Mr. Tambourine Man b/w I knew I'd want you by The Byrds (CBS 1.922)

So Bob Dylan could write good songs, but they could also be executed beautifully. The Byrds sounded like a cross between Dylan and The Beatles, which it later turned out, was exactly what they intended to be. Three folkies, a bluegrass mandoline player and a "beach boy" playing "beat music" inspired by The Beatles, using a Rickenbacker 12-string their lead-singer Jim McGuinn had seen George Harrison use in the film "A hard day's night". Tambourine man Gene Clark seemed a bit out of place in this band, it wasn't until later I found out what he was up to.
Rating: *****

Like a rolling stone Part 1 b/w Like a rolling stone Part 2 by Bob Dylan (CBS 1.952)

Stupidity number???????? I bought this single when it had just been released. That was the version with "Like a rolling stone" cut in two parts and dispersed over two sides of a 7" single. The second pressing came out with the complete song on the A-side and "Gates of Eden" on the flipside. A friend of mine bought that second edition and laughed at me: he had twice as much music for the same money! I later sold or swapped my original, not realizing this Part 1 / Part 2 version would become a collector's item.......
Revolutionary music entering the Top 10 with Mike Bloomfield on guitar and Al Kooper on organ. But where was the cut exactly on the original single?
Rating: *****

Catch a falling star b/w Only friends by Françoise Hardy (Vogue HV 2013)

I actually didn't own this record at the time (1965), it was my sister's. But I bought a copy a few years ago. My sweet Lord: what a woman! Which boy born between 1945 and 1955 didn't at one point dream that Françoise Hardy would fall in love with him? Or jerked off to her pictures? We were ALL in love with her. And then she started singing in English as well, this wonderful "yeh yeh girl". A very charming French accent that worked particularly well on "Only friends" (which I remember being the A-side, but maybe that's because I played it all the time). Alas, she married Jacques Dutronc, the lucky bastard, and left millions of men wondering of what might have been if ONLY they'd been FRIENDS with Françoise.
Rating: ***

Lucille b/w Now decide by The Rivets (Star-Club Records 148 510 STF)

During the summer sale of 1965 I was on holiday abroad and ultimately ended up in a department store in the city of Lörrach in the south of Germany where they had a discount record sale. The Germans were really slow in following trends in those days. I wanted to buy the latest Beatles single "Help!" which had been a number one when I left home, but it hadn't even been released in Germany yet! I went back to the camping with a cheap "live" LP by a group called The Ravers full of covered 1963/1964 hits and a single by German group The Rivets. The latter cost me just one Deutschmark and it contained a nice version of Little Richard's "Lucille" done Everly Brothers style, but more "beat". And it was of course on the Star-Club label, which I associated with The Beatles in their Hamburg-days.
The Ravers later turned out to be a group called The Tonics, who used the pseudonym to record for the cheapo TIP label. Amazingly the LP I bought in 1965 (and which I later bought again for a huge sum in order to digitize it) was released on cd: "Twist mit den Ravers"!
Rating: **