Back in the days of yore, the Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell was singing about her Big Yellow Taxi, bemoaning “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” as paradise was paved over in order to build what our North American cousins refer to as a ‘parking lot”, or as we might call it, a multi-storey car park. Joni’s version slips better off the tongue, I think you will agree. Joni, now 81,is happily still with us and I would like to think her legion of fans will be making the best of that before, just like the rest of us, she slips off her mortal coil. Sadly, Pound Shop Beatles impersonator Noel Gallaghers’ assertion that “you and I are gonna live forever” is, like the rest of his lyrics, pure gobbledegook.
The “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” applies to just about everything. Time, unfortunately, waits for no man nor woman and while if you are a person with faith you can hope that you will survive your own death and spend eternity wandering around the pubs in Heaven – now that just might be worth praying for – you are taking a punt by going down that road.
Overthinking the subject while lying in bed, wide awake and some ungodly hour, I found myself thinking about the greatest popular beat combo outfit of all time, The Beatles.
My introduction to John, Paul, George and Ringo happened in 1964 when I first heard She Loves You on what would have been the BBC’s Light Programme, a station akin to today’s Radio 2, but with even less modern cutting edge music than today’s version. It was all Perry Como, Acker Bilk and Bobby Darin. Great music, for sure, but hardly state of the art. The mop tops from Merseyside changed all that forever.
I became a fan and have remained one for the ensuing 61 years. If anything, I love The Beatles more today than I ever did. I owned a large selection of their music, but now I own nearly all of the officially released records, sometimes purchased several times over for reasons only a collector would understand. Away from the all-time classics of which there are so many, like Hey Jude, Let It Be and A Hard Day’s Night, I have had a deep desire to dig deeper and deeper, recently buying the three Anthology records. There is nothing to touch the genius of The Beatles and surely there never could be. You might not like The Beatles – and I find it impossible to believe that anyone could not like even some of their music given the genres they covered – but you simply cannot deny their influence over modern music. As my friend Joe Vitale, one of the greatest drummers of all time, told me when we were schmoozing backstage at the Royal Albert Hall some years ago after a magical concert by Crosby, Stills and Nash: “Without The Beatles, none of us would be here.”
There are two Beatles left now. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who are 83 and 85 respectively, still out there playing music. Ringo, with his All Starr Band and Macca with his band. Macca’s most recent shows lasted over three hours and usually featured as many as 36 songs. Yes, of course his voice is not what it was, what with the ravages of time, but he still sings in the same key and he is there, still playing some of the greatest music that has ever been made. We no longer have John Lennon who has been dead for nearly 45 years and was murdered at the age of 40 (just imagine the music he could have made and then weep) or George Harrison who died in 2001 aged 58, killed by Marlboro. When it comes back to “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone“, I don’t want that to happen with The Beatles, which is why pretty well every day I will play or find myself humming, thanks to an ear worm, one of their songs.
It’s not always the big hits that grab my attention. If I was asked to name my favourite Beatles song, I’d have a different answer a few minutes later. Getting Better, from the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album has always been a go to, but this year I have been utterly obsessed with I Will, 1:46 of Macca magic and Good Night, some Lennon genius here, sung by Ringo, both from The Beatles album known as the White Album. Asking what your favourite Beatles song is makes about as much sense as asking someone who their favourite child is. Debating who the most talented Beatle was makes no sense at all.
The Beatles were world class in every sense. World class singers, world class songwriters, world class musicians and putting it all together, you got Revolver, Rubber Soul and Sgt Pepper. And in 1967, they released the greatest double A side single of all time, with Macca’s Penny Lane on one side and Lennon’s Strawberry Fields Forever on the other, which, thanks to Engelbert Humperdinck’s Release Me, never got to number one. (Partly my mum’s fault for buying Enge’s record.)
It’s absolutely fine to play and celebrate the music of the greats who are no longer with us. With the death of Brian Wilson, listening to the impeccable Pet Sounds feels more poignant than ever. But I am doing my very best to enjoy Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr while they are still very much with us.
Seeing Macca live in concert stands top of my bucket list of everything in the world and I am not in the least bothered by the fact that age has withered his voice. It certainly hasn’t withered his music, almost all of which, except perhaps his work with the Frog chorus, more than stands the test of time.
Someone once told me that The Beatles were overrated and I responded by saying no, they were and remain underrated. They really did change everything in music like no one before or since. Make sure you do know what you’ve got when it comes to Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and The Beatles. Along with George Harrison and John Lennon, and the fifth Beatle producer George Martin, they were the greatest of them all. No one came close. No one ever will.
