(re-run from 2022)
Yesterday I went to a local library to hear two members of a Beatles cover band do one hour of lovely harmonies while they sang song after song. All the old people in the audience sang along. There were chairs for us, and the young people with small children, who didn’t think to come early to get a seat, stood in the back while their preschoolers danced.
I wanted to dance, but alas, I am not a preschooler, so I had to sit in the chair and sing along. I wore an N-95 mask, making it hard to sing and breathe.
As I was singing along to some of the early Beatles tunes from the first three albums, tunes that no one else in the room seemed to know, I thought of my older sister, the one who bought the one-song-on-each-side records (45s) as soon as they came out, and the albums, as soon as she saved up or borrowed (from me) enough money. I didn’t need to buy any of them. I was only 9, 10, and 11 when we shared a bedroom and a listening space, the Beatles singing the same songs over and over.
There were three of us up in the half-story attic in Iowa, with the slanted walls and lots of little corners to retreat to. Nancy was in one corner playing Litte Kiddles (she was younger), I was on my bed doing homework but mostly daydreaming, and Barb would be at the mirror, fussing with her hair or make-up while John, Paul, George and Ringo sang on.
What if I had been born the oldest? The Ed Sullivan show, when the Beatles took America by storm in 1964, might have been missed by me, an eight-year-old. But since Barb was just about to turn 12, she was tuned into the arrival of the famous group from Liverpool. She was ready to sit there and swoon over the four mop tops. I still remember the caption under John’s close-up. Sorry girls, he’s married.
How could a Beatle be married? It didn’t seem to go with his look, or the way he sang his songs with such bravado and gravelly voice.
Barb introduced me to other British and American groups of the early and mid-sixties. I made a playlist a few weeks ago, trying to remember all the 45s she had that she would play over and over while Nancy and I went about our business of sharing the attic space.
The Troggs, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Herman’s Hermits, Donovan, The Foundations, The Hollies, The Monkees, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Beach Boys, The Happenings, The Cyrkle, The Angels, Spiral Staircase, The Association, and on and on.
Barb has been gone almost two years, and I think of her daily. She was quiet, undemanding, well-read, funny, and probably sad about how her life turned out — no husband, no kids. She lived with our mom for almost thirty years.
Barb, thanks for introducing me to all that great music when I was still a single-digit-old child. Those songs, when I hear them, take me back to our attic space and how we all got along with the help of a cheap record player and a pile of 45s.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 