Timeless

This post isn’t about The Beatles, though it will feel like it at first. Nor is it about how I became a Beatles fan, though it will feel like that, too.

I actually didn’t heart The Beatles at first. You could say I literally grew up with The Beatles. They made their first appearance in the United States in 1964, the year I was born, and became instant icons in the American music scene. I missed all of the real Beatlemania, of course, as I was still pooping my pants, practically, when they were breaking up.

When I became aware of things in general, I noticed in nostalgic clips of The Ed Sullivan Show the girls in the audience, screaming and crying and swooning from the first note The Beatles played on his show, and I thought it just silly. Two of my sisters, being older than I am, were teenagers in the 1960s and, had they the means then, they would have been among those screaming, crying, swooning girls at Comiskey Park in Chicago on 20 August 1965.

Naturally, they had Beatles records at home. Due to my adverse reaction to the girls in the audiences on The Ed Sullivan Show and other film clips, I was, of course, just as repulsed by the music when my sisters played it in the house.

Over the course of the next ten years I was pretty much able to get by in life without much reliance on music. A few songs here and there caught my interest, but they were usually songs of a more novelty nature: “Kung Fu Fighting,” “ The Streak,” “King Tut” and the like.

Somewhere in there I had developed a liking for the song “Get Back,” yet, having successfully tuned out any of the music my sisters played, somehow I had never caught on the radio that it was a Beatles song. I blame the line in the song where Paul speaks the line, “Get back, Jo-Jo!” which is then followed by a George Harrison electric guitar solo. I knew back then the names of the individual members of The Beatles, so I figured at the time that Jo-Jo was the lead guitarist in whatever band that was.

In high school I made a new friend, Sam, who thought I was pretty cool, so on many weekends I was invited over to his house to hang out and play, make little animated and live-action movies on Super8 film, and learn new ways to try to be funny. Sam also happened to be a HUGE Beatles fan. I can’t all-caps, bold and italicize that enough. HUGE fan. It was one of those things I could tolerate because I liked the rest of him so much. Every once in a while he would pull out his Beatles records, hoping to share his love for their music with his new friend (I’d say “best friend,” but I’m not sure he considered me as such). He couldn’t seem to understand why someone who got him as much as I did and whom he got as much as he did could possibly not like the Beatles. I would groan about it and endure, hoping he would get it out of his system or get tired of me rolling my eyes, and then we would go back upstairs and stick silly, homemade dialogue balloons on his baseball cards.

Then one day he pulled out Let It Be. “Get Back” started up, and I gave him what must have been quite a perplexed look.

“Wait a minute!” I said. “This is The Beatles?!”

Then Sam gave me a perplexed look. “Yeah!” he said. “Who did you think it was?”

I was dumbstruck. The song played on, and I sort of felt my reality coming apart. I hated The Beatles. I liked “Get Back.” It was like one of those logic puzzles: The Beatles exist(ed); The Beatles created “Get Back;” I like “Get Back;” Therefore, I like The Beatles. It can’t be!

So thus began a serious reassessment of why I hated The Beatles. I went home and, in solitary moments when the sister who had not yet moved out of the house wasn’t home, I listened surreptitiously to her Beatles albums, this time without resisting them and tuning them out like I did at Sam’s house, but relaxing and letting their words and melodies get through. Within several weeks, with historical lessons from Sam about the band’s origins and their growth from minor celebrity to industry and social icons, I was a Beatles fan. Of course, right about this time was when John Lennon was murdered, so right when it felt good, it felt bad again.

But as I stated at the top of this post, this isn’t about The Beatles or why I’m a fan. The Beatles are used as a point of reference for the topic of my post.

What defines timelessness? How does a film or a novel or a song reach out across the decades from the era in which it was made and still manage to speak to us with its full power?

There have been many, many great films made since the dawn of the industry, but many of them have faded with their times, and their messages have lost their punch. But others stand strong forever. It’s A Wonderful Life, for instance — which is my all-time favorite film — is one I consider timeless. The story arc covers about thirty years in the life of one man. Clearly set in the earlier half of the 20th century, the film manages to transcend its era and drive home its message: the lives of everyone around you would be immeasurably different if you never existed. Whenever I watch that film, I never think, “What an old movie.” I think, “What a great story.” Regardless of your beliefs, and despite the film’s method, it’s a powerful concept: how different would be your neighborhood, your city, the world, if you were never born?

These days, whenever I hear an old Beatles song, it doesn’t seem old to me. The same goes for a Led Zeppelin song, or a Pink Floyd song (even though I’m not a huge fan of theirs), to name a few. Even if the Beatles song I hear is from one of their earliest albums, there seems to be an edge to it that transcends the things that make other ‘60s music “typical.” I can’t explain what that is. More sophisticated lyrics? More complicated music? I seriously doubt it. John Lennon and Paul McCartney started their band so they could meet girls. They certainly didn’t intend to shake the world and reshape the sound of music. Is it perhaps the knowledge of what they became — what they are even to this day — that colors the feel of their oldest music, not to mention songs from every phase of their existence as a band, that makes theirs feel like important music to me? I don’t think that’s it either. It seems to me a combination of everything involved in their music that made it superior — the words AND the music AND the arrangements. It seems as if they made great music that others tried to emulate and failed, rendering all the rest as typical, while The Beatles continued cutting the waters and leaving the wake that everyone else rode upon.

In an earlier post I waxed nostalgic about the old 1970s TV show, Starsky & Hutch. While it is considered seminal, the formula upon which all TV cop shows were founded for years to come, that show is clearly a product of its time and willingly reflects it. I don’t consider it — nor do I believe would anyone else consider it — timeless. It’s deeply rooted in its ‘70s-ness; kitschy, even.

How does it happen, then? Does someone write a song or a screenplay or a novel intent on making it timeless, or does it just come out that way? Is it instantly timeless, or does it take a decade or more of withstanding the years before we realize it’s just as valid today as it was when it first came out?

I’m having trouble wrapping this up. I don’t feel I’ve properly embraced the concept with words to the depth ofmy thoughts and feelings. What are some examples of timelessness for you? Any further thoughts on it?