Nov 18, 2006

Of Beatles and man

Back in college, I read an interview with Paul McCartney. In it, he was asked to reminisce on the early years with the Fab Four. He told the interviewer that going back to those days was like "remembering your childhood summers," and not very easy, at that.
I've been thinking about The Beatles lately, about how much of an impact they've had on my life and the world. And I realize that what McCartney said to that interviewer back in 1981 resonated with me, perhaps with most of my generation, because it wasn't just true for Paul, it was true for many of us.
I believe the Beatles were part of a phenomenon that came about as a direct result of the times and cosmic timing that I often think has the signature of spirit overlaying it.
That Paul, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were talented is clear. Each of the lads went on to more or less stellar solo music careers, leaving us with even longer playlists to enjoy. Yet, there was a synergy to the Beatles, to Beatleness. If each Beatle was part of a larger organism, then that organism was less complete with parts missing.
In my life, Beatles music has been a touchstone of sorts. It has been a salve during rough times and a window to my childhood, when I often dreamed, fancifully, about my future life. I can't hear the number "I Saw Her Standing There" without being transported back to the summer of 1968, to a small hotel in Cuautla, Mexico and the outdoor swimming pool where a jukebox blared that song I'd first heard two years prior.
I took to the Beatles at age 6. It was September, 1966. We were a young family. Dad and mom (and I) had moved to Portland, Oregon from Mexico City five years earlier. But mom wasn't well, so a Mexican girl moved in to take care of the kids while dad worked. She had a Beatles 45 with "I Saw Her Standing There" on the "A" side. There was something revelatory about the music, even to me, a sub-sized 6-year-old. I'd seen the boys on Ed Sullivan and thought they were cool but I also thought the same thing about The Beach Boys when I saw them on TV. Was it just the music or was there something else going on?
When I was 7, dad came home with a copy of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and that act connected me more deeply with my father, who always seemed to be a little ahead of his time.
From that point on, I began collecting Beatles albums. I hunted for 45s. I watched Beatles cartoons. From 1971 to 1975, my friend Lennox Hannan and I must have spent countless hours playing Beatles songs over and over again, examining all the production details and marveling at how lucky the band had been to encounter a guy like producer George Martin. Why'd they do this? How'd they do that?
I remember staring at the cover and backside of Pepper, imagining the Fabs as members of a royal court, as The Knights of the Round Table, as the Three Muskateers—plus D'Artagnon. I'd ponder the "Paul is dead" scenario over and over, staring at Pepper for clues, listening to John singing "I am the Walrus" for the umpteenth time to hear the "I bury Paul."
I'd leaf through the Magical Mystery Tour album's glossy insert imagining—being transported to—another world, a sort of alternate universe of magic buses, incense, and brightly colored, indigo worlds populated by fools on hills, lonely hearts and befuddled submarine commanders.
Was it just marketing? Was I simply an early sucker in what has become mass marketed musical muscle? Perhaps, but I seriously doubt it.
With the Beatles, I always had the sense they, like me, were unique. They, as was I, were bolder, more original, more creative, better looking and less pretentious than, say, The Monkees. As I moved through adolescence, my memories of those early years were potent forces as a touchstone. No pain was too great, no sorrow so severe, that a good dose of Revolver or Rubber Soul would not solve (or, as the case may be, a good dose of Pink Floyd.) And let's not forget Abbey Road or The White Album. I can remember a trip to Spain with dad in 1974. It was, perhaps, my darkest childhood hour, coming on the heels of a nasty divorce. But I'll never forget Revolution #9 playing over and over again in my head as I watched the rainy plains pass by from my seat aboard those Talgo trains: "Numba nine, numba nine, numba nine."
I've always loved The Rolling Stones, The Who, Kinks, etc., the landmark 60s and 70s-era bands. It's hard to argue with the Stones' informal coronation as Greatest Rock Band in the World, a title they seem to live up to, even after 46 years. When a family friend in 1972 gave me the Stones' Sticky Fingers, I was ecstatic. And I have no quarrel with anyone who proclaims U-2 to be the Biggest Band in the world today, or as the English say, the most massive. Bono's earned his nuts.
Yet, it's difficult for me to compare The Beatles to anything else because they were unique. No other popular band had achieved the depth and breadth, the eclectic mix of musical styles The Beatles had in their decade-long run. If the 60s represented the greatest social transformation in my memory, then The Beatles matched that transformation individually and as organism.
Each part of that organism had a significant role to play in the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist, that made the 60s the 60s.
Though it's probably an over-simplification as metaphor, it is, to a certain degree, apt to say that Paul expressed the heart, John the mind, George the soul, Ringo the body. The whole represented far more than the sum of its parts.
I was a 21-year-old college junior in December 1980 when Lennon was killed and I remember the day as if it were yesterday. At the time, I was a staff writer for the Oregon Daily Emerald, the University of Oregon's daily student paper. Passing through the newsroom that day, I overheard a female production staffer remark, "that's the last nail in the coffin of the '60s," likely a reference to Lennon and the Reagan revolution that was imminent. For me, it was a reminder that it was time to move on from those childhood summers.

1 comment:

Bernardo said...

Your essay took me back to my childhood summers too. Every time I hear a Beatles song it evokes a memory connected to that time. We all grew up with them. A heartwarming essay.