The Beatles, I realize now, have played a really important role in my life going back to when I was eight years old and in the hospital recovering from a ruptured appendix. She Loves You was the big hit. I only had the vaguest idea of how they made such a song, I didn't think about it too much, but after watching Get Back (I'm now on the second installment) I see the magic. #
They invented The Beatles, it was a real thing, you can see it in the relationships and the end result. A song starts as an idea, and they hack at it, over and over, and gradually the song emerges. I kept wanted to say it's "Tucson Arizona!" but of course they didn't know that yet. #
I recognize the dissatisfaction of people who don't share the bond that Lennon and McCartney did. Ringo accepted his role as an onlooker, George struggled against it. And all the hangers-on with opinions about this and that. They remind me of the VCs and execs in tech. #
The magic was Paul working out a hit song on the bass, with Ringo and George looking on. Then John coming back and loving it, and adding his bit. #
The conversations reveal so much. If only we had understood all this less than 50 years after the fact. I think of all the young creative people who can watch this, and how it will help them understand, and how we got by, feeling our way around this the way the Beatles. #
I wrote to a friend yesterday that this feels biblical. This is how it all began. I expect we'll be talking about this for years to come #
I wish we had the equivalent video for all kinds of other seminal events. I'd love to see a video of all that Trump did on January 6, for example, while the Capitol was under attack. Who was he calling on cell phones, threatening them in not so subtle ways while they were feeling so vulnerable?#
Listening to She Loves You reinforces the point made by Paul McCartney in a recent Fresh Air interview. He said when they were young, when the Beatles were starting out, mostly what they wanted was girlfriends. #
At one point, in the struggle over George Harrison's departure, Lennon talks about how they'll feel about all of it when they're old. How profoundly sad that he didn't get to be old, and we didn't get to learn from an older John Lennon. #
In the music Lennon and McCartney produced separately after the breakup there was (evidently) a lot of bitterness between them. But in this movie you feel the love they had between them. I wonder where the bitterness came from, or if it was just an illusion. Maybe we imagined it. #
Update: A podcast about the invention of the Beatles. #
copyright 1994-2021 Dave Winer.
Last update: Wednesday December 1, 2021; 8:50 PM EST.
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