Now and Then

The last Beatle song has been released. Give it a listen if you haven’t already.

The song is great, the video inventive and whimsical. So Beatle, so much about love, like their music ever was.

Because it’s the music I like, I usually like anyone singing a Beatle song. This one is quite good. 

The other day I was at a music session where the guitar player was taking requests. I was able to ask, for the first and last time in my life, “Can you play that new Beatles song?”

I’m in a generation of women who were little girls during Beatlemania. We loved the Beatles, but without erotic sensations, just pure appreciation for the music and antics. Sometimes I can still conjure that excitement.

An early memory is walking with my Mom to the laundry room in our trailer park on the outskirts of Fresno singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” With four cans of tuna I made a drum set and beat on them with spoons. Like all little girls, I loved Ringo best, but as I grew older I loved Paul’s pop songs, then George because: adolescence; and finally I was old enough for John.

I have never forgiven one of my sisters for announcing to me in December 1980, with a smirk: “John Lennon got shot.” I will never understand how someone so young–she must have been 12—had already mastered the mean-spirited tone of right-wing cultural warriors.

But does this have anything to do with Ireland? Of course. All four men have Irish ancestry and grew up among the Liverpool Irish, an immigrant community dating to the 1840s, at time when a trip to Liverpool was the cheapest ticket off the island. (The potato crop failed all over Europe in the 1846, but only Ireland starved.) The Great Hunger is why Liverpool is the city it is today, why it has its distinctive accent, and why the Beatles are so dang talented.

The Beatles performed in Ireland only once, in 1963. After that, there probably wasn’t a venue large enough.

Here’s an Dublin airport interview you probably haven’t seen:

Ten years ago, Dublin hosted a Beatles Festival commemorating that one concert. 

Both John and Paul released songs about Northern Ireland on their first solo albums. “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” isn’t a great song, but it was Wings’s first single and the government banned it. They banned a Paul McCartney song! And he’s the nice one! After that, British pop stars didn’t openly support civil rights in Northern Ireland.

John and Yoko’s first album included two songs about the Troubles: “Sunday Bloody Sunday”

…and “The Luck of the Irish.”

My pal Hilary is about my age and another Beatle fan. She and I watched all eight hours of Get Back over three days. We loved it. The creativity, the friendship, the collaboration, the heartbreaking inability to see a solution to their problems. How wonderfully they worked together, and were not the bickering  shit show we were told they were.

When Hils and I were in England in April for the Anne Lister pilgrimage, we detoured to Liverpool for the weekend and immersed ourselves in all things Beatles.

We stayed at the Hard Days Night Hotel.

It looks like an early 20th-C office building, but now displays 
statues of the Beatles above the columns, like saints around the Vatican. 

In the lobby, only Beatles music. 

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Now I wish I had bought this clock. 

Each room features a portrait. We were in the “John as a wain” room.

 We hired the highest-rated private black cab tour.

The statue at the docks.

Paul’s family home. 

The street Paul grew up on. John lived nearby with his aunt.

The driver played all the hits, and we sang them at the top of our lungs. 

“What do you like best about the Beatles?” he asked us. “The Music!”

The driver was our age, too young at the time to get into the clubs, but he knew their families and friends.

The house of John’s mother’s sister. 

Our driver knew how to take the best photos. Obviously, I ignored him. 

The church yard with Eleanor Rigby’s grave.

The Empire, and street in Ringo’s neighborhood. 

The barber. 

The roundabout.

Strawberry Fields. In John’s time these were the grounds of a Salvation Army children’s home. The sort of place he nearly ended up in. 

The best part of the visit was the last night. 

We descended into the rebuilt Cavern Club under the hotel for a Beatles concert. 

At first, the museum display gave off a cringey Hard Rock Hotel vibe. 

But once the music started, the magic happened. 

I didn’t take any more pictures, I just listened, absorbed in the music. I heard the Beatles again, like I never had, for the first and last time. 

Sometimes I can still conjure that excitement.

One of the greatest archeology documentaries of all time. “1000 years in the future, the legacy of John, Paul, Greg, and Scottie remains.”