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| Some kind of light by your side. |
Well, Kent, this would be about the time we'd stop doing whatever we weren't supposed to be doing and settle down to sleep. That meant music. We listened to everything together, even after we wound up on two sides of a room divider, the green from the stereo the only light. We listened to a little of it all in there--Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Otis Redding, Ozzy/Sabbath, Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac, The Commodores, Boston, Blondie, Rush, the Clash, Van Halen, Rickie Lee Jones and the Pretenders--everything we knew back then.
You didn't like some of the old music punk turned me toward, and I didn't follow you far down the jam band road, but we shared embryonic bonds. Though we could never really talk about it (it wouldn't occur to us to talk about that), I think we thought through a lot of our identities in that room. We grew into the odd ducks we were out of that quiet time together.
That time that would start just about now. I was generally in charge of the stereo (the first one was on my side, lol), and I remember picking things you'd want to hear as we worked on getting sleepy. I knew every time I could go to Ian Hunter's "You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic" and the Grateful Dead's "Terrapin Station."
And we would both always go for some Beatles. That started back when we first met, me 11/you 9, and the Beatles were the great inheritance from my older brother we bonded fullest over together. Most nights, I believe that meant "Abbey Road."
Last time I saw you I told you to watch the Scorsese Grateful Dead documentary. I don't know if you did. You wouldn't have learned as much from it as I would have anyway. You lived half that story.
But this Beatles "Get Back" thing? That would have been something to blow both our minds. (We simply would not have believed such a thing could exist back then in that room at 5809 Meadowcrest.) And though it's a movie about the "Let It Be" sessions, they play at least ten songs that would appear on "Abbey Road." And though many of those songs would be only fragments on "Abbey Road," they're equal to every other fledgling song idea during these sessions.
So, you remember how we loved "Polythene Pam"? Well, instead of one minute woven into a suite, it becomes the whole song we always wanted it to be as kids.
No, it's no longer. John doesn't play any more of it....
But he doesn't know he won't write it into a full song yet, and, because that's true, we hear it now always wanting to be that unwritten song.
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| Plotting something together |
So I'm writing you in this week of my world remembering the Beatles because I want to sit on the side of the bed with you again and listen together again. I mean, I'm doing it with you in my mind now, just the way you were back then. I'm realizing you've always been there because we shared so much time in that stereo's green light.
One of the things I think is truly great about this new Peter Jackson "Get Back" thing is that it gets at that passion of playing music as brothers. And I don't mean because we banged around on some guitars at times. It was really the joy that made us want to do that. It was sitting in the darkness sharing that journey into sound. It was sometimes catching each other's eyes when we heard something really great. Just before we drifted off, in the dark staring at the ceiling, it was that quiet remark, a "that right there" and a "yeah" from the other side of the room.
And one reason that focus on the shared experience matters so much is that this movie emphasizes the community in music. Elsewhere, that last part of the Beatles career is torn up by individualistic interpretations, simply because the family was growing up and apart, a natural process. That's one way to look at all our stories, and that's what you and I were doing, playing music together from the ages of 9 to 17.
It was also the time of our greatest bonding.
Living in this world, we lost touch some over the years, for all kinds of reasons, but we always felt the deepest love when we were together. The kind of bond you see in this band in this movie, it stands out to me as John Lennon bouncing on his toes; George Harrison asking Paul what he thinks of a line; Paul banging drums and climbing rafters, letting himself be the silliest of all; Ringo defending the band's togetherness, saying, "You don't know that; you're surmising because we got grumpy with each other. We've been grumpy for 18 months."
That part's about grief over Brian Epstein's death. That part, like so many, reminds me of that night after Dad died--you, me and James partying in the kitchen, taking turns deejaying YouTube. Your idea, and it worked--grief made raucous and joyful.
"Get Back" is about grief, certainly, but it's about grief in such a full, round way. It's about the music and the love where I live with you now, my dear brother. I linger more and more over the meaning of those memories that will always be "longer than the road that stretches out ahead."
Physically, I'm walking that road without you now, but you've never been more constant in my heart.
Thank you for everything, Kent, and thank you for sharing all those musical journeys with me. This is the heart of what that movie shows that makes me think of you--music is about "we" and how "we" come together. In a world where "I," "Me" and "Mine" are the most popular brands, it's such a gift to have learned together the importance of that collaborative beat, that dialogue and that harmony.
Oh, and the laughter. There's so much of that here, heartfelt, filling in all the gaps...just as there was, always, with us.... Just as there is in the smiles when I think of you now.
