selenak

For today, I was asked to talk about that Liverpool band I like so much. It's good to be reminded why, because like any other fandom, Beatles fandom comes with the downsides as well as the upsides: kerfuffles, the sense that people go on about the same old points and partisanship in the sense of not allowing any other pov. But every time, just when you reach the eye rolling point, you have a dicussion or find a gem that reminds you of the loveliness of shared enthusiasm, the bright side of fandom as well, luckily. Incidentally, not the least interesting aspect of Mark Lewisohn's three volume biography, the first of which just got published this year, is that he interviewed the very early fans as well - those around long before Beatlemania, when the Beatles were simply another teenage Northern band just barely out of school - and it made for some great stories about what it was like, getting enthusiastic about a rock'n roll band as a female teenager in the late 50s with your parents convinced this was the beginning of the end.

Now, what it all comes back to is the music, of course. The Beatles' first single got released in 1962, and they officially ended in 1970; in between that time, the sheer range of musical development and variety is breathtaking. Which is one reason why you have fans who only love the early tunes and fans of the "only the late Beatles are musically interesting" persuasion and anything in between. I appreciate the entire canon, so to speak, and I like that depending on my mood I have such a great variety of songs to choose from. It's not every day you want to be disturbed by She Said She Said or Helter Skelter, after all. Sometimes you'd rather be soothed by way of Let it Be or be irresistably cheered up by She Loves You. Or you are hiking in the mountains with friends and family and are in the mood for a Yellow Submarine singalong. (Don't ask.) Or you want a discussion about why Joe Cocker totally gets it wrong when making With a little help from my friends a throat tearing soul hymn instead of the casual mixture of mocking affection and pastiche it is when Paul and John wrote it for Ringo to sing. Truth is, I might not always be in the mood of active fandom but there hasn't been a time in my life, no matter whether happy or miserable, when a Beatles song or the other hasn't added something to it or helped.

(Two years ago, when I lost weight together with my mother, I brought Revolver along, and my mother asked me since when I was into those ghastly techno bands. "Mum," quoth I, shocked, "first of all, this is not techno, and secondly, these are the Beatles." "No, they are not!" she said determinedly. Turns out she missed the entire psychedelic phase in the mid 60s, though she did recognize Eleanor Rigby. Anyway, I can assure you listening to George Harrison complaining about having to pay a gigantic amount of tax in Taxman is helpful to losing weight if you're me.)

The great musical variety, of course, is the result of various lucky circumstances, including having an awesome producer ready to go with experiments, George Martin, but most of all the result of having not one but three great composers, even if the third one didn't come really into his own until the last two years of the band. And of having not one but three vocalists. And of having Ringo as a drummer, both because of the drumming (it's quite satisfying to read Lewisohn establishing once and for all that Ringo pre-Beatles really was one of the top drummers in Liverpool and they were lucky to get him), and because he was in many ways the glue balancing three egos together.

The band dynamics are of course another case for fascination. The pre-Beatles cases of world superstardom were mainly solo singers - Sinatra and Elvis Presley mainly - and for that matter, that goes for post-Beatles cases as well: Michael Jackson. If there was a band, there was a clear leader, and a clear hierarchy. But not for the Beatles. Now the Beatles themselves, not agreeing on much in hindsight, always agreed on how lucky it was that when fame hit the way it did, it happened to the four of them. They weren't alone with the mass adoration, life in the goldfish bowl and corresponding almost inevitable change in friends and family to minions and courtiers. (Ringo once summed this phenomenon up thusly: In 1963 the attitude of my whole family changed. They treated me like a different person. One absolutely clear vision I had was round at my auntie's, where I'd been a thousand times before. We were having a cup of tea one night and somebody knocked the coffee table and my tea split into my saucer. Everyone's reaction was, 'He can't have that. We have to tidy up.' That would never have happened before. I thought then, 'Things are changing.' It was absolutely an arrow in the brain. Suddenly I was ‘one of those’, even within my family, and it was very difficult to get used to. I’d grown up and lived with these people and now I found myself in weirdland. Home and family were the two things I didn't want to change, because it had all changed 'out there' and we were no longer really sure who our friends were, unless we'd had them before the fame. The guys and the girls I used to hang about with I could trust. But once we'd become big and famous, we soon learnt that people were with us only because of the vague notoriety of being 'a Beatle'. And when this happened in the family, it was quite a blow. I didn't know what to do about it; I couldn't stand up and say, 'Treat me like you used to,' because that would be acting 'big time'.) Being four, not one, was a way to at least keep that bit of groundedness. Though like everything, it was a two-edged sword. There was also enormous group pressure. (For example, when Paul refused to take LSD for near two years.) And when things started to implode, you got the ugly in-fighting that happens when people know each other really, really well and know exactly where to hit.

One of the most famous descriptions of the late Beatles dynamic comes from Ray Connolly, who compared them to a classic dysfunctional family, absent deadbeat yet brilliant Dad (John), hard-working Mum keeping the family together but also perceived as nagging shrew for doing so (Paul), rebellious teenage son (George) and adorable toddler whom everyone loves (Ringo). This is a far cry of the public selves their audience was used to from A Hard Day's Night, when they they were sold as The Witty One, the Cute One, the Quiet One and the Funny One. It's also not how they themselves would have described themselves in either phase, other than the marriage/divorce metaphor, which was used already extensively in 1969 and 1970 when they split up by both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Which is another reason why the whole Beatles story is interesting to me; it's very much a case of the Rashomon principle at work, depending on who tells it and who gets emphasized, and that holds doubly true if the person at the heart of the story is someone other than the Fab Four - say, Brian Epstein, their manager, or one of the wives. I like complex situations which can't get simplified to X was always right, and Y was always wrong, and I like messed up family dynamics; which is why the entire biographical situation still holds a certain fascination for me.

But really, it always comes back to the music. And the way it became a way to perceive reality to me. I can't see an old lady shuffling through the streets and not think of Eleanor Rigby, having a face that she keeps in a jar by the door. When I hear about parent/child disputes (of the none abusive type, I hasten to add!), generational conflicts, I hear She's Leaving Home, which manages to be simultanously on the side of the girl and present the point of view of the parents (which itself makes it clear why she left without the parents being demonized). When I'm in that strange state of not sleeping but also very tired, it's impossible not to think my mind is on the blink with appropriate chords. Submarines always let me down a bit due to not being yellow. Once there was a way to get back home. And well, some times, you've just got a hard day's night. :)