The Beatles in Context
Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 10:03 pm
This isn't going to be well thought out. I know good and well that if MeDot were to take it on he'd do far better justice to it than I ever could, but I feel like writing so here it comes. (MeDot come save me and spare these folks of my writing!)
Last year while finishing up my family genealogy work I had bits of information on lists, random sticky notes, and partial copies of data bases, when I decided to create a timeline to plug it all into. I color coded people and put my great grandmother (who was the motivation for the work and later my trip to Scotland) in red font.
And, when I looked down the page I saw what I never had seen before and it answered my question about why when the old folks talked about her, the message conveyed to me at least, was always that she was internally strong. I even put that impression in a written statement to my own child years about her great-great grandmother before I ever started serious family research because she is named for her and shares some of those same qualities. Although the old folks never said it outright, it came across in every story that they told about her.
When I put the timeline together I suddenly noticed that as a young mother with four children in the house, that her baby and husband died within a year of each other and she apparently tended to her dying husband just before giving birth to her next child. And later looking down the timeline, I noticed for the first time that when she came to the US, her mother and adult son likewise both died within months of each other. Seeing her in her historical context gave me insight that I never could have achieved otherwise. I knew that these events happened but I had never seen them in context until I put them on the timeline. How did she survive all of that? She was strong, she pulled from within, that's how.
What in world does this have to do with the Beatles?
Last week my new video arrived. I had gotten it to watch during our blizzards. It's called "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week-The Touring Years", directed by Ron Howard. I had seen a promo for it and went for it. Howard promised never before seen footage and remixed music. He came through.
In my opinion, the video is simply fab. ;-) It tells the story of their beginnings, their rise to fame, what the touring experience was like from their perspective, the innovations in the music industry they created out of necessity, how they composed their music, what their recording schedule was like, the demands they made regarding segregation and how those demands were met because they had the power to get them met, and ends with their mutually agreed to break up and their last concert on the roof of Abbey Road Studios.
But more than that, Ron Howard put the Beatles into historical context in a way that I had never considered before. I wasn't yet a teenager when the Beatles arrived in the U.S. I well remember watching that first Ed Sullivan show appearance on the black and white television. How excited we were! Me and my cousin. I knew that they were different, fresh and new. I knew that we loved them, she more than I. After her sadistic terrorist of a father burned her Shea Stadium tickets in front of her the following year because he had the power to break her heart and the bastard never missed a chance to exercise it, her mother went out and some how managed to get another set and by god, she went and screamed her lungs out at the Shea in all her Beatlemania glory!
What I didn't realize is that the first Ed Sullivan appearance and the build up before it, all took place within a few months of the Kennedy assassination. Truly, they set foot on US soil just 3 months after JFK was shot in Dallas. The world was blasting apart around us or at least it felt that way. Russia, Cuban missile crisis, civil rights, and later the Vietnam War were things that we lived with daily. We lived with duck and cover drills in grade school when we were too young to fully understand why we were doing it and thank God for that innocence because if we fully understood, we would have been afraid to leave our houses every day of our little lives!
No wonder we kids were excited about the Beatles. Not to mention the fact that Lennon and McCartney composed well over 300 songs that served as the musical score of our lives, no wonder we needed something to get excited about when the whole damn world was frightening, so were we frightened.
No wonder we fell in love with them. No wonder they wrote the underlying narrative that we all grew up with for while we were growing up and surrounded by fearful happenings, they were growing up too, and their music carried us through in ways that appealed to our growing sense of maturity.
No wonder!
I recall religious leaders (even my own) speaking out harshly against the Beatles, how dangerous and evil they were. Well, it seems to me that back in those days we often felt surrounded by danger and evil. We saw it every night with the body counts on the 6 o'clock news and images of body bags being airlifted out of Vietnam. We saw it in new reports from the South where MLKJr was leading the movement for civil rights.
And then we saw him killed, too. And then Bobby.
It often gave a sense that the world was coming apart around us. And all some of us wanted to do was hold your hand and give peace a chance and get by (and get high) with a little help from our friends because we couldn't abide by what the world was dealing us.
Ain't nothing dangerous about that, folks. Like Whoopi Goldberg said in the film, "They were damned amazing!"
Maybe we were amazed because we needed to be. Or maybe we just needed someone to talk to us and sing us through it all.
If you are a Beatles fan, get the video. You won't regret it. I've probably watched it 6 times already. If you took the time to read this entire post, you probably owe it to yourself to see the film.
;-)
Last year while finishing up my family genealogy work I had bits of information on lists, random sticky notes, and partial copies of data bases, when I decided to create a timeline to plug it all into. I color coded people and put my great grandmother (who was the motivation for the work and later my trip to Scotland) in red font.
And, when I looked down the page I saw what I never had seen before and it answered my question about why when the old folks talked about her, the message conveyed to me at least, was always that she was internally strong. I even put that impression in a written statement to my own child years about her great-great grandmother before I ever started serious family research because she is named for her and shares some of those same qualities. Although the old folks never said it outright, it came across in every story that they told about her.
When I put the timeline together I suddenly noticed that as a young mother with four children in the house, that her baby and husband died within a year of each other and she apparently tended to her dying husband just before giving birth to her next child. And later looking down the timeline, I noticed for the first time that when she came to the US, her mother and adult son likewise both died within months of each other. Seeing her in her historical context gave me insight that I never could have achieved otherwise. I knew that these events happened but I had never seen them in context until I put them on the timeline. How did she survive all of that? She was strong, she pulled from within, that's how.
What in world does this have to do with the Beatles?
Last week my new video arrived. I had gotten it to watch during our blizzards. It's called "The Beatles: Eight Days a Week-The Touring Years", directed by Ron Howard. I had seen a promo for it and went for it. Howard promised never before seen footage and remixed music. He came through.
In my opinion, the video is simply fab. ;-) It tells the story of their beginnings, their rise to fame, what the touring experience was like from their perspective, the innovations in the music industry they created out of necessity, how they composed their music, what their recording schedule was like, the demands they made regarding segregation and how those demands were met because they had the power to get them met, and ends with their mutually agreed to break up and their last concert on the roof of Abbey Road Studios.
But more than that, Ron Howard put the Beatles into historical context in a way that I had never considered before. I wasn't yet a teenager when the Beatles arrived in the U.S. I well remember watching that first Ed Sullivan show appearance on the black and white television. How excited we were! Me and my cousin. I knew that they were different, fresh and new. I knew that we loved them, she more than I. After her sadistic terrorist of a father burned her Shea Stadium tickets in front of her the following year because he had the power to break her heart and the bastard never missed a chance to exercise it, her mother went out and some how managed to get another set and by god, she went and screamed her lungs out at the Shea in all her Beatlemania glory!
What I didn't realize is that the first Ed Sullivan appearance and the build up before it, all took place within a few months of the Kennedy assassination. Truly, they set foot on US soil just 3 months after JFK was shot in Dallas. The world was blasting apart around us or at least it felt that way. Russia, Cuban missile crisis, civil rights, and later the Vietnam War were things that we lived with daily. We lived with duck and cover drills in grade school when we were too young to fully understand why we were doing it and thank God for that innocence because if we fully understood, we would have been afraid to leave our houses every day of our little lives!
No wonder we kids were excited about the Beatles. Not to mention the fact that Lennon and McCartney composed well over 300 songs that served as the musical score of our lives, no wonder we needed something to get excited about when the whole damn world was frightening, so were we frightened.
No wonder we fell in love with them. No wonder they wrote the underlying narrative that we all grew up with for while we were growing up and surrounded by fearful happenings, they were growing up too, and their music carried us through in ways that appealed to our growing sense of maturity.
No wonder!
I recall religious leaders (even my own) speaking out harshly against the Beatles, how dangerous and evil they were. Well, it seems to me that back in those days we often felt surrounded by danger and evil. We saw it every night with the body counts on the 6 o'clock news and images of body bags being airlifted out of Vietnam. We saw it in new reports from the South where MLKJr was leading the movement for civil rights.
And then we saw him killed, too. And then Bobby.
It often gave a sense that the world was coming apart around us. And all some of us wanted to do was hold your hand and give peace a chance and get by (and get high) with a little help from our friends because we couldn't abide by what the world was dealing us.
Ain't nothing dangerous about that, folks. Like Whoopi Goldberg said in the film, "They were damned amazing!"
Maybe we were amazed because we needed to be. Or maybe we just needed someone to talk to us and sing us through it all.
If you are a Beatles fan, get the video. You won't regret it. I've probably watched it 6 times already. If you took the time to read this entire post, you probably owe it to yourself to see the film.
;-)
