Only A Beatles Blog

So The Beatles are back. Rock Band game, remastered albums... Recently a friend asked via Facebook (where else?), "Have the Beatles sold out?" Well, they did have an album called, "Beatles For Sale". Maybe they sold out many years ago? My answer is this: Comparitively speaking, no. I think a band like The Beatles became bigger than its name long ago, so it's really hard to differentiate between what is selling out and what is just Beatlemania that has been going on since the early '60s. Keep in mind that this is one of the few band that turned down reunion gimmicks time after time after time, most recently in 2000, apparently, when Universal offered George, Ringo, and Paul a multi-million dollar offer to do one show. They quite obviously turned it down. I think that constitutes a very non-sell-out attitude toward your band.

But that's not what I want to write about today. Partly, I feel silly trying to contribute anything to the discussion about The Beatles. Anything and everything has already been written by people who are far better writers than me. But also, there's part of me that could probably write every single blog about The Beatles (or Bob Dylan) because I have been a life-long fan and really, though, my favorite songs and albums have changed over time, I've never tired of them. What I want to talk about is how one gets to that point of fandom. Can video games and remastered CD's carry on the legacy of The Beatles to future generations?

I really don't think they can. While I'd love to check out the Rock Band game and hear the remasters, I think that's mostly because I'm already a fan and am curious. Becoming a fan, I'm convinced, has everything to do with friends turning you on to a band and/or having magical experiences related to the songs of a particular band. It's a person by person, very individual process. You can't ram your music down someones throat and expect them to like you. I didn't get into grunge in the early to mid '90s because of media hype. I got into Pearl Jam because of my cousin, Mark. I later got into Nirvana because of conversations with my friend, Amy. Similarly, I can't imagine being a true, hardcore, life-long Beatles fan without experiences that are unique to my own life, not because of a particular reissue or hyped-up cross-marketing scheme.

I became a Beatles fan for a couple of reasons. First off, my dad was a dj on a local radio station, when I was a just a small town kid in Wataga, IL. By that time, The Beatles were already fodder for "oldies" stations. This was twenty plus years ago! My dad was (and still is) a huge Beatles fan. He would play them anytime he could and in fact spent one Thanksgiving Day (??? I think. I may have gotten the holiday wrong. Help me out here dad!) playing nothing but the Beatles for hours on end. But it was one particular time he played one song that sticks with me. I remember him asking me before he left for work one day, if there was anything I wanted to hear on the radio. And I said I wanted to hear, "Hey Jude". I must have been like 10 or 11 at the time. Man was I a cool kid! I sat by the radio, filled with anticipation, and waited for Paul McCartney's voice to ring out over the ancient speakers I listened to music through.

But before Paul's voice, came my dad's, and I'll never forget this, saying, "This one goes out to Wataga." Cue Mr. McCartney and the band. I loved that he put it that way. It wasn't, "This one goes out to my son, Andy", it was a more mysterious statement, but I was in on the secret. In fact, that moment may very well be one of the main reasons I went to broadcast school years later! It was magical, it was personal, it was The Beatles! And the song has remained extremely personal to me ever since.

One of my other early moments of Beatles indoctrination came from listening to them with my older brother. Particularly, we used to sit in his room and listen to my dad's scratchy LP of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Man, we must have listened to it thousands of times. We both, to this day, could probably tell you exactly where the record skipped. These days, I see very little of my brother, and quite honestly, we are far different people, but I always cut back to those days in my mind. Pre-cd (I know for a fact that when both of us eventually bought cd players, Sgt. Pepper was one of the first cd's we each bought) days of a kid sitting around with his older brother, who he idolized, digging music that came from a different universe--trippy, ethereal, melodic, fun, singable...it was all there.

Even though, those were the two big ones, I've had so many other moments that relate to the music of The Beatles. Countless times singing to a song on the car radio or on a dock of a lake on a summer day. Sitting around with music people talking about our favorite songs. When I still played open mics, one of my best performances came at a packed folk music-oriented open mic in the suburbs of Chicago. I kicked off my two song set with, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away". I can't explain how it felt to have all of these people, many of whom were professionals, singing along with me to this song that I love. It gave me the confidence to deliver a solid rendition of one of my own songs.

And I've got to imagine, that this is how most people became Beatles fans, or fans of any band for that matter. Music is a supremely personal experience and while I hope that the Rock Band game and the remasters create some new fans, I think it's more complicated than that. The future of music lies on creating experiences for people, not necessarily in the physical product. New bands should get wise to a couple of things. First of all, get good. The Beatles were so good because they played together for hours and hours on end (without their stint in Germany, they may have been just another British Invasion band). Second of all, make personal connections with your fans. Don't push the issue, but meet your fans, talk to them, be accessible, make songs from your heart and soul. Say what you will about Twitter and Facebook and 21st century technology, but one of the positives about it, is that fans of an artist have a unique way of connecting to their favorite bands or singers, in a way that was never possible in the past. And artists have a unique way of marketing their music and creating one-of-a-kind experiences--secret shows, specially autographed merchandice--because of these social networking sites.

With music, first and foremost, it's about the MUSIC. But also, it's about creating personal experiences that people will remember for the rest of their lives. And I don't know if The Beatles did that purposefully, but their music has had the power and timelessness to be able to create those moments for myself as well as millions of others. Maybe you can't recreate that. Maybe it just has to happen. So while new Beatles "stuff" is great, it's not what makes them amazing or what will keep them alive for generations.

It's scratchy records, older brothers or sisters, moms & dads, summer sing-a-longs, the late night bar juke box on a night out with friends, FM radio on a roadtrip. It's moments that stick with us for a lifetime.