"We were honest with each other and we were honest about the music. The music was positive. It was positive in love. They did write - we all wrote - about other things, but the basic Beatles message was Love....The Beatles were just four guys that loved each other. That's all they'll ever be.”
Ringo Starr
from The Beatles Anthology
September the eleventh need not be an unhappy anniversary in every respect. Here's living proof: It was fifty years ago today....
Ringo Starr
from The Beatles Anthology
September the eleventh need not be an unhappy anniversary in every respect. Here's living proof: It was fifty years ago today....
John Lennon
Paul McCartney
George Harrison
Ringo Starr
A half century a
go today, the Beatles were an obscure band of pop musicians known only to the clientele of a handful of establishments in Liverpool, England, and a couple of seedy stripper nightclubs in Hamburg, Germany. September 11, 1962 would find them two-hundred miles south of their home turf in London. Arriving at the EMI recording facility on Abbey Road, they set up their gear inside of Studio Number Two. This was the opportunity they had been dreaming of. They were actually going to make a record! Not only that, but it was going to be released by Parlophone - a major British label known primarily for the records of Peter Sellers, the comedian they loved the best. At ten AM the session commenced. Within ten takes it was in the can; a modest but catchy little tune called Love Me Do.
The passage of a half century should give us pause. We are as removed in time from that day as the Beatles themselves were removed from September 11, 1912. Although they would not enter America's consciousness for another year-and-a-half, I was lucky.
In the late spring/early summer of 1963 my brothers and I were first introduced to the Beatles through our English nanny, a nineteen-year-old Londoner named Margaret. She loved music and among her collection of 45 RPM's was something on the Vee-Jay label called, Do You Want to know a Secret. I clearly remember that I liked it. The child-like simplicity of John Lennon's lyric ("Do you promise not to tell?/Let me whisper in your ear") was the sort of thing that would appeal to a little boy not quite having reached his fifth birthday. There was no picture sleeve for the record, so the Beatles would remain faceless - and nameless - to us for another year.
I read the news today, oh boy....
Their timing w
as perfect. When they finally touched down on these shores in February of 1964, Americans were still emotionally bent over from the psychological blow rendered to them less than three months earlier when a young and beloved president was shot and killed in Texas. Everyone who was alive in 1963 say they remember where they were and what they were doing when they received the news that Jack Kennedy was dead. Seventeen years and sixteen days later, people would say the same thing about the moment they heard the news that one of the Beatles had died. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans, you know?.
Other than that joyous music, what appealed to so many of us about these guys was the fact John, Paul, George and Ringo were a frustrated comedy team. Let's face it: they were a riot of laughter. In that dark, late winter of 1964, America needed the Beatles like a tonic.
Although our conscious memory of the living, breathing Fab Four recedes into the mists of history with each passing year, it cannot be argued that their music is still timely. Fifty years after Glenn Miller made his first recording, his output would be seen as a quaint chestnut of a lost and bygone era. That is not the case in this instance - far from it. The Beatles still matter. They're the soundtrack in the lives of people who were not even alive when they thrived.
A few months ago I wrote about Brian Sager, who attended Beatlefest 2012 with me. When he was born in 1994, the lads from Liverpool had not released a new LP in almost a quarter of a century, And yet the convention we attended in Secaucus, New Jersey was packed with kids his age - and even younger - for whom the music of the Beatles defies the decades. They are the gentle and silly ghosts that refuse to fade away into that eternal, unknowable void.
Those of us w
ho are lucky enough to have been alive during the years they ruled the world have our personal memories of the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. I remember the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember seeing A Hard Day's Night at the movie theater around the corner from where I grew up. I remember being at my cousin Mike Cullen's home when I first saw the Sgt. Pepper cover ("Mike! They're wearing mustaches! What's that all about???") I remember exactly where I was standing in the summer of 1968 when I happened upon a girl from the neighborhood who was listening to the new Beatles record, Hey Jude, on a small transistor radio.
I remember my reaction to the news that they had disbanded. It wouldn't last, I remember thinking. Someday they'll Get Back to where they once belonged. I really believed it - for an entire decade I believed it. You may say I'm a dreamer. The dream is over. It ended forever on that horrible night almost thirty-two years ago when John Lennon was forever taken from us because of an insane act of cold-blooded murder.
They would join forces once again - sort of. In 1995 the three surviving Beatles (and then there were two) would get together to overdub their instruments and their voices onto an unfinished Lennon composition. When I first read that it was going to happen I was miffed. John had spent many months in the studio prior to his death. Certainly there were hours of studio-quality recordings they could have worked with, and yet all Yoko Ono provided them with was an old and faded homemade cassette tape. What the hell is wrong with her, I thought.
My opinion changed when I finally heard the finished product. George and Paul sounded very clear, while John, due to the technical limitations of the tape, sounded like he was singing from another dimension, far, far away. Hearing them all together now, those incredible harmonies, I'm afraid I became a bit emotional. The young woman who was with me that night was named Connie. When she saw my reaction she giggled and said, "Oh, Tom! What's the big deal?" I told her that no one who did not live through that era could possibly understand what the Beatles meant to their troubled generation.
Forty-four years
of biographical scholarship informs us that these were four very flawed, imperfect - and in many respects - troubled men. Oh, but that music. That timeless, perfect and beautiful music. I'm willing to forgive these guys just about anything. I was only four months shy of my twelfth birthday when the Beatles broke up forever in 1970. When I was a little boy they were the undisputed princes of the Planet Earth. To me they seemed to be invincible. The deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison proved for all time that they were not. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are today elderly men for whom eternity now beckons. They were - and are - as vulnerable in their grip on this slender thread of life as any of us. Imagine.
I think I'll be spending a good deal of my time today reflecting on their legacy and listening to their music. Fifty five years ago, in the summer of 1957, two teenagers named Lennon and McCartney were casually introduced to one another at a church picnic in Liverpool, England. Can you even imagine how boring this world would be if either one of them had made different plans that day? A world without the Beatles....I can't picture it. You've really got to hand it to fate. You really do.
All you need is love. I'll go to my grave believing it.
go today, the Beatles were an obscure band of pop musicians known only to the clientele of a handful of establishments in Liverpool, England, and a couple of seedy stripper nightclubs in Hamburg, Germany. September 11, 1962 would find them two-hundred miles south of their home turf in London. Arriving at the EMI recording facility on Abbey Road, they set up their gear inside of Studio Number Two. This was the opportunity they had been dreaming of. They were actually going to make a record! Not only that, but it was going to be released by Parlophone - a major British label known primarily for the records of Peter Sellers, the comedian they loved the best. At ten AM the session commenced. Within ten takes it was in the can; a modest but catchy little tune called Love Me Do.The passage of a half century should give us pause. We are as removed in time from that day as the Beatles themselves were removed from September 11, 1912. Although they would not enter America's consciousness for another year-and-a-half, I was lucky.
In the late spring/early summer of 1963 my brothers and I were first introduced to the Beatles through our English nanny, a nineteen-year-old Londoner named Margaret. She loved music and among her collection of 45 RPM's was something on the Vee-Jay label called, Do You Want to know a Secret. I clearly remember that I liked it. The child-like simplicity of John Lennon's lyric ("Do you promise not to tell?/Let me whisper in your ear") was the sort of thing that would appeal to a little boy not quite having reached his fifth birthday. There was no picture sleeve for the record, so the Beatles would remain faceless - and nameless - to us for another year.
I read the news today, oh boy....
Their timing w
as perfect. When they finally touched down on these shores in February of 1964, Americans were still emotionally bent over from the psychological blow rendered to them less than three months earlier when a young and beloved president was shot and killed in Texas. Everyone who was alive in 1963 say they remember where they were and what they were doing when they received the news that Jack Kennedy was dead. Seventeen years and sixteen days later, people would say the same thing about the moment they heard the news that one of the Beatles had died. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans, you know?.Other than that joyous music, what appealed to so many of us about these guys was the fact John, Paul, George and Ringo were a frustrated comedy team. Let's face it: they were a riot of laughter. In that dark, late winter of 1964, America needed the Beatles like a tonic.
Although our conscious memory of the living, breathing Fab Four recedes into the mists of history with each passing year, it cannot be argued that their music is still timely. Fifty years after Glenn Miller made his first recording, his output would be seen as a quaint chestnut of a lost and bygone era. That is not the case in this instance - far from it. The Beatles still matter. They're the soundtrack in the lives of people who were not even alive when they thrived.
A few months ago I wrote about Brian Sager, who attended Beatlefest 2012 with me. When he was born in 1994, the lads from Liverpool had not released a new LP in almost a quarter of a century, And yet the convention we attended in Secaucus, New Jersey was packed with kids his age - and even younger - for whom the music of the Beatles defies the decades. They are the gentle and silly ghosts that refuse to fade away into that eternal, unknowable void.
Those of us w
ho are lucky enough to have been alive during the years they ruled the world have our personal memories of the phenomenon that was Beatlemania. I remember the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember seeing A Hard Day's Night at the movie theater around the corner from where I grew up. I remember being at my cousin Mike Cullen's home when I first saw the Sgt. Pepper cover ("Mike! They're wearing mustaches! What's that all about???") I remember exactly where I was standing in the summer of 1968 when I happened upon a girl from the neighborhood who was listening to the new Beatles record, Hey Jude, on a small transistor radio.I remember my reaction to the news that they had disbanded. It wouldn't last, I remember thinking. Someday they'll Get Back to where they once belonged. I really believed it - for an entire decade I believed it. You may say I'm a dreamer. The dream is over. It ended forever on that horrible night almost thirty-two years ago when John Lennon was forever taken from us because of an insane act of cold-blooded murder.
They would join forces once again - sort of. In 1995 the three surviving Beatles (and then there were two) would get together to overdub their instruments and their voices onto an unfinished Lennon composition. When I first read that it was going to happen I was miffed. John had spent many months in the studio prior to his death. Certainly there were hours of studio-quality recordings they could have worked with, and yet all Yoko Ono provided them with was an old and faded homemade cassette tape. What the hell is wrong with her, I thought.
My opinion changed when I finally heard the finished product. George and Paul sounded very clear, while John, due to the technical limitations of the tape, sounded like he was singing from another dimension, far, far away. Hearing them all together now, those incredible harmonies, I'm afraid I became a bit emotional. The young woman who was with me that night was named Connie. When she saw my reaction she giggled and said, "Oh, Tom! What's the big deal?" I told her that no one who did not live through that era could possibly understand what the Beatles meant to their troubled generation.
Forty-four years
of biographical scholarship informs us that these were four very flawed, imperfect - and in many respects - troubled men. Oh, but that music. That timeless, perfect and beautiful music. I'm willing to forgive these guys just about anything. I was only four months shy of my twelfth birthday when the Beatles broke up forever in 1970. When I was a little boy they were the undisputed princes of the Planet Earth. To me they seemed to be invincible. The deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison proved for all time that they were not. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are today elderly men for whom eternity now beckons. They were - and are - as vulnerable in their grip on this slender thread of life as any of us. Imagine.I think I'll be spending a good deal of my time today reflecting on their legacy and listening to their music. Fifty five years ago, in the summer of 1957, two teenagers named Lennon and McCartney were casually introduced to one another at a church picnic in Liverpool, England. Can you even imagine how boring this world would be if either one of them had made different plans that day? A world without the Beatles....I can't picture it. You've really got to hand it to fate. You really do.
All you need is love. I'll go to my grave believing it.
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Love Me Do by the Beatles - Recorded fifty years ago today!
SUGGESTED READING:
SHOUT!!!
by Phillip Norman
There have been quite a few good biographies of the Beatles written since 1968. This is one of the best.
Here is a link to a piece I wrote two years ago about the tour I made with Brother Pete and our pal, Kevin Swanwick, of the Abbey Road Studios in merrie olde England:
SUGGESTED READING:
SHOUT!!!
by Phillip Norman
There have been quite a few good biographies of the Beatles written since 1968. This is one of the best.
Here is a link to a piece I wrote two years ago about the tour I made with Brother Pete and our pal, Kevin Swanwick, of the Abbey Road Studios in merrie olde England:
http://tomdegan.blogspot.com/2010/05/excellent-adventure-at-abbey-road.html
We followed her down from a bridge by a fountain, and she led us to the door of Studio Two. Life is funny that way, you know?
We followed her down from a bridge by a fountain, and she led us to the door of Studio Two. Life is funny that way, you know?
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
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