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By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music
In 2002, when my wife was pregnant, we went to Europe for one final trip
before our possibilities for travel would become much more limited. While we
were in London I called in a favor, and we visited the EMI recording studios at
Abbey Road. We stood and gaped inside each of the facility's three historic
studios, especially, of course, Studio Two, the impossibly simple space in which
the Beatles recorded about 90 percent of their work.
We can never be certain that soaking up the history of that one room in utero
is what made my son, Adam, into a world-class Beatlemaniac, but we will always
have our suspicions. He is now 6 years old ("6 and two-thirds," he would
insist I say), and he can rattle off all the songs, all the albums, including
bootlegs, B-sides and set lists. Adam is just like I was when I was 12,
except more so. Since beginning guitar lessons (at his insistence) earlier this
year, he can now play about two dozen Beatles songs, and let me tell you that
you have not lived until you've heard a first-grader rip through "Come Together"
or "Helter Skelter."
This obsession was not immediately apparent. The first music that he showed a
taste for tended toward old R&B (Ray Charles, Louis Jordan, Chuck Berry), which I
suppose makes a decent amount of sense, given the irresistible rhythmic charms
and narrative shape of so many of those songs. My wife, Suzanne, would sometimes
play Beatles albums within the day's rotation (the "White Album" was frequent
dinner accompaniment for a while), but to no greater effect than anything else.
View photos: In Focus: The Beatles
And then one day, when the boy was around 3, I put something on (maybe it was
"Revolver," maybe "Abbey Road" -- I'm really not sure), and Adam's head
spun around like something from "The Exorcist." "What is that!?" he wanted to
know. And when that album was done, he wanted more. Then more and still more.
Almost four years later, it has not yet stopped.
Oh, his interests in all things Liverpudlian certainly expanded. Adam is a
big fan of anything that comes in a list or a system (his parallel fixation has
been memorizing subway maps from around the globe), so the endless
configurations of which Beatle wrote or sang which song, and who played which
instrument when, was immediately fascinating.
He worked his way through the four solo catalogs (who had any idea that there
are actually about 400 Paul McCartney solo albums?), studied the anthology DVDs and
footage of the Ed Sullivan performances. I stopped keeping up with the bootleg
world a while ago, but my dear friend Sam, with whom I discovered the Beatles in
our youth, remains a collector, and he was all too happy to be Adam's connection
when the child was seeking out rehearsals from the "Rubber Soul" era or
alternate takes of "Revolution."
Last Halloween, Adam's teachers asked the kids to dress as their favorite
character from a book. Adam elected to be George Harrison, the animated, "Yellow
Submarine" version. I took him to see Ringo's "All-Starr Band," and he even sat
through Billy Squier's segment without protesting. We went to McCartney's recent
show at the New York Mets' new ballpark. When I asked Adam what he most wanted
to hear, he said "I'm Down," because that's what they closed the 1965 Shea
Stadium concert with -- and damn if Paul didn't play it. Most exciting for me:
We went to a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall a few months ago at which
the two surviving Beatles played together for the first time in the United
States since 1990, the only time I've seen them play together. Adam fully
understood the magnitude of the occasion.
The point of all of this, though, is not to brag about my kid. Although, as
you can see, I'm not shy about doing just that. The point is that I have
listened to the music of the Beatles for some part of virtually every one of the
last 1,500 days. (Story Continues On Next Page...) |
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