0504blog

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Music has been my anchor, my joy, my pressure release valve and my safe place, my escape for much of my life. I don’t know if that is true for every generation having cut my teeth on the greatest musical years the planet has ever known with the greatest band the planet has ever had the good fortune of hosting, The Beatles.

Just writing their name feels almost sacrilegious, like trying to describe the magic of a flower that blooms only briefly, excavating the hallowed ground of my soul, eliciting a mystical energy, some power that was able to touch the souls and hypnotize hundreds of millions of young people around the world and perhaps, beyond. They were just John, Paul, George and Ringo, four lads from Liverpool but they tapped into a karma that changed the world. Maybe they came from another planet, I’ll never know. But don’t tell me about Sinatra or Elvis, they were singers who could draw you into their emotions, even make the young girls swoon but they did not change the world, not like The Beatles did. That’s not to say that the moptops didn’t make the lassies swoon as much as Elvis or Sinatra, as they gave ground to no one when it came to swooning.

I ascribed to them an other-worldly place, believing them to be geniuses and very possibly offered to us from the gods from somewhere far, far away and able to create as if they were light years ahead of any other musical group at the time, as they were. Anyone who said they were mere mortals was just not listening closely to the music and had missed so much by not paying attention to the brilliant comet that swept through our universe and was then gone.

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the sounds of Motown, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles; or the tunes of the Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Kinks, The Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, James Taylor, Grateful Dead or any of the other many, great music makers of the day but comparing any of them to The Beatles is like comparing Shakespeare to a comic book.

I have to note here that Bob Dylan inhabits a holy space much like The Beatles but that Dylan painted with his words, the Beatles’ palette was music.

The Beatles were wise beyond their years and they exuded happiness while their songs reached out for all of us to share their delight and to join on their strange, magical trip, even if it was often laden with drugs.

I worshiped their music, waiting impatiently for every new album and each album was filled with musical diamonds not like the albums from other musicians which included one or two hits and the rest fools gold songs. Driving up Spring Valley Road that May day in 1967 when I first heard the DJ on the radio announce a new Beatles album, something called “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” I flipped in the same way I flipped when every new Beatles album was released. When the “White Album” came out, I steamed the jacket hoping but failing to see the hidden nude photo of John and Yoko, I listened to “Abbey Road” for hours with a wrestling team friend who was in love with his body in my dorm room at a nondescript college in Connecticut and I tried to understand the symbolism of Paul walking across Abbey Road in his bare feet. Anyone who said there was no symbolism just didn’t get it even if years later Paul said there was no symbolism and that he just didn’t want to wear shoes. I listened to “I Am The Walrus” and tried to verify John calling out “I buried Paul” which was a clear reference to the disappearance and possible passing of Paul McCartney when I learned in later years he was saying “I’m very small” or trying to dig in to the depth and surrealism of “I am the Walrus” before learning later that “Yellow-matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye, Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess
Boy, you’ve been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down” was basically meaningless and just a string of silly words and thoughts by John.

“You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” was John singing directly to me; it was just Paul and I when he crooned “I Love Her”; and George and I had a personal relationship around the time he wrote “Don’t Bother Me.” All the songs reached deep into me, reverberated and excited me, “Paperback Writer,” “Daytripper,” “Look What You’re Doing,” “Penny Lane,” “Helter Skelter,” “In My Life” and so many, many others whose every word remain imprinted and chiseled in my brain.

The Beatles on Life Magazine with their new moustaches, soon to be de rigueur for every young man old enough to grow facial hair, including me. Those striped pants and mod jackets were worn like no one else could wear them, they were coats of many colors down on Carnaby Street. Their message was always the same: Love, whether it was the love of a boy and a girl (That Girl, I Want to Hold Your Hand) or a universal love (All You Need is Love). And peace (Let It Be) and simplicity (Get Back).

Now, 51 years has passed since they released the 13th and final album as The Beatles and I am still obsessed with reading the most meaningless, insignificant, titillating morsels about the lives of each of them, whether it is how Paul nearly drank himself to death after the band broke up or how John wrote “Sexie Sady” because the smiling, enigmatic maharishi who hoped to bring peace to the world was quietly banging Mia Farrow or how George drifted away from the others or how John and Paul were watching Saturday Night Live and toyed with the idea of surprising the world by stopping by to sing but didn’t. And I am not alone as there are dozens of Facebook groups and Internet groups dedicated to The Beatles for all of those like me who cannot escape their spell that was woven all those years ago and can never disappear.

John’s Jesus-like murder and George’s all too soon passing only added to their mystique as if we weren’t ready to keep on following them even though Paul kept on singing and Ringo continued his imperfect talents. But it was never the same and could never be the same because The Beatles were not four individuals but they were one creation, an energy that could not be disassembled or deconstructed to see its parts, a source that nearly touched perfection.

This was a hard blog to write because I am not a man who is prone to hero worship and I do not like to admit that there are some people who I place on pedestals in some stratospheric place where mortals can never go and because it somehow seems blasphemous to put limited words to paper when my emotions seem to be inexpressible. Those four reside in a special place in me and I choose to keep that place warm, unquestioned, unsullied, regardless of how ridiculous I know that sounds.

I feel badly for those too old to have enjoyed The Beatles and those too young to have been around during those magical years. You missed out on a magical mystery tour that will never again arrive and I am so glad I was there.

And it was magic.