A pattern seems to have emerged in my life—once every 18 months or so, I get on an unrelenting Beatles kick, and have to break out all my Fab cds and play em, and get morose over the lost years. I watch the old film clips on Youtube, and look at those young faces and smirky expressions, and I feel almost as if I want to warn them “ Look out ahead, things are going to get rough. Two of you will die young, one of you will lose his wife, and all this camaraderie will fade as you mature and get sick of each other’s company.”
I confess, when John Lennon died, I wasn’t as shook up as I was later when George passed. I was 22 in 1980, and while it was a blow when I heard the news, I was young and there were parties to go to, and girls to chase, and college classes to blow off. I was too young to have anything to look back upon with regret yet. I was too shallow to realize that these guys were the background music of my life, and that Lennon’s death meant the end of all that.
Later, when George died, 2 months after 9/11, it threw me for a loop. Bad enough that I was a grim, pale and angry middle-aged guy in the aftermath of an event that changed my country forever, I also lost another bit of my childhood with his passing. People say these musicians live on when you hear their songs, but not to me. I hear their songs and see doors closed and locked forever. More and more it gets to be that way with me when I hear songs from my boyish days. I don’t get that pleasure reliving where I was when I first heard the music—I see, instead, the defeats racked up by Time.
For example, listening to an old Gordon Lightfoot tune, with his beautiful, troubadour –like voice only reminds me how shot that voice has become in recent years, unable to hold a note. It makes me sad for reasons other than he originally intended. All those guys and girls who filled the pop radio charts in the 70s, when I was a teen, are mostly gone now, either out of show biz, or out of this plane of existence all together.
I still get choked up when I see a picture of George Harrison. Though I don’t care for the religion he adopted (or any religion, for that matter), I respect that, unlike the other fabs, he stuck with it till the end. He kept up a level of quality in his music as well. I can tell a Harrison guitar lick at 60 paces.
When the remaining Beatles came back together to release “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, I was mesmerized. It was a haunting experience. I listened to both over and over. The accompanying videos were equally riveting. It was as if those sealed doors had broken open—how often does that happen in our lives? 25 years after they broke up—15 years after Lennon’s death, the Beatles had returned. Maybe only The Beatles could have pulled off such a return. I still get chills. I know some have knocked the relative merits of those songs, but I don’t care. They move me still.
The years have brought me much closer to an appreciation of Lennon. Back in the day, I have to admit, I found him to be something of a pussy—in song, he was forever begging Yoko to take him back, or to forgive him, or kissing her ass in some way or another. Christ, he even called her Mommy! Then he was a househusband for 5 years, after Sean was born. Not a lot to admire from a SE Ohio boy like me.
Now that I am 10 years older than he was when he died, I seem to look upon him with a kind of indulgence. He was working it out, you know? Figuring out who he was supposed to be, in the wake of that insane period of idolatry he and the other loveable Moptops went through. And he never stopped with his music, even if he stopped releasing it.
All the Beatles had their public moments of douchebaggery, but they were kids really, snarky and shouldering big chips as a result of their lower class backgrounds. No band ever went through so many evolutions, so much scrutiny by media and fans. We’ll never see that again. They were originals. And, as I said, they were the soundtrack of my life. The first song I remember liking was “ She Loves You”—my sister and I would sit on our couch and bounce forward and backward to the beat and sing “Yeah Yeah Yeah”, and would change the lyrics to annoy my younger brother Barry, who we called Beej (for BJ)—“ She loves you, be, be, beej…”
Since George died, I find it hard to watch Paul or Ringo as well. They always said John was the brain, Paul the heart, and George the soul. Dunno what Ringo was—the ass? Anyway, once the soul was gone, the rest of it was lost for me. So this semi-regular Beatles kick I’m on is fraught with even more melancholy than usual. So forgive me if you run into me and I am quietly humming “ Rocky Raccoon” and trailing a few tears along my way. It’s a mid-life thing, you know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D196-oXw2k
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