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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