Playing a BEATLES album backwards...
I grew up in the time period where long playing (LP) vinyl records were king. The platter was 12 inches and they ran at a speed of 33-1/3 rpm. A decade earlier were 7 inch records that ran at a speed of 45 rpm with only 2 songs, an A side and a B side.The 45's were perfect for coin operated jukebox players often found in fast food restaurants. Drop in a dime, make your selection and it will play a song. For me, the music I listened to was too obscure for top 40 air play, so LP's were the only way to go.
Depending on the length of the songs an LP, you might find more than 10 songs on an album as the total playing time to be around 44 minutes.
I'll admit, I was a BEATLES fan when I was a kid. There were lots of influences in my musical beginnings and in 1966 we were told that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-alike named Billy Shears. The news was everywhere and so were the fact finding documentaries.
Confirming this were the many clues on the BEATLES records... the one thing needed to hear them was to play the recordings backwards.
I owned a DUAL brand record player with a SHURE brand stereo cartridge. It had a speed adjustment of only + or - a few percent so not possible to run the motor backwards... but I was able to record to my Wollensak reel-to-reel tape machine, flip the tape over, move the play head to the monaural setting and poof! Backwards BEATLES.
Don't ask me if I heard John Lennon saying "Turn me on dead man, Turn me on dead man" as maybe I didn't... or maybe I did.
Comments (5)
It big enough that if you ask us if we know your cousin so-and-so from London, we think you're bonkers.
It's small enough that if a load of blokes auditioned to be Paul, word would get around.
At one time I went from a Marantz 2270 stereo receiver with 2 Dynaco A25 speakers to quadraphonic Marantz 4270, quad Shure cartridge and 4 Dynaco A25's.
That was more than 50 years ago and if I remember, there weren't may records formatted for quad sound so I went back to stereo.
Technology is moving so fast and everything is getting smaller and a throwaway culture. The days of big clunker RCA and Phillips TVs to clunker stereos are just lost into antiquity. Anyone who has such stuff might draw a good price for a nostalgia moment. It's even rare to find LPs and soon CDs will be something of a novelty.