A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BEATLES

And in the End, the Love you take is equal to the love you make.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 2015

Early in the morning of December 9th, 1980, thirty-eight year old Paul McCartney received a phone call at his home outside of London that his lifelong friend of twenty-three years, John Lennon, had been shot and killed in New York City. When his wife, Linda McCartney, got home after taking their kids to school, she noticed he was in complete shock. Thinking he should continue a routine to keep his mind busy, McCartney went to a studio in London to work on an album. Denny Laine, his guitarist, recalled that the work was tough, and everyone in the studio was on edge. McCartney had met the press that morning, and later on that afternoon. That night, still in shock, a reporter asked him about the murder. Horrified, deeply depressed, and going in and out of being scared for his life, McCartney answered ‘It’s a drag, isn’t it?’ while trying to quickly get away from the crowd of lights.  Once inside his house, unable to control his emotions, he broke down crying for hours, completely inconsolable. His wife Linda was unable to get McCartney to go anywhere, do anything, so terrible was his grief. The next day he did not go to the studio, and Linda traversed their rural property to stop neighbors from bird hunting such was her fear of what the sound of gunshots would do to her husband. McCartney emerged from sobs with pure anger, and had plenty to say about Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman. Fighting this anger and his fear, he managed to fly to New York City to see Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono, with whom he broke down again in front of a small entourage of family and friends. 
    McCartney was never the same again. After spending the first ten years of his solo career running away from the biggest band in history, McCartney spent the next ten years kicking out mild but distracting and sometime mediocre hits with the single purpose of healing. Having emerged from the Eighties intact, he then started to go back to his youth, back to the ‘60’s and yes, back to the Beatles. His music, which he had structured to be most decidedly not like The Beatles, slowly traversed back over this ground. Perhaps his album Flaming Pie is the best example of this, but so is Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and even Flowers in the Dirt. In his old age, McCartney’s wall of silence about John abated, and he slowly and sometimes controversially shared details of his relationship with John. Some of this became the basis of the films Backbeat and Two of Us. Some like myself laughed when McCartney suggested that his solo music was more ‘advant garde’ than Lennon’s. But he brought the songs out of the closet and starting in the early ‘90’s he even played many songs that traditionally John recorded or sang. In this public healing, he was healing us, too. Though the pain was long ago for many of us, and many of us were too young to experience the shock, the feeling of loss never goes away. Pontificating on Lennon’s career today is equivalent to wondering what Kurt Cobain would have done. As McCartney went on, we went on. 
Hearing his friend George Harrison was sick, McCartney went to his bedside where Harrison, perturbed at how sad his friend was, tried to cheer him up. They held hands. They didn’t talk about the past. Learning from his past mistake about speaking to the press in the midst of shock, McCartney waited until his grief had subsided before speaking to the press outside his house. He called him a great lad and said “I am devastated and very, very sad. He was a lovely guy and a very brave man and had a wonderful sense of humor.” McCartney has gone on, as the Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has. They continue to record and tour, while the media obsesses over 6 July 1957.
    “I met Paul the first time I did Be-Bop-a-Lula live,” Lennon remembered during his interviews with David Sheff shortly before his murder, “and I think he said yes the next day.” In doing so, McCartney changed the face not only of pop music, but of history. Last week, taking my kids to see the Minion Movie, I watched four animated characters, one of them barefoot, cross Abbey Road in London in a weird homage to the Fab Four. While my kids didn’t get the reference, all the adults did, and looking around the theatre I noticed all the adults were my age, not my mother’s age. 
    We all had Abbey Road.
    At my vinyl rack at home I looked at my used copy of Abbey Road. I bought it when the music stores were dumping vinyl like no there was no tomorrow. It still had the three dollar sticker price on it. I didn’t get it from my parents. My parents listened to country and western music, not rock and roll. Though my father was heavy into ‘50’s rock like Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, he knew next to nothing about the Beatles. My father-in-law bought Sgt. Pepper on CD and literally laughed with joy as he played it in his PC, altering the scales as if he were a sound engineer. He said it didn’t sound right, and had to fix several things he found ‘wrong’ with the stereo, as if he were George Martin. My first experience with the Beatles was watching A Hard Day’s Night on the Encore Network in the ‘80’s and laughing hysterically at Lennon arguing with a stage girl on whether or not he was actually himself. And of course, who didn’t laugh when a reporter asked George Harrison how he ‘found’ America?
    “Turn left at Greenland.”
    The phenomenon of Beatlemania left such an indelible mark on history as to change the future. The dry, wry wit not only of the Liverpudlians themselves but their handlers, their publicists creating their image, the Hollywood producers approving the script and everyone who interviewed them from Ed Sullivan to Cameron Crowe egged them on this route to perpetuate the image. This is ongoing, long after the Beatles broke up, long after Lennon’s murder and Harrison’s passing. It will continue as long as people born after them buy Abbey Road and instead of focusing on the horror of whatever moment is dragging down them and the world instead sing along:
    “Here comes the sun, here comes the sun and I say, ‘it’s alright.’”
    McCartney always focused on this trend, the trend of the Beatles to stay upbeat and positive. During the Anthology he took pride in saying the band emphasized love. Love Me Do, She Loves You, A Little Help From My Friends, Come Together, etc. Sgt. Pepper has been beaten down in the four decades since its release, deemed by some to be not as good as the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds and many notate that it was in fact released months after the Doors’ debut album that featured Break on Through and The End. As a tome of psychedelia it does seem a bit late in the game except that the Beach Boys were singing about trying to get laid and being turned down and the Doors were openly singing about death. But while Pet Sounds and even the Romones have slowly replaced the Beatles on the top charts of art rock the fact remains this is fourth quarter football. Shit, this is calling the game the other way after the game is over. Sgt Pepper was, in the view of Rolling Stone, “The closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815.”
    Yes, I’m going to play Blitzkrieg Bop to my kids when they get old enough, and I’m going to play it loud. I am also going to console them with Wouldn’t it be Nice and Breaking up is Hard to Do after their first flame out. When they get pissed that their vote didn’t go their way I’m going to play Gimmie Shelter and the next time we’re on the highway doing a hundred and ten klicks it’s time for A Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress. All that notwithstanding, I don’t have to do anything to get them into the Beatles. It’s ingrained in them already. My boy is singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and my daughter is singing Yellow Submarine. Add ten years and it’s going to be Revolution and Hey Jude. The Beatles will live on because their message and their meaning in pop culture transcends the changes in history. 

FOR THE LOVE OF TEGAN AND SARA PART I

Maybe I would have been something you’d be good at. Maybe you would have been something I’d be good at.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 2015

I knew there was something wrong in the world. 
         I was in Newfoundland on business (yes, they have business there), when in my hotel room I saw a video of identical twin sisters singing a very catchy tune. While in the local record shop looking for traditional Newfoundland music I inquired about this dynamic duo, Tegan & Sara, and shown their CDs. I bought the one with the song on it. The L.P. was called So Jealous. It had just been released. These being the days before I had any type of mp3 player I listened to it on my laptop and in my car at home. I was mesmerized by one voice, literally put into a trance, and soothed to sleep with another. For a man who had a stressful job in the Oil Patch it was just what the doctor ordered. When I discovered on the internet they had a release called If It Was You, I went to Best Buy at home to pick it up and they said they didn’t carry it. 
         And that’s when I knew there was something wrong in the world. 
         How was it possible that the largest compact disc retailer in the United States wasn’t carrying Tegan & Sara? I pondered this question as I spoke to other store personnel who looked up the label and said it was only available in Canada. The twins, so they told me, were from Calgary, Alberta, someone happened to know, and thus it was distributed there.
         Canada? What? Since when did the Great White North have the corner on good music? I mean, I love Neil Young, I saw Bryan Adams in the Astrodome in ’94, and in general thought I had an appreciation of Canadian music as evidenced by my huge collection of Newfie CDs, including but not limited to Shanneyganock, Blair Harvey and the Dregs, and every other band that could afford to record on George Street three sheets to the wind. Why these were not available in the States, I understand. 
         But Tegan and Sara? What the fuck is wrong with my country?
         Further proving I lived in the cultural shitter was the impending release of The Con in 2007. Having gotten wind of it on another trip to Newfoundland, I went to an ‘Indie’ record shop in Houston one day well after its release to find it was not available. 
         Who the fuck is not stocking The Con in music stores?
         Now yes, I lived in Texas, and yes, I lived in Houston, but let’s get real. First, it’s not like I live in Pocatello or Ithaca. For Christ’s sakes, it’s the fourth largest city in the United Goddamn States. Second, I’m willing to bet that besides Buffalo, there are more Canadians living in Houston than anywhere else in the world due to the Oil Patch. Thirdly, the inner city of Houston (the part that doesn’t live in racist imposed poverty) is extremely bohemian and would love Tegan & Sara, especially the Montrose Neighborhood for which I will address in a later article. I had to wait until my rotation to Newfoundland again to get The Con, as no website would deliver it to me (I found out later, to my extreme embarrassment, that I was in fact wrong, that teganandsara.com would have made sure I would receive it, but for the purposes of the article, just pretend I’m not an idiot doucebag). Once armed with The Con, I found it was, in my opinion at least, So Jealous Part II, and that was just fine with me. It was like following Revolver with Rubber Soul. The Con enjoyed a healthy rotation in my car and in my office, but my home life prevented me from focusing on anything regarding Tegan & Sara but their music. 
         For instance, though I could distinguish their voices, I did not know who sang what song, and scarce photos and no time for research that did not involve supermodels meant that I could not tell one from the other. In the long view, this was healthy for me, as these two albums never left the ten in circulation for the next five or six years. To listen to those two records was an intimate look into the lives of what appeared to me to be, two very damaged women who clearly had relationship issues but had survived to express themselves to me of all people. How lucky was I?
         On a chance trip to Calgary on business I heard On Directing on the radio and new immediately, that Tegan and Sara had released another L.P. I ran to the nearest independent record shop that google found and purchased it (Sainthood) and spun it forever and ever. It was more stripped down than the previous two, but that made it seem even rawer in emotion. Sainthood bumped No Jealous and when I went back home I found it was available for order but not in stock. Well, my backwater redneck country was just moving right along the progression turnpike. 
         As circumstance would fucking have it, I wound up moving to Calgary shortly after that visit, and threw myself into my new job, which guaranteed 80 hour work weeks during the winter amid minus forty degree weather, BUT it also had Tegan & Sara on the radio as it was their hometown and when I brought them up to people under the age of thirty, they knew who the twins were. I even had a direct report who had gone to high school with the Twins and met them a few times, though he was actually not that big of a fan.
         TWO DEGREES OF SEPARATION (as evidenced by a high school yearbook).
         The collective impact of these experiences, immersing myself into their music, their psychological love problems, memorizing chord and key changes as if my life depended on it, paled in comparison when I discovered via a link of a link of a link to a Rolling Stone website link that they were recording another album. 
         Suddenly, all I could think of for the next four months, was Heartthrob. 
         It was unhealthy. For the first time, I devoured their videos on youtube. I spent an unbelievable amount of money on itunes getting everything available, I scoured the internet for copies of the Plunk! E.P. and color issues. Somehow I had missed Tegan & Sara Get Along (I had this thing constantly in the way called a job and two little people at home that WOULD NOT LEAVE ME ALONE). Well, shit, I ordered that, too. States, a film about the band on tour, struck me as being just as important as Gimmie Shelter, Let it Be, or No Direction Home.
         Within ten minutes on youtube I declared everyone an idiot who could not tell them apart. Within ten more minutes, they looked similar, but had distinguishing differences. A half-hour convinced me the two of them looked nothing alike. They weren’t twins! Were they even sisters? This was the REAL con.
         Likewise in the same amount of time (after Back in Your Head) I knew who was singing what and with glee started arranging playlists on my iTouch in addition to my TEGAN&SARA playlist a TEGAN playlist and a SARA playlist. Over the next few weeks, I discovered I listened to Tegan more, and wondered if I always had, or if I had developed this post-surgical strike. Then I wondered if it was fair, separating the two. After all, they were a BAND. I didn’t separate out my Lennon from my McCartney. 
         These late nights on my Mac were followed during the daytime by an unhealthy jaunt into pre-Heartthrob research. Within the next two weeks, I WOULD KNOW FUCKING EVERYTHING THERE WAS TO KNOW ABOUT TEGAN & SARA. And I wasn’t ashamed. I knew which neighborhood they moved around in (near my work) I learned their personality traits via hundreds of published interviews on the web (though they are both funny, Tegan comes off more of a witty comedian and Sara more of a philosopher) and in a weird way, this made their music which I already knew intimately, even more intimately. Part of this was due directly to the Twins living their lives quite literally in the open and unabashedly, which I find endearing and brave. Part of this is what I came to see as the Tegan & Sara Machine. They were with the WB at this point, but already by that time, they had a brand, they knew how to sell it, and by God they were fucking geniuses at it. 
         The push towards the Heartthrob release left me obsessed with wanting more. More free shit on iTunes. The Newark Folk Fest. A listed but hard to find NPR concert. Road reviews. And among these was an advert they were going to play the Shaw Center in Edmonton in March.
         March? Edmonton? FUCK! It’ll be minus forty up there! FUCK IT! I was saved only by the revelation that even earlier they were playing at the University of Calgary. I just barely got tickets before they sold out. Though in my youth barely a month went by when I did not go to a concert (this went on for ten years or so) by this time I had not been to a concert (drunken forays on George Street did not classify) in at least four years. I think my last one was Rush on their Snakes and Arrows Tour stop at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Now all I had to do was survive the impending wave of pleasure that the Heartthrob release would cause and try not to get committed to an asylum before I could see them in concert. 
         Then, as if the Twins understood my plight, they released the album streaming the weekend before the release. I played it non-stop for three days. I never left earshot of my Mac. Folks, I had a problem. I had it bad. I needed help. This was worse than my constant repetition of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto album. I listened to that everyday sometimes twice a day for six goddamn months. I was, however, able to reign in my interest. Everyone already knew, for example, who Chris Martin was shacking up with. 
         My fascination and investigation into the lives of Tegan & Sara was shameful and I am in fact embarrassed about it. I only repeat it to warn others. You think its okay. You think it’s acceptable, even preferable to say, stalking. To me, it was a repeat of my behavior regarding The Beatles when I discovered them in my youth. Or the Doors. Holy shit, how many books had I read on Zeppelin? Surely my Tegan & Sara obsession didn’t border impropriety?  There was a definite period of a week there when my wife was not too sure who I wanted to be married to because of the articles she found open on my mac, the music running on the earphones on my ipod while I was sleeping, the desktop image at my work, and my humming of Drove Me Wild while doing dishes. Thinking back, perhaps it was overboard, or was I being hard on myself because unlike The Who or Def Leppard, they were women. In this case, I was actually being sexist against myself, and as someone who thinks of themselves as non-gender biased, this upset me. 
         I pulled back. I reconsidered what this meant, for my marriage. For my parental duties. For my job. After all, I was on a work permit and didn’t want the Canadian government to figure out what was going on and toss me out of the country for fear of being an obsessed fan. Calm down, I told myself. It’s okay to put My Number on eleven and rock the fuck out. It’s perfectly fine to mention in passing to someone Not Tonight is a special song to you. It’s all right that you’re only one of a hundred people who can repeat the refrain in The Ocean accurately and clearly. Just…dial it back. Who gives a shit who Tegan is dating but Tegan? Take the bookmark off their youtube page for Christ’s sake. I collected myself. I moved on. I was ready for the post Heartthrob world. 
         THEN I FUCKING DISCOVERED TWITTER!
         It had always been there, on my blackberry, awaiting just a flick of the finger. I had a work blackberry so everything was blocked out. I went through three blackberries due to crap RIM technology and one shameless pawn-up to get a Bold to replace my Torch. All of the icons, the Facebook, the Youtube, had been deactivated as a part of corporate policy. So I was surprised when I tried to turn my BB to silent that I accidentally hit the Twitter preinstalled icon and up came the home page. I previously had an iTouch so I kept up with Joel McHale and Kevin Smith for laughs, but as Closer was playing on my radio while I discovered this, the possibilities were endless!
         So now, I, like an addict, know where they are any given time of day, what they are doing, and what they are thinking, and I don’t have to feel like an obsessed fan because I’m not the one doing the obsessive researching and digital stalking. There’s no need for that now. Why?
         Because they fucking tell me what’s going on now, like I’m their bitch. And let’s face it, hundreds of dollars into my obsession, that’s what I am to the Tegan & Sara Machine. I’m their bitch, and like a submissive little creature I keep up with everything they care to tell me…and they care….they care to tell me a lot. So when I make it to their next gig, it’s all good. I won’t need to stand at the front. I’ll do with just a moderate floor view, I’ll cheer them on, and I’ll quietly check off their setlist against my wishlist. Tegan & Sara are one band that won’t ever have to get back in my head, because they would have never left.