A Hard Day's Night & The Birth of the Dead

My next stop has been the Beatles' 1964 film "It's Been a Hard Day's Night." I chose to give it a screening, because it had a pretty big influence on the members of Mother McCree's forming an electric band. Through the end of 1964, Pigpen began bothering Garcia to form an electric band, which would consequently be able to feature more of his blues numbers. Said Garcia, "He'd been pestering me for a while; he wanted me to start an electic blues band" (Jackson 67). The Beatles' film helped push Garcia in that direction.

"[The Beatles] were real important to everybody," Garcia said. "They were a little model, especially the movies - the movies were a big turn-on. Just because it was a little model of good times.... It was like [they] were saying, 'You can be young, you can be far-out, and you can still make it.' They were making people happy. The happy thing - that's the stuff that counts - was something we could all see right away" (Jackson 67).

Weir adds,

"The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band.... What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing" (Jackson 67).

So with an example set by the Beatles in '64, The characters of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions formed an electric band called The Warlocks. They began playing in May or June of '65 at Magoo's Pizza Parlor. It's too bad that no tapes of those shows are known to exist. People who were there suggest that the shows had a new kind of energy that wasn't present in any of the other area music. One of those fans who were listening was Phil Lesh.

If you wish, here is the full movie, It's Been a Hard Day's Night.