By the time The Beatles appeared on the Sullivan show, I had already been buying Beach Boys and Paul Revere & The Raiders LP’s (along with instrumental surf albums, Chuck Berry’s Greatest Hits on Chess Records, A Roy Orbison collection on Monument Records, a Jimmy Smith album, and Johnny Horton’s Greatest Hits on Columbia), and lots of 7" 45 RPM singles (Girl Groups, The Everly Brothers, Del Shannon, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Righteous Brothers, Ricky Nelson, all the Pop hits that were plentiful in the early-60’s. The myth that there was no good music between the death of 1950’s Rock ’n’ Roll and The Beatles is pure bs.).
I had mixed feelings about the group, and though I saw The Beach Boys live in the summer of ’64 (my first concert, at the San Jose Civic Auditorium), and along with my sisters had a ticket to see The Beatles at The Cow Palace in S. San Francisco later that summer, I at the last minute changed my mind (my mom used my ticket. She liked Johnny Cash and Elvis). By the time they returned in the summer of ’65 I had come to like them more, and went to see them at the CP (and was disappointed. Not a good live band, honest ;-). Still, it wasn’t until Rubber Soul that I thought they made a really good album (I preferred The Kinks, The Animals, Them, Manfred Mann, and The Yardbirds. I didn’t like The Stones then, and still don’t.), an opinion that has not changed.
Here’s how fast things were changing in those days: it was only three years later that I was going to The Fillmore Auditorium and Carousel and Avalon Ballrooms in SF, seeing first Cream and Hendrix live, the following year The Jeff Beck Group, The Who, The Electric Flag (with Michael Bloomfield and Buddy Miles, of course), and all the old Blues guys Bill Graham brought to their first white audiences. Seeing Albert King live put everything into perspective ;-) .