I Call Your Name
Originally, I intended for this week’s newsletter to be about The Beach Boys, a companion piece to the one that follows. Instead, I thought it would be good to have this as prelude to that essay. It’s also an opportunity for me expand and revise the piece. February is Beatles month to me because it’s the month they arrived in the U.S. and where things really exploded for them.
It wasn't until my mother was murdered that I fully realized how much she was connected to the Beatles and to my memories of them.
Growing up, I thought of them as more of my band than hers. An absurd notion considering she was alive during their heyday and I arrived long after they called it quits.
On its face, it’s completely ridiculous that fans born decades after the band broke up develop such a personal and intense relationship with them, but that’s the magic of The Beatles.
When those kids sing about “She loves you”, yeah well, you know, she does, she’s any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colours, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the “you” is everybody. And herself. — Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
She was born the day Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform at the National Guard armory in Duluth. Days later, Holly would die in a plane crash. But before that, Holly and Dylan locked eyes, a passing of the torch. Both Dylan and Holly would have a profound impact on The Beatles.
She’d been five-years-old for a week when they landed at the newly renamed JFK Airport in Queens. She was living on E 4th Street in Gravesend, Brooklyn. That was Feb. 7, 1964. I would be born 25 years later, a week after she turned 30.
I got just a hair under 29 years with her. It still wasn’t enough.
You ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Thirty was her first birthday with me. My thirtieth was my first birthday without her. Every year of my 30s will tell me how many years I’ve been without her.
Growing up, her mother didn’t approve of The Beatles. There’s some irony there and perhaps a little hypocrisy as grandma swooned for Frank Sinatra during her bobby soxer days. And as with The Beatles, the adults of that era viewed Ol’ Blue Eyes with disdain. Sinatra himself would later cover “Something” and attribute it to Lennon/McCartney. Not the the first nor last time George was slighted.
I remember mom telling me shortly before she died that her father bought her her first Beatles recording, a 45: “Eight Days A Week” b/w “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party.”
Now I can’t hear that classic A-Side without getting sad.
It’s not the only Beatles song that kills me now: “Julia” and “I Will” wreck me now, too. The former because it’s a song about a dead mother. The latter because an instrumental version of it was used on Delilah’s radio show. Mom was a frequent listener.
And of course John’s solo music is a rough listen: “Mother,” “My Mummy’s Dead” and “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” are all gutpunches.
I don’t remember where I first heard of The Beatles or actually heard their music, but I do remember bringing them up during a trip to Disney World in April 1995. The Oklahoma City Bombings happened right around our trip.
We drove from La Porte, Indiana to Orlando, Florida in our white Chevy Astro van. We’d gotten that vehicle around the time we made the cross-country move from Grants Pass, Oregon to Indiana. The van came with a cassette player and mom brought along her cassette case. A light grey number with enough slots to soundtrack a road trip.
Mixed in with her 90s country cassettes and kiddie music for my brother and I was a copy of Journey’s Greatest Hits.
I couldn’t read at the time and assumed, based on the scarab on the cover that this was a Beatles cassette.
Maybe I’d heard something about Anthology on the news or heard them on the bus to kindergarten. The bus driver tuned in to an oldies station operating in Chicago.
My earliest music memories are The Supremes, The Temptations and The Four Tops. I suppose The Beatles must have been mixed in there somewhere but I don’t remember.
Seeing that beetle sparked questions. I’ve always been inquisitive as a rule and I asked about The Beatles. I don’t remember much about that conversation except that she told me one of them had died and he’d also made music with his wife.
I imagined an old man resting in bed and passing peacefully in his sleep and a husband and wife sitting on a piano bench together and playing. She didn’t mention that he was murdered.
It wasn’t until the launch of 1 that I fell under their spell and became a fan.
January 2001, after having dinner at Olive Garden for her birthday, we went to Best Buy where my mom bought Chris and I some CDs. I got 1, which proved to be a life-changing moment. I’d never heard music like this and I listened to it over and over, bringing it on road trips, etc.
That first year of my fandom was the year George Harrison died of cancer. I remember hearing about his ill-health on the radio on the way to summer camp. It was the first time I felt guilty about a musician. I felt guilty about not appreciating them more while they were alive. I still feel that guilt when a musician dies and then I take a deeper dive into their body of work.
One of my teachers very kindly gave me a copy of Time with George on the cover. In the photo, it’s an older George, probably in the 1980s. He’s holding a sunflower and wearing a sweater.
That fall, I got 1967–1970 from a music store at an outlet mall. That became my go-to listen on the bus rides to seventh grade.
George died in November, I remember being half-asleep and hearing it on the morning show on the oldies station. It didn’t register until I was more awake. I turned on CNN and got nothing so I went to the computer and confirmed my fears.
Days later I trimmed the tree while watching SNL, which did a tribute to George during Weekend Update.
Grandma softened her stance on The Beatles, part of an overall mellowing as she got on in years. She got me a copy of A Cellarful of Noise for one of my birthdays.
Mom and I watched I Am Sam a few times. She’d often quote Michelle Pfeiffer saying “George was always my favorite.” Thinking of that always leaves my eyes edged with tears. George was always my favorite.
I think it was the fact that songwriting wasn’t as effortless it was for the group’s principal songwriters. I appreciated his sense of humor and worldview. Didn’t hurt that he helped the Pythons and others make movies. And I think it says something about him that he was The Beatle Dylan was closest to.
These days it’s a bit of a cliché to call George your favorite, it’s a means of standing setting yourself apart because of the perceived flaws of the other three. When it comes to John, people forget about his biting wit and flair for the absurd and instead focus on his more political actions.
Paul doesn’t get his far shake either. His music is dismissed as fluff. This ignores all the cutting-edge music Paul was exposed to during his relationship with Jane Asher. McCartney is “Silly Love Songs” and musique concrète.
I have never met anyone whose favorite Beatle is Ringo, but I just know they have a heart of gold. Ringo was the soul of that band, a crucial component of their success. To use hoops parlance, Ringo was the ultimate glue guy.
When Paul McCartney announced a concert at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, mom got tickets for all three of us.
I remember being surprised when she knew “Here, There, Everywhere” and recognizing it when it was played on steel drums at Phoebe’s wedding on Friends.
I have a knack for remembering important dates for people and things that I love. It impressed the hell out of me that she knew the release dates for Revolver and Help!
When it came to The Beatles, she’s preferred the earlier stuff, before they got on drugs.
Me? That’s my favorite era, specifically 1965 and 1966. Rubber Soul to Revolver is a one-two punch any artist would kill to have.
She also liked the later period stuff, when they were near the end. The early and late stuff are what I remember singing along to on road trips.
She was never as obsessed with The Beatles as I am, but she had them on vinyl. 1962–1966 and 1967–1970. The former was the victim of the heat and sun at a garage sale that happened when my parents split. She also had John’s final solo album.
George is my favorite, but John was the one I related to the most initially. A smart kid with a caustic wit who used humor to cope with the trauma of his father abandoning him. Is it any wonder I latched on to him?
He also had his mother suddenly ripped away. An off-duty cop in his case and an ex-marine recruiter in my case. They’re the same type of asshole as far as I’m concerned.
And like John, she was killed with a gun. I remember thinking, as my friends drove me away from the house on that awful day that destroyed my life, “I’m just like Sean and Julian: my parent was murdered with a gun.”
I was the one who found the bodies. I blink and I see them and the blood and brain and skull fragments like it was yesterday. It’s an image that is permanently seared in my mind.
In the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years since it happened I’ve often thought of Paul’s response to John’s murder. “Drag, isn’t it?”
What else can you say when your best friend and songwriting partner is murdered?
What do you say when you find your mother, your biggest supporter and the person you admire most murdered?
I’m a writer, but I’m at a loss for words. I think I always will be. There’s nothing intelligent to say after a massacre.
Yeah, Paul, it sure is a fucking drag.
What You Leave Out
I first heard “In My Life” during the credits of Imagine: John Lennon. I hadn’t heard all their albums yet, but that song stayed with me. The sentiment is time-tested and simple, but it works because of the conviction in warmth in the singing and playing. It is wistful, reassuring and sad. Sometimes happy, sometimes blue, some are dead and some are living.
Most people know the story about the piano on the song. Producer George Martin played a Bach-like solo that was recorded at half-speed. When sped up, the piano sounded reminiscent of a harpsichord.
It’s that piano that makes the song for me. The song opens with a rising piano figure that repeats throughout the song. The riff feels complete, but it’s not until the conclusion of the song that you realize something was missing. After the rising figure plays again it briefly descends before returning to the note the riff ended with before rising a little more to bring everything to resolution.
That’s the moment that makes the song for me. The earlier parts of the song are lovely and moving, but the ending elevates it and I love what that ending symbolizes. The opening figure already feels complete, but with that new addition, you realize that’s not the case. And that’s what love is like to me: finding what you didn’t realize you were missing in another person. Love changes us, some forever, not for better.
Without Rubber Soul, there is no Pet Sounds and if there is no Pet Sounds, my whole life is completely different.
I Lost It At The Movies
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released when I was a high school freshman and at the height of my Beatlemania. That was when I started filling out my collection with more of their studio albums and when I learned that they had arrived in America 25 years before I was born. Knowing that connection made it feel like fate for me to be a Beatles fan. And thematically the movie fits with this week’s song.
I saw this the day after Valentine’s Day on 35mm as part of a double-feature with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I’d seen Pilgrim in a theater when it released but not the first film on the bill.
I found it moving and poignant at times, particularly the idea of how love changes us and even erasing someone from your memories wouldn’t remove their impact on you completely. Some might find the ending bleak, the idea that this has happened to them before and will happen again. They retained some emotional connection to each other in spite of undergoing the procedure. They have been down this road before, but ultimately it is worth trying again because maybe this time it will be different.
On some level they are not the same people as they once were and perhaps that is enough to make a difference.
Snack bar
Keeping with the theme, here’s a 1995 Pizza Hut commercial starring Ringo Starr to advertise the new stuffed crust pizza. The ad seems like it’s building up to a Beatles reunion, no doubt a nod to Anthology. Joining Ringo instead of George and Paul are Mickey Dolenz, Davey Jones and Peter Tork. Musically, there is a bait and switch, a shift from an approximation of “Twist and Shout” into “(Theme From) The Monkees.”
Absent here is Michal Nesmith, who like George dipped his toe into the world of filmmaking and having a similar affinity for more offbeat cinema. In another version of the ad, Ringo remarks “Wrong lads.” when three members of the prefab four join him.
I am no Monkees hater, as Frank Zappa said, they were the only honest band in L.A. and Head is a masterpiece film. They also released a lot of great music and had some of the best songwriters ever giving them material in addition to the songs they wrote.
The Monkees television show was inspired by A Hard Day’s Night and Help! Davy Jones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show the same the day The Beatles did.
Butcher Cover
Capitol Records was notorious for the changes they made to Beatles albums released in the U.S. They would remove songs and shift them to other albums. Some have interpreted the infamous butcher cover of Yesterday and Today as a protest against Capital editing albums as they saw fit. Their record company would finally end the practice in 1967.
The band themselves considered the British releases to be the definitive versions, but that didn't stop some U.S. Beatles fans from preferring the Capital Records release of the album.
So to my mind the fast food analog is Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. The former is a franchise one can find back East while the latter can be found all over the western parts of the U.S. Originally, they were two separate entities but then the parent company of Carl’s Jr. acquired Hardee’s in 1997. That’s when the branding and menu items for both franchises became more similar, but there were some distinctions between the two. Both chains feature Mexican food on the menu at certain locations: Red Burrito for Hardee’s and Green Burrito for Carl’s Jr. Hardee’s offers curly fries while Carl’s Jr. features waffle fries among other differences in menu.
Capitol Records was purchased by EMI in 1955 and their Beatle releases often featured the same album title but different track listings. I grew up listening to the UK pressings so the U.S. ones feel alien to me. I can definitely understand that preference when it comes to the U.S. version of Rubber Soul, which trades out “Drive My Car,” “Nowhere Man,” “What Goes On,” and “If I Needed Someone” for “I’ve Just Seen A Face” and “It’s Only Love.” I’ve listened to the U.S. version a few time and I can get behind it having more of a folk-rock feel.