Before I start in on the Fab Four, let me say goodbye to my favorite member of the Prefab Four aka The Monkees, the great Michael Nesmith.
In my house we had only one Beatles album, but we had every Monkees record. My mom was a Monkees fan, not a Beatles fan. As a little kid I loved both groups and thought that they all probably lived together in a beach house with bunkbeds. Mom’s favorite Monkee is Micky, closely followed by Davy Jones. Mike has always been my favorite. As a kid it was because he played guitar, he had his iconic wool hat, and he was from Texas—like me! He was the first celebrity I remember being from Texas. I know now that there are multitudes of famous people from Texas, but as a preschooler, I thought that famous Texans were as scarce as hen’s teeth—as we say in Texas. I obviously knew that Waylon and Willie were famous, but I also thought that they were uncles or cousins, kinfolk of some sort. As an adult I appreciated that Michael Nesmith wrote one of my favorite songs of all time, Different Drum. It was made famous by Linda Ronstadt’s first band, Stone Poneys, and it is her version that I truly love. I also appreciated that he was the executive producer of Repo Man, one of my top five favorite films. Rest in peace, Michael Nesmith. Anyways, here’s his own version of Different Drum:
The one Beatles album that we had was a very battered copy of Meet the Beatles! (known as With the Beatles outside of North America) that was handed down by my Aunt Nicki to my mom.
Maa was a little too young for The Beatles and did not really understand Aunt Nicki’s frustration with Grandma and Grandpa Noah for visiting too long after Sunday night church; sure that they were going to miss the lads from Liverpool on The Ed Sullivan Show. I think that they made it home in time, but barely.
Mom’s favorite Beatle is Paul. I think that if you polled the world’s moms as to whom their favorite Beatle is, ninety percent would say Paul. I actually put this theory to test on Twitter and George took the lead, with Paul a close second and Ringo comfortably in third. It looks like I was completely wrong. Paul is nowhere near ninety percent.
John barely polled in double digits, which makes me very sad. You see, I’m a John guy, and have been since around seventh grade when I realized just how funny he was. Before that I was a Paul guy. I was raised in a vile religion that forced its congregants to go to fucking night church on Sundays and Wednesdays, where swearing and anything remotely countercultural was utterly forbidden, and John was too much of an ironic iconoclast and vocal nonbeliever for my family to deal with. He wrote and sang Imagine, after all, a song which is as close to a hymn as we atheists can get. Better to stick with safe, smiling Paul. After all, he sang with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. Also, Paul is left-handed—like me! I still love Paul, George, and Ringo, but I am thoroughly a John guy now. I know all of his many faults and failings, but I think that he had rejected the misogyny and toxic masculinity that he was in the thrall of and that he was growing into a better man. We’ll never know now, because some fat fanboy/religious nut/all purpose wackaloon from Texas (like me) shot him to death in front of his apartment building.
John was assassinated when I was seven years old. I recall being very saddened and horrified. I remember reading the copy of Newsweek that reported his death and staring at the cover for hours. The image of his face in black and white seared into my mind’s eye forever—even if I did misremember it as being the cover of Time Magazine. In the weeks and months that followed John’s death, his music was omnipresent. John and Yoko’s album Double Fantasy had been released just a few weeks prior and the songs Woman, (Just Like) Starting Over, and Watching the Wheels were played constantly. They had such an unintended haunting and elegiac quality to me when I would hear them on the local mom radio station while being driven to school, or at the grocery store waiting in the checkout lane with mom and sister, or in the lobby of Dr. Knapp’s office. More than forty years later listening to any of those songs takes me to cold overcast days in the winter of 1980-81, meditating on the short life of John Lennon, thinking back to the time when turning forty seemed so far away.
As the third episode of Get Back is winding down Jennifer says, “They don’t know that this is the last time that they’ll play together.” I was thinking the exact same thought right as she said it. They have just finished playing on the rooftop of Apple Corps LTD’s studio. It is the first time that they have played in public for almost three years.
This is also the last time.
But they don’t know it.
And it made me cry my eyes out to watch it. I’m a little teary eyed now, honestly. They were all still so young. Ringo and John have not made thirty yet and Paul is twenty-seven and George is only twenty-six. Watching the guys, the incomparable and infectiously joyful Billy Preston, Linda, and Yoko crowded into the recording console to listen to the performance that they absolutely crushed, laughing and smoking—my god, so much smoking!—they are having the best time. After weeks of mounting tension and the tedium of writing and recording a new album—with cameras rolling—the show ends on an absolute triumph. On the rooftop they just crush it—and they know it. Since the beginning of day one Paul has been speaking aloud the anxieties and stage fright that the rest of the band has been experiencing (except for the unflappable Ringo) and expressing in more oblique ways. All but forgotten are the few days when George left the band after being belittled and picked on by John and condescended to and belittled by Paul one too many times. At the beginning of the series George is a very sensitive and emotionally fragile young man who doubts his abilities as a guitarist and songwriter in the face of the “.leaders'“ and presumedly more talented songwriters, Paul and John. At one point in the first episode, Jennifer says that the emotionally fragile George is very “wells for boys,” a phrase taken from this hilarious SNL sketch of the same name.
By the end of the series George has found himself as an artist and songwriter telling John and Yoko how he really wants to make his own music now. And he does. He even produces movies like Time Bandits, one of my top five favorite films. He has a brilliant solo career. They all do. In my heart of hearts I believe that had John lived that they would have gotten back together. Not forever, but every so often when they felt like dusting off the old classics and maybe making a few new ones.
Enough of my speculative fan fiction, I really want to talk about why I feel inspired by this piece of television. It’s because for the first several hours of this piece the Immortal Beatles SUCK—they really stink the place up. They’re out of tune (even Paul), off beat (never Ringo), and the lyrics (when they have them) are really bad. And they continue to stink right up until the end and it is a slog where tempers flare and egos are bruised. But they keep plugging away by fits and starts. Like making sausage, it’s ugly, but it makes something beautiful. To watch heroes of mine since early childhood really struggle and kick at the pricks is frankly magical. And inspiring. But they also have fun—so much fun just being irrepressible goofballs and that is also magical.
I miss creating so much. I love writing this blog and the wonderful people that I have met through it, but I need to make more things. I need to write, I need to sing, I need to act, I need to direct, I need to draw, I need to paint, I need to write songs. . .I need to do all of the things! Not to be maudlin; I may not have too much time.
What I really miss is creating with other people. I miss collaboration. Next year I am starting a virtual writing room with friends and acquaintances. The goal is to make as many projects as possible within one year. I will tell y’all more about it soon. Probably next week. I know what y’all are thinking, “Yeah, right.” I know my track record with following through on nearly everything makes this goal suspect, but let me ride this wave of post-anxiety/depression optimism.
I recently had a health scare that made me so anxious that it crossed into depression, but it looks like I’m ok—for now. I had to get a chest X-ray to rule out lung cancer a couple of weeks ago. Needless to say, I was beyond worried. Lung cancer is so deadly. It’s what killed poor George Harrison after all. Even though I quit smoking over eight years ago, I did smoke for more than twenty years, so lung cancer is a real possibility. I do not currently have it though, so let me have some hope.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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