My obsession with the Beatles is like a dormant disease that strikes every year or two.
It began in Junior High. It was 1978. I was 13 years old, sitting on the floor of my friend Bill Balint’s bedroom. The Beatles hadn’t recorded anything in nearly ten years. My favorite artists were the flamboyant Elton John, the warmly mellow James Taylor, and rising frantic pianist, Billy Joel. Despite the fact the Beatles were no longer a band, I knew much of their music. Everyone did. But they were a bigger deal in Bill’s house. His older sisters were fans, so his knowledge exceeded what other 13-year-olds naturally possessed. His excitement for the music and for the mythology of the band was contagious, and I caught it.
As we flipped through the album notes, sitting like little children poring over picture books, Bill’s voice grew intense like any good storyteller. His favorite subject was the conspiratorial myth of Paul McCartney’s death. “Look at the cover of Abbey Road,” he said. “Paul is barefoot, holding a cigarette in his right hand. He’s left-handed! It’s his funeral procession!” He played “Revolution 9” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” backwards, probably scratching his sister’s vinyl in the process. “Do you hear it?” he asked excitedly. Of course I did, whether through the power of suggestion or my Daredevil-like auditory skills. “Turn me on, Dead Man” and “I buried Paul” were John Lennon’s unequivocally clear revelations of the hidden truth. Paul was dead, and somehow the Beatles had buried the truth in the crypt of pop culture.
But it was more than the mythology that drew me in. I loved the songs! The jangly and sadistically catchy early stuff (“I Want to Hold your Hand,” “Love Me Do,” and “I Saw Her Standing There”); the melancholy response to lost innocence and overwhelming fame (“Help,” “Penny Lane, ““All the Lonely People”), the exploratory, genre-busting Sgt. Pepper, and even the last weird works of the White Album and Yellow Submarine. I was amazed at the impact they had made on the world in such a short time—the most prolific, culture-shifting, hit-producing, legacy-leaving group ever concocted—unique, talented, funny, and endlessly fascinating.
Every few years since, the obsession rises again, taking over my Spotify playlist and taking me back to those days on Bill’s bedroom floor. I’ll listen to almost nothing else for a week or two, singing along at the top of my voice, and discovering something I never noticed before. The great thing about the Beatles is that you can listen to nothing but them for weeks at a time and barely hear the same song twice.
Get this – more than 50 years since they broke up and more than 40 years since John was killed — the Beatles still have 25 million monthly listeners on Spotify and are the 93rd ranked artist on that platform. They remain so popular that nine mostly-meandering hours of footage of them sitting around talking and fighting is a hit for Disney.
I write all this, not because I have anything new to say to the endless narrative of Beatles’ fandom (which is comparatively mild, I’m sure) but because my obsession was rekindled recently by that Disney show, Get Back. Peter Jackson’s documentary (now available on Disney Plus), condenses more than 150 hours of lost footage from the Beatles’ last days into a voyeuristic voyage into genius.
Watching Get Back is like watching the Continental Congress – endless anticlimactic hours of legendary historical figures doing not much more than talking, fidgeting, eating, laughing, arguing, and ultimately, creating something incredible for the ages.
For no reason except my own need to say it, here’s what struck me as I watched it.
• They were friends. Sure, there’s tension in the room, and you can see the fraying of their relationships. Paul is the alpha. But they were just young lads who had become the most famous people on the entire planet and yet, somehow, managed to remain friends and co-creators in the simplest sense. Stripped away of every distraction, stuck in a studio, with a deadline hanging over their heads, they still enjoyed making music together when all was said and done.
• Creative genius is a grind. I don’t know how they persevered, given the pressure, the demands and the expectations. The resulting album, “Let It Be,” is not their best work, but it’s better than 99% of anything everyone else ever made. “Dig a Pony” is a minor, underappreciated delight in the Beatles’ catalog that I had never noticed before.
• People wore funny clothes in the 60s.
• Speaking of which--there were some weird units in that room, Yoko Ono? George’s monk-like friends? Mal? Just some odd folks with epic haircuts.
• The rooftop concert is organically brilliant. They sing their heart out. But while it makes me smile watching it--and it has become a legendary part of their lore--it’s also a shame they didn’t go out with something bigger than this.
• I would have given anything to be on the street below. Most of the people enjoyed it (though they are surprisingly lowkey about it). But there was one woman who was upset that the loud music had awakened her from her nap. Man, if she was unable to appreciate the fact that the freaking Beatles were playing on the rooftop above her, her whole life must have been one long pathetically-boring nap. I’ll bet she was fun at parties, the grumpy old bat!
• The cops who showed up for the noise complaints were like Pharisees at a meal with Jesus, humorless and oblivious to the history they were watching. I guess they were doing their job, but it’s funny to watch their discomfort. Really? You’re going to arrest the Beatles because they are playing music? Take off the silly hat you keep chewing on and enjoy the show, bro!
• Lastly, as the band begins to play “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Get Back,” a deep joy takes over, especially in Paul and John. You can see it wash over them. Their faces light up. They feed off each other. It’s natural. It’s symbiotic. They are GREAT singers! They are lost in the moment as brothers, unaware that their unprecedented musical partnership will echo from that rooftop for generations to come. It brought tears to my eyes.
In the end, what I learned from watching Get Back is that the Beatles will always be an obsession for me. They will never leave my psyche. They will always have more secrets for me to discover. Their music, like the mythology surrounding them, will never get old, even when I’m 64.
For more, I highly recommend Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America by Jonathan Gould, a thorough and fascinating unpacking of their worldwide influence and songwriting prowess.