Thanks for a pleasant and insightful reprise of one of the kindest,
least saccharin and most durable record albums ever made. Despite the
tension that racked this collaboration from the beginning to the end of
their existence, The Beatles knew how to make music for all the ages.
I'm
not talking about Bach or Beethoven monumentality. Where The Beatles
might stand is the pantheon of musicians is for others to determine
long after I'm gone, I speak of real ages, grandmothers and toddlers,
angst ridden boys, beer bellied bricklayers, having their pint of
afters, and, of course, the young girls. Easy or at its most exotic,
the music these four made managed to resonate; however, unexpectedly
with almost everyone who listened to it.
This was the music of my
teens. I count myself lucky. And, even with forty years of educating my
ear, I know it will also be the music of my "late middle age,"
interleaving and framing the thousands of selections available to me.
One of the treasures of our present age is the approximately 400 years
of musical genius we have available at the tap of a key. On top of that
we have almost 100 years original performances, nuance and phrasing
that let us literally step back into time to feel what our ancestors
felt.
For me, The Beatles easily hold their own place in this
unprecedented river of sound, unlike all too many modern musicians, The
Beatles understood that music is the pure language of emotion. They
demonstrated that this language had a vocabulary greater than four
chords and a whine. They explored it every bit as successfully as
the musical luminaries of other ages.
Getting to 64 won't be so bad. I know I'll hear friendly voices
when I arrive.
