Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The Beatles and me

I must have been in my early teens when the Beatle mania burst into my part of the world. John, George, Paul and Ringo filled my small world, leaving space for none else. Those were days of the turntables, spool tapes and radiograms. I used to keep the spool tape ready and wait expectantly, tensely for a Beatle number to be announced on the radio, then bounce to the tape recorder & switch it on when McCartney’s voice drifted from the radiogram, through the disturbance and all.
Of course the elders were disapproving – of the Hard Days Night and the No Reply----; and ‘when my heart went zoom’ my father's face would turn livid, and would look as though he’d have a blood vessel burst when the voice scaled higher & higher with ‘miiiiiiine!’.
It didn’t improve matters when my siblings started demanding that their trousers be stitched skin tight and they be permitted to grow hair. On the last count my father held his ground but lost out on all the rest to the Beatles. We begged and pleaded and managed a good collection of The Beatles LP's and singles.
Now, I’m well into fifties and must confess that I never really grew out of the Beatles. I have tried to analyse this lifelong obsession with this group. It’s funny, the way I sit bolt upright when I hear a Beatles number unexpectedly or the way I buy a magazine if there’s some indication that there’s an article on them inside-----. Initially, I toyed with the idea of presenting a research paper on their lyrics but soon gave up the idea because the requirements of research and its methodology can never provide space to reveal the way this alien group dominated my childhood imagination, then pursued me with different types of appeal in all stages of my life and continues to create an intense, almost unbearable nostalgia with Yesterday and And I Love Her and I should have known better------------
If you think long enough on it, it’s strange how in those days when we never saw their live performance on TV, when all we had were stills of LIFE magazines which I treasured till recently, we KNEW how they performed, how they looked in action! and the shots we saw much later were not any different from what we imagined them to be. Could it be that they are an extension of some suppressed impulse in you waiting for release?
Paul was my favorite; maybe because it was his voice that rendered all those numbers in an untrained but irresistible style, and which sent my mind thru' the English countryside that I’ve never visited. He is still capable of evoking pictures of the aging Eleanor Rigby looking out of her lonely window or a 64 year old couple in the Isle of Wight with grandchildren Vera, Chuck and Dave on their knee!
And their melody, I wish I knew enough about music to go into its intricacies. But this I know. There are very few songs that move me like And I Love Her and Yesterday. Never have I heard such absolute harmony of the sentiments and strain as in these two songs!.

9 comments:

  1. Mam,
    I was surprised when someone in class today told me that you too were into blogging.....Word does spread around very fast in the FYBMM class....i think there are a whole lot of us reading your blog right now!!!....
    Do post your poems and other writings in your blog.......we wanna read them too....!!!

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  2. hullo maam ,
    ur blog is famous now!....my fav beatles song is 'Help' i just love it.....
    my blog

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  3. hello there... i came upon your blog through tessie's blog... what actually caught my eye was the word "beatles"... personally, my favorite beatles song has to be george harrison's masterpiece- "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".... the flowing guitars (quoting an anonimous graffiti artist "clapton is god") and the soaring vocals..... aah... pure beauty....

    oh yeah... and about your post "NOT MY DOG"... i personally am an indian in the US... florida to be exact..... and i most certainly do not have "truckloads of money" :D.... although i do wish i had some of that mysterious papers sheets known as "dollars"....

    but the matter of lost humanity and such... yes, it is true,.... not just in the US... but all over the world... we as people have lost all of our humanity... we are all but shells filled with materialistic greed, jealousy, selfish motives and "fear & loathing".... trust me.... it's true.....

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  4. well well..

    not many beatles fans around these days, i am one.

    Norwegian wood and Michelle are my favs - and of course Hey jude...

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  5. You wrote that well! Very nostalgic! And the last 2 mentioned are my favorites too. And I love her and Yesterday.
    Beatles are still a hit! And rightly so!
    Here is a collection of their lyrics, you probably have it already-Lyrics

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  6. So true. And so very much like what I feel. I did watch their movies in what could be the small screen of our times (no multiplexes!). And thanks for dropping by at my blog.

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