The Beatles Awaken a New Sensation
I think I had my first orgasm at a Beatles concert — then again, how would I have known? When you’re preteen, prepubescent and pretty much pre-everything, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” seems the height of erotic ambition. And that was especially true in 1964, before the sexual revolution and the Internet made that kind of ignorance unimaginable.
By the time the Beatles showed up in Glasgow, on the final leg of their second Scottish visit that year, my friends and I were already fanatically devoted. Transistor radios were hidden in our school desks, earpiece cords accessed through inkwells, and afterschool hours were spent listening to 45s in the home of the one friend who owned a record player.
To see our idols in person required sneakiness and elaborate planning. Parental permission, had we asked for it, would not have been forthcoming, and tickets were available only by mail — city authorities being keen to avoid the camping-out chaos that had preceded earlier events.
Before the Internet and Ticketmaster stepped in, big-name tickets were typically purchased one way: by lining up on the street at night alongside throngs of hardy fans and waiting for a box office or a record store to open at 9 a.m. Since most of my early concertgoing took place in Scotland, those streets were almost always damp and the temperatures abysmal.
By: Jeannette Catsoulis
Source: New York Times
