The Beatles: A Day In The Life: 1967: WPTR Radio Bootleg Story

 Last Sunday while watching the latest episode of Mad Men which takes place in 1966 they finally play a Beatles song....Tomorrow Never Knows. News reports say Lions Gate Productions payed one quarter of a million dollars for the rights to use this song. The song was perhaps the most radical and different of  any of the Beatles song book. But hearing that song for the first time in yrs sparked a latent trivial memory from a distant adolescence. It was circa February 1967. Music rumors of a new and very different record album being produced. in England by the Beatles and George Martin. At that time no one really can remember from whom came a bootleg copy of a long and unusual Beatles production.....It was called A Day In The Life. About 7 stations in America obtained this copy. One such station was a major 50,000 watt AM station WPTR in Troy NY. Without much fanfare it began playing primarily in the night time hours and then filtered down to occasional day play. It seemed odd at the time that no one else was playing it. But it was The Beatles. And it was a different R&R song. A taste of something to come from lets face it the most important  group of the second half of the 20th Century.  After about two weeks of play it suddenly disappeared as quietly as it had appeared. What I was to discover later was The Beatles and more importantly their lawyers had discovered the bootleg was being played on select stations. Cease and desist threats issued and the bootleg rendition was gone. Of course the song would be on Sgt. Peppers issued in June of the same year.  My thanks to H." Skip" Peters former DJ for some additional information on this subject. A happy trivial memory of time past and when The Beatles ruled much of popular music.