This is (possibly) my favorite Beatle song. It puts me in a great mood every time I hear. The music is full of melody and the lyrics take an ordinary street in Liverpool and transform it into a magical place. Also, that trumpet solo is the most glorious trumpet solo in rock history!
Yes, the soaring trumpet solo is a perfect fit for the song and as you say it has to be the best use of a solo trumpet in all of popular music in the post big-band era.
Thank all of you Brits for all the wonderful music you have given to America and the Entire World. Thank you for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and The Kinks and Black Sabbath and The Clash and The Sex Pistols and the list goes on and on and on... Thank you Brits for shoving Rock and Roll back into our faces for years to come. We are brothers and sisters after all. 🇺🇸❤️🇬🇧
Well said Rodney - It's much appreciated Remember tho' - The Beatles and The Rolling Stones drew influence & were inspired by American musicians Rather like taking what you guys already had, refining it, re-packaging it & selling it "back to ya" across the pond It never ceases to amaze me that the English speaking nations HAVE punted out such GREAT music I'd say our island nation has punched both high, hard & above their weight for many, many decades We could "retire" on the strength of The Beatles & Led Zeppelin alone !! (Laughs !!)
The Beatles used 4 track machines to record Sgt. Pepper. They used multiple machines to get more than 4 tracks by taking one 4 track machine and mixing it down to one or two tracks (bouncing) to the second machine. It was a logistical, financial reason to use 4 tracks as the 8 tracks machines of the day were expensive and weren't as reliable. If they had a 24 track machine at the time you can imagine how even more miraculous the music they could have produced...
I often say just imagine if they had today's technology. But then again, it might have taken away from the creativity and the thrill of being able to do what seemed impossible with what little they had to work with.
@@magneto7930 That’s what I think, that they may not have been as creative with all the toys available today. The Beatles were always coming up with new ways to make sounds, and I think that in itself stimulated the creative juices. I was reading recently where Eddie Van Halen as a teen couldn’t afford stomp boxes and effects for his guitar, so he had to figure out how to get those sounds just with his hands and guitar. That process ended up inventing new sounds on guitar. And in his search for tone, he ended up inventing all sorts of guitar-building innovations, many of which are still used today. If the Beatles had had all these plug-ins and tools that they have now, they may have ended up sounding just like everybody else. I think that’s why today’s music is so boring.
@@carlbaumeister3439 When four musical geniuses picked the mind of a genius producer like George Martin (with his encyclopedic knowledge of classical music), with a little bit of psychedelic assistance, it's no wonder that the Beatles grew from 50s rock mop tops into genre-defining artists. There will never be another group like them.
I was born, on Merseyside, in 1960, and one of my earliest memories is dancing in front of the black and white tv to a Beatles song. This song is one of my favourite Beatles songs partly because when it was released I was seven years old and it was the last of their songs I could really appreciate at the time. Music is the time machine that enables us to revisit the past.
Good to see you, Imadrummin...have missed you, brother. Have always loved Penny Lane...takes me back to a simpler time and leaves me feeling good like when I hear Ventura Highway.Great selection and reaction!
That's the magic of these lads, they wrote about almost everything imaginable, and not imaginable, and many times with very inventive lyrics, or phrases sequences that make the listener interpret each song differently. Very good reaction as always!!
Penny Lane was released In February 1967, the flip side of Strawberry Fields Forever. Penny Lane, a street in Liverpool, housed a large bus terminal, where John and Paul would meet up. Session musician, David Mason played the piccolo trumpet for it's bridge section. One of the Beatle's outstanding classics. Perfection at its best. Great reaction Harri. 😊 Thanks Harri and Imadrummin. So glad to see you're back and picking the classics again. Beautiful memory. Cheers from Canada 🇨🇦
@@alanmusicman3385 Hi Alan. In Canada, 45's were released with an A side and B side. The A side was the song released first and thought it would be the best received and make it to the top of the chart. The B side was released secondary. That's how I remember it. Lol. 👍✌️🎶🇨🇦
@@HarriBestReactions Harri, Greybeard and I disappeared briefly but we are getting the band back together. I'll be back for December going forward. Love ya brother.👍👍👍
The Beatles making great music singing about thier town. Some people think they only wrote about drugs in thier later years. They wrote about the same things we experience only they did it with a flair. Thanks Harri
Sir Harri has the greatest channel on RUclips. I saw The Beatles in Atlanta Stadium as a youngster. I play all their songs from The Complete Beatles on guitar and piano. But it's 50 years and it took Sir Harri Best to explain the hilarious irony to me of the "Fireman rushes in from the pouring rain." Thank you, Sir Harri. Peace and love from Florida where The Beatles broke segregation in America by refusing to play Jacksonville unless they stopped that bullshite. They were already here and scheduled for Jacksonville. They changed that shite in a day. TMI. Sorry. I'm old. Hahahaha.
Don't apologise! That was a significant event, bringing such a high profile critical outsiders' view of America's racist segregation laws forcefully to the attention of Florida's rule-makers/enforcers. And it would have affected others too, because after Jacksonville, they insisted it be written into all their venue contracts that they would not be required to play before a segregated audience. As I expect you'd be aware as a long time Beatles fan, Paul wrote Blackbird in part at least as a result of seeing in the paper news of a small group of black women (black 'birds', in the British slang of the time) being the first to be admitted to a formerly segregated/ all-white college... "You were only waiting for this moment to arise..." 🙂
No, they didn't change segregation in a day. While that was a significant and commendable act it was something that many performers were doing from the fifties on, and some even earlier. Eartha Kitt, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, Lena Horne, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, among many others, refused to play for segregated audiences years before the Beatles came to America.
@@steve55sogood16 You're giving it way more weight than it had in it's time. I remember that tour quite well. I was 16 years old, played guitar and followed the news of the tour very closely. I didn't go to the Boston concert when they came there near the end of the tour because on all tv clips I saw during the tour they were totally drowned out by screams of the young girls who made up the majority of the audiences. The thing is, that incident got pretty much no publicity at the time. I didn't hear about it and didn't know of anyone that did. It wasn't until the 70's when I was visiting a friend in California and watching a documentary on popular music and it's effect in the civil rights era. It mentioned Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and other singers singing at civil rights protests and at Martin Luther King's march on Washington and it mentioned how a few black singers started refusing to play segregated venues in the forties and how that number grew in the fifties and by the sixties many white performers had also joined them. They mentioned the incident with The Beatles, and my friend and I were surprised that we never heard of it. Out of curiosity I started asking everyone I knew if they heard about it, and I didn't find anyone I knew that ever heard about it in California or Massachusetts, and that was in 1975. Didn't hear about again until the early 2000's when Paul McCartney started talking about it in interviews. Since then I had done some research and was unable to find any magazine or newspaper article about it, except for one. A local reporter in Florida asked them about it at a press conference and all Paul said said was"Yeah, we won't play anywhere the audience is segregated" and John said "No f***ing way". They were also asked about a hotel they where supposed to stay at and didn't and they told the reporters it was because they didn't have room for them, although it turns out the actual story was that the hotel wouldn't allow the black members of the crew and performers they brought with them to stay there, so they walked out. So for some reason, the story never made the major national media outlets and though a few papers around the area may have commented on it, there really was no way for it to have a huge impact on the movement. Whether it was a case of The Beatles not wanting the publicity (or more likely their management) or a case of the local news people not wanting to pass the story to national news outlets to save embarrassment of the town, I really don't know, but either way, it was not at all well known. And don't forget the people they were influencing in the 1964 were predominantly 13-16 year old teenyboppers, it wasn't until the following year that their audience began expanding when they started releasing songs like "Yesterday".
@@ptournas Since that very day in Jacksonville, music venues have been segregated. I saw James Brown dozens of times in Atlanta but it was a black show and I broke in each time with dozens of blacks by lifting a sliding door. Thanks for your context.
Just think if Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields had been included on Pepper. George Martin even wanted to include them, but Beatle tradition kept them off. Isn't it a pity.
Great pick Imadrummin as usual. Being an old firefighter I love the part about the clean fire engine. Plus,we went to Liverpool a few years ago and took a tour to Penny Lane, and Strawberry Fields. My life's mission is to go back as soon as I can. Loved it so much. Great reaction Harri. 🤴🇬🇧🇨🇦🇺🇸🙃👍🔥😉
Thank you for playing this song and video. Unfortunately, it was blocked with a still picture of them, but from your description of it, I think I've seen it. Thanks for trying anyway.
Thank you Mr. Ambassador. And likewise, I know you will have some stellar tunes with interesting factoids. You my friend are an icon on Harri's channel. 😀😀😀
@@Imadrummin Well thanks, but let's see how "iconic" you think I am after I begin my next music artist tour for Harri: *Milli Vanilli - Their Full Catalog!*
When the Beatles played Toronto in the mid sixties the security division assigned for their protection was from the OPP Ontario provincial police . The head of that group was Sgt. Pepper. Hence the song.And Paul is wearing an OPP badge on his left sleeve.
This song is somewhere in my top 20 all time great compositions. I play music by ear, and I can vouch that this cimposition is most masterful collection of transitions from one key to another. Beautiful stuff. Timeless.
What I thought was cool about Lennon/McCartney partnership was. It was very much a competition. John wrote "Strawberry Fields" Pauls response he wrote "Penny Lane".
Thanks to Imadrummin for this one. Harri, you know how I feel about the Beatles and You told me (several months ago) that my requested “Rocky Raccoon” was blocked and you were working on getting it unblocked. Is there any hope for that? Love what you do Harri🌺✌️
When ever someone asks me what my favorite Beatles song is, I pause and say if I have to name just one it is Penny Lane - yes an amazing song -perfect in every way but I also feel the connection having been there to see the Roundabout the Barber Shop(inside and out) and where the bank was and down the road the fire station. Learned a lot about the song too as I stood at Smithdown Place which is the actual name but of course the power of the Beatles and all now it is simply called Penny Lane.
@@howcotube I live very close by to Penny Lane and you describe it pretty well. They need to knock down that Sgt Peppers horrible structure in the centre of the roundabout. I thought you was local as you knew it was Smithdown Place. 🙂
@@bobuk161 wow Lucky you !. As a Huge Beatles fan you come to know these things and visiting Liverpool you learn these things. We dream of living in Liverpool or at least stay a month every year or in London so we can visit Liverpool anytime we want !
If you can find it. There was a PBS special with Paul Mccartney giving a tour of Apple Studios and showing many of their great Studio tricks were not high tech before its time gadgets, but stuff hastily hammered and glue with plywood and stuff they found laying around, and their amazing imaginations. Oh and he does a couple of great acoustical songs at the end. Rock-a-billy. Fun stuff Hari!
There are 62 comments as I write imadrummin and I am here to state that the 62 bus is now the local one bearing the name Penny Lane. It terminates at that very site in Penny Lane where the shelter in the middle of the roundabout was. It connects North Liverpool to South Liverpool where the Beatles lived. The Beatles used to go to North Liverpool where they appeared at the Mona Best run club The Casbah In Haymans Green. . If only they had written a song called the latter. We would gave got all the tourisrs up our stretch of the woods lol Cheers. Thanks for a great reaction Harri
@@Imadrummin if you ever vet to Liverpo you can tour the Casbah the little family run small club at the back of the residence now owned by Pete Brst and his brothers . It is all there as was . It is fascinating
One important point is that before the two songs in the single Penny Lane (side A)/ Strawberry Fields (side B), there were no British subjects in The Beatles' songs. Also the music is no more an appropriation of American music, but a different thing, taking from different sources.
Penny Lane and Strawberry Field Forever. Released as two sides of a double-A side single (in the UK at least) on 13th Feb 1967. It was the first 7" single I ever owned that came in a picture bag - up until then only EPs (two tracks per side of a 7" disc) came in picture sleeves. Penny Lane features that wonderful Piccolo Trumpet solo and Strawberry Fields features the unique sound of the Mellotron. Both have lyrics which hark back to Lennon and McCartney's growing up years in Liverpool. Although the recording sessions for these two songs woverlapped rsessions for recording the tracks on Sgt Pepper, they were released a few months ahead of that album. Therefore, in terms of the release schedule, these tracks formed a bridge between what had gone before and the many innovations in Pepper. Penny Lane is also, I think, the first Beatles composition in which the lyrics are largely observational more than first person. They had done that before, but not to this extent? Although the lyrics to Penny Lane sound innocent enough, don't enquire too closely into the meaning of "Fish and finger pies" - well according to one 70s interview with John or Paul (I forget which) anyway!
For another slice of Liverpool daily life, listen to "On My Way to Work" from McCartney's solo album "New." One of my favorites from his later catalogue.
Something I’ve never noticed before, Paul is pronouncing some of the words in a Scouse accent, which makes sense since he’s singing about a Liverpool place.
There two endings in existence to this song. On the Beatles Anthology is the other one. the trumpet, rather than hold that long high note, plays a little riff to conclude the song on the alternate/ The trumpet player, playing the piccolo trumpet, was David Mason, principle trumpet of the London Philharmonia and a session player. I had a boot leg copy of the alternate ending through bootleg album purchases long before the Anthology albums.
I used to live on Penny Lane Harri....😏 it leads onto Smithdown Road one end and Mossley Hill Road the other end...and Yeah, as far as I'm aware the barbers is still there...👍😊
Well, it looks like the video was blocked after all... shame. Yes, it's weird they filmed the Beatles part of it in Stratford, East London, rather than in Penny Lane itself. But in those days when videos or 'promotional films' as they were then referred to were not the big, expensive deals they are today, probably no-one thought it mattered much. IIRC, the guys couldn't fit a trip up to Liverpool into their schedule, so they sent a camera crew up there instead for those background shots. And those few snatches of Liverpool in the 60s are priceless, showing one of the green buses that plied the Penny Lane bus route, and just for a fleeting second, the old Bioletti's barbers' shop (painted black) that features in the song. It's now Slavin's, still a barber.... And Harri, if you haven't already, you simply MUST watch the Carpool Karaoke episode (here on YT) featuring Paul where they visit the barber's and other old haunts including stop-offs at 'that' roundabout where the nurse sold poppies and at Paul's former council house home in Forthlin Road, where Paul reminisces about writing 'She Loves You' with John and what his Dad had to say about it. The trip culminates in Paul and his current band playing a surprise gig as a sort of human Beatles hits jukebox in a local pub, which is hilarious, joyous and clearly very emotional for the locals. Honestly, you will love it - it's only about 20 minutes or so long, IIRC, so why not do a reaction and then we can all go on that wonderful trip down memory lane together! 🙂
Love the Beatles. Grew up listening to them, experiencing all the twists, turns, and developments in their music. Quite often it caused a What are they doing Now !? reaction. Strawberry Fields on the other side of this single was a bit of a jump to the senses. This side of the disk sounded quite traditional in contrast. Top of the pops played the two songs back to back. They were planning a whole album of Liverpool songs, but when the record company pulled these out and released it as a single it kyboshed the idea, and they morphed the project into Sgt. Peppers. I always listen out for the piccolo trumpet, they asked the player to deliver a top note beyond the range of the instrument, and he did it. Ever after he was ways being asked to repeat it, which was a bit of a strain. On the video they are having a go on horses. Ringo wasn't used to them , and his ran off with him at one point. He wasn't happy. Great drummer though.
Drummin' my brother! Excellent choice my man. Getting the crew back together. I broke my old phone during my traveling, and lost your email my friend. Hit me up so I can get your info again. I've missed you brother! Great reaction Harri my man!
My brother GBMM. I will send you an offline catchup email this weekend. I have certainly missed you too. I had to take a few months off and starting to get in the swing of thing again. We're getting the band back together. Hahahahaha!!!
Made me smile as a little kid at 9 when I heard it on the radio in the wake of my parents divorce. Made John my confirmation name as I was already Paul.😊
I heard from a Beatles historian (I am one but still learning new things after over 50 years) that the lyric about "fish and finger pies" is not about real fish. It was symbolic and was about the pretty girls.
Lyrics inspired by Dylan Thomas' 'Under Milk Wood' by Macca's own admission. The song modulates seven times and you'd never notice. Pure genius. My daughter lives just outside Penny Lane.
Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were going to be on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album but they were left off and released as singles instead. Imagine those two great songs on an already great album.
I think it important from time to time to remind people that at this point in their career none of them could read music! They all were self taught on their instruments and just "figured it out, played by ear!" Then pay attention to the complicated manner in which they would resolve chord progressions in this song! Very uncommon chord progressions!
You came here and showed how ignorant you are.If you bothered to watch the video,you would have clearly heard me say I KNOW THIS SONG and you woukd also have heard why i chose to react to it.
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Yet another masterpiece from perhaps the most important band of our time. Love this song!
This is (possibly) my favorite Beatle song. It puts me in a great mood every time I hear. The music is full of melody and the lyrics take an ordinary street in Liverpool and transform it into a magical place. Also, that trumpet solo is the most glorious trumpet solo in rock history!
Yes, the soaring trumpet solo is a perfect fit for the song and as you say it has to be the best use of a solo trumpet in all of popular music in the post big-band era.
@@alanmusicman3385 Yes, the Beatles were so great at incorporating so many different instruments into their music.
The trumpet solo is sheer genius.
@@markallan5484 Absolutely right!
Thank all of you Brits for all the wonderful music you have given to America and the Entire World.
Thank you for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and The Kinks and Black Sabbath and The Clash and The Sex Pistols and the list goes on and on and on...
Thank you Brits for shoving Rock and Roll back into our faces for years to come.
We are brothers and sisters after all.
🇺🇸❤️🇬🇧
Well said Rodney - It's much appreciated
Remember tho' - The Beatles and The Rolling Stones drew influence & were inspired by American musicians
Rather like taking what you guys already had, refining it, re-packaging it & selling it "back to ya" across the pond
It never ceases to amaze me that the English speaking nations HAVE punted out such GREAT music
I'd say our island nation has punched both high, hard & above their weight for many, many decades
We could "retire" on the strength of The Beatles & Led Zeppelin alone !! (Laughs !!)
The Beatles used 4 track machines to record Sgt. Pepper. They used multiple machines to get more than 4 tracks by taking one 4 track machine and mixing it down to one or two tracks (bouncing) to the second machine. It was a logistical, financial reason to use 4 tracks as the 8 tracks machines of the day were expensive and weren't as reliable. If they had a 24 track machine at the time you can imagine how even more miraculous the music they could have produced...
I often say just imagine if they had today's technology. But then again, it might have taken away from the creativity and the thrill of being able to do what seemed impossible with what little they had to work with.
@@magneto7930 That’s what I think, that they may not have been as creative with all the toys available today. The Beatles were always coming up with new ways to make sounds, and I think that in itself stimulated the creative juices. I was reading recently where Eddie Van Halen as a teen couldn’t afford stomp boxes and effects for his guitar, so he had to figure out how to get those sounds just with his hands and guitar. That process ended up inventing new sounds on guitar. And in his search for tone, he ended up inventing all sorts of guitar-building innovations, many of which are still used today. If the Beatles had had all these plug-ins and tools that they have now, they may have ended up sounding just like everybody else. I think that’s why today’s music is so boring.
@@carlbaumeister3439 I couldn't agree with you more!
@@carlbaumeister3439 When four musical geniuses picked the mind of a genius producer like George Martin (with his encyclopedic knowledge of classical music), with a little bit of psychedelic assistance, it's no wonder that the Beatles grew from 50s rock mop tops into genre-defining artists. There will never be another group like them.
Agreed 100% that it had the affect of ramping up their creative juices.
Great choice Harri. I loved that song ever since I first heard it as a young teen and I love it today. Never gets old. It's such a happy song.
I was born, on Merseyside, in 1960, and one of my earliest memories is dancing in front of the black and white tv to a Beatles song. This song is one of my favourite Beatles songs partly because when it was released I was seven years old and it was the last of their songs I could really appreciate at the time. Music is the time machine that enables us to revisit the past.
The Chord Progression in this song is a work of Genius!
One of their most amazing songs. They were just unbridled.
Good to see you, Imadrummin...have missed you, brother. Have always loved Penny Lane...takes me back to a simpler time and leaves me feeling good like when I hear Ventura Highway.Great selection and reaction!
Thank you my friend. I had to take a few months off but I am getting back into the swing of Harri's channel. ✌
That's the magic of these lads, they wrote about almost everything imaginable, and not imaginable, and many times with very inventive lyrics, or phrases sequences that make the listener interpret each song differently. Very good reaction as always!!
Penny Lane was released In February 1967, the flip side of Strawberry Fields Forever. Penny Lane, a street in Liverpool, housed a large bus terminal, where John and Paul would meet up.
Session musician, David Mason played the piccolo trumpet for it's bridge section.
One of the Beatle's outstanding classics.
Perfection at its best. Great reaction Harri. 😊 Thanks Harri and Imadrummin.
So glad to see you're back and picking the classics again. Beautiful memory. Cheers from Canada 🇨🇦
Dave Mason? Amazing.
@@famat161 Not that Dave Mason (Traffic etc) a different David Mason.
Dunno how it was in Canada, but in the UK the two songs were released and promoted as a double A-side.
@@alanmusicman3385 Hi Alan. In Canada, 45's were released with an A side and B side. The A side was the song released
first and thought it would be the best received and make it to the top of the chart. The B side was released secondary. That's how I remember it.
Lol. 👍✌️🎶🇨🇦
@@alanmusicman3385 Thanks for the clarification. 👍✌️🎶🇨🇦
Imadrummin where have you been? Welcome back and with a great Beatles song!
Its an old request..Hes still missing in action 🤣
@@HarriBestReactions Oh too bad. Great song though.🥹
@@HarriBestReactions Harri, Greybeard and I disappeared briefly but we are getting the band back together. I'll be back for December going forward. Love ya brother.👍👍👍
Cynthia, very sweet of you. I'll be back in December. Missed all of you too. 😀😀😀
@@Imadrummin Hey so good to hear from you. I look forward to your return. Hope you are well. 🥁
The Beatles making great music singing about thier town. Some people think they only wrote about drugs in thier later years. They wrote about the same things we experience only they did it with a flair. Thanks Harri
My favorite Beatles song. So well crafted and sets a very happy mood.
A fantastic and enjoyable reaction. One of the greatest songs by the Beatles. Thank you for all of your hard work Harri!!!! 😀✌👍👋👋
How great is this, I just love anything by the Beatles. 💞
Love this & "Strawberry Fields," flip side of the single. Both became hits.
Double A side in the UK.
Thank you for the memories.
Such a happy recording! My personal fave.
Love ❤️ the Beatles, yeah they are just cool as a fan lads , good day to u Harri, rely 😀 I enjoy your videos
Sir Harri has the greatest channel on RUclips. I saw The Beatles in Atlanta Stadium as a youngster. I play all their songs from The Complete Beatles on guitar and piano. But it's 50 years and it took Sir Harri Best to explain the hilarious irony to me of the "Fireman rushes in from the pouring rain." Thank you, Sir Harri. Peace and love from Florida where The Beatles broke segregation in America by refusing to play Jacksonville unless they stopped that bullshite. They were already here and scheduled for Jacksonville. They changed that shite in a day. TMI. Sorry. I'm old. Hahahaha.
Don't apologise! That was a significant event, bringing such a high profile critical outsiders' view of America's racist segregation laws forcefully to the attention of Florida's rule-makers/enforcers. And it would have affected others too, because after Jacksonville, they insisted it be written into all their venue contracts that they would not be required to play before a segregated audience.
As I expect you'd be aware as a long time Beatles fan, Paul wrote Blackbird in part at least as a result of seeing in the paper news of a small group of black women (black 'birds', in the British slang of the time) being the first to be admitted to a formerly segregated/ all-white college... "You were only waiting for this moment to arise..." 🙂
No, they didn't change segregation in a day. While that was a significant and commendable act it was something that many performers were doing from the fifties on, and some even earlier. Eartha Kitt, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, Lena Horne, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra, among many others, refused to play for segregated audiences years before the Beatles came to America.
@@ptournas That's true, but the Beatles towering popularity, made a bigger impact on younger people, particularly!
@@steve55sogood16 You're giving it way more weight than it had in it's time. I remember that tour quite well. I was 16 years old, played guitar and followed the news of the tour very closely. I didn't go to the Boston concert when they came there near the end of the tour because on all tv clips I saw during the tour they were totally drowned out by screams of the young girls who made up the majority of the audiences.
The thing is, that incident got pretty much no publicity at the time. I didn't hear about it and didn't know of anyone that did. It wasn't until the 70's when I was visiting a friend in California and watching a documentary on popular music and it's effect in the civil rights era. It mentioned Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and other singers singing at civil rights protests and at Martin Luther King's march on Washington and it mentioned how a few black singers started refusing to play segregated venues in the forties and how that number grew in the fifties and by the sixties many white performers had also joined them.
They mentioned the incident with The Beatles, and my friend and I were surprised that we never heard of it. Out of curiosity I started asking everyone I knew if they heard about it, and I didn't find anyone I knew that ever heard about it in California or Massachusetts, and that was in 1975.
Didn't hear about again until the early 2000's when Paul McCartney started talking about it in interviews. Since then I had done some research and was unable to find any magazine or newspaper article about it, except for one. A local reporter in Florida asked them about it at a press conference and all Paul said said was"Yeah, we won't play anywhere the audience is segregated" and John said "No f***ing way". They were also asked about a hotel they where supposed to stay at and didn't and they told the reporters it was because they didn't have room for them, although it turns out the actual story was that the hotel wouldn't allow the black members of the crew and performers they brought with them to stay there, so they walked out.
So for some reason, the story never made the major national media outlets and though a few papers around the area may have commented on it, there really was no way for it to have a huge impact on the movement. Whether it was a case of The Beatles not wanting the publicity (or more likely their management) or a case of the local news people not wanting to pass the story to national news outlets to save embarrassment of the town, I really don't know, but either way, it was not at all well known. And don't forget the people they were influencing in the 1964 were predominantly 13-16 year old teenyboppers, it wasn't until the following year that their audience began expanding when they started releasing songs like "Yesterday".
@@ptournas Since that very day in Jacksonville, music venues have been segregated. I saw James Brown dozens of times in Atlanta but it was a black show and I broke in each time with dozens of blacks by lifting a sliding door. Thanks for your context.
Excellent ! the Beatles for ever Jacques of Paris
Just think if Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields had been included on Pepper. George Martin even wanted to include them, but Beatle tradition kept them off. Isn't it a pity.
My favourite Beatles song.
Great pick Imadrummin as usual. Being an old firefighter I love the part about the clean fire engine. Plus,we went to Liverpool a few years ago and
took a tour to Penny Lane, and Strawberry Fields. My life's mission is to go back as soon as I can. Loved it so much. Great reaction Harri. 🤴🇬🇧🇨🇦🇺🇸🙃👍🔥😉
Daniel my brother. Thank you sir. 👍
One of my favs! You have to react to Paul McCartney on Carpool Karaoke!
That would mean having to endure the putrid presence of the imbecilic James Corden. Stay well clear Harri!
Love your reactions, Harri. Would love to see you review "The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let it Roll)" by George Harrison.
Agreed!!! Great tune.
Ill check it out..You might have to remind me pls
@@HarriBestReactions Beware of Darkness from the same album is another great song worth a listen
Great reaction Hari Cheers, RNB
Thank you for playing this song and video. Unfortunately, it was blocked with a still picture of them, but from your description of it, I think I've seen it. Thanks for trying anyway.
Fun lighthearted and beautiful. We were gifted to have grown up with the Beatles.
this is my favorite beatles song
Boy it sure has been a long time since I heard this tune. Thanks Harri, it wasn't banned.
Welcome back, Imadrummin! And what a great tune to announce your return! Looking forward to seeing what's next!
Thank you Mr. Ambassador. And likewise, I know you will have some stellar tunes with interesting factoids. You my friend are an icon on Harri's channel. 😀😀😀
@@Imadrummin Well thanks, but let's see how "iconic" you think I am after I begin my next music artist tour for Harri: *Milli Vanilli - Their Full Catalog!*
When the Beatles played Toronto in the mid sixties the security division assigned for their protection was from the OPP Ontario provincial police . The head of that group was Sgt. Pepper. Hence the song.And Paul is wearing an OPP badge on his left sleeve.
This song is somewhere in my top 20 all time great compositions. I play music by ear, and I can vouch that this cimposition is most masterful collection of transitions from one key to another. Beautiful stuff. Timeless.
One of my top 3 favorite Beatles song
Love it.
How about “Baby your a rich man” by them.
What I thought was cool about Lennon/McCartney partnership was. It was very much a competition. John wrote "Strawberry Fields" Pauls response he wrote "Penny Lane".
Love this song, my favorite is the long and winding road! Great reaction!
Imadrummin, nice to see you back, and with a strong pick by The Beatles. Great review, Harri!
DaveBZen, my comrade. Thanks for chiming in sir. Glad to be back from a few month break.✌
HarriBest......YOU are the BEST! You are the best song reactor on RUclips. I am forever a subscriber. God speed and keep it up!!
You should watch the James Corden car pool karaoke with Paul McCartney. He showed him the real Penny Lane.
So freaking great. This band helped to warp my mind ☘️🥂🚬🖤
What do Paul's grandfather and the fire engine in "Penny Lane" have in common?
They're both clean.
Cheeky LOL
This might just be the best song ever written.
I agree Scott. It is a masterpiece especially in that era,
The Beatles changed Everything!
Paul McCartney - simply genius again!
Thanks to Imadrummin for this one. Harri, you know how I feel about the Beatles and You told me (several months ago) that my requested “Rocky Raccoon” was blocked and you were working on getting it unblocked. Is there any hope for that? Love what you do Harri🌺✌️
My goodness, my friend Debbie Chang. Great to hear from you. I took a few months off and getting back into the swing. I appreciate you as always.
The perfect Beatles song
Best song ever!
When ever someone asks me what my favorite Beatles song is, I pause and say if I have to name just one it is Penny Lane - yes an amazing song -perfect in every way but I also feel the connection having been there to see the Roundabout the Barber Shop(inside and out) and where the bank was and down the road the fire station. Learned a lot about the song too as I stood at Smithdown Place which is the actual name but of course the power of the Beatles and all now it is simply called Penny Lane.
Where are you from?
@@bobuk161 Hey Bob. I live in New England (USA) but visit there as much as I can.
@@howcotube I live very close by to Penny Lane and you describe it pretty well. They need to knock down that Sgt Peppers horrible structure in the centre of the roundabout. I thought you was local as you knew it was Smithdown Place. 🙂
@@bobuk161 wow Lucky you !. As a Huge Beatles fan you come to know these things and visiting Liverpool you learn these things. We dream of living in Liverpool or at least stay a month every year or in London so we can visit Liverpool anytime we want !
If you can find it. There was a PBS special with Paul Mccartney giving a tour of Apple Studios and showing many of their great Studio tricks were not high tech before its time gadgets, but stuff hastily hammered and glue with plywood and stuff they found laying around, and their amazing imaginations. Oh and he does a couple of great acoustical songs at the end. Rock-a-billy. Fun stuff Hari!
The piccolo trumpet player passed away fairly recently. I believe Paul had heard him at a concert and wanted to use the instrument on a song,
There are 62 comments as I write imadrummin and I am here to state that the 62 bus is now the local one bearing the name Penny Lane. It terminates at that very site in Penny Lane where the shelter in the middle of the roundabout was. It connects North Liverpool to South Liverpool where the Beatles lived. The Beatles used to go to North Liverpool where they appeared at the Mona Best run club The Casbah
In Haymans Green. . If only they had written a song called the latter. We would gave got all the tourisrs up our stretch of the woods lol Cheers. Thanks for a great reaction Harri
Ahhh, I love your details which show you are an expert from that area . Love hearing some of your feedback
@@Imadrummin if you ever
vet to Liverpo you can tour the Casbah the little family run small club at the back of the residence now owned by Pete Brst and his brothers . It is all there as was . It is fascinating
One important point is that before the two songs in the single Penny Lane (side A)/ Strawberry Fields (side B), there were no British subjects in The Beatles' songs. Also the music is no more an appropriation of American music, but a different thing, taking from different sources.
Penny Lane and Strawberry Field Forever. Released as two sides of a double-A side single (in the UK at least) on 13th Feb 1967.
It was the first 7" single I ever owned that came in a picture bag - up until then only EPs (two tracks per side of a 7" disc) came in picture sleeves. Penny Lane features that wonderful Piccolo Trumpet solo and Strawberry Fields features the unique sound of the Mellotron. Both have lyrics which hark back to Lennon and McCartney's growing up years in Liverpool.
Although the recording sessions for these two songs woverlapped rsessions for recording the tracks on Sgt Pepper, they were released a few months ahead of that album. Therefore, in terms of the release schedule, these tracks formed a bridge between what had gone before and the many innovations in Pepper.
Penny Lane is also, I think, the first Beatles composition in which the lyrics are largely observational more than first person. They had done that before, but not to this extent? Although the lyrics to Penny Lane sound innocent enough, don't enquire too closely into the meaning of "Fish and finger pies" - well according to one 70s interview with John or Paul (I forget which) anyway!
For another slice of Liverpool daily life, listen to "On My Way to Work" from McCartney's solo album "New." One of my favorites from his later catalogue.
my 1st 45 as a wee lad
Brilliant 🌹
Something I’ve never noticed before, Paul is pronouncing some of the words in a Scouse accent, which makes sense since he’s singing about a Liverpool place.
There two endings in existence to this song. On the Beatles Anthology is the other one. the trumpet, rather than hold that long high note, plays a little riff to conclude the song on the alternate/ The trumpet player, playing the piccolo trumpet, was David Mason, principle trumpet of the London Philharmonia and a session player. I had a boot leg copy of the alternate ending through bootleg album purchases long before the Anthology albums.
The promo single which I used to own also had the alternate ending.
I used to live on Penny Lane Harri....😏 it leads onto Smithdown Road one end and Mossley Hill Road the other end...and Yeah, as far as I'm aware the barbers is still there...👍😊
It is called a piccolo trumpet I believe.
Well, it looks like the video was blocked after all... shame. Yes, it's weird they filmed the Beatles part of it in Stratford, East London, rather than in Penny Lane itself. But in those days when videos or 'promotional films' as they were then referred to were not the big, expensive deals they are today, probably no-one thought it mattered much. IIRC, the guys couldn't fit a trip up to Liverpool into their schedule, so they sent a camera crew up there instead for those background shots. And those few snatches of Liverpool in the 60s are priceless, showing one of the green buses that plied the Penny Lane bus route, and just for a fleeting second, the old Bioletti's barbers' shop (painted black) that features in the song. It's now Slavin's, still a barber....
And Harri, if you haven't already, you simply MUST watch the Carpool Karaoke episode (here on YT) featuring Paul where they visit the barber's and other old haunts including stop-offs at 'that' roundabout where the nurse sold poppies and at Paul's former council house home in Forthlin Road, where Paul reminisces about writing 'She Loves You' with John and what his Dad had to say about it. The trip culminates in Paul and his current band playing a surprise gig as a sort of human Beatles hits jukebox in a local pub, which is hilarious, joyous and clearly very emotional for the locals.
Honestly, you will love it - it's only about 20 minutes or so long, IIRC, so why not do a reaction and then we can all go on that wonderful trip down memory lane together! 🙂
Beatles = GOAT’s,simple as that.
Love the Beatles. Grew up listening to them, experiencing all the twists, turns, and developments in their music. Quite often it caused a What are they doing Now !? reaction. Strawberry Fields on the other side of this single was a bit of a jump to the senses. This side of the disk sounded quite traditional in contrast. Top of the pops played the two songs back to back.
They were planning a whole album of Liverpool songs, but when the record company pulled these out and released it as a single it kyboshed the idea, and they morphed the project into Sgt. Peppers. I always listen out for the piccolo trumpet, they asked the player to deliver a top note beyond the range of the instrument, and he did it. Ever after he was ways being asked to repeat it, which was a bit of a strain.
On the video they are having a go on horses. Ringo wasn't used to them , and his ran off with him at one point. He wasn't happy. Great drummer though.
Whenever I pass Penny Lane I can't help but sing it out loud, one of the Best Beatles songs, I get some strange looks though, 😂👍
I watched the premiers of “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” videos on “The Hollywood Palace”, a U.S. variety show.
I first saw the videos on Dick Clark's American Bandstand and was amused by the teens reactions to the Beatles facial hair. It's on YT somewhere.
'The Fireman rushes in from the pouring rain' refers back to 'and the Banker never wears a mac (raincoat) in the pouring rain - very strange'
A mac is a hat.
@@bobmessier5215Maybe, but in this case It's an abbreviation of 'mackintosh' - a type of overcoat.
The horse riding shots were in East London.
Drummin' my brother! Excellent choice my man. Getting the crew back together. I broke my old phone during my traveling, and lost your email my friend. Hit me up so I can get your info again. I've missed you brother! Great reaction Harri my man!
My brother GBMM. I will send you an offline catchup email this weekend. I have certainly missed you too. I had to take a few months off and starting to get in the swing of thing again. We're getting the band back together. Hahahahaha!!!
@@Imadrummin that's awesome my man! I remember you saying you were starting a new job.
Made me smile as a little kid at 9 when I heard it on the radio in the wake of my parents divorce.
Made John my confirmation name as I was already Paul.😊
I heard from a Beatles historian (I am one but still learning new things after over 50 years) that the lyric about "fish and finger pies" is not about real fish. It was symbolic and was about the pretty girls.
Lyrics inspired by Dylan Thomas' 'Under Milk Wood' by Macca's own admission. The song modulates seven times and you'd never notice. Pure genius. My daughter lives just outside Penny Lane.
Ahhhh, Harri, how could you interrupt in the middle of that fantastic trumpet solo??????
Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were going to be on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album but they were left off and released as singles instead. Imagine those two great songs on an already great album.
Check out Elvis Costello's White House performance of Penny Lane with Paul McCartney and Barack Obama sitting in the audience.
Faul!❤️‼️✌️
Too bad the video was blocked ! but i m sure i saw that vid not long ago !
for a change you could react to the 'the meteors' i dont worry about it, a song about not caring what others think
I think it important from time to time to remind people that at this point in their career none of them could read music! They all were self taught on their instruments and just "figured it out, played by ear!" Then pay attention to the complicated manner in which they would resolve chord progressions in this song! Very uncommon chord progressions!
Pretty good tune. This band sounds promising.
The street where Paul McCartney grew up.
Harri you a fake man
You never heard this b4?
You came here and showed how ignorant you are.If you bothered to watch the video,you would have clearly heard me say I KNOW THIS SONG and you woukd also have heard why i chose to react to it.
Go on, get outta here with your bogus "fake" accusation. Harri ain't fake. He's the guvnor, he is.
He said he knew the song but he’s listening to it to see the video that’s blocked .
@@Cosmo-Kramer Ambassador 🤣😂🤣😂🤣