I haven’t taken the guitar(s) off the wall a half-dozen times since we moved into our new house a year and a half ago, and as I marked the end of my 61st cycle of seasons Saturday morning, I found myself listening to the homemade recordings I’ve made through the years with those guitars.
Once I fancied myself an up-and-coming singer-songwriter, but there’s something about being a musician that I never quite mastered, summed up by the observation that if you’re not living it and practicing hard every day, you’re talking about a hobby, not a vocation.
Every so often the passion would catch me, and I’d write some songs, then sit down with a tape recorder (or, in recent years, a computer) and make an “album.” I’ve made a couple of dozen of these albums since the fever first hit around 1973, although just four in the last 20 years. Most recently, after a burst of musical creativity in 2009, I put 12 new songs together and actually put the album, Ten Thousand Days, out for sale, with mixed results. Rightfully mixed: It’s a homemade album. Professional musicians would call these demos. Music is a hobby for me.
But I like some of these songs and albums, and I just enjoy sharing them and saying, “Hey, listen to this.” So here they are, or at least two of my favorites and a “greatest hits” collection. Buy my books and stories and newspapers; these are for fun and my gift to you.
People are irresistibly attracted to lists, from to-do lists to the list of 50 ways to leave your lover. Music lists seem to be most irresistible of all, from the Hot 100 to America’s Top 40.
So it was inevitable, given the musical-historical significance of this week, that more than one person would come up with Beatles lists. Elysa Gardner of USA Today wrote her personal list of the 12 best Beatles songs. There have been several rankings of the 13 Beatles albums listed in order, with Revolver, Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road generally taking the top spot depending on the list.
So I felt the impulse to join the fray, although I will limit my list to the more familiar Top 10 – I suspect Ms. Gardner was unable to make the final two cuts.
There was an indefinable thrill upon first hearing a Beatles song – first the thrill of discovery: “A new Beatles song!” and then the thrill of listening to what new aural delights the band had injected into the composition this time: “Holy cow, listen to what they’ve done this time!” They were the leading innovators in a very innovative period of modern pop/rock music.
The first time I ever got that thrill was when I first heard “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” on WABC Radio from New York. The last time, amazingly enough, was in the 1990s as I played my new vinyl reissue of Beatles for Sale, having skipped the American version Beatles VI so many years earlier, and I heard the first syncopated beats of “What You’re Doing”: OMG, I thought, a Beatles song I never heard before.
So there is no real scientific or musical-knowledge basis to this list of my favorite Beatles songs (which, after the very top of the list, probably would vary from day to day) – this is just the general order in which I recall that burst of energy most vividly.
1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
2. A Day in the Life
3. Eleanor Rigby
4. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
5. Yellow Submarine
6. Penny Lane
7. Good Morning Good Morning
8. I Feel Fine
9. She Loves You
10. I Should Have Known Better
To make that list, I needed to overlook “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be,” “Yesterday,” the song “Sgt. Pepper” itself, “In My Life,” and half of the songs that Ms. Gardner put in her top 12. Tomorrow I may remember the first time I heard “Hey Jude” – holy cow, this thing never ends! – and put that one in the top-10 list. Or the memory of my heart melting for “In My Life” or the joyous bounce of “With a Little Help From My Friends” starting without a pause from the new album’s first song – the Beatles gave us so many sweet surprises.
And for most of us in that generation, it started here the night of Feb. 9, 1964:
I found an interesting little essay online the other day called “Shut Your Dumb Stupid Mouth About The Beatles Being Overrated” that I really
can’t recommend in this venue because the author has a severe case of
potty mouth. But if you can accept that ranting and excessive profanity
sometimes have a place, you might get some sense of catharsis.
The
writer’s main point is that as influential as The Beatles have been on
popular music, it’s OK to say they’re not your proverbial cup of tea,
but you’re dead wrong if you believe they are “overrated.”
I
suspect you really had to be there when the Beatles happened to fully
appreciate how much they changed the landscape — and how suddenly.
There’s a lot of debate about exactly when the rock ’n’ roll era began:
It was sometime in the 1950s, but the change was gradual. Not so with
the Beatles.
Nope,
there was popular music through December 1963, and then “I Wanna Hold
Your Hand” struck like lightning. On Jan. 18, 1964, the song debuted on
the Billboard Hot 100, and it was No. 1 by Feb. 1. By the time the band
appeared on the Ed Sullivan show Feb. 9, 1964, the musical world was
changed.
Really. There’s pre-Beatles rock, and there’s post-Beatles rock. It happened in a matter of days, like throwing a switch.
So
you may listen to the Beatles and feel “meh” or even actively dislike
the music, but you really can’t deny their tremendous influence on
popular music. You had to be there.
That
boggling sound coming from the second floor of the Advocate is my mind
trying to come to grips with the fact that it is now 50 years since all
that happened. I was able to deny that I was aging until I realized I
hold memories that are a half-century old.
That sounds like a long time. And it is.
It’s
long enough to go to high school and graduate, move 1,000 miles to go
to college and graduate, take a half-dozen jobs talking to people on the
radio, work for three newspapers — wait, four — make scores of mistakes
and achieve a handful of triumphs, not the least of which was finding
the girl of my dreams in time to spend the last 17 of those 50 years
with her.
It’s
long enough for the United States to go through nine presidents and the
Green Bay Packers to win four Super Bowls — heck, it’s long enough to
come up with the idea of the Super Bowl in the first place.
And
it’s long enough to hear thousands of songs on the radio, on records,
eight-tracks, cassettes, CDs, computers and smartphones — iTunes says I
own more than two weeks of music just in digital form.
But
some of the things that happened during that half-century don’t seem so
long ago and far away. To those who experienced it the first time
around, the opening guitar chords of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” still
evoke that sense of “Whoa! Who is THAT?”
My
favorite movie is “It’s A Wonderful Life,” which concludes with our
hard-luck hero getting a glimpse of what the world would be like without
him. It’s hard to imagine what the world would be like if the Beatles
never existed — unless you lived in that world. For better or for worse,
in January 1964 the creative possibilities of popular music were
expanded dramatically.
It’s
been fun to watch it all happen, especially the part where holy cow,
that was a half-century ago. I guess time really does fly when you’re
having fun.
