Peace, Love, and 'The Beatles'
Zach Pearce
Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: Arts and Entertainment
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This column examines artists, albums, and songs new, old, and in between. An all-Beatles show can be heard Monday night, November 9, 8-9 pm, on 89.7, WRUC.
I couldn't help myself. It was simply, perfect. Something so liberating, so pure, so raw-and I couldn't stop grinning. Stepping out into a brisk Halloween night, my face was still stretched ear to ear.
I was transported back to 1969, scratching a needle across a worn copy of Abbey Road…
And I snapped back to reality. It was Saturday night! All right! Yet, I still couldn't shake it. Whether it was the real "Fab Four" or a Faux Four, I couldn't tell. And it didn't matter. Because I saw John Lennon transform from a mop-top to the bespectacled peace activist. I saw Ringo smile, despite longer, and longer hair.
It was "Beatlemania Again," a tribute to four legendary Liverpudlians. But the music-oh, the music-was serene. For the first time since I first heard the Beatles' croon on my parents' old LPs, I was reminded of why I fell madly in love with the band in the first place.
It was everything about the unfolding scene around me that took me down…to Strawberry Fields (sorry, I couldn't resist). Kids in front of me, looking wondrously at parents in front of them, transported back to their childhoods, beaming, singing, dancing to John, Paul, George, and Ringo (at least their reincarnations). And all of a sudden, I was doing it. Every Beatles song flooded back in ecstasy-I began to smile. Old men, grizzled by the pains of life, singing, raucously, behind me. I couldn't stop myself now. Bobbing my head, now, I looked to my right. Two parents, not too far removed from the 60s, dancing in the aisles. And I began to move my mouth with the lyrics of a Lennon-McCartney tune. And for a brief instant on Halloween of 2009, everything was right in the world.
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