I remain a pack rat to this day and the Oct. '94 issue is still with me almost eighteen years later.
In the upper right corner is a sticker indicating that I purchased it from the Virgin Megastore in Hollywood. Today Tower Records and Virgin are no longer physically with us. Only the memories of the old brick and mortar stores that we thought would be around forever have survived.
One of the feature articles offered excerpts of a new Beatles book "Revolution in the Head" by Ian McDonald. I specifically enjoyed his appraisal of Ticket To Ride.
As an eight year old Beatles fan, the 1965 movie Help! and the Capitol lp soundtrack brought incredible joy and happiness into my life. Ticket To Ride has always had a special place in my heart. Music fans were spoiled with the riches of creativity in the 60’s and riding the career path on the bandwagon with The Beatles provided many touchstones of meaningful shared experiences.
The bonds that I have made with music and film over the years of my life are incredibly strong.
Ticket To Ride remains one of the most powerful of those emotional bonds.
I bought Help! (or received the album as a birthday gift) when it was first released in mid-August 1965, and I was visiting my relatives in Virginia. Like A Hard Day's Night and other Beatles albums, I played Help! to death and sang along. Whenever I hear a song like Ticket To Ride, I can remember and make a welcome return to not only my youth, but to a period when breakthrough moments in pop music culture were not only amazing and delightful but refreshingly abundant.
In the clip below The Beatles peform Ticket To Ride on the Ed Sullivan Show which was recorded in August for broadcast in September '65. Looking back and listening to this clip with the hindsight of what we know about the history of The Beatles, John Lennon's live rough vocal honestly and clearly indicates the artistic acceleration of his internal maturation and an aging process that is in overdrive and fully engaged.
