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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Missed Beatles opportunities March 13, 2026

  

It’s mid-March. Usually, we gear up for the Festival for Beatles Fans, only the East Coast event was suspended for this year as organizers seek to reconfigure it.

As much as I love it and have unfailingly attended it since the mid-1990s when it was called “Beatlefest” and was located in Secaucus, the event has lost much of its luster over the last few years.

We did not attend the event when it celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in America because they relocated it temporarily from Jersey City to Long Island.

But in truth, each year makes the event less attractive, partly because those who have seen the Beatles story firsthand have faded away.

Over the last three decades, the line up of stars was amazing, include Astrid, George Harrison’s sister, members of Wings and other – including Donovan.

None of the Beatles ever attended, even John Lennon, who supported the concept when it started in the 1970s. I suppose the Beatles when all were still alive feared a repeat of Beatlemania madness.

Beatlefest became the place where later albums were unveiled, such as Live from the BBC, and the Anthology, and a not small irony of my friend, Hank, who passed away days ahead of the release of Live at the BBC, when he – like the rest of us – had ached so much for a Beatles reunion.

His funeral took place at the same time as the Beatlefest that year, which allowed me to purchase Sergeant Peppers patches for myself and the two other surviving members of our unofficial Beatles wannabes.

Garrick being Garrick managed to slip his patch into Hank’s coffin just before it was closed for the trip to the graveyard, a quiet and private tribute to Hank and all our hopes of following in the footsteps of the Beatles –and rekindled in me the feelings I had back in 1980 when John Lennon passed away.

In 2001 when George Harrison died, I made my way to Strawberry Fields, and then months later to Beatlefest where we all paid tribute, accompanied that year by Garrick.

Pauly, the Lennon-like member of our little group, long claimed the Beatles ruined our lives by setting up expectations that we could actually achieve greatness, despite our blue-collar upbringing. It is an illusion he took to his grave, and something I thought about when they canceled the 2020 Beatlefest on account of COVID.  Unlike with Hank or George Harrison, I had no place to go to help mourn his passing, a gap that still exists in my life, even though a year later, the event resumed.

Over the last 30 years, I perpetually held out hope that one of the remaining Beatles would show up, giving us all the thrill of a lifetime. My wife, fortunately, saw the Beatles live at Shea Stadium. I never got an opportunity to see them or any of their solo acts.

When I was still on the run from the police back in 1971, I missed George\s concert for Bangladesh – I had been living in New York, but went west to Portland, only to kick myself when the event as announced, though Hank managed to make it, just as he got to see Hendrix at the Filmore a year or so earlier.

Now, with Sir Paul more or less retiring and Ringo likely to do the same shortly, the opportunity to actually Meet the Beatles becomes even less likely. But we will always have their music, and perhaps that will always be enough.

 

 

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Beatles fans gather at the Meadowlands Hilton March, 1995

 

 

A weekend of memories

 

Going to the Beatlefest at the Meadowlands Hilton on the weekend of March 17, 18 and 19 meant different things to different people. To many older Beatles fans, it was an opportunity to relive their youth, a memory lane of melodies that they can never quite get out of their heads. For younger fans, it was an opportunity to catch hold of a madness called Beatlemania, dipping their toes into the huge pool of music, posters, history and collectibles that made up such a large part of the early 1960s.

Yet for other fans, Beatlefest was a chance to recall through music and memorabilia vanished heroes like John Lennon, Brian Epstein, and Stu Suttcliffe as well as the still-living members in the Beatles' rise to fame. For Kathy Gerdsen, for instance, this was an opportunity to renew old ties, not with other Beatles fans, but with the family of George Harrison -- with whom until a few years ago she says she maintained correspondence.

I even came with a personal agenda, looking to build a tribute for my best friend, Frank, who died on March 16, one day before this year's Beatlefest got underway. To say he was a Beatles fan is gross understatement, though his fanaticism centered largely around the music. He played it often, and when younger, sang it in the streets of Paterson and New York with the vitality of a minstrel. He even sang it on the bus between Paterson and New York, a bus that oddly enough drove past the sight of the Meadowlands Hilton in Secaucus. Indeed, walking through the exhibits of Beatles memorabilia felt strange without Frank's constant diatribe. Although the Beatlefest has been at the Meadowlands Hilton yearly since 1980, this was my first visit alone. During the 1970s, Frank and I held many of our own festivals, attending double features of Beatles films with the hope that some spirit would rise up and bring the group back together. Although ill for many years, Frank held on until the very week the release of three new Beatles Songs was announced for August.

 

Taking over the hotel

 

My friend would have been very much at home walking through the halls of the Secaucus Meadowlands Hilton during the Beatlefest, basking in the glow of Beatles fervor that illuminated every corner and cast out every shadow. People sat on chairs or stairs or low walls with guitars and harmonicas, singing Beatles songs the way we used to. Everyone, everywhere, wore some form of Beatles clothing, from hats to t-shirts. Many wore buttons and patches that echoed the various phases of Beatles music from the ``Yeah, Yeah, Yeah'' era to the ``Long and Winding Road.''

This mood invaded the two bottom floors of the hotel, irritating grim-faced hotel security men, who constantly whispered into their two-way radios as they kept fans in the public areas <197> where almost every square inch had been converted for the festival's use. The temporary walls that divided the hotel ballrooms into three had been pushed aside to create one huge ballroom in which hundreds of metal folding chairs had been set up, facing a stage full of drums and amplifiers in expectation of an all-out rock & roll show. The stage, however, did serve as a forum for many of the special guests, like George Harrison's sister, Louise, who Kathy Gerdsen had come to see. But other guests also spoke, such as Paul McCartney's stepmother Ruth McCartney, and her daughter, Angie.

Geoffrey Ellis from the Beatles original managing company, NEMS, also spoke, as did Pauline Suttcliffe, the sister of the fifth and most controversial Beatle, Stu, who was recently propelled into the forefront of Beatles trivia by the release of the movie ``Back Beat.''

 

The little stories

 

Kathy Gerdsen came to Beatlefest on Saturday with a mission to meet up with Louise Harrison after losing communication with the Harrison family a few years ago. During the glory days of Beatlemania, Gerdsen accidently bumped into the Beatles when they rushed out of the Atlantic City Convention Hall after a concert. From this brief encounter, she established a tie.

``Before they left, I asked George how I could keep in contact with them. He told me to write his parents at Macketts Lane, Liverpool and that's what I did.''

Over the years, Gerdsen wrote faithfully and said she grew close with George's parents, Harry and Louise. She met with the family finally in 1974 during George Harrison's tour with Ravi Shankar. She took pictures and later continued her correspondence, which eventually faded out.

``I met with Louise at the Beatlefest,'' Gerdsen said. ``She invited me up to her suite where I showed her the photographs I had and the letters. She cried over them. Her father, Harry, died a few years ago, I guess it was nice to see him smiling.''

Other fans got their chance to talk to these dignitaries, though in the more public setting of the grand ballroom, where they asked questions about the intimate and private lives of the Fab Four. In one question and answer session with the McCartneys, Beatle fans pressed the guest speakers for memories, and were told about the time Paul and John sneaked out of the house in disguise to attend a local yard sale, wearing thick glasses taken from the junk drawer. Ruth McCartney said a truck pulled up before the boys got back, delivering all sorts of strange things. John, with his unusual sense of humor, had purchased a six foot tall cross. Angie McCartney said during her childhood John Lennon was her friend and uncle as well as hero Beatle. Lennon, in fact, helped her learn to ride a bicycle. But he was also the naughty brother who Ruth said she sometimes had to scold.

 

Beatles for sale

 

This year's Beatlefest was also alive with the usual Beatle gossip, from talk about the new Live from BBC album to the upcoming three new Beatle songs scheduled for inclusion in the Beatles Compilation album (due for release in August). This talk was particularly intense at the Giant International Beatles Market Place where crowds surged through narrow aisles to view the more than 100 tables of memorabilia, clothing, CDs and other collectibles. Beatles music played constantly over hidden speakers, though it struggled to compete with the chatter of visitors and dealers who quoted prices or talked about values, citing rumors of rare items or records. Many of the rarer pieces of Beatle merchandise brought me back in time to grammar school and junior high. While I never had a Beatles lunch box, many of my friends did. Some had Beatles pencil cases or Beatles umbrellas.

Now with the event of Stu Suttcliffe's emergence from the shadows with the film ``Back Beat,'' his paintings and image appeared at some tables. One dealer, however, complained about all the attention Stu Suttcliffe was getting, saying the man had quit the band before the Beatles had actually taken off. This dealer was among the purists who believed only John, Paul, George and Ringo deserved the high distinction of being called The Beatles. Those who came before their first hit record didn't count. One table selling videos promoted the 1979 TV Dick Clark film ``The Birth of the Beatles'' as the true Beatles story; the vendors said too much attention was spent to Stu in ``Back Beat.''

``Why didn't they call it the Stu Suttcliffe story?'' the vendor asked.

 

Stepping into their shoes

 

Meanwhile, in the upstairs galleries, the temporary Beatles museum traced thirty years of Beatles history with news clippings, photographs and posters with newer images of the Beatles done as part of this year's art contest. The images had the strangely unsettling quality of adoration, that I always found uncomfortable. Mark Lapidos, one of the festival's organizers, often quotes John Lennon who said ``the music is the thing.'' Upstairs, away from the market place and huge hall, the Beatles video rooms broadcast interviews and news clips from the past. In one video, George Harrison and Eric Clapton explained how Clapton had come to play on the Beatles' White Album. Nearby, lines of fans waited their turn to get into the Beatles recording studio where they could sing along for a fee. The Laser Karaoke video sing-along tested the mettle of numerous fans, who braved the embarrassment of having their voices and images broadcast out into the hotel halls. Men and women, ranging in age from teenagers to the middle-aged, each made brave attempts to step into the shoes of a favorite Beatle.

 

The singing fans

 

There were numerous other more organized if not more serious musical events over the three-day weekend celebration. Some of these involved filmed segments from Beatles at the Cavern club, videos from George, Paul, John and Ringo, as well as films, concert footage, and the all important Battle of the Beatle Bands on Sunday, with interludes of Beatles music by the cover band ``Liverpool.'' The big musical event for me, however, was the ongoing Beatles sound alike contest on Saturday afternoon, which drew hundreds of guitar-wielding Beatles fans from up and down the East Coast.  Washington, D.C. was well represented. So was New York City. But there were a significant number from New Jersey. At this event, fans bravely stepped up to the microphone to take their shots at recreating Beatles music. My friend, Frank, would have been among them. He had often been a guest singer of a local band -- a fan invited up to sing the Beatles' version of ``Till there was you.''

The audience, packed with fans waiting their turn, strummed their guitars, added the more complicated musical interludes and harmonies, sang or clapped in imitation of the original recording. Many of these people hadn't been born yet when the Beatles broke up in 1970, yet mouthed every word from memory as if they had heard the original release. Some of the acts performed to the piano, others to a variety of acoustic and electric guitars. There were even acts that sang their favorite Beatle songs a cappella. ``That boy'' sung by two girls from Waldwich and Westwood, New Jersey drew overwhelming applause. While some performers played it safe and kept their performance simple, others, like the duo with acoustic and electric guitar, dared to attempt the last leg of Abbey Road, a complicated recording studio masterpiece that these fans didn't quite manage to pull off live.

And yet for every performance, heads nodded, people swayed, men, women and children sang along, adding the parts the performers missed or could not do themselves, the``oohs'' and ``aahs,'' the complicated harmony. Everyone in that room knew every nuance of every song, yet strangely, didn't scold performers who failed to live up to the original, cheering them on, as if all lived in the same Beatles fantasy, and for this weekend lived again the era when Beatles music was something new. Fathers hugged their daughters as the music played. Lovers hugged each other. During one rendition of ``Here comes the sun,'' sunlight beamed through the glass ceiling as the sun began its slow descent into the meadowlands outside, light streaking through the reed heads, adding texture to the mood of the room.

Then, a sixteen-year-old boy sat down at the piano and began to play ``Hey Jude.''  He did not sing it well. He goofed more than once and played wrong chords. Yet the mood in the room grew somber and the faces respectful, as most of the fans began to clap or add their voices to the ``La, la, la.'' For these Beatles fans, it was a holy song, as it had been for my friend Frank <197> who used to sing it frequently. It was the first song I ever heard him sing, made strong by four years of high school musicals. Even now, nearly thirty years after it first hit the airwaves, it evoked awe in these people, recalling not the drugs and violence of the sixties, but a world of wonder and a community of people to whom Beatles have become a central, positive issue in their lives.  In that chanting of ``La, La, La,'' you could almost hear those members of the Beatles family for whom many of these fans have come to mourn: John Lennon, Stu Suttcliffe, Brian Epstein. Their song spread through the room like a meadow fire, its smoke rising up against the ceiling glass. In it, among clatter of memorabilia dealers, among the clank and clang of imitation Beatles music, among the sing-along videos, recording studio fakers, tapes of Beatles interviews,  questions and answers, I thought I heard the small, but utterly significant voice of my friend chiming in.