On February 7, 1964, four British lads from Liverpool, England landed in New York. Two days later on February 9, over 73 million Americans gathered around their televisions and tuned into the Ed Sullivan Show. On that Sunday evening in Memphis, Tennessee, college student Dick Laws along with his roommate Allan Schwartz, was invited to join their landlord to watch the performance that would become a musical landmark event. In Gallatin, Tennessee, teenager Janice Driver sitting in her living room, watched the British invasion and American pop culture being changed forever. From that day until now, Janice has been a life long Beatles fan.
As it would happen, this year a week before Janice’s birthday on Friday, May 4, the Beatles tribute band, Rain was performing at TPAC. So we thought it was only fitting to all chip in and treat Janice and Dad to a night on the town, dinner in Nashville and to two tickets to this Broadway production. We thought it would be great fun to present the tickets and the gift card to dinner at the Sunset Grill in the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Due to the overwhelming popularity of this album and all the collectors, it was difficult to lay our hands on one but we prevailed. To make it a little extra special, Terry created a keepsake insert which detailed their evening of fun using graphics that resembled the album cover .
Grandmother Ginny was in town visiting so we asked to come up so we could all have dinner together before she went back to Elizabethton. When we arrived, everyone was relaxing on the back porch so we thought that was a great time to present her with her gift. To throw her off the scent and to avoid suspicion, we wrapped the album in a plain cardboard box, tied it with garden twine and told her we had found a little something at an estate sale we thought she would like. She opened the box and to her delight found a vinyl album from one of her all time favorite bands. She was even more surprised when she discovered the fun evening planned for them just a few weeks from now.
After all the excitement we all went to Whipporwill’s on the square for dinner and for dessert, ice cream at the Dairy Queen. Back at the Farm we stretched out, relaxed and watched the movie, “Blast from the Past”.
With that in mind, here’s another blast from the past:
