Introducing the director of Yesterday, a film made with Beatles music, the radio host admitted caring not so much as Boomers do about the songs. "But I get it," she said, "the Beatles were good."
No, she does not get it. For Boomers, the Beatles never were just a rock band to be ranked among others, but something different in kind, Apple to oranges.
For me, a late Boomer, the Beatles had the same cachet as sex.
I gawked while a dozen teenaged cousins spun Beatles LPs on their stereos (wondrous new technology at the time). I had my little - kids' version, "Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing the Beatles." My older sister Kim and her friends read Beatles fan magazines, and I listened in when Kim called the radio station to vote against playing "Back in the USSR," danceable though it was, because its words promoted Communism. (We missed the whole Beach Boys parody connection.)
Then, Kim found out what the lyrics of songs really meant in a library book of illustrated Beatles songs. (What other group would have a shelf full of books about them?) She explained how "Day Tripper" was about sexual things, "if you know what I mean." (I didn't.) The fifth grade's coolest guy gave me the lowdown in his basement. While his Beatles LPs played, Alan explained the facts of life: the hallucinogenic "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was about LSD (true) and "Hey Jude" was about heroin, how you "let her under your skin" (not); Paul's bare feet on the cover of Abbey Road signaled to the world that the real Paul McCartney had died, a secret confirmed by the distorted voice in "Strawberry Fields Forever" that says "I buried Paul." Also, Ringo wasn't very smart.
After the Beatles broke up in 1970, the music continued to play in basement parties and automobile tape decks for the rest of my teens. You could start any tune, and others would join in singing. For a pick - up line, guaranteed ice - breaker, we could always ask, "John, or Paul?"
Even behind the Iron Curtain during the coldest days of the Cold War, Beatles melted the ice. In 1977, our Westminster Ensemble, touring Communist - dominated Poland, encountered neighborhood kids in Gdansk's town square singing "Yellow Submarine." We joined in. Our guitarist David Weissman played "Blackbird" at our concerts.
The other thing that set Beatles apart was their artistic development. I myself owned two Beatles LPs, just four years apart but in different worlds. Meet the Beatles was a boy band's program of short, catchy originals about girls and holding hands, along with covers of Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" and a Broadway balad, "Till There Was You." Magical Mystery Tour included much longer songs, surreal lyrics with electronic effects, a brass band for "Penny Lane," and a psychedelic instrumental "Flying" based on 12 - bar blues. Dad's eight - track tapes (the Red and Blue compilations) filled in the music in between, such as the exuberant love song "Got to Get You Into My Life" with its off - beat rhythm and challenging intervals; and "Eleanor Rigby," a string quartet the sole accompaniment for a haunting and clever lyric about an elderly exemplar of "all the lonely people":
Eleanor Rigby
Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door:
Who is it for?
The Beatles' growth as artists, album by album, stimulated our imaginations. So we talked endlessly about the creative friction between sardonic rocker John Lennon and cheerfully eclectic Paul McCartney, about the contributions of spiritual seeker George Harrison, about the way the songs in Sgt. Pepper develop a theme. Wikipedia's article cites Jonathan Gould's book Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007:
According to Gould, the Beatles changed the way people listened to popular music and experienced its role in their lives. From what began as the Beatlemania fad, the group's popularity grew into what was seen as an embodiment of sociocultural movements of the decade.
I was there, and that's what it felt like, even as it happened.
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