1962

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

interesting piece by McRum in the graun

Looking back, 1962 now seems to be the fascinating antechamber to the great party that was the 60s. But it's also a time capsule. Here are issues – civil rights nuclear disarmament, radical feminism, the dystopian imagination, secularisation – with which we are still grappling. But then the world was young – Lennon was about to turn 22, McCartney was just 20 – and Love Me Do, three words, two basic chords and a pocket harmonica, could change the hearts and minds of a generation.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

1962. That was the year I first first played the oboe in the school orchestra. I was thrilled.

[gurnemanz]

The Cuban missile crisis was going on and I can remember lying on my bed scared stiff aged 13 wondering what it would be like to be burned alive in a nuclear attack like the people in those pictures of Hiroshima. Later that year the Beatles hit us between the eyes and things seemed to be OK again.

[amateur51]

The Cuban missile crisis was going on and I can remember lying on my bed scared stiff aged 13 wondering what it would be like to be burned alive in a nuclear attack like the people in those pictures of Hiroshima. Later that year the Beatles hit us between the eyes and things seemed to be OK again.

Yes indeed gurnemanz.

The Kennedies & Marylin & Martin Luther King got shot & I got the glooms again

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i wonder if the Zeitgeist was in part inspired by not being annihilated by nukes in '62?

twist any one?

[eighthobstruction]

1968 Martin LK shot....62 John Glenn Flight....Wim o weh, Wim o weh....Sun Arise....Telstar,.... Stranger on the Shore....

[Petrushka]

I was 8 in 1962 and recall that year very well as being the first one I can properly remember. For an interesting and intriguing take on the Kennedy/Kruschev relationship this http://www.amazon.co.uk/JFK-Unspeaka...9010580&sr=1-1 is a rattling good read.

[Mary Chambers]

1962 was the year I went to live in London as a postgraduate student. Fonteyn's first performances with Nureyev, Olivier at the theatre, Maria Callas, Britten and Pears, premiere of War Requiem....one way and another, 1962 was quite a year in the arts. I totally ignored the Beatles, if they were around then.

[teamsaint]

I clocked in, just in time for the 3rd round of the cup !!

[mangerton]

I was 11, and started secondary school in August, so a number of new subjects including French and Latin. And woodwork.

Politics and world events were beginning to make an impression on me. I remember the press reaction when the Libs won at Orpington, and Macmillan's night with the long knives. Coventry Cathedral. TW3. The Beatles. The start of the worst winter for a number of years, when road conditions meant I wasn't allowed to use my bike and had to walk to school for several weeks.

[decantor]

1962 was my 1st/2nd year at Cambridge. The year began with the great freeze: gas pressure went so low that you could hardly toast a crumpet, and few in Cambridge had running water (my rooms were over a boiler-house, and had hot & cold throughout); there was 26 degrees of frost (F) one night. The year ended with the threat of annihilation: every jet passing overhead - and there were many USAF stations around - promised the beginning of the holocaust. Genuinely scary.

Beatles passed us by completely, but The Swingles doing Bach caused quite a stir. I attended a couple of unscheduled lectures by Willcocks on the War Requiem - my score is still marked up!

[Serial_Apologist]

If I've got the year right, the most exciting event was sitting beside the first girl I'd kissed properly, being part of the audience recording The Dickie Henderson Show ("LAUGH NOW") at the ITV studios in Willesden. She'd just bought "Love Me Do". "Stupid name for a band " I scornfully told her - see, I'd just discovered Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie through the school jazz club.

I well remember the alarming news report that suggested we were on some brink of nuclear annihilation - one of those events when you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing, as they say. It was a warm, sunny day; I walked out into our back garden and looked up at a sky filled with innocuous cirrus cloud.

[Mary Chambers]

1962 was my 1st/2nd year at Cambridge. The year began with the great freeze: gas pressure went so low that you could hardly toast a crumpet, and few in Cambridge had running water (my rooms were over a boiler-house, and had hot & cold throughout)

Wasn't the great freeze 1962 - 1963, rather than the beginning of 1962? It was in London. My student house didn't have running water for ages. It was pretty grim, I suppose, but we were young and thought it rather exciting.

[EdgeleyRob]

1962, I was only 4.

[antongould]

The Cuban missile crisis was going on and I can remember lying on my bed scared stiff aged 13 wondering what it would be like to be burned alive in a nuclear attack like the people in those pictures of Hiroshima. Later that year the Beatles hit us between the eyes and things seemed to be OK again.

Very well put I was also that young person........