Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Like Gary, I wasn't predisposed to catch Beatlemania. I'd also seen
the clip on the Jack Paar show a few months earlier, and may have seen
the thing in Life magazine, and I was into other kinds of music--some
rock, some folk, but also (being a Brooklyn native, albeit relocated to
San Diego) heavy into Four Seasons, Drifters, etc. But the moment I
saw them on Ed Sullivan I knew they had something going on that I had
to know more about. I wasn't instantly converted to maniac, but it
didn't take long. Within the year my brother and I were lip-synching
and playing prop-aided (i.e. baseball bats) air guitar to Beatles
albums in our den--I always took John's parts, he Paul's--and within
two years I had taken up the guitar (which I've never put down).

During the Beatles years I was a pretty serious John acolyte. He
seemed to have the most incisive intelligence, the most urgent,
piercing way of putting across his art (especially his vocals), the
most sophisticated way of looking at the world. It wasn't until years
after the band broke up that I came to understand and appreciate how
much Paul and the others brought to the table, and how it was the
synergy of their talents and proclivities that made the whole Beatles
gestalt possible.

I was watching "Monday Night Football" when Cosell told the nation and
the world about Lennon's murder. The day before, I had taken an
all-day workshop with musician Paul Winter here in Berkeley, and had
come away from it profoundly energized and excited about music as I
hadn't been in some time. So in a sense I took the news of John's death
personally--like it was an insult and affront to my renewed passion
for music. But more than that, I took it as some kind of evil omen
about the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan--who, let us recall, had been
elected as president the month before. It was like, well SURE you want
to do away with gun control, so you can have crazies running around
shooting people like John Lennon. You fuckers! (How ironic, then, that
Reagan's own press secretary would become a kind of poster child for
gun control a few months later--and would, with his wife, found one of
the more effective gun control enterprises going.)

Today what matters to me is that I am still unpacking the genius John
and his mates laid down on their albums, some 40 years later. Hard to
think of a higher-yield body of work than the Beatles'.
  

    
Oh, and I neglected to say: Thanks for the kind words, Elizabeth.
  

    
One of the things I wondered about as I started to put together this
book is how Beatlemania spread so fast. The Jack Paar tape went down
quietly enough, but SO many people heard about the appearances on Ed
Sullivan. I was surprised to find out that Beatlemania had been raging
in Great Britain, but then thought maybe the whole Beatlemania thing
here was a massive marketing campaign. But over the last few years I've
heard so many stories, like a friend who told me that she first heard
the Beatles while in a taxi on 6th Ave. in New York, and she could
still tell me exactly which blocks she was on... time somehow coalesced
for her right then. 

I was among those who heard about the Sullivan show, and joined my
father, who is a photographer, in the dark room while he was printing.
(He had the only TV in the house.) I sat under the enlarger while he
walked back and forth in the dark, whistling, while I fell in love.

I was only a few days away from having my first child when Lennon was
shot. The huge, painful mystery of birth and death and violence and
vulnerability took hold of me. I was working, right up to my son Will's
birth, as an acupuncturist, and for the next few days everyone I saw
was processing Lennon's death, some very deeply and profoundly.
  

    
Yeah. The Web of Coincidence. How did so many meaningful, if
troubling, things happen almost all at once? It was a time of great
change.

Fwiw, I got into the Beatles 'cuz I noticed that the girls really dug
them. I was just old enough to be paying attention for the first time,
to what girls liked. I remember being on the school bus, and all the
young ladies were trading Beatles card. I figured I'd better get in on
that racket. I'm not even sure if I'd recognize their music at this
point.

A few days later, they showed up on Ed Sullivan, and I watched it with
my folks. My dad said their music was okay, but he didn't understand
why they needed to have those haircuts. My mom protested that they were
clean cut young men. I liked the songs fine, but was mazed at how the
girls were all freaking out. Whatever JohnPaulGeorge&Ringo had, I
wanted. I bought my first rock n' roll record, their first US release,
the next day.

I haven't been quite right since ;-)
  

    
They were damn good!  It's still some of the best music ever recorded.
  

    
Yeah. It's interesting to have been around at the point where the
electronic recording studio became an instrument itself. The Beatles
weren't alone in creating this innovation, and it's rather obvious in
hindsight that a former producer of comedy records, Martin, would have
such a hand in the revolution. But, the Beatles and Martin were in many
ways the most successful in the enterprise.

Today, I think it's hard for the casual listener not around during the
mid-to-late 60s to realize what a break from the past occurred in
terms of song-craft and production, at that time.

Heh! Without her producers and the modern studio, Madonna would be
unlistenable ;-)
  

    
Yeah, it's funny, I have a longtime friend who's also a major music
hound -- he listens to stuff going back to the 50s and my range goes
back to the 20s.  And we had a long talk a few months ago is that while
you can enjoy the music of the past, the one thing you can never
really hear is what was new to people at the time, and thus what a big
flash it was.  I really like Louis Armstrong's classic records from the
late 1920s, but I absolutely can't hear what was so startling about
them to people at the time, in part I'm sure because they were so
influential that I've been hearing music incorporating their insights
my whole life.
  

    
Well said.
  

    
This is SO completely true! Because you can never have the thrill of
feeling it for the first time -- you've already heard all the
iterations as they have filtered into other people's music. I think
excitement is also contagious -- the pleasure of a group of people
discovering something new at the same time. And in this case, the
Beatles music gave us a way of hearing and feeling and expressing all
these phenomenal changes we were going through.

I'd love to hear also anyone's thoughts on why the death of Lennon
stood for so much. It was a personal loss, certainly, but for me it was
more: it was some kind of end of the dream, of the possibility that we
would find our way into making more changes, reclaim some of the
idealism of the sixties we had put aside.
  

    
"It was a personal loss, certainly, but for me it was more: it was some
 kind of end of the dream..."

That's it, exactly.   Frankly, I didn't have a favorite Beatle.   I was
aware from the beginning that they were a whole greater than the sum of the
parts.   And as I became a professional musician myself (a goal that became
cemented for me while watching the mailcar scene in "Hard Day's Night"), I
realized that the synergy required two more factors.   Brian Epstein and
George Martin.

John's death, for me, was the you-can't-go-home-again moment.   It would
have been the same for me if it had been any one of the four performers.
And, in my life, it was that part of growing up when I really got that
everything is not going to turn out OK.
  

    

"...why the death of Lennon
stood for so much..."  
 I think its personal for everyone. AS I recall, up until about a year
 before the tragedy I hadn't been very interested in the Beatles or
John for that matter.  I'd been caught up in the John and Yoko story
and demise of the Beatles.  In that year before the tragedy, I had
started hearing another side of the John and Yoke story, and began to
feel there was an incredible
love story, something I had completely missed in the stories I had
been reading.  For me, there was the sense of a tremendous loss of John
and the end of the love story of John and Yoko. I still think about it
from time to time.
  

    
Yep, the two posts above give some measure of the depth of the loss of
John Lennon. We were already filled with pivotal moments we might not
have even realized: launched into puberty with the Sullivan show,
hooked into being a musician with the Hard Day's Night mailcar scene,
realizing we could never go home again, the end of a love story. What
layers! Lennon carried so much for us, and he had the depth himself to
contain all of it. It must have been a heavy burden to be so symbolic.
I know sometimes he would protest: "We were just four guys who formed a
band, and we made it very, very big." (paraphrasing)
  

    
Ooosh, my reaction to the news, oh, boy, once I regained the ability
to think at all about what had happened, was this: "How could WE have
killed John Lennon?"

It's not a rational feeling, but it sort of rings true even today. How
in the world did we make a culture that could breed and then kill such
a man? It's a complex question that spills out into so many more. He
was no angel. He was a useful, powerful lens through which we could see
ourselves and our society.

There was the cold weather that morning; all those snow and flowers,
and it was so grey. Ronald Reagan was the big pop star on the scene.
His management team of thugs, goons, and bonzos had swept the nation in
a storm. All the new music sucked. I couldn't imagine a future. It was
like when one stupid kid shot Lennon, hope died, and I felt we all
shared some of the blame.
  

    
Thanks for the heads up about all the discussions in the WELL's Bealtes
Conference.  All this and much more all the time.

I'm wondering how much the spread of the Beatles was fueled by a "great
white hope" sense -- wasn't the really great stuff on the charts in 1963
Marvin Gay, the Shirlles, the Temps and the Four Tops?
  

    
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by a "great white hope" sense, but
this may answer your question: Sam Phillips had a small recording
studio in Memphis. He was white. He recorded black r & b musicians. He
said "I knew that for black music to come to its rightful place in this
country we had to have some white singers come over and do black music
-- not copy it, not change, not sweeten it. Just do it." In 1954 Elvis
walked into his studio.

The rest, as they say, is history.
  

    

Yow, the two weeks have zipped by so fast! Thank you so much for joining us,
Elizabeth, this has been a great conversation. And thank you, (evy), for
moderating the discussion.

Our virtual spotlight has turned to a new author, but that doesn't mean this
conversation has to stop. The topic will remain open indefinitely and you're
welcome to continue as long as you like. On the other hand, we'll 
understand if you have to move on to other responsibilities.

In either case, it's been a pleasure. I'm hoping, Elizabeth, that 
you'll be able to give us a quick run-down on what's next for you before
you have to disappear. Are you working on a new book, and if so, what's it 
about? 
  

    
This has been wonderful. Thanks for all the interesting posts.

So far, I haven't committed myself to a new project. I'm playing with
a couple-- for me, ideas are easy. I have plenty of cool ideas to chose
from. I spend a period of time waiting to see what clamours the
loudest. I may write a novel, or I have a couple of bio. ideas i'm
checking out. We'll see!
  

    
Well, whatever you decide to do, Elizabeth, we'll all be eager to see
it. And good luck with it! Thanks for being available here and for all
your insights into one of the most iconic figures of our lives.
  

    
Yes, and thanks so much for writing a young people's book about John that
doesn't present him simply as an icon but presents him in all his remarkable
complexity.