Their Long and Winding Road

The first thing I always do when The New Yorker arrives in the mail is search the table of contents for either David Sedaris or Paul Rudnick. This week? Bingo! Sedaris is featured. It’s one of his really good ones, especially if you think Me Talk Pretty One Day is his best book. (Sorry, I’d give you the online link, but I guess The New Yorker keeps its best stuff off-line, and this article isn’t available.) Next thing I look for is some wonderful, unapologetic, scathing critique of our current administration. Bingo, again! Jeffrey Goldberg gives us “Party Unfaithful,” which could also have been called “The Decline and Fall of Rove, Gingrich, et al.” These two articles and a very funny “Shouts and Murmurs” would have been enough to satisfy me, but then I encountered “When I’m Sixty-Four,” John Colapinto’s all-absorbing piece on Paul McCartney (another article with no link).

Think and say what you will about The Beatles, but it’s nearly impossible to deny the influence they had on pop and rock music, not to mention pop culture in general. As anyone in my family can tell you, Bob and I love to have rowdy debates conversations that begin thus, “Which authors of the past fifty years will people still be reading 100 years from now?” or “Which musicians of the past fifty years will people still be listening to 100 years from now?” I had a friend in high school whose father used to say to us, “That crap you listen to, no one’s going to know who The Beatles were 200 years from now. They won’t last the way Mozart has.” (We were actually listening to David Bowie and Talking Heads. The Beatles were somewhat cool and retro, but not quite yet, or at least not yet enough for us to bring them out and play them at teenaged gatherings in parents’ “rec rooms.” But that’s beside the point.) Bob and I would beg to differ with my friend’s father.

I can honestly say I’ve had a “love-hate” relationship with the Beatles all my life. After all, they arrived in The States in the same month and year I was born. Naturally, for the first five or so years of my life, I hated them, because my parents did (they were the sorts of parents who were “shocked” by The Beatles’ “ugliness”). Then I discovered those great Muppets’ hits I’d seen a few times on Sesame Street, “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine” and “An Octupus’s Garden,” weren't by the Muppets at all, but were actually by The Beatles. I broke rank with my parents (one of my first little acts of rebellion, I guess). Besides, by then, my sisters were beginning to acquire Beatles albums (as well as albums by even “uglier” groups). Despite the fact the band had broken up, they still seemed to be coming out with new albums every year.

Looking back on it, I’m so aware of how influenced our culture was by these four young men. I doubt there were many popular cartoons and sit-coms of the era that didn’t have at least one episode that somehow alluded to The Beatles. Even Gilligan’s Island, those castaways who should have been completely unaffected by pop culture, must have had a couple of Beatles albums stowed on the S.S. Minnow (the boat hauling three life-times of goods on its “three-hour tour”). I’m amazed anyone who lived through that era could have claimed this group wouldn’t go down in history. I mean, did half the world race out and buy Mozart-style wigs when he was alive?

The summer when I was eleven or so, our friends who would eventually move to South Africa, Ian, and I listened to Abbey Road every single day. We played Pay Day, listened to Abbey Road, and drew pictures of the octopus’s garden. I know we did other things that summer (the grand finale was a performance for all the parents of a dance choreographed by my sister Lindsay to The Four Seasons’ “December, 1963” – a band certainly influenced by The Beatles), but that’s mostly what I remember about that summer.

Revolver was the first album (not 45 but album. Those of you who are old enough, remember how important the transition from 45 to album was) I ever owned. My sisters gave it to me for my birthday when I was in junior high. To find out what to get me, they pretended they were doing a survey for their school newspaper in which they were asking people, “If you could only own one album, what would it be?” I fell hook, line, and sinker, and (I think) surprised them a bit with my answer. They got it for me, though. It was followed not-too-long afterwards by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The problem is, I listened to The Beatles to death. I’m that sort of obsessive music-listener. For instance, I absolutely love the fact that our shameful car (i.e. the one that isn’t a Prius, but take note that it’s still a car, not an S.U.V.) has CD controls on the steering wheel. I can hit the replay button over, and over, and over again. I would have loved to have had such a feature on my record player when I was a teenager. Instead, I’d lift the needle over and over again to repeat my favorite songs. By the time I was in college, having been listening to them over and over in this way all my life, really, I was pretty sick of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I went years without listening to them much (except occasionally, for memory’s sake, I might pull out Abbey Road).

Then I met Bob. Bob, being a number of years older than I, was actually cognizant when The Beatles arrived on the scene. Apparently, his mother loved to relate the story of her little boy’s birthday party in which all the children were dancing to The Beatles (obviously, she’d been a little more hip than my parents). With Bob’s infectious enthusiasm (those of you who know Bob know what I mean about his “infectious enthusiasm.” He can get a person excited about a telephone pole, if he’s excited about it, relating all kinds of unknown facts about the pole and telling stories of its life), it was impossible not to start listening to them again, with a new and older ear that brought a deeper appreciation.

McCartney says it himself in the article. What a miracle it was that these four boys managed to find each other, even more of a miracle that they were in the right place at the right time for the right people to take notice. The Lennon-McCartney collaboration, while it lasted, was a perfect combination of competitive genius. It’s really fun to watch those early clips of them embarking on a journey that would have such an impact. That is, it’s fun to watch them de-boarding that plane as they arrive in America or crooning away on Ed Sullivan’s stage until we remember the tragedies in store for them, the fact that the group wouldn’t last, the fact that so many of the characters in their story would die well before that oh-so-old age of 64.

Time to go dig out Abbey Road again. Of course, it’s on CD now (but, yes, Bob does still have the album). Oh, and apologies to all our family members, but people will most definitely remember The Beatles 100 years from now. After all, it’s already been over 40.