Personally, I have to rate the blog a success thus far; because of it, I’ve already gotten back in touch with a couple of friends, been virtually leered at, sparked some interest in Alice Coltrane, and provoked the claim that the Beatles stole everything from the Monkees. (Incidentally, I am a big Monkees fan). So I’m glad to have gotten in on this whole internet thing while it’s still on the ground floor. (Here I allude to the late-90s Simpsons episode in which Homer decides he needs to start a dotcom, and at one point looks up from one of many books on the topic piled before him to exclaim, “Wow, they have the internet on _computers_ now!!”)
A recurring theme in responses to yesterday’s first post is the role the Beatles played in people’s childhood imaginaries, and the people bringing this up cross boundaries of gender, straight/queer, generation, and probably numerous other, less articulated lines of difference. What’s interesting about this to me is not any homiletic suggestion that the Beatles bring us all together, above our differences; it’s how different each of these relationships no doubt were, and all the different things they might have done for those involved. I would hazard to guess that sexuality and, less abstractly, sexual feelings played a role in the vast majority of these childhood experiences; also that these feelings involved some highly complicated and titillatingly tangled web of desires and identifications illegible to standard categories of sexuality, and different in each case. I remember reading one of the Hernandez brothers (of Love and Rockets fame—the comic book, not the 80s band) say in an interview a long time ago that when someone would put on a Beatles record when he was a little kid, he would feel that he had to leave the house, because the sheer amount of feeling it generated in his small body, however pleasurable, was simply unbearable. That struck a loud chord with me. As an expert in repression, I don’t have many memories of childhood sexuality or autoeroticism. But I do remember that when the Beatles were playing, I would feel my body in a way that I never had before. It was like the inside of my body suddenly became real, all at once took on depth. And I’m talking about being five or six here (among the many great advantages of having much older sisters is being initiated into good music at a young age). I also remember that the most intense moments of this feeling came in response to the vocal harmonies. Hmmmm. . .
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my sister made the monkees comment. i recognize her anywhere. she is my sister. did i ever tell you that my cousin (another one of us!) and i spent many, many, many, many hours of our youth locked away in his room playing beatles albums as if we were djs, announcing the songs, commenting on them, discussing what order they should be played in, and taping our dj performances? we did. and we still always talk about how we did. every day was the all-beatles weekend. we didn't have older sisters, but our parents were very, very young, and we also spent a lot of time ruining our tender ears by watching our dads rehearse together for their band, whenever they weren't screaming at each other about something only someone in my odd family would scream about. the beatles! youth! help! it was a hard days night eight days a week! for mr. kite, happiness is a warm gun, made of norwegian wood over which beethoven rolled because we were doing it in the road!
What's very creepy about this is that I was, and possibly still am, convinced that that comment was made by my ex-wife.
and what's interesting (and/or creepy) about that is that my sister just LOVES to joke, in a neverending comic performance, that she has been romantically involved with anyone i've ever liked to picture in a bathtub. sometimes the punchline precedes the telling of the joke. just as sometimes the monkees precede the beatles. linear time is so 1965.
OK, I’ll testify, especially since I recognize the phrase “childhood imaginary” from my email response to an earlier post. I first heard about the Beatles in 1964 at the age of 6. I vividly remember (at least as vividly as the news of JFK’s assassination) being on the swingset in my backyard with another six-year old friend, and she was telling me about the Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan show days before. I hadn’t seen it because it was past my bedtime and we barely had a TV (no American channels) and were rarely allowed to watch it. But I knew this was important. (Amazing now to realize that in an era without VH1, video and DVDs, or YouTube, it was probably quite some time before I actually saw that Ed Sullivan episode – but it still worked its magic.)
And I soon found out more from my beloved aunt, who was 10 years older than me. She was the equivalent of an older sibling, and I was crazy about the music she turned me on to – the Beatles were at the top of the list, but they were followed closely by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. My life as a fan was born. I still regret that my parents considered me too young to go see the Beatles live when they came to Vancouver in 1964 – especially since my father got to go with my aunt. And they told me that other little kids were there and they didn’t get trampled.
But the Beatles were still a very live presence in my fantasy life. I would look forward to going to bed so that I could make up stories about my relationships with them. So, how. at the age of 7, did I put myself in this picture? I carefully calculated that my favorite Beatle (first Ringo, although I eventually moved on to John and George but never Paul) was 17 years older than me, which didn’t seem to be the stuff of romance (although I never really thought of them as close in age to my parents, despite the fact that they were). Plus some of them were already getting married. They seemed more like older siblings, or perhaps like my younger aunts and uncles.
The end product of all of this conscious and unconscious labor was that I imagined myself to be a companion to my favorite Beatle. I wasn’t a blood relation but I was part of the family – myself the older sibling that I imagined them to be. Although I was a bit disappointed when Ringo got married and had a child, it also meant that I could assume the role of caretaker for the baby. (I was too young to have read even Jane Eyre, much less Freud, on the sexual dynamics of the governess but I was clearly on to something.) I was somewhere between adult and child – definitely old enough to be a maternal figure to Ringo’s child but more like a babysitter than a parent. I didn’t seem to be able to go so far as to think of myself as adult, but I could imagine myself as somewhere between 12 and 16, much older than my current age and sexually ambiguous. My intimacy with the Beatles was fun, not nuclear, full of desire in way that might have been sexual but, if so, in a decidedly queer way.
So what does it all mean, dear music fans and queer readers? Certainly, Major to Minor’s speculations would seem to be on target.
As a Beatles fan, and a HUGE childhood Beatles fan (Revolver, in particular, was the looping background soundtrack during my eleventh summer, which I spent obsessively drawing horses at my aunt and uncle's abandoned silver mine...one of those drawings actually appeared in Horses for Juniors magazine, forever linking that particular Palomino pride to "Tomorrow Never Knows" in my head, and heart), I've always been indignantly shocked at how often the musicians I know discount the band. If prodded, they'll give a nod to their genius and innovation, but they seem to reserve their gushing for the Rolling Stones, Dylan, Bruce Springsteen. The Beatles, it seems, are not cool? Is it because they're just too obvious, that there's none of that thrill of defending and evangelizing that people get from other bands? Because I'll admit it, there's something corny, almost embarrassingly earnest and true, about loving The Beatles (see: that body-felt resonance other people have mentioned, and which I very much feel, too), and it isn't even the kind of corny that carries a piquant irony -- a la a passion for, say, Hanson or Mariah Carey. So, I guess because the greatness of The Beatles is so unassailable, there’s no potential for fun, all-night drunken debate (which is why, as my musian manfriend tells me, the favorite debate-starter, “name your top ten bands of all time,” is so often amended with an “aside from the Beatles”)? I really do wonder!
two things. first thing: turns out, people are afraid of feelings, especially the uncontrollable visceral ones, like love, and the beatles.
i remember once feeling strangely, euphorically vindicated when one of my genius friends from thinking fellers union local 282 admitted to me that the beatles is his favorite band.
two. i LOVE ann c's story because it reminds me of one of the best-ever things i learned about a friend of mine during a long night spent slowly drinking and slowly revealing our romantic and sexual development stories. anyway, said friend of mine had a fantasy about a school teacher of hers at an age young enough where she wasn't quite sure just what sex was or where all the parts went or why you'd bother to rub them together anyway, but she would nonetheless construct elaborate longlasting fantasies about having long dinners with the teacher where they would gaze at each other over a table set with wine and a good meal, and she would say things like "i'm not sure i can give you what you need from me" (all the time not being certain what that was), and THEN, at the end of the fantasy, every time, a red velvet curtain would draw across the stage to shield us all from what happens next!
that's one place where the beatles come in, i think.
i've never been able to understand choosing ringo. it strikes me as wrong on that dully insistent yet utterly irrational visceral level.
ok, three things. i think the love my cousin and i shared for the beatles might be at the root of the teasing i've sometimes been subjected to about whether my relationship to this cousin of mine is entirely cousinly rather than something "darker," or at least "less socially acceptable." to that i say: see the first thing on this list. (and also: we all suffer from a tremendous poverty of categories in which to file our meaningful loves. "just friends" is a terrible phrase, as if friendship were something inherently less valuable than the rubbing together of body parts. but i digress.)
Ann C, I’m struck by the central role that real, quasi-, and fantasized sibling relationships play in both our stories. I definitely wanted George and John to be my sisters’ boyfriends. Like you, Paul, not so much—Paul always seemed to be there to please the parents. At the same time, it’s notable that I didn’t want them to be my brothers—I didn’t want, never wanted brothers—it was important that they always bring me closer to my sisters.
Evany, you articulated something I've been ruminating on desultorily for a long time. I agree that they almost transcend the types of discussions you mention. You hear their music so much that it’s nearly impossible to really hear it—and I actually get very little rush when something like “She Loves You” comes on the radio these days. But it’s hard not to notice that they were a lot more fey than the other musicians you mention, and what was passionate in their music can’t be as easily and immediately understood as an authentic expression of the straight male psyche. And hence is harder to understand as passion.
Yes. It was I, Jill's sister that made the monkees comment. they rock!
those who know me well know i have an obsession with understandings of passion. i've even taught two courses on it at quakerbubble, usa. so of course i have thoughts. some of them are my own. others appear right here: maybe it is harder to understand what "happens" to a person listening to the beatles as "passion" because we tend to try so hard to recuperate even "passion" (which is the essence of something that needs to be undergone rather than "recuperated") as a thing having something to do with will (and by will i mean volition). but it doesn't. (however: now opens an abyss where i might go on for some time about the ways in which the dividing line between reason and passion is never certain and thus what i've just said needs to be qualified.) there is a tremendous beauty in the uncertainty to which passion subjects us. but then again we also often experience that beauty as anxiety or uncertainty or wondering WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN? the beatles just give us this: SOMETHING IS HAPPENING. and so we love them. (and so some also dismiss them.)
hi my name is jade ruri i have three brothers and one sister
and me im the youngest child in my family is really fun and i love the beatles they are coolest band
in the worldxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
from jadexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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