McCartney gives us a gift of memory March 28, 2016

 

 

 

Paul McCartney’s “The Days we left behind,” stunned me.

Partly because it is the time of the lives of the Beatles that I most treasure, a time of hope and when they worked towards a common goal.

When they were more than just friends or band mates.

Going through the story of the Beatles, I crave that time as well, partly because it foreshadows my lives with my friends, and how much we managed to come together, and never had success ruin it for us – we all remained like brothers for all of our lives.

McCartney’s release of his song and the album to come realizes finally just how powerful a time it was prior to their success, and how much success really cost them.

The release of this new music reflects something I was thinking about as well, and how I wish I could have been part of that experience – although again, I was with my friends, two of whom (like John and George) have since passed on.

I’ve written extensively about my experiences, and several songs that reflect the same feeling McCarney’s recent song does (my song called “Formerly Joe’s very much in the same vein as Paul’s.

This may well be McCartney’s swan song (hopefully not). If it is, I treasure it, because it looks back and brings back to life those precious moments he lived through (and stirs up in me the nostalgia for our little gang).

Few things have touched me so deeply, or bonded me more closely with McCartney (who I’ve never met) than the release of this song – which I’m in the process of learning, part of my attempt to get into the heads of the Beatles by trying to perform their music.

Thank you, Paul.

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Unresolved March 28, 2026

 

Seven nights in a row I’ve dreamed about my old job at the newspaper, not with the most recent owner, but the one I worked for twenty-five years prior to that.

Not exactly a nightmare, although filled with the usual trepidation, the weekly and sometimes daily deadline hovering over me.

My dreams usually have the same overall landscape, a world that roughly corresponds to places I actually lived or worked. With this latest series, the landscape altered somewhat.

I won’t confess to any questionable trysts, though REM sleep always brings its share of those as well. Yet, these dreams recollected some of what I felt when the owner of our paper used to spy on me, checking the computers where I worked as if looking for evidence of a crime.

I rarely used work a computer for anything but work. If I wrote anything private, I did so long hand into hardcovered notebooks that I carried with me in my bag or my car.

These recent dreams had the same feeling I got when in reality I came to work to find my boss sitting at my terminal or got word from the other office that he had been snooping in my terminal there.

In waking, I lost most of the thread of these dreams, only that he expected something of me or suspected something about me, which in reality or dreamland, he could not prove.

Why I am saddled with these dreams these days after nearly a decade since he sold off the business and moved up state New York, I can’t say.

Perhaps the godawful work environment still haunts me even now when I have a much better boss and a less stressful job. Something remains unresolved, something I suspect never will be.

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Beatles story: Be careful of what you wish for

 

 

The more I learned about the Beatles history the sadder the story is

It is one of those tales of caution that Shakespeare might have written or others about getting what you really want

This is partly a tale of my friends and our band, which came dangerously close to fame and it would have ruined our lives if we’d gotten it

All of it started in the basement of a friend, who's rich parents gave him everything he wanted in instruments and everybody gravitated towards that place

Out of this emerge the band that played Passaic valley area and for a time looked like it was going to have its own version of Beatlemania

Two venues had to be closed down because of overcrowding of teens

This occurred after I first saw the band in Paterson playing the St John's community center where Paulie got up on stage

Later, while I was on the run from the police out west, the band made even more headway and by the time I came back was already playing most of the clubs in the area and making a name for itself

The most notable of these performances was at Melody lake where we played for a bikers’ picnic thousands of motorcyclists, scaring the hell out of Passaic county – our version of the 1969 Rolling Stones concert.

In a battle of the band that was supposed to be won by a band largely made up of a horn section, our band prevailed. It was at an exclusive community, where only relations to the association could compete. But since our drummer was dating one of the daughters, we were allowed to compete. Everybody thought the house group with its big horn sound would prevail. It did not.

The prize was a recording contract as well as the services of a prominent booking agency.

The band was very tight by that time and one of the prominent agents came to see us at the Red Baron in cedar Grove.

He offered to represent us but at a price we had to give him a percentage of all the revenues we had made already and then upgrade all of our equipment to Marshalls and other stuff we couldn't afford

What are the two Johns who played guitar for our band told him to screw off and we got blacklisted

We tried to disguise John, doing a Davis Bowie disguise, but he was just too good a guitarists and nobody got fooled – much like the scene from Backbeat in which Stu was playing Elvis, and the agent walked out.

We never reached that high point again although we continue to play in various factions at one point splitting it to two entirely different bands one new age and one more traditional Rock

One version of the band cut a single thanks to the assistance of Joey Ramone. But it went nowhere.

The other band put out several albums of original material no record company picked up on.

Perhaps a blessing, since none of us were ready for success.

One John went on to work as a prominent computer specialist and succeeded in that fashion.

The other John was more tragic, never giving up the rock and roll live and died eventually from liver failure.

Paulie became something for hermit after working as a library director for 20 years

Some of this sounds like the scene from yesterday in which John Lennon held up as a hermit and that's what I think of often when I see that film, Paul living in in his trailer where he eventually passed away as well

And the more I learn about the Beatles the more I realize that had the band really succeeded it would have had the same issues and perhaps not the same positive result no Linda or Yoko to settle down the most too provocative characters

Sometimes I think it's better off not getting what you want especially when it comes to fame because there's no way to shed the mantle of it and perhaps as with the Beatles you sort of become a puppet show for other media to make money

In many ways the Beatles lucked out later when each of them settled into a real life but the story is still sad very tragic a regular Shakespearean tragedy

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We were never The Beatles

 March 18, 2026

 

Cold again, two days before the official start of spring, not really a surprise, just annoying. Junior, our cat, is ill again, and does not seem to be on the mend, despite a visit to the vet, and I’m caught between bad choices.

We are also in the midst of house repairs that have our lives in a turmoil, stuff in places it oughtn’t be in order to make space for the work, some of which will be rectified today when the contractors come to finish up one portion, allowing us to repack the space that previously contain the “stuff”.

Beyond the walls of our abode, the world is in even worse shape, people seeking peace by waging war, and we are all forced to take sides, an uncomfortable choice because none of this will end up well, regardless of which philosophy prevails.

I miss the simplicity of the past, when I assumed I knew which side I wanted to be on, and could confidently live with this delusion wisdom has since revealed as folly.

Looking back, I continue to wonder at what point in the past I might return to had I had the power to do so, and most often conclude the 1970s when all our dreams still seemed within reach, when we all believed we would end us somewhere better than we ultimately did.

Perhaps living with illusion is better than living without it, having hope than later feeling hopeless.

These days, the more I learn about the Beatles, the sadder that story becomes, how these four lads got everything they hoped for, then lost it, derailed by their own flaws.

Did Yoko save John? Was Linda the salvation Paul needed?

I keep hearing Layla in my head, the song that became the sound track of 1972, our most hopeful year, and realize this was about George losing a lover.

Hank used to compare the four of us to the Beatles – me, himself, Garrick and Pauly, and over time, as the Beatles story unveils, he might have been right, we losing Hank first, and decades later, Pauly, leaving me and Garrick as the las two of the foursome to carry on.

Pauly was much more like John, while Hank, like Paul, each seeming to take on one or the other as a model. Pauly had John’s twisted humor and amazing vocal ability, even doing artwork similar to John’s, and came up with unrealized schemes.

Hank was the ultimate showman like Paul, performing in local pubs, often singing show tunes – including the Broadway tune the Beatles covered.

This leaves me and Garrick to accept the roles of George and Ringo. Garrick still performs out with pick up bands. I do internet videos. Both of us clinging to a bit of the past. I relate to George most, and I tend to play best his music.

Yet, we can carrying this comparison too far, since Pauly alone had the genius of the Beatles, and perhaps Hank had the talent. I work too hard to learn what the did, and often come up short. Still, as time goes on, what else can we do, but keep on keeping on.

 

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Trying to write like the Beatles

 March 15th 2026

As much as we all admired The Beatles, our band was very late in trying to do original material and then sounded too much like Beatles songs to ever be taken seriously.
I wrote my first song in 1968 which was called "through the looking Glass" which was more or less a monkees tribute 
The band itself remained the cover band for decades after that.
Pauley and I did a number of original pieces on our own without the band.
This included a number of instrumentals we modeled after mountain's scenes from an imaginary Western in that we saw ourselves as doing the score for movie 
Although I had started writing beatle like songs almost from when I picked up the guitar in 1970
Pauley and Rick did a rendition of "my cross of Jade" song and inserted in one of these imaginary soundtracks called dead horses.
I became for much more serious songwriter during the 1975 recording sessions in my fancy apartment in Passaic after the settlement of the car accident insurance allowed me to buy a four-track reel to reel
Paulie and I spent hours and much pot and speed into the late night recording songs.
 
Although I love the Beatles as a whole I tended to be most attracted to Paul McCartney songs and frequently tried to do what he did.
Out of these sessions evolved my song called old news which was my attempt at writing a Eleanor Rigby type song.
Later I would write a song called "hey there" which was modeled after John Lennon.
 
Pauley wrote a lot of songs many eventually wound up as the basis for the bands recording sessions in 1990 through 2000. 
From what I can gather he was still writing these songs at the time of his death in 2020 
Most of what Paulie did with the band was very very imitative of other bands, particularly The Beatles -- not merely an attempt to actually write a song that was in that vein but a little too close in structure and in sound to ever be taken seriously by a record company.
I don't think this were deliberate.
Whereas in my case the songs I wrote and still write are deliberate attempts to write songs that I think someone like Paul McCartney might play or Bruce Springsteen or others like Simon and Garfunkel.

During the early 80s pauley, Garrick and I did a number of sessions in my cold water flat in passaic, mostly stoned, very humorous, often mocking hank and trying to duplicate John Lennon's artsy fartsy and strange songs of the magical mystery era.

For instance we had Hank read backwards from some provocative novel while pauley and I played music.
We also wrote a song that forced Hank to sing a sentence I had created out of all the words he mispronounces.
A number of songs that I wrote like Orange ball and a few others were lost as the tapes vanished.

We managed to get into a Pink Floyd phase about me being stoned and going to the supermarket for a cigarette or the invasion of alien monsters. 
Some of these tapes I still have.

A close study of n
Beatles music now I realize just how amazingly complex early Beatles songs were and how innocent and how over time especially from revolver on they grew more serious and intense, filled with a kind of dystopian vision of the world that they lacked as younger musicians.
 
How do you capture either the Innocence from the early days or the bitterness of John Lennon later?
What I admire about Paul McCarty is his storytelling just as I think that is the best of Bruce Springsteen as well, stories about his life and the people in it.

I've tried numerous times to duplicate Penny Lane which is impossible 
 And yet has become a kind of framework for my songwriting that with teaches me The Craft 

A number of my songs were written about Peggy a stripper that I dated in the 80s and about other people specially women I met earlier and later

These days I'd write about places and moments in time, trying to preserve them .

Nearly all of these don't eork because I don't have the music Craft of The Beatles or Springsteen, yet brings me great pleasure to make the attempt.

Since I am primarily a word Smith, I struggle with the problem Paul McCartney did in that I start out with words and try to fit music to them
he said that was rare when he did that.
 most of the time he starts with the tune

My better songs especially those written during this '80s were written music first, and later I started to get the idea their need to be movement in the music and aspect I'm still working on

Magical mystery tour

 When we took off from LA in our red white and blue BW van and April 1971.

 we were not just thinking of The Beatles magical mystery tour although that tape played prominent on our cassette player as we drove.

We were also thinking of easy Rider and we're a little scared that our trip would be more like that movie than the pleasant romp through the country the way the Beatles did for two weeks filming there movie.

We still take magical mystery tours every Friday, driving to places we've never been, often getting lost usually picking the music that fits the mood of the place we hope to get to.

 

Most often it's beatle music but sometimes has if we go to places like Asbury Park, Springsteen is on the CD player 

This idea of going somewhere and not caring if you get lost was a big part of my relationship with the Beatles,even after they broke up, a sense of abandonment to fate which would possibly have made George Harrison very happy if not John and Paul.

In the summer of '72 Hank, Paulie, Garrick and me did several of such magical mystery tours in search of land, one that ended us up on the Canadian border others through the pea country of New York State .

In those days we carried the Paul McCartney pub mentality around us in the car, singing beatle tunes to the radio or if none were to be found there, singing them without the radio.

Hank of course had obsession with Beatles Christmas records, those things that were sent to fan club members and he was particular attached to the age of 34 as if that was a defining factor in our life or in one case the number 44 he would find highways that matched it to drive down, even though we had no clue as to where they would take us.

 

The band of course always had Beatles songs in its repertoire even at those times when we were trying to keep up with the times so that we would get get back side by side with rolling Stones but then also Ziggy stardust and of course mott the hoople.

We are always fighting to have the band do more beatle songs which we added to the repertoire later in the 70s when they became a more conventional cover band.

 

When I traveled around the state with Hank we were constantly singing Beatles songs and especially when we got drunk with Paulie

at one point we ended up at paulie's girlfriend's girlfriend's house and we were so drunk they didn't want us there

but we had a guitar and a tape recorder and recorded a number of Beatles songs none of which were any good because we were too drunk but ultimately almost all of them ended with the end of twist and shout.

Pauly called it Oshkosh which still resonates when I see a sign or hear of some report of that City which we have never seen.

I suppose I will continue to do mystery tours because I need that part of my life and will continue to sing Beatles songs on the road 

Two of us going nowhere

Beatles music is the soundtrack of our lives March 14, 2026

 

 

The news broke about the breakup of the Beatles in April 1970, just as we packed up our VW van to go back on the road. I was crushed.

Paul made the announcement, but in reality, John had previously ended it months earlier in late 1969, just about the time I got discharged from the Army.

Beatles music had made up the soundtrack of my teen years – although I was much more familiar with the singles than I was with albums. Hank and I (along with our gay friend from the Stonewall Inn) had frequently sung the songs while walking the streets of Manhattan.

I knew about St. Peppers, of course, since kids on the school bus in late 1967 kept sing the songs, proving how big an impact the album had on our otherwise ordinary lives.

When I fled from the police to LA in late 1969, I holed up in roach infested apartment in East LA. I brought a reel to reel four track tape recorder and purchased two tapes – The Sound of Silence album, and Magical Mystery Tour, which I listened to endlessly while hiding out.

The Sound of Silence was the most depressing album I’d heard to date, especially because one of the songs talked about being on the run from the police. Equally disturbing was “Blue Jay Way,” because it was a dark song and referred to the many police I might meet.

The tape did not suffer from many of the problems LPs did, but provided a crystal clear rendition of the Beatles songs.

My whole flight from the police had come about because I had fallen in love, and I eventually made my way to Boulder to meet with the girl of my dreams. While waiting for the bus in Denver, I went to the local music store where I purchased a cassette player and every Beatles cassette they had, listening to these non-stop, as if these albums had just been released.

Magical Mystery Tour and the other albums came more in focus when we got back to LA where we took LSD for the first time – and many times afterwards, sensing somehow that a number of these albums required the drug to fully comprehend the meaning of the songs.

We played these tapes nonstop when we took off on the road in the VW van (a van painted red, white and blue with the slogan - stolen from Arlo) -of Multi-colored Rainbow Roach, which made us a target of every cop we encountered.

Let it Be had just come out with songs like Two of Us and such, raising hope that the Beatles break up was only temporary – a fruitless hope.

My Sweet Lord was on the radio when we got back to New York City, Ram was released a short time later, as was Imagine, great music, but did not fully fill the void the break up had created.

My friends and I constantly hoped for a reunion that would never come, and then, came worse news in 1980 that fan had murdered John Lennon. – another fan would attack George in his home – a scary rendition of Beatlemania that still makes me cringe.

During the 1970s and 1980s, our band played Beatles music, making it clear that we had a treasure trove of songs we could use to recall those days.

When Hank and I worked in the warehouse in Fairfield, he brought his stereo in and played the whole collection of Beatles music from start to finish (what was available then), something I think about a lot now with so many more songs released we didn’t know about back then – making me realize, they still are the sound track of our lives.

 

 

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