A Mature Kind of Fandom
I got a book over the holidays: John Lennon In His Own Words by Ken :Lawrence. It’s a nice but spare collection of quotes from a man I’ve always admired. One quote in particular made me climb out of the recliner to share with my wife.
"Our society is driven by neurotic speed and force, accelerated by greed and the frustration of not being able to live up to the image of men and women we have created for ourselves - an image which is nothing to do with the reality of people. How can we be [an] eternal James Bond or Twiggy and raise three kids on the side? So we pass our kids on to babysitters, nursery and high school teachers - three of the most underpaid positions in our society!…In such an image driven culture, a piece of reality like a child becomes a threat to our very false existence."
–first of a regular column written by John and Yoko,
Sundance magazine. April-May 1972.
Truth is timeless, isn’t it?
I was a bit too young to live Beatlemania. I came to musical awareness a couple years after the group disbanded. In sixth grade I met a guy named Paul who uncannily mimicked McCartney’s voice. Since then I cannot listen to "My Love" by Wings without hearing my friend Paul’s voice crack in the high parts. We both were of that age…He taught me a Liverpublian accent and we used to pretend to be John and Paul for a while. We both took up guitars, his left handed, and mimed to records and such. For me it was the last fling of childhood before the onset of puberty and all attendant complications. Some of the good memories, that.
Since then, I have gathered a modest collection of Beatle books and read them all. To my family, I’m a bit of an expert. I’ve taught myself guitar from their songbooks, learned songwriting from their example, enriched my life through such efforts. To hear their music, all I need is to concentrate, they’re stored forever in my synapses. As I typed the preceding sentence, "Anytime At All" cued up in my head… "All you gotta do is call / And I’ll be there…" As my daughter grew, I made sure to instill a love of Beatles in her heart. She’s collected all the British recording in CD, and I’m proud. A bit of a personal legacy she may share in her future. Let the music live on…
These days I don’t obsess anymore. It’s a gentle, mature kind of fandom, but John and his mates are still a part of me. Amazing, really - I never met him - how a single person can alter history, affect so many people and infect them with fond memories. It’s magic.