The Age of Plunder

Abstract

Beatles 12 inch flops onto my desk, sporting a rather fetching colour pic of those well-known faces in their velvet collar Burtons and their famous pink tab collars. The record contains their first — not very good — single ‘Love Me Do’ with an alternative take. Train-spotting sleeve notes and a facsimile of the original label add up to a product that is perfectly anachronistic (they didn’t have Beatles’ collectors or 12 inchers in 1962, but that’s another story). It’s perfectly aimed: backed up by a clever campaign on the London buses — youthful pics of the Four with the captions ‘It Was 20 Years Ago’ and ‘Did You Know That John Lennon Was In The Beatles?’ — the record charted and peaked at number 5. I thought it was shit in 1964, but now?!

This article was first published in The Face, No. 23, January 1983.