AT 40 Beatles Special 7/4/81

I agree with you there. Unfortunately, this particular special never aired in the San Francisco area because, at the time, AT40 was between stations (KYA had dropped the show the week before, and KCBS would not begin airing the show until the following week). I did manage to catch the special on KJOY out of Stockton, and I also downloaded the show many years later. It still holds a prominent place on my iPod.

Too bad all of the American Top 40's aren't posted like this on YouTube. Unedited, with full intro and exit music. Wish XM would air their versions of AT40 like this.

Listened to this over the past two nights. Segment 10 of 24, which contains #25 and #24 -- "Eight Days A Week" and "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" has been taken down due to objections by Universal Music Group. I'm not sure what interest UMG would have in either of those songs; was there also an extra played in that segment that may be the source of the problem? I have to wonder if at some point someone like Premiere, Capitol/EMI/Apple or Sony/ATV will put in a more extensive objection and the whole thing will be taken down. As of tonight, though, everything except for segment 10 is still there.

I remember listening to this special countdown when it was new, when I was ten years old. I think I was barely aware of who the Beatles were at the time that John Lennon died (I had recently posted about remembering when Casey played "Hey Jude" as an extra on a February 1980 show, sitting at the kitchen table as my mother explained to me who the Beatles were; I think I was completely unfamiliar with them at the time), but I got caught up in the all the renewed interest in the Beatles after Lennon died, and went through a period of obsession with the Beatles around 1981-82. So this show was a very big deal for me when it was first broadcast.

I remember that I recorded at least parts of it onto cassette tape. I didn't own a radio with a built-in cassette player at the time, so I recorded it by placing a standalone tape recorder next to the radio speaker. I can remember yelling at my younger brother when he walked into my room at one point and started talking! As I was listening to the show on youtube, a few of Casey's comments and stories sounded very familiar to me; I probably had those segments on that tape.

My ten year old daughter is a bit of a budding Beatles fan. She had noticed this countdown a while back when I had oldradioshows.com up on my computer screen and had asked if this show would be played some weekend. I explained to her that it probably wouldn't because it wasn't a regular weekly show. Maybe I'll have a chance to listen to it with her now.

Historically, there were a number of Beatles songs that existed in different versions (e.g., mono vs. stereo, U.K. vs. U.S.). As I was listening to the show, I was wondering if some of these songs were played in versions that were common at the time but no longer are today. I identified at least two where I believe this was the case. As of 1981, "I Feel Fine" had never been released in the U.S. in true stereo, and the most commonly available version was the distorted, awful sounding "fake stereo" mix on the American Beatles '65 LP. I'm pretty sure that's what Casey played, as he had earlier in 1981 when this song came up on the AT40 Archives #1 Hits of the '60s feature. Another one is "I Am The Walrus". The original U.K. mono mix had an opening with two bars, while the U.K. stereo had an opening with four bars. For some reason, the Beatles' U.S. label, Capitol, edited down the intro on the stereo to match the mono, so the four-bar opening was virtually unknown here. Accordingly, Casey played the version with the two-bar intro. Since the Beatles' catalog was released on CD in the late '80s, the four-bar U.K. stereo mix has been the common version.

Darn. I missed out on segment 10.

I wonder if George Harrison's latest hit, at that time, "All Those Years Ago", made the special countdown?

"All Those Years Ago" wasn't in the countdown, and I was thinking just the opposite, that it probably wasn't taken into account in assembling the rankings. It was just reaching its peak position of #2 the week the special countdown was aired, 7/4/81. "Woman" by contrast, had been off the charts for a few months -- the week the special countdown aired, its follow-up, "Watching The Wheels Go Round", had already more-or-less come and gone; it was out of the Top 40 and dropping through the lower reaches of the Hot 100.