revolver album which came out the same day.

“Yellow Submarine” was different from their past hits in a couple of notewothy ways. First, although it was written primarily by Paul McCartney, it was the first one of their hits sung by Ringo Starr (and ended up being by far the biggest hit he’d sing for them.) Secondly, and obviously it was a rather silly or childish tune, sounding quite unlike most of what was on hit radio at the time. Which, perhaps it could be said was very characteristic of The Beatles in the mid-’60s: going where no band had gone before.

Although credited to Lennon & McCartney, and even though some of the music for the verse part was conceived by John, it was clearly a Paul song. Lennon later said of it, “it’s Paul’s baby…Paul’s inspiration, Paul’s title.” McCartney said he began it “thinking of a song for Ringo…so I wrote it not so rangey in the vocal, then started making a story. Sort of an ancient mariner (story).” He adds it “began as being about different colored submarines, but evolved to include only a yellow one…it’s a happy place. We were trying to write a children’s song. There’s nothing more to be read into it.” One person who actually added to the lyrics was Donovan, who was hanging out with Paul and suggested the “sky of blue, sea of green” line. Donovan himself would have a hit later in the year with another sunny-colored song, “Mellow Yellow.”

They recorded the song in five takes in May of ’66 and then let George Martin go to work six days later, adding special sound effects. Martin’s experience doing comedy records for The Goon Show helped out as he was a master of sound effects. Some examples included having John blow through a straw into a bowl of water for gurgling water sounds, having studio crew whip chains around for the nautical feel and getting Ringo to yell about “drop the cables” outside the studio door to get the faraway effect. A number of visitors added some backing vocals including Patti Boyd, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and their friend Marianne Faithful.

It was a bold and unusual choice for a first single off an album, but it worked. With the great “Eleanor Rigby” on the b-side , it hit #1 in the UK (their 11th chart-topping single in their homeland) and Canada and a respectable #2 in the U.S., where it sold well enough to give them their 15th gold single in about three years. And so enduring was the popularity for them that it was turned into an animated movie two years later, and re-released on a soundtrack to that.

The real diehard fan might want to visit Liverpool and John Lennon Airport. There one will find a 51-foot metal yellow submarine placed outside in honor of the song, and the city’s most famous entertainers.