Beatleombus
I am a Beatle fan. I'm a Beatlemanic. I spent way too much time in high school listening to them, reading about them and spending way too much money at this silly place than I'd care to remember.
Why? (i've given myself an hour to state the reasons)
Obviously, the music. I have no music training besides a couple years playing rythym guitar - which I stopped after realizing it only takes about 3 chords to impress a drunk 18-year old girl - and about 20 lessons on the banjo; both packed up and forgotten in my daughter's closet so I will not try to analyze that.
If you want that, go bore yourself here. I will go for the easier route (the route most Rock critics take): what the Beatles meant to me and why I delved into that particular pop culture alley way about 1985. But to suffice it to say that the music was just plain good. It was hummable. That's all.
Anyone can get hooked on the music, but me being a dorky overthinking 15 year old, I had to take it further. Here's what I came up with.
First, I remember reading a bio of Lennon (well before I got my hands on the Bible) that spoke of his troubled youth and mispent adolescence and his failures at school. Five years after the guy's death I was intrigued by what I saw as a predetermism that would make John Wesley proud.
I imagined that a teacher or neighbor of Lennon's during his boyhood spent the 60s and 70s on the other side of the moon and never heard of the Beatles, or Yoko, or all that. If someone had told him he was shot down in the street, the man would probably shrugged, thought back to Lennon the Teddy Boy, Lennon the drop out, Lennon the orphan and said, "You could have seen that coming."
It was almost as if Lennon couldn't have escaped his fate no matter what he accomplished. Deep thoughts for a rich suburban kid in the mid-west, eh?
While the music grabbed my attention and overthought Beatle theology got me thinking, the real reason for my facination of the Beatles is that they represent all of adolescence.
No matter which Beatle you looked at or which phase of their career you listened to, some part of every boy's adolescence was there.
Look at John again, he's was there as a model for the cool loner type. Distance gaze (caused by this not wearing glasses on stage) and dangling tie (couldn't tie one) he looked the tough guy. We all want to be cool at some time. That wanting makes us not cool, but at least we could look to John and see how it's done. At least he wasn't McCartney.
Paul seemed, to me at least, the Good Guy. The guy every mother liked and he was good with his girlfriends and he was just great. He looked good, he was smart and polite and always had a girl and he was never me. Maybe every once in a while. I think every decent guy quietly strove to be this guy. This guy lead a great life was usually happy, made middle management and retired to some island in South Carolina. He's the guy I sort of wanted to be when things were tough but never would. I could at times fake it. I think I've become him.
George was me. Looking for attention but not getting it, standing in the background, overshadowed, doing my own thing. Shining every once in a while. To get notice you have to do something strange like bring in a Sitar (or bring the Beatle tape on the road trip in 1986).
A then there was Ringo. When I was in those silly who cares if I'm not cool (that makes me cool) phase I was Ringo. Ringo didn't care if the homework wasn't done, Ringo took the puff when the jay was passed, Ringo had a good time. Ringo didn't care about anything and life would take care of him - and it normally does.
So I was always a Beatle, at least one of them. They represented 4 distinct personalities that I always was. Of course, these distinct personalities made them wonderfully marketable, or was I just marketing some personalities?
And then there was the music.
Really, what is adolescence but a quick change of moods and interests and desires and focuses. Most bands then and now only focus on one aspect. You get the every song is about a girl crap that boy bands the last few years focus on but is just another in a long tradition (Hey, Hey, We're the Monkees), or you get the Stone "I want to Screw You" songs, or the artsy folksy Belushi smashes their guitar types (Hi, Dave Matthews!), or dorky overwrought political activism. But the Beatles had it all and did it all.
Youthful puppy love? It starts at 14 or so and ends....? Then you've got She Love You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc. From If I Fell:
How about that stage of youth where you do have great big thoughts like linking John Lennon with predeterminism? They've got plenty of that: Across the Universe, Dear Prudence, We Can Work it Out, even Here, There and Everywhere, and most especially A Day in the Life. Heck, just throw in all of Pepper and most of Magical Mystery.
Youthful Anger and I want to Rock? Helter Skelter, Revolution (single version), Run for Your Life
But they went beyond the obvious. Everyone had that first girlfriend that seemed like more than puppy love. It seemed "serious" with serious overtones and you were really committed and this is the one and all that. You know the one, the one you ended up making out with her friend after getting drunk on 3 beers at your buddy's house. That one. Then you have Girl:
All joking aside, they put aside silly love songs (at least until 1976) at times and went for mature themes: Norwegian Wood, In My Life, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (A gay theme? Yes.), Let it Be, Hey Jude, etc.
I followed Lennon into the solo albums. Listening now, it's kind of sad, but he address that overt political activism that some kids starts to embrace. I own - on vinyl and CD no less - the Sometime in New York City album. Look at those song titles.
Okay, I've over the hour that I budgeted for this so I'm cutting it off. Sorry for lack of proof reading and links.
How does a conservative mid-western guy growing up in the 80s get hooked on the Beatles. A little opened mindedness (not easy in those particular suburbs) and a realization that the Beatles are adolescence. They define it and they wrote a complete soundtrack for it. I hear the 60s geezers sometimes talk about how the Beatles were the soundtrack for their generation. Not true. Every generation is pretty much the same with the same hormones and emotions and thoughts and experiences. There's nothing new under the sun.
The Beatles didn't write the soundtrack for that generation, but for all generations.
Why do I still listen? Because it takes me back to that time, that adolescence when hopes were higher, pains more deeply felt, new experiences of love, sex, drugs, booze, freedom, responsibility were coming at me every day. It lifts me out of the mindset of the guy with the mortgage with the private school tuition due and the underfunded retirement account worrying about some change in his health insurance.
and that feels good.
Here's my personal favorite Beatles song, I'm only Sleeping from Revolver:
Back to Main Page
Why? (i've given myself an hour to state the reasons)
Obviously, the music. I have no music training besides a couple years playing rythym guitar - which I stopped after realizing it only takes about 3 chords to impress a drunk 18-year old girl - and about 20 lessons on the banjo; both packed up and forgotten in my daughter's closet so I will not try to analyze that.
If you want that, go bore yourself here. I will go for the easier route (the route most Rock critics take): what the Beatles meant to me and why I delved into that particular pop culture alley way about 1985. But to suffice it to say that the music was just plain good. It was hummable. That's all.
Anyone can get hooked on the music, but me being a dorky overthinking 15 year old, I had to take it further. Here's what I came up with.
First, I remember reading a bio of Lennon (well before I got my hands on the Bible) that spoke of his troubled youth and mispent adolescence and his failures at school. Five years after the guy's death I was intrigued by what I saw as a predetermism that would make John Wesley proud.
I imagined that a teacher or neighbor of Lennon's during his boyhood spent the 60s and 70s on the other side of the moon and never heard of the Beatles, or Yoko, or all that. If someone had told him he was shot down in the street, the man would probably shrugged, thought back to Lennon the Teddy Boy, Lennon the drop out, Lennon the orphan and said, "You could have seen that coming."
It was almost as if Lennon couldn't have escaped his fate no matter what he accomplished. Deep thoughts for a rich suburban kid in the mid-west, eh?
While the music grabbed my attention and overthought Beatle theology got me thinking, the real reason for my facination of the Beatles is that they represent all of adolescence.
No matter which Beatle you looked at or which phase of their career you listened to, some part of every boy's adolescence was there.
Look at John again, he's was there as a model for the cool loner type. Distance gaze (caused by this not wearing glasses on stage) and dangling tie (couldn't tie one) he looked the tough guy. We all want to be cool at some time. That wanting makes us not cool, but at least we could look to John and see how it's done. At least he wasn't McCartney.
Paul seemed, to me at least, the Good Guy. The guy every mother liked and he was good with his girlfriends and he was just great. He looked good, he was smart and polite and always had a girl and he was never me. Maybe every once in a while. I think every decent guy quietly strove to be this guy. This guy lead a great life was usually happy, made middle management and retired to some island in South Carolina. He's the guy I sort of wanted to be when things were tough but never would. I could at times fake it. I think I've become him.
George was me. Looking for attention but not getting it, standing in the background, overshadowed, doing my own thing. Shining every once in a while. To get notice you have to do something strange like bring in a Sitar (or bring the Beatle tape on the road trip in 1986).
A then there was Ringo. When I was in those silly who cares if I'm not cool (that makes me cool) phase I was Ringo. Ringo didn't care if the homework wasn't done, Ringo took the puff when the jay was passed, Ringo had a good time. Ringo didn't care about anything and life would take care of him - and it normally does.
So I was always a Beatle, at least one of them. They represented 4 distinct personalities that I always was. Of course, these distinct personalities made them wonderfully marketable, or was I just marketing some personalities?
And then there was the music.
Really, what is adolescence but a quick change of moods and interests and desires and focuses. Most bands then and now only focus on one aspect. You get the every song is about a girl crap that boy bands the last few years focus on but is just another in a long tradition (Hey, Hey, We're the Monkees), or you get the Stone "I want to Screw You" songs, or the artsy folksy Belushi smashes their guitar types (Hi, Dave Matthews!), or dorky overwrought political activism. But the Beatles had it all and did it all.
Youthful puppy love? It starts at 14 or so and ends....? Then you've got She Love You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc. From If I Fell:
If I fell in love with youSex? I Want You, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, I Saw Her Standing There:
would you promis to be true
She was just seventeenAt 35, I do and it makes me uncomfortable.
and you know what I mean
How about that stage of youth where you do have great big thoughts like linking John Lennon with predeterminism? They've got plenty of that: Across the Universe, Dear Prudence, We Can Work it Out, even Here, There and Everywhere, and most especially A Day in the Life. Heck, just throw in all of Pepper and most of Magical Mystery.
I look at you all, see the love there that's sleepingI don't know what it means but it must mean something important.
While my guitar gently weeps.
Youthful Anger and I want to Rock? Helter Skelter, Revolution (single version), Run for Your Life
But they went beyond the obvious. Everyone had that first girlfriend that seemed like more than puppy love. It seemed "serious" with serious overtones and you were really committed and this is the one and all that. You know the one, the one you ended up making out with her friend after getting drunk on 3 beers at your buddy's house. That one. Then you have Girl:
Was she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure?Cool! (BTW: The background vocals on girl is the work tit repeated over and over. Deep.) Toss in Yesterday and I'm a Loser and any thing from the Rubber Soul or Revolver albums.
Did she understand it when they said,
That a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he's dead.
All joking aside, they put aside silly love songs (at least until 1976) at times and went for mature themes: Norwegian Wood, In My Life, You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (A gay theme? Yes.), Let it Be, Hey Jude, etc.
I followed Lennon into the solo albums. Listening now, it's kind of sad, but he address that overt political activism that some kids starts to embrace. I own - on vinyl and CD no less - the Sometime in New York City album. Look at those song titles.
Okay, I've over the hour that I budgeted for this so I'm cutting it off. Sorry for lack of proof reading and links.
How does a conservative mid-western guy growing up in the 80s get hooked on the Beatles. A little opened mindedness (not easy in those particular suburbs) and a realization that the Beatles are adolescence. They define it and they wrote a complete soundtrack for it. I hear the 60s geezers sometimes talk about how the Beatles were the soundtrack for their generation. Not true. Every generation is pretty much the same with the same hormones and emotions and thoughts and experiences. There's nothing new under the sun.
The Beatles didn't write the soundtrack for that generation, but for all generations.
Why do I still listen? Because it takes me back to that time, that adolescence when hopes were higher, pains more deeply felt, new experiences of love, sex, drugs, booze, freedom, responsibility were coming at me every day. It lifts me out of the mindset of the guy with the mortgage with the private school tuition due and the underfunded retirement account worrying about some change in his health insurance.
and that feels good.
Here's my personal favorite Beatles song, I'm only Sleeping from Revolver:
When I wake up early in the morning,Stay You.
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream
Please don't wake me, no
don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy
I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find, there's no need
Please don't spoil my day
I'm miles away
And after all
I'm only sleeping
Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time
Lying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feeling
Please don't spoil my day
I'm miles away
And after all
I'm only sleeping
Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time
When I wake up early in the morning,
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream
Please don't wake me, no
don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping
Back to Main Page
posted by Howard McEwen, CFA at Sunday, July 17, 2005
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