At the end of World War II. Hungary was occupied by soviet troops and was announced to be a Communist country, one "free" member of the Middle-European Communist Block. This lasted until 1989, when communism was at last over. So how can any connections be made between the Beatles and my motherland? Arguably not much. The Beatles - officially anyway - was considered to be a capitalist attack against Hungarian teenagers and the government - and so the communist media - only mentioned them as examples of Western hedonism. Still some Hungarians did play a major or minor role in Beatles history. Besides - at the end of the sixties - even the Hungarian media realized that there was more into Beatlemania, than just the screams. And slowly, but surely Beatles LPs, music started to appear in Hungarian record shops. After a while even though only a handful of books were written and published about the Liverpudlians, but those were great success. The reason? Hungarians - like any other people - loved them.... The first Hungarian
character who played a major role in Beatles history is Hoffmann Dezso (better known as
Dezo Hoffmann). The next person - who is worth to be mentioned - was a Hungarian tailor, who was responsible for the shirts the boys wore at the start of their professional career. He was a friend of Dezo Hoffmann, and so Dezo introduced him to Brian, who liked his work. Dezo, his friend - whose name is long forgotten - and the boys often went to lunch together to the Budapest Restaurant in London.
The next person with some Hungarian background is the notorious manger, Allen Klein. He was born in Budapest as a member of a Hungarian Jewish family, but soon left the country. We all know the role he played in Beatles history and I'm not so proud of it so let us move on to... Publications Vinyl The first official Beatles LP, that appeared on the shelves of Hungarian shops was A COLLECTION OF BEATLES OLDIES in 1970, which was followed by ABBEY ROAD in the same year. Each of these LPs were Indian prints (EMI Dum Dum) and were published in a very small quantity (and sold almost immediately). After this two LPs there came a long silence, which was only broken by the death of John Lennon. In 1981 the Hungarian record company (PEPITA) published three old Beatles LPs: A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, PLEASE PLEASE ME and finally - also published in tape format - YELLOW SUBMARINE. After these, two more compilation LPs were published at the beginning of the eighties - again not Hungarian prints - one of them being the BEATLES BALLADS, the other called 20 GREATEST HITS. Beside these few publications Hungarian Beatlefans could buy all the Beatles albums in small private record shops, where mostly Jugoslavian (Yugoton) prints were available for a very high prize. CDs In 1990 four Beatles CD was published by the Hungarian Gloria Kft. These CDs covered the first four official Beatles CDs, but all the songs were mixed up, and some also included songs from RUBBER SOUL. The titles were: The Beatles, More Beatles, Rock And Roll Music, Beatles IV. Lately a Hungarian CD company called RING published all the Beatles LPs on CD and tape format . The White Album was published separately in two CDs, such as the Red and the Blue Album. Some bootlegs (like certain publications fom Yellow Dog) are said to be Hungarian publications, but I think it is not true. Maybe because copyright laws are not so strict here, it is safer to state this country as manufacturer... Written music The first written music of Beatles melodies were published in 1972 - with the kind permission of Northern Songs. This was a four piece collection containing all the songs from ABBEY ROAD. Later a similar edition was published - this time a two volume set, which featured all the songs of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. In 1981 a memorial publication saw the light of day entitled simply JOHN LENNON, which contained the most famous songs of the composer. Books The first real Beatles book - titled Beatles Biblia - was published in 1969 in Hungary. It was written by a well-known Hungarian writer - Tamás Ungvári. In this book he was searching for an answer to Beatlemania, but besides these he wrote about the story of the Liverpudlians. The publication was a great success and fans even broke into bookshops, just to have a copy. It was also published in a different format in 1981, and with the original artwork in 1992. The second publication - which featured the Beatles - was Beatlestol az Újhullámig. Published at the start of the eighties, and written by János Sebok, it was mainly about the story of rock from the fifties up to New Wave. A whole chapter was dedicated to the boys, mainly conserning their characters through writing about Beatlemania based on the concert at the Hollywood Bowl. In 1981 a memorial book was published entitled simply John Lennon 1940-80 by Gábor Koltai. A nice work, which contained a lot of pictures, lyrics and the whole Playboy interwiev. In 1982 a small volume commemorating the Beatles Week (13 -17. December) in Hungary was published by Tamás Ungvári, titled Egy Kiállítás Képei. The Beatles book everybody was waiting for was published finally in 1986. Entitled Halhatatlan Beatles it was the work of Gábor Molnás and his father Imre Molnár. The book told the detailed story of the Beatles, with reviews of each recorded song and a nice collection of bootleg songlist. It is - up to this day - the best Hungarian publication. A strange book which had the title Népszerubb, mint Jézus Krisztus followed by the same author, Imre Molnár. It was a book in which the writer tried to see the world through John's eyes. I dont really consider it to be a serious Beatles book.... In 1988 all the Beatles lyrics were published (with Hungarian translations) in one volume called Yesterday, by András Márton. I personally don't like the translations, but at least all the English lyrics were now available. Again a valuable Beatles book followed. This time written by three true fans (György Bánosi, Endre Horváth and Erno Tihanyi) it was titled B, mint Beatles and contained interesting pictures, a Beatles timeline, discographies, outtake info and more. The second must have in Hungary. Though not exactly al Beatles book - but still needs to be mentioned: (Happy Xmas - War Is Over) , which was published in December 1990. It contained a John Lennon timeline, a discography and all the lyrics (both in English and Hungarian). Nice publication, with a lot of rare pictures. In 1993 the first official book by a foreign author, called John Lennon élete és legendája was published. The writer - Richard Buskin - made a very nice book following John from his birth until his death, commenting on each major steps of his life. Very nice colorful book, with discography. In 1995 John's first book In His Own Write was published with Hungarian translations by János Hideg titled Kövér dudor Eric Hearble fején. The latest publication about the Beatles in Hungary right know is a CD format pocketbook by Jon Ewing titled simply Beatles. Good work, again with pictures and discography. Now that the country became free from Russian rule, more and more publications appeare, lets hope it will stay this way... THEATER There was a play written by which had certain connections to the Beatles. It was about four Hungarian men who were young during the sixties, and had a band. Now after 30 years they meet and talk about their lives. For fun they start to play together and cover a lot of Beatles songs during the play. It was an enormous success in my country and the actors even played real concerts in the country, with their repertoire. A CD was also published with the music of the play. On the 31st of March 1997, a large Beatles Revival Concert was held in Budapest, where a band called Old Boys covered songs from Love Me Do to Let It Be. The National Symphonic Orchestra also played. Again: Great success! Media Radio Shows First Beatles airing was during the summer of 1963 and by 1965 almost every request show on Hungarian Radio featured the Beatles. Later during the eighties whole radio shows were aired about the boys. All the albums (separately the English and Americans) were aired, and because of the great success more was to follow. The radio had a whole show on Beatles rarities, where Get Back sessions, outtakes and rare concert recordings were aired! Even all the Beatles Christmas albums were played during Christmas Time.... TV 1977 / 1978 / 1995 - A HARD DAY'S NIGHT 1993 - HELP! 1977. - YELLOW SUBMARINE 1990 / 96 - GROW OLD WITHOUT ME 1989 - BEATLES STORY (4 parts) 1987 - NOW AND THAN 1996 - ANTHOLOGY AT THE MOVIES 25. March 1968 - A HARD DAY'S NIGHT 2. Augustus 1979 - HELP! 1991. IMAGINE - JOHN LENNON 1994. GET BACK - Paul McCartney World Tour 1990 VIDEO TAPES The Beatles Külön és Együtt 50min. A Komplett Beatles 120 min. |
He was born in Hungary at the start of this century, but after
WWI. it became part of Slovakia.He bacame a photographer in London and was already taking
pictures of Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich, when he first heard of the Beatles. It
was a letter from Liverpool and Dezo became interested in the group. He travelled to
Liverpool, where he met the boys and started to photograph them for national music papers.
He
made thousands and thousands of pictures of the boys from early 1962 till the end of 1964.
He had a bitter argument with John in 1964 about a picture which was published in a
teenager magazine and he stopped taking pictures of them so ferquently, but he was still
present at major occasions (such as the lauch party for Pepper...). In the early seventies
Dezo and John met in New York, where the two settled their differencies. During the
sixties and up to his death in 1985 Dezo Hoffman published a lot of picture books about
the band:The Beatles (1963), The Beatles Book (1964), Beatles (1976), With The Beatles
(1982), The Beatles Conquer America (1984), John Lennon (1985).