headphones and Hey Jude and all my days

beatles 1967-1970

I watched a tribute to the Beatles last night on the television.

I don’t know where else I would have watched it, really.

It makes sense that it was on the television.

I didn’t get any special invitations.

Maybe it got lost in the mail?

It was a pretty cool show.

There were a lot of performers who’d been around for a long time paying tribute like the fans they are.

Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart doing a really beautiful, subdued version of “Fool on the Hill”….Joe Walsh and Gary Clark Jr. playing a nice version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”…John Mayer with some funky boots….it was a  good night.

Paul McCartney and Ringo closed out the night with some solo and duo performances.

Watching Paul play “Hey Jude” made me think of how many times I’d listened to that song in my room in Marietta, laying on my back with my headphones on, getting up every 7 minutes or so to place the needle back at the beginning of that long Beatles classic.

I listened to that song for a while when I was in my very early teens like it was going to show me some sort of hidden truth about surviving adolescence…as if he was saying, “don’t make it bad, take a sad song….” to me directly.

I guess that we grab on to whatever flotation device is within reach when we feel tired of swimming.

The Beatles were a life raft, sometimes.

Now some might say, “Oh. Oh. Oh how sad! Liking the Beatles? How sad that you didn’t have a more solid bedrock to stand on! How sad that you didn’t have the Rock of Ages to stand on! Don’t ever place your faith in Man…. how sad that is that you liked the Beatles that much!”

Well, I was a kid.  There was a lot of that “rock of ages” stuff going on…even when I was a young kid…but I liked the Beatles, too.

I still like the Beatles.

I don’t think that I was alone in that feeling.

I know a lot of people who had a very important relationship with music.

Music was a pretty tactile thing to get some sustaining strength from.  You put the album on the turntable, hit play….and a favorite song could do a lot for a young troubled mind.

You knew that before you got the album out of the sleeve.

Forget self-help books…we all had self-help albums.

The remaining Beatles are getting older.

I told Jenny that Paul is starting to look like my Dad…and he is, with his swept over hair and a few more wrinkles.

It’s good to see them getting along…playing some music together.

That is surely a good thing to see people enjoying each others company.

 

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

Comments are closed.