{"id":1754,"date":"2011-01-09T20:08:45","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T01:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2015-09-25T20:12:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T00:12:33","slug":"a-hard-days-night-and-not-a-second-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1754","title":{"rendered":"Kind of a Big Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Theme Songs Page<\/a>\u00a0| Previous Theme Song<\/a>\u00a0| Next Theme Song<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Kind of a Big Deal<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\"AHardDaysNightUSalbumcover\"<\/a>\"Meet<\/a><\/h2>\n

\u00a0A Hard Day\u2019s Night, by the Beatles (1964), encountered 1964<\/h3>\n

Not A Second Time, by the Beatles (1963), encountered 1964?<\/h3>\n

I believe I can remember the first time I heard about the Beatles, sometime during late winter 1964 (my freshman year), in the boys\u2019 locker-room of my high school, after a junior varsity basketball practice.[1]\u00a0 I think someone was saying he was expecting to watch them on Ed Sullivan, which means we were probably\u00a0two of three days\u00a0before either Sunday, February 9 or Sunday, February 16, the dates of the Beatles\u2019 first two appearances on the show.[2]\u00a0 I took it in, but didn\u2019t make any personal plans to watch. \u00a0(There was no TV in my house until June of that year anyhow\u00a0.)\u00a0 I understood the Beatles were kind of a big deal, but this was a month or so before my ears started opening up, as described in the previous Theme Song piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Had I even heard their music at this point?\u00a0 I think I must have, as I was already attending high school dances at least sporadically.\u00a0 Surely by early 1964, they were already playing the Beatles at the dances.\u00a0 (I Want to Hold Your Hand<\/em> had charted on January 18 and She Loves You<\/em> the following week.)\u00a0 But evidently I just wasn\u2019t listening yet.\u00a0 I\u2019m quite certain that when my classmate spoke up about Ed Sullivan, I could not have called a single Beatles melody to mind.<\/p>\n

No, my path to satori<\/em> was a by-product of my growing interest in girls.\u00a0 It was no secret that the youngsters doing most of the screaming at Beatles concerts were female.\u00a0 If you wanted to have something to talk about with girls, knowing something about the Beatles might come in handy.<\/p>\n

There was one Beatles fan in particular, call her Becky, whose mom and my parents met at the beginning of that summer of \u201864.\u00a0 Her mom was part of my parents\u2019 academic crowd, and I think everybody thought Becky and I were suitable companions.\u00a0 Well, all the grownups did.<\/p>\n

Actually, I\u2019d give a lot now to know what Becky herself thought about the whole thing.\u00a0 Her mom\u00a0had the reputation of being a scalp-hunter, out to sleep with academic stars and to flirt with smaller fry.\u00a0 I can\u2019t speak about whom the mom really slept with (or didn\u2019t); it could all have been unfounded gossip.\u00a0 But the flirtatiousness I had myself observed, aimed at my stepdad.\u00a0 In fact a little bit of it was extended in my direction (and a little bit was powerful stuff).<\/p>\n

I know Becky had observed this too.\u00a0 Would you want to go out with a callow boy who had been deliberately buzzed by your mom?\u00a0 I\u2019m asking the question, not answering.\u00a0\u00a0All I\u2019m certain of is that it was complicated.<\/p>\n

She may have felt\u00a0as confused as I did, given\u00a0the pretty obvious enchantment her mom exerted over me.\u00a0 Sometimes\u00a0Becky\u00a0treated me\u00a0like a confidant, and at others as if I were an annoyance.\u00a0 Because our families quickly became intimates, I was constantly visiting with her throughout the summer and fall of 1964.\u00a0 She certainly held me at arm\u2019s length, with off-putting remarks like: \u201cKisses shouldn\u2019t be handed out; like jewels, they\u2019re valuable because they\u2019re rare.\u201d\u00a0 On the one hand, this kind of comment kept me from trying to kiss her, and in retrospect I\u2019m sure that was an intended effect.[3]\u00a0 On the other hand, it spurred me to try finding shared topics to fascinate her with.<\/p>\n

Which is where Beatlemania came in.\u00a0 The on-ramp for me was the Beatles’ movie\u00a0A Hard Day’s <\/em>Night.\u00a0 The soundtrack album came out in June,[4] soon followed by the movie itself.\u00a0 When I was visiting with my father in New York that August, I persuaded him to take me to see it, largely to have something to talk about with Becky.\u00a0 But not exclusively for that reason.\u00a0 By now I was listening to the right radio stations back home: CKLW<\/a> and WKNR<\/a>, which certainly featured\u00a0Beatles music\u00a0prominently.[5]\u00a0 And the stores in Times Square all seemed to be playing the songs.\u00a0 And so I must have heard it all on the radio before ever seeing the movie (seven songs from the movie\/album having charted by that point in the summer).<\/p>\n

When I heard just that first George Harrison chord (possibly G eleventh suspended fourth),[6] I knew I was in for an adventure.\u00a0 No great distinction for me to perceive that, of course: everyone in my generation had that same moment of epiphany.\u00a0 What followed that chord in the movie<\/a>, though (the madcap chases, the lower-class Liverpudlian attitudes, the sneering toffs, and the hard-rocking love songs with the soft-core centers, the camaraderie of the four lads) was an initiation into a brand-new and exciting world and made me fall even harder. There was something, too, about the fourths and fifths\u00a0the Beatles liked to harmonize with \u2013 different from the thirds my ear had been trained up till then to anticipate, that forever came to be associated in my mind with the bracing strangeness of the life on the screen in that movie.<\/p>\n

Remember, I was from<\/em> England, sort of.\u00a0 So I felt as if this should have been part of my birthright.\u00a0 But my dim memories of the place held nothing that looked or sounded anything at all like this.\u00a0 Like most impressionable youngsters of that day, I wanted to go to England, to be<\/em> English, and part of that scene.<\/p>\n

I bought a copy of the album\u00a0for Becky as a birthday present \u2013 which, by good luck, was the only Fab Four album she didn\u2019t already have.[7]\u00a0\u00a0 But of course, to a teenager in 1964, Beatlemania was like a Roach Motel: you could check in, but you couldn\u2019t check out.<\/a>\u00a0 Of course I had to have the record myself. \u00a0I bought my own copy three days after handing over the first one to Becky. \u00a0And then I went and saw the movie again with my Ann Arbor friends six days after that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I got to know the songs.\u00a0 I played my harmonica alone in my room along with them.\u00a0 I bought a songbook and played the songs on the piano (to the best of my limited ability and the dismay of my parents downstairs).\u00a0 I became happily obsessed.<\/p>\n

There was a lot more to the music than a chord, I was learning.\u00a0 Not that I was exactly thinking; I was just responding: to the straight-ahead rock \u2019n\u2019 roll of the early Beatles.\u00a0 It drew me in with the just the right mix of challenge and coziness.<\/p>\n

And I began to develop a dollop of sophistication.\u00a0 Top 40 Radio bringing me this incredible mix of excitement (#1 hits from that year \u2013 apart from those of the Beatles, who had five of them \u2013 included vintage stuff from Peter and Gordon, Roy Orbison, the Beach Boys, the 4 Seasons, the Animals, the Supremes, and the Shangri-Las).\u00a0 There were dances on Friday nights at the high school where you could hear these things cranked way up (and I got a young woman neighbor to show me how to dance properly).\u00a0 And I spent hours in the record store, looking at the posters and the album covers, and taking in what they were playing on the PA system.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in that fall, I remember being at a dance, and actually telling a girl \u201cThis music is the sound of our generation.\u201d\u00a0 Why would I say something so obvious?\u00a0 Well, partly because it wasn\u2019t quite so obvious then.\u00a0 We had scotched the snake of the Mitch Miller sound, not killed it.\u00a0 (It\u2019s worthy of note that Dean Martin also had a #1 hit that year.)\u00a0 And we also hadn\u2019t converted our parents, to most of whom it was and remained nothing but noise.\u00a0 (It was surely just noise to my mom and stepdad, though, blessedly, my father seemed to be hearing something.)\u00a0 But that remark was also a statement of allegiance.\u00a0 I was refusing to follow my parents\u2019 likes and dislikes any more.<\/p>\n

In later years, my mom spoke of having \u201clost\u201d me.\u00a0 She was, of course, talking about a lot more than my music.\u00a0 But in a real sense it started with the music.\u00a0 Implicit in her thinking was that she had laid down a course for the two of us to walk together, and then I\u2019d inexplicably wandered off it.\u00a0 My perspective was the opposite: I\u2019d gone on a voyage of discovery that her own tastes had done a great deal to send me out on, and then she\u2019d refused to accompany me where the path naturally led.\u00a0 And, as I\u2019d said before, the Beatles (especially of this era) were actually a pretty cozy lot.\u00a0 Our moms should have loved them.\u00a0 But for some reason they couldn\u2019t hear.<\/p>\n

Of course I went on and bought all of the Beatles\u2019 records, mostly in mono.\u00a0 I still have them, sacred relics.\u00a0 Shortly after I secured the soundtrack LP of A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em>, I bought their first Capitol album, Meet The Beatles<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 More actually than A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em>, that album \u2013 the whole album \u2013 was the theme song of my late 1964.\u00a0 But if I have to choose just one number from the album, I\u2019m going to take Not A Second Time<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>as my theme song.<\/p>\n

You can argue about whether it\u2019s the hardest-rocking song on the LP; in my opinion it is, because of George Martin\u2019s pounding piano, and because of the awfully jazzy minor keys (G minor and E minor) alternating among which John Lennon (sole writer and singer) carries on proceedings.\u00a0 Allegedly the melody comes down on an \u201cAeolian cadence,\u201d<\/a> something Lennon had never heard of.[8]\u00a0 No more had I, nor do I understand the technical lingo to this day.\u00a0 I just know that it was the song that ended the album, a powerful finish that amounted to a calling card.<\/p>\n

And I, as it happens, was accepting visitors.<\/p>\n

What then of Becky, who had precipitated these discoveries?\u00a0 Things there never got unweird.\u00a0 We did share a few occasions that could reasonably be labeled dates, but she resisted any efforts to get physically or emotionally close.\u00a0 And then came a climactic moment of weirdness.\u00a0 Two different strands of my life suddenly got snarled on each other, and I was left not knowing whom to believe.\u00a0 Becky told me that \u201cPatricia,\u201d of whom I wrote concerning another song<\/a>, was spreading word that I in turn had been spreading trashy calumnies about Becky.\u00a0 Apart from the shock of being accused of things I would never have done, the notion of these two having any contact was surprising (they attended different schools in different grades). To this day, I have no idea whether Patricia actually said these things, or whether Becky was making up the story that Patricia had said these things, or whether some intermediary had started the rumor. \u00a0Deny it though I might, Becky\u2019s way of dealing with it was not to go out with me anymore.\u00a0 She deigned to come to a party of mine, and we did see each other through our parents a while longer.\u00a0 Eventually Becky\u2019s mom left town\u00a0and never had any contact with her former circle again, nor did I ever hear anything further of Becky.\u00a0 And so\u00a0there the story truly ended.<\/p>\n

And as for me, I did not mourn long.\u00a0 Like Milton\u2019s shepherd, I composed myself and made for \u201cfresh Woods, and Pastures new.\u201d\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 There were lots of girls out there.<\/p>\n

So that was that.\u00a0 But I had a fine legacy from the relationship, an introduction to the sound of my generation \u2013 someone I knew called it that.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]\u00a0\u00a0 This is not a subtle way to sneak in a brag about my athletic prowess.\u00a0 I had none.\u00a0 I went out for the team because I knew how bad I was, but had just entered a stage of my life where I thought that maybe by lowering my horns and charging I could remedy the problem.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 If you can interpret the team photo (me second from right in back row), you can determine this.\u00a0 (Clue: the jacketed ones didn\u2019t actually get to play much.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[2] \u00a0\u00a0Though there are an infinitude of Beatles books, my constant vade mecum<\/em> in Fab Four matters is the late Ian MacDonald\u2019s Revolution in the Head (3d ed. 2005),<\/a><\/em> which is the finest book on the Beatles I\u2019ve ever encountered.\u00a0 At the moment I\u2019m consulting the appendix containing a Chronology at page 416.<\/p>\n

[3] \u00a0Another effect, almost certainly intended, was to differentiate Becky in her own mind from her mom.\u00a0 The mom not only kissed me on occasion but allowed me to kiss back \u2013 and I could see Becky\u2019s discomfiture while it was happening.\u00a0 I can only plead extreme youth and cluelessness for letting myself get swept up in a potential girlfriend\u2019s mom\u2019s psychodrama like that.<\/p>\n

[4]\u00a0\u00a0 So we\u2019re clear, I\u2019m talking about the 1964 red-covered U.S. soundtrack album including some instrumental tracks, not the British blue-covered album with 13 songs, which is now issued as the standard version in the States as well.\u00a0 They are well distinguished in this Wikipedia entry.<\/a><\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0\u00a0 WKNR was particularly important, because they had these weekly lists of the hot records that you could pick up at the record store, all done up in the instantly-recognizable WKNR turquoise, vital because they gave a neophyte like me a fighting chance to understand everything gushing out of the spigot of music I had just turned on.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a \"\"<\/a>photo of the guides.\u00a0 And here\u2019s a good website about the station<\/a>, source of the photo.<\/p>\n

[6]\u00a0 \u00a0So saith MacDonald at 115.\u00a0 Whatever G eleventh suspended fourth even means.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what that monster chord really was.\u00a0 A few years after I first heard the song, I acquired some sheet music and tried to play the chord the transcriptionists had put in its place.\u00a0 Of course, I was on the piano, not the guitar.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t too hard to figure (while trying and failing to make my right hand stretch all the way to the top) that this was a substitute.\u00a0 It was a good sound, an intriguing sound, but not that initial slab of arch wonderfulness.\u00a0 Apparently not everybody agrees with MacDonald anyway.\u00a0 Check out this amazing article<\/a> by Chris Hook for further dissection of the chord.\u00a0 Hook collects 14 different names various experts have given the chord and mentions seven others.\u00a0 Hook\u2019s take is that you can\u2019t duplicate this sound without a 12-string guitar, deploying eight of the strings \u2013 and then you need John replicating it on a 6-string, Paul hitting a high D on the base, and then you still need a post-production snare tap by Ringo and piano chord by George Martin on a Steinway buried in the mix.\u00a0 No wonder my feeble piano effort seemed so short of the mark.<\/p>\n

[7]\u00a0\u00a0 Though, as will be seen, nothing wonderful came of the relationship, I think at that moment it was as good as it ever got, because that gift was clearly for Becky, and had nothing to do with her mom, and maybe it made clear to her that I wasn\u2019t just hanging around Becky to get access to her mom, or vice versa.<\/p>\n

[8]\u00a0 MacDonald at 97-98.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

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It spurred me to try to find shared topics to fascinate her with. Which is where Beatlemania came in. I persuaded my father to take me to see the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night, largely to have something to talk about with her. But of course, to a teenager in 1964, Beatlemania was like a Roach Motel: you could check in, but you couldn\u2019t check out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,968],"tags":[2062,2015,2016,2047,2041,2051,2064,2039,2022,2055,2023,2044,2045,2018,2273,2026,2048,2030,2019,2053,2057,2049,2052,2021,2027,2028,2050,2046,1181,2017,2056,2032,2060,2054,2058,2029,2033,2043,2020,2061,2065,2066,2042,2035,2036,2034,1972,2038,2037,2025,2031,2063,2024],"class_list":["post-1754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closeup","category-theme-songs","tag-12-string-guitar","tag-2015","tag-a-hard-days-night","tag-aeolian-cadence","tag-animals","tag-basketball","tag-bass-guitar","tag-beach-boys","tag-beatlemania","tag-chris-hook","tag-cklw","tag-dances","tag-dean-martin","tag-ed-sullivan","tag-four-seasons","tag-george-harrison","tag-george-martin","tag-harmonica","tag-i-want-to-hold-your-hand","tag-ian-macdonald","tag-john-lennon","tag-john-milton","tag-jv-basketball","tag-kisses","tag-liverpool","tag-liverpudlian","tag-lycidas","tag-meet-the-beatles","tag-mitch-miller","tag-not-a-second-time","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-peter-and-gordon","tag-piano","tag-revolution-in-the-head","tag-ringo-starr","tag-roach-motel","tag-roy-orbison","tag-shangri-las","tag-she-loves-you","tag-six-string-guitar","tag-snare-drums","tag-steinway-piano","tag-supremes","tag-the-4-searsons","tag-the-animals","tag-the-beach-boys","tag-the-beatles","tag-the-shangri-las","tag-the-supremes","tag-times-square","tag-top-40-radio","tag-twelve-string-guitar","tag-wknr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":58,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5471,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions\/5471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}