The Beatles Essays

It's a full moon night and the moon is huge, it bulges like a solar flare washing out the night so the street light seems dull in comparison. On my way home from work tonight I shivered even though it wasn't that cold, thinking about the first time I heard them. It wasn't so much that it changed my life at that time but later I looked back and noticed that it did… it moved me from one place to another. From kiddy records that spun round in yellow plastic and records that I liked that my mom also listened to that had remnants of World War Two. Those sounds on little dynamic needles, that tinny sound that would make me hum along would seem pale- would collect dust after that first time. It was more that the rhythms made sense to a young heart, that the guitars had body and the drums had sizzle that no one, not even the great Elvis had been able to put to plastic.

Over the coming years of collecting black and white pictures of silly snap shots of them, moppy toppy and making smiles out of the music they created. The 45rpm surprises that I could buy at the local Turnstyle dept store for under a dollar. The anticipation of the album's worth of songs that were always perfection in the sound of youth. Gathering, watching as the evolution to rainbow colors would make the black and white of JFK go away and drive the Dylan jambles of another folk rock era. Of the evolution of the revolver that took sunshine into the Tibetan rhythms of sitars and harpsichords. That all meant a glimpse out the window from the high school tennis shoe boredom and made for a big speaker rattle that the neighbors should hear because it was the Music with a capitol M. Apples and submarines and meter maids and newspaper taxi's that slipped by the love songs into the maturity of a innocent drug. Mustaches and sunglasses and mushrooms and a burst of religion as clear as the walrus they played.

I bled for more, sucking up imposters that would claim free love and incense and peppermints with wheels of fire. But it was never the same as them, never the same quality and heart. But more than that it was the history that it reminded me of, the here to there that marked the sixties like milestones to remember everything that changes.

Ed Sullivan seemed like forever before it, when I was still wearing Roy Rogers's shirts and making fun of the era that had gone. Now I was part of the band, Billy Shears with a rag top, not a mop top. How much older was I really? Did it seem that long? Remembering that Christmas, with the double album washing back and forth in my headphones. I could hear the fabric of the four separate people that made up the group. Each of them making there own statement it seemed silly that they called the record by just the name of the group, when it seemed so separate in so many ways. But it was Christmas; it was the numbered issue of a long enjoyable set of songs that shifted from hard to soft, from mystical to pastoral all in one clear path.

The days numbered, I will never forget the moment when the plastic came off the swan song of the boys from Liverpool, the good-bye of the love you take equal to the love you make. I had grown up and could see that I would have to choose other friends for my turntable, because these would be done, these would be that last great weekend before going off to school. That lift of the glass that said that this was good.

Like old friends you phone later, it would never quite be the same when you would get the solo records, never quite have the Rogers for the Hammerstein. There were hints of the edge, but just like that long ago friend- it was like checking into see how the family was going. A new wife, travels and new friends to play the music with. But it wasn't the same as the old gang that had started it all. The 4 guys that had filled that memory book with days gone by.

So now my son looks back with me on a group that was born 20 years before him- yet had fundamentally weaved foggy pictures of the audition on the roof, of the cartoon submarines, of the lullaby that I sang to all of my children. "Now its time to say Goodnights" and a pats on the head with some golden slumbers. They didn't know I was singing them my childhood- handing them a piece of what I had way before they were even thought of. I loved them so I wanted to let them in on the secret.

So how could I explain the pain of gunshots in a December New York night that took away a piece of something so close to my memory? How could I explain each song that draws its own little picture of what must be a million little home movies in my head. Who can share those with me? It's the vacuum of the lost innocence of the lost spirit that made me feel so hollow. That fact that for 5 years he had shared his life, and not his music to be a father like me, with a baby boy who would be a part of what he was. Now it was gone, shot away only to be sown together with computers from voices long gone for one more try by the remaining three. But now that was even farther away.

Once again the remembrance of an age long ago when the stage filled with screams and my parents winced with the pain of the coming tide, out of which they would ever lose the Eisenhower 50's/ Once again the sitar and smoke of the paisley tie. Once more the tight cords of the Clapton collaborations and the beards of the material world. Here it was, age and cancer, wallowing in the pool of youth and dragging it to the age of seniority and" family around him".

It was time to make the 4 into 2, time to make remind us all of the way that all things must pass. The way that the more things change the more they can stay the same. More than anything the once again resurgence of the fabulous group to the "topper most top" for one more generation to enjoy had to be sweet justice to the remaining boys. But unfortunately it could not reissue the original memories that went with the first time that it was ever heard on the AM radios of the beaches and cars. The CD quality sound would not grasp the meaning of the moment of anticipation of turning the record over to know more of the order in which the songs would be drawn. That was the private memories of the time that I was there. There to pour out the $4 for the mono and $5 for the stereo. The Christmas and birthday lists that were easily spelled out with the newest releases hit the charts at #1.

So here I am driving home from my grown up job on this full moon night, the kind where the moon looks like a large circular balloon hugging orange on the horizon. Its cold, but not that cold. The radio is playing the dedication for a man who helped to influence all that came after him, even to the day of the music that my children call new. Here's to another goodbye to a piece of that soundtrack that made up my leap to the place I am now. I can't forget that movie, that combination of harmony and melody that made my younger years a solid chain of scenes and snapshots. Not a violent death, it's a quiet death for the "quiet one" that stood and played the Carl Perkins roll offs and the Day Tripper power chords and smiled.

Goodnight Beatle George. Say hello to Beatle John. Artists that will make the world a better place because they were asking for war to be over, to honor your religion, to find love wherever you could. To stick to what you believe and not follow the formula that has the musical stars today displaying image instead of substance. Goodbye to the quiet one, who was the middle of the two who had written the classics for the ages.

The drive is over and the night wears on. I can go into the house now and gather my kids around and tell them of a time, when we said it simpler but it really wasn't. I can explain what records meant and when black and white Ed Sullivan became color Yellow Submarine. I can tell them when Sgt Peppers meant the summer of love and Abbey Road was an Everest to the remnants of the 60's and the disco balls of the 70's to come. Can it all be explained? No, because they will have their heroes too, albeit the speed in which they come and go seems as fast as the internet that they arrive on. They can't know about the Beatles, like I can't know about bobbysoxers. It's an era that contains itself. The difference is that 40 years after invasion came it is still ringing true in the Blink 182 reality that they call something else. The difference is that no matter how far away we get from the Mersey beat or the Long and Winding Road, there will be a guitar lick, or a harmony, a drum beat or a back beat that will echo the fabulous four. Only they won't know it. It will be the tribute that will keep George Harrison and John Lennon alive without anyone knowing.

That's ok, that is what will make it alright to go on. That's what will make me smile with every song that I hear from them together or from John's Imagine, George's My Sweet Lord, Paul's Silly Love Songs or Ringo's Don't Come Easy.