On the Beatles.

I like the Beatles. I can't say that I'm obsessed with them because unlike my more musically-appreciative friends, I don't have the entire Beatles catalogue memorized. I know a few songs, like the popular ones (Hey Jude, Girl, Here There and Everywhere, and then a few others (such as Good Day Sunshine and I Should Have Known Better) that i just discovered around the past two years thanks to my friend Arthur (who writes the blog ihategameswithballs.blogspot.com) and, to You (to whom the best songs were offered)..


But I do like the Beatles, particularly because of a little event that occurred in my life when I was eight that featured the song "Til There was You". I wrote about it around two years ago in a piece I call "Paul and the Musical Insects" because I suck at making titles.

He was a nice and handsome drunk, with his normally fair skin already tinged red after a few glasses of San Miguel, but it was my eight year old self who was tipsy with delight in this situation.

And why wouldn't I be, having such a charming rogue serenade me with a decent though unaccompanied warbling of The Beatles' 'Til There Was You?'

As far as I was concerned, the goodly solid nine years we had between us was hardly relevant. Perhaps if I even believed in the concept of marital bliss (that involved myself), which I already didn't at that age, he would have been the Mister to my Missus and maybe somewhere in the back of my second-grade mind I may have entertained that fantasy.

I wasn't drinking then (because this didn't happen in Europe where children could have their meat with a little wine, and even then it wasn't vino that they had) but my beer goggles showed me that my very, very first Adored had been lost until I was found and that when I was, his heart leapt while roses bloomed and music played all around.

What he sang was an almost silly, simply rhymed Beatles song. What I heard was that our distant ages could not keep us apart, not at all, for if love was true it transcended anything or anyone that willed its demise.

I was all of eight, falling in love for the first time ever that night.

When the morning came a few hours later I was still all of eight years, give or take a few months, weeks and days and I had completely forgotten the heart and soul I offered the night before as I played hide-and-seek with my friends.

True story, by the way. I didn't see him around much after that but but he did move into my cousin's house across the street when I was in high school. Of course, as luck would have it, I learned this a few months after he'd left. Haha.


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Anyway, back to the Beatles. Actually, I don't have much to say on them, much of their myth and history escape me. I just like their songs.


I do like George Harrison, however, as he always seemed to be serious. I'm drawn to serious people, I guess.  Besides, as I found out through wikipedia, Mr. Harrison did pen some of my favorite Beatles songs like While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Something, Here Comes the Sun and he sang the lead in I'd Be Happy Just to Dance with You.


Aside from that, I also just learned his connection to Eric Clapton's song Layla, where apparently the song was written by Clapton for George's wife at the time, Pattie Boyd. Dirty trick, innit? Though I guess she must have been the sort of woman men write songs for.


Anyway, to abruptly end this pointless rambling, I offer you a song from the Concert for George (now available on DVD). I don't think it's a Beatles song per se, but it's a sweet tune played by Joe Brown on the ukulele for George Harrison.