When we was fab

In his Observer-Reporter column, Terry Hazlett remembers the 40th anniversary of the “summer of love”:

“I’d like to say that when local college students first heard ‘Light My Fire,’ they burned their bras and draft cards, tossed pop music 45s into a bonfire and destroyed their AM radios. But it didn’t happen like that. Having been there, I can assure you that, in these parts, Motown (Smokey Robinson, the Supremes and the Temptations) still ruled in 1967.”

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band presented a special dilemma to local disc jockeys because Capitol Records didn’t release any singles from the album and Top 40 stations didn’t, as a rule, play album cuts. Thankfully, KQV started playing “When I’m 64,” so other stations did too: “No doubt, we played ‘Respect’ and ‘Mirage’ on either side of that song, though, just to make sure we didn’t lose listeners,” Hazlett says.