So fifty years ago, the Beatles landed and played on the Ed Sullivan Show, which apparently was watched by everyone in the country. And since ever other music writer is putting in their two cents on the Beatles, I guess I might as well put in mine.
Yes, the Beatles’ arrival was a cultural earthquake that changed everything.
Yes, the Beatles did so many things first.
And yes, the Beatles influenced everyone that came afterwards.
But what does this matter if you’re some schmuck like me born after the Beatles? You have no idea what the world was like before the Beatles, so you just have to take it for granted that the world was Dullsville before the Beatles, Daddy-o.
Okay, so the Beatles wrote some great songs and did a lot of things first, but from the back seat of the car I rode around in as a child, the Beatles were no CCR. They weren’t the Beach Boys, either.
But I’m not some sort of ignorant clod who can’t see the Beatles’ work as the work of genius. In fact, it was my assumption of the band’s genius that led to one of my moments of enlightenment.
Once upon a time, when I was in grad school in Arizona, I hung out with a neighbor friend of mine, Al, who was about ten to fifteen years my senior. We were both big music fans that loved to chat into the wee hours of the morning, so we got along beautifully.
One day, we went to one of my regular haunts, a used bookstore which also sold used records and CD’s.
I remember looking at the stacks of used CD’s and seeing a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, which every music fan knows is one of the greatest albums ever made. (In truth, it’s no Appetite for Destruction or Bringing it All Back Home, but it’s certainly not bad.)
I remember saying to Al with a bemused tone, “Al, look at this; somebody sold Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band,” thinking someone must have had bad taste not to recognize how good the album was.
“Yeah, someone must have been pretty hard up,” Al responded.
This response bemused me even more, but I tried not to show it.
As I thought about it later, I remembered Al’s tales of having to sell his beloved Les Paul guitar to pay the rent, so parting with something that was cherished to pay the rent or some other bill was an experience he was intimately familiar with.
But I hadn’t been, and it was then I realized how lucky I was.
I had never wondered where my next meal would come from, and there I was, twenty-seven years old and going to graduate school in the exotic locale of Flagstaff, Arizona, to earn master’s degree in English so I could learn more about the books I loved. In many ways, it was like a two-year long vacation.
But Al had struggled.
He had graduated high school (I think), and if he attended college, he certainly didn’t graduate. In addition, he rarely had a job that paid more than minimum wage, and he told many tales of attempts to start his own business, but those dreams never played out.
And Al’s personal life hadn’t worked out either.
So he understood what it meant to live life close to the bone, and he taught me that day about how privileged I was.
Al also taught me to appreciate Bob Dylan, but that’s a story for another day.