A FAN’S NOTES
“Two of Us”
The Beatles have been top of mind of late. The corporate entity which has lived on since the group’s desultory dissolution in 1970 has always been canny. Get Back and its reanimation of Let It Be follows other select album anniversary reissues, new compilations, Anthology, the stereo, mono and Capitol box sets, Love and of course the excitement surrounding the band’s calculated and staggered debut on compact disc way back in eighties. Elvis Presley Enterprises can’t compete.
When I was a boy I assumed A Hard Day’s Night and Help! were documentaries. I couldn’t have told you what a documentary was back in the mid-sixties, but all movies seemed to be made in one take, without scripts, sets nor editing; any scene on celluloid rang true to my unsophisticated eyes and ears. They were just moving Kodak photographs; I possessed no disbelief to suspend.
My mother’s elder sister was a remarkable woman. As a teenager Auntie Mag believed her destiny lay in a convent. She instead found her calling as a Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson; from time to time she modelled the latest fashions in photo shoots for her ad agency’s clients. In her spare time she studied piano and painted. One of her works, a still life of yellow tulips, hangs in the Crooked 9 – not because Auntie Mag painted it but because it’s a remarkable work of art. Hipper than my mother, Auntie Mag took me to the cinema to see Yellow Submarine upon its release. She loved the Beatles; she could appreciate how the Fab Four were “lifting latches,” opening doors. Following the movie I was treated to a delightful discourse on the nature of design, the film’s usage of primary colours and its fluid animation technique, so very different from the classic Bugs Bunny and crude Saturday morning Beatles cartoons I was used to watching. All a bit beyond my grasp at the time but the information filtered through over the years and consequently has never been forgotten. The established world need not be so established in its ways.
“Two of us wearing raincoats/standing solo in the sun.” The Beatles breakup was staggering news. Perhaps my first experience with grief – an ill-fated family cat aside. I thought they were four best friends, the way I was best friends with a couple of boys who lived on my street. The tomboy sisters who lived on the corner were devastated. I’ve still no idea how they managed to stretch their weekly allowances to stay current with the initial spate of solo releases.
The fourth Beatles feature film was Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be. My Auntie did not take me to see that one although she’d no issues with me, then aged ten, seeing Little Big Man. No, Let It Be was something else. Let It Be was midnight repertory showings and the realization that some sort of life beyond high school wasn’t so fantastically distant. Old enough to buy cigarettes, and probably a six-pack – provided the corner shop owner wasn’t too fussy about selling beer to spotty kids.
My high school was situated on a university campus in Montreal’s West End. Depending on my mother’s marital status, school was either three or two bus rides away. Friends lived in neighbourhoods other than mine. My city was opening up. Cinema V was on Sherbrooke Street West in Notre-Dame de Grace. It faced NDG Park, a big, green and heavily treed recreational space about the size of two city blocks. There was plenty of cover, the lighting didn’t much illuminate the paths and benches. We’d gather there well in advance of show time to hang out, hoping to catch a buzz. Teendom did not come with a user’s manual. People dated, but I don’t know that any particular couple ever went out alone on a weekend night, the gang was omnipresent.
At the time (and sometimes still do), I thought the Beatles were much cooler after they ditched their band uniforms and costumes. In retrospect, I believe letting themselves go as a unified visual entity manifested their inability to take care of band business as a unit following the sudden death of their manager and confidante Brian Epstein in the summer of 1967. “You and me chasing paper/getting nowhere.”
Let It Be was a downer. But it was never boring. Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same was boring and Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii was really boring; the pot and hash didn’t work. To see the Beatles as themselves instead of acting as Beatles in a Richard Lester film was amazing. The Savile Row rooftop finale is still mind blowing, exhilarating, that penultimate party drink before one too many. Nobody, not me friends, not my Auntie, would ever see them perform together again. That is a shame because had there been a will there would’ve been a way, but the two principals were “Sunday driving/not arriving” and that was obvious to them as “Writing letters/on my wall.”
The Beatles recorded and released about ten hours of music. With Get Back, director Peter Jackson distilled some 50 hours of footage captured by Lindsay-Hogg down to eight. While he certainly emphasizes the tedium of creativity and studio work, Get Back is never boring. And Jackson tells a different story from Let It Be - although George still comes across from their dysfunctional universe as overly sensitive and a tad precious.
“Two of Us” to me was never a nostalgic day tripping ditty about aimless motoring, P.G. Wodehouse, those warm and fuzzy years before the Hun invaded France. It’s always been about John and Paul. There’s a wonderful sequence in Get Back when they run through the song in Goon Show voices, perhaps inspired by a visit from Peter Sellers. When it comes time to really get down to it, the childhood friends lock eyes and wavelengths. John and Paul sing in harmony as well as the Everly Brothers ever did and to each other like Sonny and Cher dueting on “I Got You Babe.”
“You and I have memories/longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And there it is: from the bus shelter in the Penny Lane roundabout, the Star Club, Shea Stadium and Sgt. Pepper, they’ve done it all and the future, for whatever reasons, many reasons, proffers no promise. Fans and viewers like me are again left with heartaches, those 1970 pangs revisited, albeit restored, remastered and reissued. Bittersweet memories refreshed.
meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of memory and musical musings since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is widely available. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer. It costs a heck of a lot less than Sir Paul’s new book.
