The Beatles

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Today I am grateful for The Beatles.  I cannot believe it’s been 50 years since they changed the musical world and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Fifty years.  Where does the time go?  Now I sound like my mother, help us all!

When they appeared my family, along with every other family in the country, turned on the old console TV early so the tubes could warm up and make the center dot turn into the magic of strangers in our living room.  My friend, Joann, was a nut case for The Beatles.  She had every record, she had the Nehru jackets, she had the hats.  She was beside herself to see them on TV.  I knew who they were from listening to her 45’s but I didn’t have any records of my own so I wasn’t as intense a fan as she was.

I remember sitting on the floor with my sister, in our house on David Avenue, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  When that twitchy, weird, old guy, Ed Sullivan introduced them the crowd went ballistic.  My dad started to laugh and talk about how ridiculous they looked.  My mom shook her head and said, “For Pete sake get that hair outta your eyes!”  Then she looked at us and said, “Do you LIKE that?”  I did like the music, but I, too, thought their hair was bizarre.

Watching “The Beatles: The Night they Changed the World” about their appearance on Ed Sullivan fifty years ago, I couldn’t help notice young people in the audience trying to sing along to lyrics they don’t know.  How could they know them?  They weren’t even a twinkle in their daddy’s eye fifty years ago because he probably wasn’t born, yet either!  I wanted to tell them to please don’t.  Just listen if you don’t know the words.  It’s embarrassing to not know the lyrics to at least a few Beatles tunes.  We baby boomers got this one.  We’ll sing them for you.  This was music that was created to sing along with. . .music where the lyrics aren’t garbled by high tech gymnastics. . .music where every note was perfect and every lyric understandable, without Googling them.  Every other word wasn’t the Eff-Bomb, or about hurting someone, or abusing power, or painful-rip-your-head-off-sex.  Each song told a story.  They didn’t all sound alike.  And they’ve withstood the test of time.

I remember an amazing experience I had when I helped work on an original musical pageant. Sitting in a small office, next to a living room with a baby grand piano, I was privileged to encourage two artists, my friends David and Bob, as they sorted out the melody, chords and lyrics of songs David was writing and Bob was arranging.  It was awesome, inspirational, exhausting and rejuvenating.  Some sessions turned into all-nighters.  Some involved a little libation.  Some required tears, or maniacal laughter, or moments of madness, or a slide down an ice hill on a rickety toboggan. The end result was brilliant. . .not in spite of, but because of the journey.

Watching Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in the audience, I wondered if they were transported back to where they were when they wrote the songs that were being performed.  Were they sitting on a curb, or in someone’s basement, or at a kitchen table, or on a train, or in a pub? Sure they were.  Because creativity creeps in and slaps you across the face even if the only thing you have available to write on is a greasy placemat or a cardboard coaster.  That’s the muse, baby!  Viva-la-muse!

Remember. . .transport yourself back to that dance, that boy or girl, that parked car. . .and listen. . .hum along to. . .“I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, “In My Live”, “She Loves You”, “Yesterday”, “We Can Work it Out”, “Fool on a Hill”, “Standing There”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Imagine”, “Yellow Submarine”, “Get Back”, “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band”, “A Little Help From My Friends”, and “Let it Be”.  And we all remember the never-ending, “Hey Jude”, which was too long if you were dancing with a boy you didn’t like and not long enough if you were with the boy of your dreams.

Maybe we should get the leaders of all nations together, Google the lyrics and have them sing along with us. . .and The Beatles, come on, all together now “. . .all we are saying. . . is give peace a chance.”  Repeat a billion times.  Then do it.