The Beatles in Context

[_Jersey Girl]

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.

;-)

[Guest]

What a topic! For a true-blue baby boomer like me, this is like a 7-course meal. Thank you, Jersey Girl.

I'm not sure I should be giving out a date of birth on the internet, but you can narrow my age down from 67-71. I can still remember the very first time I heard the Beatles on the radio. It was recess in Junior High (Middle School). Somewhere a transistor radio played:

I wanna hold your HAND... Listen to just a few seconds of the song

It was less than 10 seconds, with the word 'hand' coming at you with a raw excitement that was more visceral and direct than the polished Brill Building, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson Top 40 soundscape. Before the Beatles there had always been an adult in the room, or a teenager playing in an adult world, like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. Groups were formed to record in the studio, given hair and makeup tips, and sent out on musical reviews.

The Beatles didn't have that filter. The songs weren't written by person A, vocals by person B, with musicians arranged by Producer C. Their music went from their hearts to their voices and their hands, and you could feel that direct connection. They were Rock and Roll Auteurs. They got me with that 10 second hook. I'm racking my brain for remembering the EXACT first time I heard any other artist or group. With the possible exceptions of Jascha Heifetz or the Portsmouth Sinfornia, I can't think of one.

My whole family watched the Beatles on our console television on Sunday night. My sister (2 years older) screamed. When the Beatles came to San Francisco, she and some friends got into the lobby of the hotel where they were staying. There was a maid who was selling pieces of what was allegedly Ringo's pillowcase. I wonder how many torn pieces of bed linen have been sold in hotels across the world to girls desperately wanting to believe there was a molecule of Beatle on it.

I have a theory: Adults think, children feel and teenagers secrete. My sister felt, and I feel this almost biochemical bond with pop music from adolescence. Hearing Ronnie Spector sing Be My Baby still creates a stage in my mind for makeout sessions in the back seat. One time I went to the garage to listen to the top 10 countdown on the car radio, driving a car meant being old enough to be free.

During the time the Beatles were imprinting on me, President Kennedy was assassinated, my mother died of leukemia, my brother joined the Marines and went to Vietnam, our family moved to Los Angeles, and my father remarried into a family that presented its own challenges (another story). My father was being wooed to work for Chuck Barris, who produced the The Newlywed Game. The host of The Newlywed Game was Bob Eubanks, who started as a disc jockey with KRLA. It was his company produced the Beatles shows at the Hollywood Bowl. And was in the summer of 1965 that my father did something, in some ways trying to fill the hole in our hearts over our mother's death coupled with our dislocation to a new city, that gave me bragging rights for one of the great thrills of my life: He got me and my sister into a Beatles press conference at Capital Records, and fourth row seats for the '65 Hollywood Bowl concert.

So some of what you saw in the Ron Howard movie I saw live in '65. The weirdest thing about that concert: We got there about an hour before anyone was on stage. There would be periods of relative quiet, but one girl would scream, it would trigger another, then another, another... waves of pent up hysteria would break in a wave of screams, 30 minutes before anyone had set foot on stage. (Did I save my ticket stub or my program? No. Do I wonder how much they would fetch on Ebay? Yes.)

So for a lot of reasons, the music of the Beatles is a large emotional touchstone in my life. Watching them change and progress musically was sort of like knowing someone's older brothers, watching them grow and changed as I grew and changed.

Before the internet and cable there was radio and television, and the cultural landscape was a lot less varied. Our tastes were more strictly defined. The Beatles were a revolution that broke down the old structure of Tin Pan Alley and made musical auteurs the masters of their own fortunes. It brought in an explosion of creativity. In the quest for authenticity, a lot of bad music and musicians made it ashore in the British Invasion. But the Beatles were extraordinary. I could go on about the writing ability of Lennon/McCarthy, the fortuitous management of Brian Epstein, the unlikely but inventive marriage of George Martin as their producer, but I'm slowing down and need to stop.

Thanks again for the topic. You pushed a large button with me.

[_Res Ipsa]

You two are amazing. Seriously.

[_Jersey Girl]

You showed up!!

I actually waited up for you. I saw that you were online posting and I waited for you to finish hoping that you would post on this thread.

I knew you would do better justice to this than I could. I so love your writing, MeDot, if you published a book of essays I'd be the first in line to get it!

I'll have more to say tomorrow. I just wanted you to know that I wasn't joking when I put out the call to you to post on thread!

Not even close to joking. I waited for you!

I thought you might go for the topic and darn if you didn't!

[_Jersey Girl]

You two are amazing. Seriously.

Explain please.

[_moksha]

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...

;-)

Even to this day, Norwegian Woods stands as my favorite elevator music.

[_Jersey Girl]

MeDot did you see the Ron Howard film?

[_Jersey Girl]

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...

;-)

Even to this day, Norwegian Woods stands as my favorite elevator music.

Your soul is obviously made of rubber, flightless bird.

[_Res Ipsa]

You two are amazing. Seriously.

Explain please.

Articulate and passionate about the music. It’s a joy to read.

[_moksha]

Your soul is obviously made of rubber, flightless bird.

Polybutadiene synthetic rubber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzYE6P5NxSw