When you get old, like me, you reminisce a lot. . . or, as Sonny Bono, sang it: remonisce.
I mean, I can still remember the day I was out in our Baton Rouge yard, mowing our lawn in 1967, racing through it so that I could get back into—as the Beach Boys had so perfectly harmonized it—“in my room, in my room”—where I could listen to the Beatles’ brand new Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We had no idea what it . . .
When I had finished the mowing, I retreated to the inner sanctum, cranked up the ancient “record-player”(about the size of a suitcase, dark wood casing with a dark fabric panel in front to soften the sound) and suddenly there’s Ringo singin’. . .
“What would you think if I sang out of tune, if I stand up and walk out on you? Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song and I’ll try not to sing out of key. I get by with a little help from me friends. . .”
It all comes back to me now. Who the heck is Billy Shears? What is going on here? Whatever happened to: "She was just seventeen; you know what I mean, and the way she looked . . ."
And for that matter. . . who is Sgt. Pepper? (. . . we were wondering, at first. If you’re not a baby boomer, don’t worry; you’d have to have been there. . .) Even so, stay with me. There's a media/cultural history lesson to be learned from us old folk.
Paul McCartney expressed the feeling well on that Sgt. Pepper album, even though he was a young dude at the time:
“I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering. . .”
But now, in this case, I'm going to fix a hole by allowing my mind to wander a bit. Wander with me.
So now, 57 years later, I’m getting a few answers. They’re out there in the 21st-century version of boobtube/idiotbox. . . the internet. Here’s some guy telling me all about the contentions that those fab four guys were going through back in the day. Turns out, it was no walk in the park, certainly no Hyde Park, no strawberry fields forever. It was, in fact, most of the time, a hard day’s night for Beatle George, tolerating the power-tripping (ha! tripping, get it?) manipulations of John and Paul, but mostly Paul.
I mean, I always knew—or at least I had figured out by, say, the 1980’s, that Paul was the real spark plug of that band. He was the real music guy, the real control freak, which is why, I suppose, John could start a highly contagious rumor that Paul was. . . barefooted, or no longer of this world or. . . something like that. Paul and John had this quite effective good guy-bad guy public melodrama going on; it rendered them a powerfully productive public image that ultimately took them around the world and back.
Well, as it turned out, in 1967, Ringo was opening that first Sgt. Pepper invitational anthem with the “if I sang out of tune” soliloquy (see lyrics above) by belting it out so bravely on behalf of his fellow-Beatle, George, because—come to find out—George was, all along, and for all fab-four time, the beaten-down Beatle.
I just watched an online behind-the-scenes exposition of that sad-but-true, chronic Starr-Harrison, shared rejection scenario. It ain't easy backing up the dynamic Lennon/McCartney duo: one song-writer genius and one working class hero with a flair for outrageous poetry and showmanship. ( In one performance, while performing for the Queen, John had released the audience from any obligation to clap by explaining they could just "rattle your jewels.")
Anyway, getting back to 2024, the musician/documentarian James Hargreaves pulls back, online, a time/media curtain to reveal the sad-but-true saga of George with his faithful drummer friend Ringo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEKwAv3cKYU&t=601s
As it turns out, George really was the neglected genius, a guitar wizard hidden behind the curtain, among that fabulous four genii.
". . .with every mistake we must surely be learning."
I mean, we always knew that George was the quiet one, possibly even the neglected—the unappreciated— one. As it turns. . . he was. He was the tortured soul who really meant it when he later sang the hauntingly beautiful, profound—even Shakespearian-level tragedy—musical lament : While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDJs9dumZI
". . .with every mistake we must surely be learning." Thank you, George, wherever you are.
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