'Found my way upstairs and had a smoke . And somebody spoke and I went into a dream.'
I grew up in a world where you could smoke upstairs on buses. South West London. Double Deckers where you entered and exited at the back of the bus. Tugged the bell to request your stop. Or just leapt off as it slowed down. You rarely saw the driver. He was fenced off in his small cabin whuch exited to the road You just met the bus conductor as he made his way down the aisle, up and down the stairs. . Gave him 20 or 30p. .There was a freedom, not having to wait until the bus stopped before making your exit. I don't think people had any idea that they were part of a vanishing world. I certaunly didn't.
The Beatles were always there for me. And everybody else. They were always the big ones. During my lifetime I've met a handful of people who've railed about them in one way or another. I've always wondered why. What exactly gets your back up? The melodies. The invention. The joy. The lyrics. The singing. The playing. The story. The songs. The fact that they were from Liverpool.We increasingly live in a world where people use football as an excuse for their petty prejudices. But just what was it that people continue to hold against The Beatles. 'The girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes? ' Their insistence on going back and forth from love as their essential orbit. Their course.
They understood that it was the greatest power in the universe. It still is? Haven't you realised it? People's foolishness about The Beatles always melts into oblivion when I listen to the records.I'm just drawn in like filings to a magnet..
I don't just listen to The Beatles. There are plenty of alternative squares on the board . But I keep coming back to them. Every few months. I always will.
I'm listening to Sgt Pepper on a Monday morning. I've got to admit it's getting better. I've got two online lessons today. They're planned. I have nothing better to do than take my bath, have an extended breakfast and then carry on listening to them until my first class at ten o'clock with businesspeople in Germany. After my first lesson. I expect I will play something else. I think it's what Beatles would want.
They take you everywhere and guide you everywhile like Pied Pipers leading a magical dance. You could go to Stockhausen and then Can and Krautrock. Back to Rock & Roll and Blues, Country & Western the records they listened to themselves with their families by the hearth on old school gramophones with a lid that lifted. Back from there to classical. Back from there further still to the caves.
They lead you on. To Dyan Thomas and Chuck Berry, To Lewis Carroll. To contemporaries. the Stones, The Kinks. The Who. Dylan. Soul, Funk. Nuggets Bands. To Motown or Stax. To The Velvet Underground and onward and outward. Inward. . To Punk and Post Punk. To Ravi Shankar or the Band. Wherever you like. To The B 52s or Wire which Lennon apparently was listening to round about the tume he was wiped off the grid. An act of wanton destruction. Cruelty and self absorbtion. Meanwhile the Beatles seem like a flower opening. Still.
'Newspaper taxis appear on the shore...'
No comments:
Post a Comment