My thoughts on The Beatles in honor of the 50 year anniversary of their first U.S. appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.
Growing up in a small town in Iowa, music had always been a part of my life. Sometimes it was my mother humming songs always puttering around the house, sometimes along with the radio, sometimes just with a melody running though her head. Other times, she would play songs on this old chord organ we used to have. My mother and father also had a lot of vinyl records, lots of Elvis (my dad's favorite) and other artists from the 50's and 60's. One of these albums was called, "Sing a Song With The Beatles". You weren't REALLY singing along with The Beatles. Instead, what you got were instrumental versions of early Beatles songs with an organ playing over the parts where you were supposed to sing.
My brother, Dan and I used to listen to this record growing up and around the time we started our own musical career, we actually recorded a version of this album with some friends of ours. I believe it was during allergy season and we called ourselves,
The Religious Underground Basement Dwellers With Allergies. It featured Dan, myself and our friends John Lingle and Chris Wysong. I have no recollection of why or how we came up with that band name, I can kind of piece all of it together but I don't remember why the word "Religious" was in there. It wasn't good by any means, but I remember it being a lot of fun. I remember singing in a horribly overdone, British accent, way more prominent than The Beatles themselves, ever used. I remember us all taking turns on vocals and I remember lots and lots of laughing....along with unnecessary profanity (usually by, yours truly). "I'm in love with you and I feel fucking fine" I do remember "All My Loving" was my "shining" moment.
The Beatles became a big influence in Dan and I's music career, not so much in songwriting, but i think the fact that they were having fun, creating their own music, and also coming up with creative ways to make music. From the beginning, Dan and I always wanted to write our own music and lyrics. Looking back I don't know if that was rare or not, we were the only people we knew in our town, along with our friend John and Eric, who were in an actual band. The fact that none of us played our respective instruments when we started and the fact that all 4 of us to this day still create music, is testimony how serious we all were about making music.
I know some of us had different books about The Beatles. Biographies, recording session notes, chord books. I loved the movies, all the records, anything Beatle related I took a HUGE interest in. John was my favorite, he was the funniest to me. But honestly those 4 guys together, especially in the beginning were something special and the world knew that right away.
I envied the way they decided to just stop touring (because they couldn't hear themselves over the crowd) and focus on recording and creating music the rest of their time together. A feat that is just
MINDBLOWING to me. I can't imagine ANYONE doing that today and being successful, since touring seems to be the main money makers for bands anymore. In the book I had of the Beatles recording sessions, which were notes taken in the studio of dates and what songs were worked on what days, I was amazed to see that even though they did not tour anymore, they were in the Abbey Road studios almost every day working on something when they were together. Aside from holidays usually, and time when they would take a few weeks off for vacation.
I remember in an interview, John Lennon saying he saw Elvis on TV and say, "That's a pretty good job" and knew he wanted to be a musician. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley from Kiss, both have said they saw The Beatles on TV and knew instantly they wanted to be musicians. And I'm positive someone saw Kiss and said the same thing and then so on and so forth.
I was 10 years old when John Lennon was shot, I remember it only vaguely. I mainly remember my cousin having a shirt with John Lennon 1940-1980 on it. Years later watching the footage of the people so shaken up and brought to tears by his death; I'm glad I didn't know much about him yet because it probably would have really disturbed me at that age. (interesting(?) side note: I did come up with an outline of a screenplay once in my early 20's about two losers who died without doing anything substantial and being selfish in their lives were told they were going to Hell unless they did one good deed. My idea for the good deed was them going back and trying to save John Lennon from getting shot. It was going to be animated, and John Goodman was going to be the voice of God. Anyway, that will never come to fruition, but I would still like to write it).
I've also always had the dream project in my mind to cover the entire "White Album". My brother and I have talked about it since we were teenagers. I also have great memories of my ex wife and I, when we were dating, driving on road trips listening to our Beatles CDs and singing along to all the songs. I, insisting to be John, and she would be Paul. and we'd not fight over George and Ringo's songs so much. I think we probably both sang each others parts constantly. The specifics of the memories now gradually fading like the ink on an old t-shirt.
The Beatles have always been a part of my life since my teens, and while there may be times I don't hear them for some time, once you hear that "one" song again, you just want to fire up that whole catalog and sing along with all of them. They are just that infectious and melodic and wonderful.
I've read something about it somewhere once about this and I think it does bear some merit, that the U.S. was in so much shock about JFK's assassination still that we, as a nation, needed something to heal us. And I do think seeing The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show those 2 and 1/2 months later did help do that. Maybe that's part of the reason they connected with so many people and made them happy when they needed to be happy again.
Whatever the reason, I truly believe the landscape of music would not be the same without The Beatles. I know my landscape would not be as full and rich without them in my youth.
Best Original Screenplay: American Hustle
