| I'll always remember exactly where the car was on the street where I grew up when the news came over the radio. I was eight years old, and my mom was driving my little sister and I to Gramma's for a visit. The car was a gigantic rust-coloured monstrosity of a Chevrolet - I believe we called her 'Old Nellie', if memory serves. We'd just hit the top of the second valley on Kennedy Street, and were in the home stretch to Aurora's main street, Yonge: the car was just passing in front of the Harrison's house. A boy lived there who was a year older than I was. I can't remember his name. I don't know if my mom heard the announcement .. I don't think she did. She was proabaly busy spitting in her hand and fixing my hair, as she often did. When we got to Gramma's, two towns over in Richmond Hill, my gramma asked my mom why I was crying. Mom laughed a bit and said, "Oh, it's just because John Lennon died." Just because John Lennon died?! As if that wasn't a momentous and unbelievably tragic occurance?! Maybe she just thought I was too young to appreciate John, having not even been born when the Beatles were active. But I felt that his murder was a huge blow, and an ominous sign. More than that, I'd just started getting to know John, and now, suddenly, inexplicably, he was gone. My best friend growing up, Chris Mitchele, who lived across the street from me, had two older brothers who HAD been around during the Beatles heyday. They'd even watched Lennon's famous Plastic Ono Band concert for peace at Varsity Stadium in Toronto from their apartment balcony! Standing on their tippy toes no doubt to see over the railing. Buck and Dee, as they were (and still are) called, had an 8-track player with small, square, blue plastic speakers. From those very speakers I was introduced to Boston, Chicago (why did so many bands have cities' names?), Supertramp, the Police, Cheech and Chong .. but mostly THE BEATLES. And just like legions of others, the Beatles music made me dream of writing songs, being a musician, and playing in a band with some other lads just like they did. The seeds were thus sown - I dreamt from then on of rock stardom, and of changing the world. The Beatles had made both dreams seem possible. The first cassette that I could call my very own came from Santa Claus. He put it in my stocking. The album was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the music on it became the style and the standard to which I would later aspire in my own music. What did they mean by, 'get high with a little help from my friends'? And who was this Sgt. Pepper fellow anyways? My favourite songs were, well, all of them! (Except for 'Within You, Without You', which I didn't get .. but that too wound up having a profound influence on me later on.) I was transported. The second cassette I called my own was actually my mother's. She'd bought it because she liked the single, 'Imagine'. The smokey cover with the little cloud in the corner encapsulated the dreamworld that was my youth. There was this rebellious, cool look to it, coupled with a sort of 'other side' quality (and I mean 'other side' in the Jim Morrison sense of the phrase). I loved 'Jealous Guy'. I hated 'Oh Yoko - that constant refrain was annoying, and I was also na�ve enough at the time as to believe that the Beatle's break-up was Yoko's fault, as if it could be that simple. 'I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier' was too edgy for me. I loved the guitar picking and the warmth on 'Oh My Love'. 'Crippled Inside' was uppidy, and it made me laugh. (I loved John's mock southern accent on that one.) And 'Imagine' came to define my philosophy; my being. It's too bad that some of the ideals that John espoused didn't work out. I found that out the hard way. But, I think that if he'd lived, then the ideals that he brought would have lived on with him. They say that the 60's died with John. I could definitely feel that it was the end of an era. There was going to be a radio show on that weekend encapsulating the man's career. But the night that it was to air I was supposed to be going to a father and son event with my dad down at the local Lions Club. I was always impressed with all the pins on my dad's purple and gold Lions Club vest. Not only were they overwhelming in number, but pins were cool back then. I figured out much later that the Lions Club was primarily a vehicle for my dad to make business contacts, and work his sales beat. In all fairness though, it was his time with 'the boys', which he has always valued, man's man that he is. I was beside myself - I absolutely, positively, without a doubt HAD to listen to that show. A compromise was forged whereby my mother would tape the show from the radio. Naturally, I didn't trust her to do it right! My most important instruction was simply for her to capture the song 'Fool On The Hill', which was Chris' and my favourite at the time. I couldn't emphasize that point enough. At the father and son affair I was defintely distracted by the radio show I was missing. At the end of the night I somehow managed to win a door-prize - it was a Barney Miller doll, of all things, and it even came with his trademark breifcase! It was pretty cool, and it eased my distress slightly. When we got home, I went straight for the stereo. The green lights of the radio dial made the stereo look like a dashboard at night. The show was winding down, but it was still on! My mom explained her process - she had recorded all the songs she figured she could fit onto one side of a cassette, and she'd cut out all the talk! I knew she'd screw it up! It was past my bedtime, so I'd just have to wait to listen to it in the morning. I listened begrudging the fact that it was all music and no oral history, begrudging my mother for lousing up so simple, and yet so vital, a task. It all worked out in the end, though - I had a tape of music that I could listen to over and over, which I did for the better part of eight years until it finally broke from age and overplay in the car one day on the way to the cottage. You can only listen to and enjoy interviews and commentary so many times before they lose their lustre, by contrast. The show wound up being a round-up of the entire British invasion. I got to hear songs that I never would have otherwise known even existed. Songs like 'Little Children' by Billy J. Kramer, a song about a guy trying to get his girlfriend's younger, tattle-proned siblings out of the picture to allow for a make-out session; and 'Glad All Over' by the Dave Clark Five, a track that's as energetic as anything the Beatle's did in their early years. I was a decade ahead of Patrick Swayze in singing 'I'm enery the eighth I yam' over and over like a goofball. And 'A World Without Love', a Lennon/McCartney composition performed by Peter & Gordon, reinforced the path that John had set me on, and forshadowed 'All You Need Is Love' which they would write years later. I'm sure my pupils were planted firmly in my forehead, and my head in my hands as I anxiously waited for 'Fool On The Hill' to appear on the tape. My mother thought she'd gotten it, but there were so many songs she couldn't be sure. The tape was half over - no 'Fool On The Hill'. Two thirds over - still no 'Fool'. Three quarters over - nothing. Then finally, near the very end of the tape, almost like an afterthought, tauntingly, mercifully, there it was! My life was as complete as it could be, although I was still exasperated by the whole radio show ordeal. Nothing is ever perfect though -that is to say, everything can't ever be all in it's right place at one time- and it took me maybe fifteen more years to realize that. My father was, at that time, in the first few years of building up a trucking company. He had just acquired his first terminal -a two door warehouse in an industrial strip mall by the airport- and his first truck, a five-ton. He just so happened to be transporting a shipment of memorial/commemorative magazines put out by the New York Times. The magazine told the epic story of John - from Aunt Mimi and Mendips, to the Silver Beetles, to 'Help', to 'All You Need Is Love', to 'Give Peace A Chance' all the way to his last day on Earth. The tale became practically, if not entirely, biblical to me; and it had lots of big, glossy pictures. Apparently some rats had chewed out the bottom edge of one of the boxes, and these magazines had just spilled out onto the dock .. or so the story went. As I've been writing this, I've started thinking that perhaps this was a bit of a ruse. Kind of like the Tooth Fairy .. or Santa Claus. Afterall, no parent would want to promote stealing, would they? I read that magazine into oblivion, just like the cassette. Fortunately I have a pristeen back-up copy. It's wrapped up tight in a folder in a box of my Beatle's memorabelia. It's the centrepiece of my collection. |
| THE WEEK JOHN DIED - A Story By Ashley |