Friday, September 9, 2011

In my Life

I was breezing through the airport and stopped to see whatever the headlines were in the "Savannah Daily Blues" having heard my old work was in it with things that I'd started and were finally finished. It front page stuff but as I reached to get it I saw something else. "Rolling Stone" magazine had a special edition on "The Beatles" the greatest thing rock-and-roll ever gave the world! It was the "The Ultimate Album-By-Album guide". I quickly forgot about the newspaper and purchased this.

I should clarify that I already own the massive book that details everything the Beatles ever did in the recording studio, song-by-song (trivia ... Who was the last Beatle to ever be in the Abby Road studios as a Beatle working on a Beatle song? ... Ringo). I've read pretty much everything written about them ... the biographies, I devoured the Anthology and watch it regularly, and if everything on the radio or Pandora sucks ... then just click to the Beatles and all is right with the world.

Flying to Pittsburgh I read and gleefully celebrated everything that I already knew.

What is cool about this review though is that it goes into some detail as to what John Lennon wrote and what Paul McCartney wrote on certain songs. My favorite of course if when McCartney sang "It's getting better all the time" to which Lennon sang back "It couldn't get much worse."

I just love that!

Then the whole ending medley to Abby Road are all of the songs that they had started but never finished. It was their last album so they took everything and made gumbo. My God! What a stew! What an ending!

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

When I was a kid and the Beatles were first happening I remember sitting on the floor in the den of our Port Wentworth City home watching the Ed Sullivan Show with my Dad (we must have skipped Sunday night Church). The Beatles came on. I was eight. And the world changed.

"They look stupid. Look at their hair!" my Dad said, "Elvis is the King."

I ignored him and started growing my hair. My Mom would take me to get it cut by Aunt Bootsie and I would put up the biggest fights, screaming and kicking and mad. Eventually Mom gave up and by then the Beatles were no longer Mop-tops but blazing the longer stuff so I went right to the shoulder length stuff.

Somewhere around this time, we were at Pastor Johnson's house of the First Baptist Church for a youth night ice cream social after Sunday night church. Ed Sullivan was on and he was debuting the Beatles doing "Let it be." The entire room stopped talked and listened to Paul sing "When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me ..." (His mother's name was Mary.)

"He looks like Jesus," I blurted out. And he did! Long hair, beard and holiness dripping as he sang.

"What did you say!!!" Pastor Johnson bellowed. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and put his nose to my nose and I got this long sermon about Jesus and how the Beatles couldn't touch the hem of his garment.

I almost missed George Harrison's guitar solo.

Kerwood Durby later took me outside and congratulated me on saying out loud what everybody else was thinking.

It's funny the things you remember in life.

And the things that stay with you throughout your life.

When I found myself suddenly single I thought "We can work it out."

When I was alone and by myself with a dog I believed "All you need is love."

When I was crying about the losses of my life it was "While my guitar gently weeps."

When I found myself at the end of "The Long and Winding Road" I took inventory.

And now I think ... "She loves you yeah, yeah,yeah."

So ... "In my life" ... I've loved them all.