Good morning. Breakfast is cooling and I am thinking out loud. There is a brilliant frost about the roof next door, so white and pure. The earth is tipping back toward the fun part for those of us in the northern hemisphere. We will have green again, birds again. Colour returns to Pepperland. Sigh, I do enjoy the definition of seasons. I know that a Caribbean island wouldn’t do for me, I like witnessing change and change back. That change is almost a proof of life, a mark. I have seen a number of changes and changes back in the last seventy-five years. Imagine, twenty year old Robert, it is now fifty-seven years since The Beatles performed their very last concert, the one on the roof of Apple, at Saville Row, London.
I was late to the Beatle wave, the mania. I only saw the very last of three Ed Sullivan shows and vaguely remembered that one. The kids at school were talking about this new group and having seen them on Sunday night but I wasn’t really interested. I was much more caught up in Motown and The Supremes (oh, yes – Mary Wells and The Supremes had hits before November of 1963). Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and those sorts fuelled my ambition to be a writer and go live in New York City’s Greenwich Village. I was borrowing their records from the library, along with books from Rimbaud and Baudelaire. On Saturdays, I would get recordings from stacks at The Dale Carnegie library, rush home and devour them. I was enthralled by my folk-scare heroes and didn’t bother with pop groups. Then, almost as if it were a move into puberty, I heard ‘I Call Your Name’. It was a song from what was released in the U.S. as The Beatles ‘Second Album’. I either woke or fell into a swoon. It still grabs me. Simple, direct, clean, solid and electrical – alive. As soon as I could scrape, beg and borrow…I bought the album, parking it next to ‘Meet the Supremes’ in what was becoming a record collection.
Time passed, many seasons did their changes, I grew fat, I grew old. I had heartbreaking losses and minor successes. I did not live my dream life but I did live. I had enough sex with enough different kinds of people, I made a decent living, I drank too much sometimes and did good deeds sometimes. I deeply disappointed two persons, two spouses. All in, It has been, unbeknownst to me, an average life for North America. I didn’t go off to Greenwich Village but I did become a sort-of writer. It might be said that my writer life is a blessed one. I am able to write when and where and about what I want. There is no money or fame involved. I think that is a blessing. I certainly have witnessed, via the press, the ravages of fame and riches upon others. Time has been Okay for me. Most ordinary people have lived in much the same way. While having my ordinary life, during these many years, my little record collection grew to an unmanageable size. It now resides over two very large bookshelves that only fit in the basement. From time to time, I do play the records, still and just cannot let them go yet. They are still dreams, still emotions.
I recently plunked down a month’s worth of capital for a Disney subscription that will end in April. I did that so that I could finally see the re-worked ‘Let It Be’ film, the one that is called ‘Get Back’ and spans some six-plus hours of viewing. This converted-to-Beatle-fan couldn’t wait any longer to see it and did the whole six-plus hours in one sitting. I know, as an adult, that sitting in front of the set for six hours is not healthy. Ah well, I wasn’t drinking or eating potato chips (crisps, as they say). I had lots of feelings, lots of thoughts. Perhaps it was just the right time in my life to see this film.
I should leave analysis of Beatle films, music to the pros and I will. I do have my opinions, though..as well as an asshole, just like everybody. It was lovely to see those Beatle Boys as young men again. Clean skin, bright eyes, trim frames. They must have changed clothes fifty or sixty times in the twenty-two days worth of filming. I see where they spent the rock and roll money! Ha. Nice shoes, John! The shock, the revelation to me was how much their creative work flows as my own does. It was from one thought to another and ended up being something totally different than the original idea. My guess, now, is that this is the way of art… it is a thing, plucked from the tree of imagination that gets toyed with until it becomes itself.
‘Get Back’ seems a fair representation of the Beatles at work. ‘Let It Be’, the old film, had an agenda, apparently. Comparison of the two films tells me that. This film is much more an art piece, with a solid direction and an undercurrent, a foreshadowing of what was to become of the group. That sad end appears inevitable when Allen Klein’s unscrupulous head pops up.
He was a man, like Trump who appears near the end of everything. Comparing the press of the time to the film, I am now fully convinced, even without the film saying a word negative, that Klein was totally responsible for the end of the Beatles as a group. Sad. The power of evil is quite remarkable.
Robert On The Air 