Discovering The Beatles

Remember when George Harrison died? I’m thinking about this right now because I’m listening to “Something” and the whole Abbey Road album. So let me talk about it.

The day George died I visited one of my good friends in her office on my university’s campus. She had all her George Harrison cd’s on her desk and was listening to the “All Things Must Pass” album. She told me she thought the Beatles were dying in order of greatness. First John, years ago, and now George. She said Ringo would outlive all of them. Poor Ringo. He gets such a bad rap.

Later that day I was listening to a radio program from the BBC, broadcast over the internet. The DJ spoke of George’s death, and then played “Something,” to honor George. I’d liked The Beatles for a long time, but I’d always been a bigger fan of their early stuff. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I didn’t own a single Beatles cd. In the spirit of the moment, I went out and bought 1. (Okay, so once I owned a copy of Rubber Soul, which I bought when I was 19 for the song “Nowhere Man.” I traded it in a long time ago because I wasn’t musically evolved enough to understand the greatness of the entire album.) Anyway, I bought 1 and it’s still the only Beatles album I really have. When George died I found out he wrote just a few of the Beatles songs and one of them was “All Things Must Pass.” A great song, and when I listen to it I think of having a hangover and being depressed. I never have hangovers, but I get depressed once in a while and have trouble remembering that people are happy around me and that things really do pass and life goes on.

Remember the friend who made that comment about the Beatles dying in order of greatness? She adored George Harrison, and I think a lot of people did. I don’t know that much about him, but from what I understand he was very much into Eastern religions. At the time of his death I was in a poetry group composed of some of my English professors, teachers, and peers. My Shakespeare professor wrote a poem about him when he died, a poem I really liked. When I think of that now, how she wrote a poem about a celebrity who didn’t know her, it makes me think of how everything is connected to everything. There are invisible strings uniting all things in the universe, people, ideas, music and poetry. And so we affect each other without knowing why or how.

Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that I’m still evolving, musically. That while I may not have a huge collection of Beatles albums, I have some of their records (I stole them from my parents). And I plan to get a copy of Abby Road in the next few days. It’s really great that there are so many amazing albums I’ve still not heard.