I love the Beatles.

I remember when I first heard their music. I must have been about 6 at the time. Every Sunday afternoon, after we had come back from morning mass and then lunch, my parents would retire to their room for their afternoon nap. I can’t remember if my elder brother would nap as well, or do his own thing (he liked looking out the window to watch the cars go by, and could do so for long periods of time); but he sure didn’t play with me. I was full of energy, didn’t care for sleeping, and bored. I was good at entertaining myself though, and could spend hours on a “project” – some days it was some craft work I’d thought up; some days it was pretending to be a radio deejay by making tapes of music I’d recorded from the radio, interspersed with my introduction of the songs; other days it was surviving in some strange land I pretended I had landed in in my spaceship (the back of an old armchair).

One day, during my “deejay period”, when I waited as songs I didn’t like were aired on the radio, I decided to trawl through my parents’ tape collection for material. I found the Bee Gees, Bread, Lobo, the Eagles…and then there was this one that simply read “The Beatles”, in colourful font. It didn’t feature a picture of the singer, only a small apple in the corner, and its colourful namesake insect. (It was obviously not an original, tsk tsk, dad!)

The colourful cover appealed to my childike tastes, and curious, I played it. It was a man’s voice, singing about this girl who had “a ticket to ride, but she don’t care”. I remember not quite getting what that meant exactly, but being extremely captivated by the song – the beat, it was extremely catchy! I went through the entire tape a couple of times, enthralled. And therein began my love affair with the Beatles.

I remember asking my dad at dinner that evening, what this tape was about, and why the man called himself “The Beatles”. My dad, amused, and not particularly sensitive to a child’s sensibility, said “Alamak, you don’t know the Beatles?! They are a famous band!” I was embarrassed (and unsuitably so – I was 6!) for being ignorant of such a “famous band”, and wanted to know more.

I spent many afternoons after playing that tape over and over again, till I could sing along to all the songs. “Love Me Do”, “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You” were some of the songs that I learned. As I grew up, and progressed up the levels of Primary school however, my Sunday afternoons were spent yakking on the phone with my friends, rollerskating, or playing catching downstairs, and my Beatles and “radio deejay” days were shelved. Music was very much still apart of my life then, although 98.7fm (that never played a single Beatles’ track!) was my station of choice as that was what all the girls in school was listening to, and it was the thing then to send dedications on air. (Dear Kate Reyes and Jean Danker, many a night was spent listening to you host Say It With Music!)

I rediscovered the group again in Secondary school, when I found Beatles CDs lying around the house. My uncle owned a music store then, and would generously pass my parents some of the more popular CDs that were sold. My Beatles repertoire widened, and I was amazed by how their songs sounded so unlike anything that I had heard before. I grew disdainful of the “current” music of the time (sure, the 90s gave us gems like Garbage, Blur, Third Eye Blind, Alanis Morissette, TLC, Oasis; but it also brought …the Macarena, My Heart Will Go On and Celine-Dion-anything, Aqua, MmmBop and Hansen-anything, K-Ci and JoJo, Caught In the Act, 98 Degrees, LFO, Chumbawamba…) and started tuning in to 90.5 or listening mostly to CDs and self-made tapes.

I explored how their sound and style evolved, and it is truly amazing. From the highly infectious and catchy, but somewhat lyrically simple tunes of their early albums; to the folksy and more thoughtful, thought-provoking lyrics in Rubber Soul; to the experimental electric-rock sound on Revolver; to the absolutely and astoundingly brilliant Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (my personal favourite!)…even as they ran into trouble both internally and externally, even as they fell apart as a group, they produced such beauties as “Something”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Get Back”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

Beatlemania On Tourcame to Singapore for a one night performance last Friday, and although I knew they would be nothing like the real thing, alas, I was born in the wrong era, and this ws probably as close as I could get.

While I did enjoy it, (also because of the very enthusiatic old uncle next to me who was bopping his head, playing air drums and guitar, and singing along loudly!) it did feel a little contrived and sad at points as they tried to recreate not just the sound, but the cheeky camaraderie between the four. Ah well. I can still dream of Mr Kite, Lucy in the sky, Elenor Rigby and Michelle in an Octopus’s Garden. Strawberry fields forever.

Filed under: Uncategorized by jadeseah