Classic Rock and Cheap Wine: Paul is Still Alive and Now Made of Mushrooms
In the first installment of this new weekly series, I established that my first “classic rock credential” was acquired in 1964 when, at the age of eight, I watched the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show along with the rest of the nation.
That groundbreaking musical event began my lifelong love affair with the Beatles.
As witness to this devotion, my baby-sitting money, earned at the rate of 50 cents an hour, provided the cash flow necessary to purchase Beatles’ albums priced at about $3.00 each. (But do not quote me on that price. All I remember about money in those days was the Barbie Doll wedding gown I highly coveted cost $5.00 and that was way above my pay grade.)
In addition to learning my fashion sense from Barbie, the Beatles were a major cultural influence during those formative grade school years. Every new album was an event — a 60s version of the latest iPhone release.
Unless you lived through it, it is hard to describe just how much the Beatles were integrated into all our young lives.
For example, a friend’s birthday party was celebrated at the movie theater watching Help! Singing Beatles’ songs on the school bus was a daily event. And in 6th grade, my best friend and I performed our baton-twirling routine for the class talent show to the tune Day Tripper.
As the mid- sixties progressed, I was not only a fan of Beatles’ music but related to the Fab Four on a personal level because they were growing and evolving right along with me.
So now it is October, 1969 and I am 14 years old.
Having discovered the opposite sex, my girlfriends and I gathered in someone’s basement for “make-out” sessions with our boyfriends. In the center of the room there was a huge cardboard box, where you entered to engage in serious making out.
The soundtrack of that “PG rated” afternoon was Abbey Road, for the newest Beatles’ album had just been released.
To listen to the entire album click below.
Like it happened yesterday, I remember hearing, I Want You (She’s So Heavy) while rolling around in the big cardboard box. For your enjoyment, here is a video montage of that song.
In addition to She’s So Heavy invoking special memories, the words to the song Come Together held a certain fascination for my friends and me.
While at cheerleading practice there was repeated group singing of the phrase “Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease.”
Besides Lennon and McCartney’s genius displayed throughout the album, George Harrison, known as the “quiet Beatle” raised his voice and stature with me because Something and Here Comes the Sun were among my favorite songs.
Thinking back, I remember being delighted that these were George’s songs. Harrison, the lead guitarist, had been totally eclipsed by Lennon and McCartney as a songwriter up until Abbey Road.
Then, that now famous 16-minute medley on side two totally perked-up my ears because I had never heard anything quite like it.
(Memo to the young’uns out there in web-land: In ancient times record albums had two sides and you actually had to get up off the couch and turn the record over. Yet another example of just how tough life was in the 60s.)
Further enhancing the Abbey Road musical experience was the raging pop culture question: “Is Paul Dead?”
A special Beatles magazine discusses the issue.
We would sit around and carefully examine the now iconic Abbey Road album cover for any new clues that could resolve on-going mysteries like, Why was Paul barefoot? What did the license plate mean? Was that Paul’s funeral procession depicted on the cover? As we played the album the mysteries deepened.
Now it is time for you to sit back and listen to Abbey Road while sipping a glass or two of Erath Pinot Noir. If you have never tried this fine, smooth Oregon wine, you are in for a treat and Costco sells it for $14.99.
The burnt-orange colored labels on the bottle read: “EARTH HEART ERATH” and “Grapes from the EARTH, wines from the HEART, ERATH.”
(Obviously a wine made by aging, liberal Oregon hippies but conservative Republicans can have a glass without experiencing any noticeable change in voting behavior.)
So while you are enjoying Erath’s mellow earth, heart, Oregon Zen-hippie vibe, mediate on this: Paul is still with us while tragically, George and John are not. Ringo is floating around somewhere in his Yellow Submarine, and 43 years later, Abbey Road is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest albums of all time.
A Life Magazine from November, 1969 resolved the mystery.
Finally, you just can not make this stuff up! After this piece was finished, my husband sent me an article with the headline: Beatles get scrambled in ‘Abbey Road’ cover made of breakfast food.
A “food sculptor” was commissioned by Beefeater Grill, a UK restaurant chain, to recreate the Abbey Road album cover using selections from their breakfast menu. This is a promotion coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first recording session at the Abbey Road Studios.
So here is that infamous cover made with the likes of sausage, scrambled eggs, fruit, cereal and hash browns. Now, out of respect for Paul McCartney’s strict vegetarian diet, Sir Paul is made of mushrooms.
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More music, Beatles and Boomers at PJ Lifestyle:
Love the breakfast food sculpture… Looking at the crosswalk gave me a new perspective on toast…
I’m a little younger, but I remember the coming of each new hit and each new wonder. They are still a revelation in music, and certain songs are forever tied to big and small events in my own life… I was just thinking this morning about the song “Hey Bulldog” which we were certain was a swipe at Yoko Ono, who was destroying our Beatles before our eyes… This AM it struck me that we somehow all understood that she was ‘metrosexualizing’ John Lennon before we even knew the name for what we were observing! A different type of cutting edge, and the harbinger of so much more that was yet to come…
I had a similar experience when Abbey Road came out. It was my girlfriend’s favorite album. She had one of those old plug and play stereos; you know, the ones where if you didn’t turn the ablum over, it would play the same side again. We listened to side 2 over and over while we made out.
Abbey Road is an interesting album. Let It Be was recorded first but released later. The Beatles knew going into the studio that Abbey Road would be their final compilation. However, only a few of the songs were really knew. The medley at the end of side 2 is actually several partially finished songs strung together. But it is brilliant, and it worked.
We all obsessed over the cover as well. What does it mean? John the Christ figure, Ringo the preacher, Paul the corpse, George the grave digger–and the license plate on the car, 28 IF. Paul would have been 28 that year. If you ask Paul today, he’ll tell you, “It’s a picture of us walking across the street.”
It’s just like when Dylan gave one of his rare press conferences in San Francisco, hosted by Ginsberg. This one hippie kept asking him about the significance of the cover of Hwy. 61 Revisited, where Dylan is shown wearing a Triumph motorcycle t-shirt. Dylan looked at him perplexed and said, “I was sitting on a stoop, and that’s the shirt I was wearing.”
The Beatles and Dylan, they changed the world. But the significance of their achievement won’t be found on any album cover, but in their music and lyrics.
On an aside, the best book on the Beatles is You Never Give Me Your Money. It exposes the ugly truth. I’m hesitant to recommend that book to any true Beatles fan, because it will change the way you think about the band. John was a real asshole. Paul was horribly insecure. George was a mystic. Ringo was an alcoholic. They got ripped off by their management and caught up in the corporate culture of Apple Records. There was much discord over creativity and money. It’s amazing that they were able to create such great music.
The four of them were never in the same room together after January, 1970. They played one last concert on the roof of Abbey Road, and never played together again.
Myra, one of my 1st music purchases was Abbey Road (along with Live Cream, Vol. 2) on eight-track tape, and I would fall asleep at night listening to it at very low volume on my $40 stereo. Great dreams for a 15 year old.
Jump ahead many years, and I am living another dream as a diplomat posted to London, and guess where my flat was – just around the corner from the Abbey Road studios (awesome neighborhood, by the way). I walked past that famous crosswalk every day on my neighborhood walks and to go to my favorite Jewish deli in St. John’s Wood. And while working at the US Embassy I got to interview Ringo for a visa to work in the US – what a super guy he was. He put everyone there in a better mood with his kindness and good humor. Oh how I miss London.
Thanks one more time for the great memories.
Given the original working title of “Yesterday”, shouldn’t Paul be made from
“Scrambled Eggs”?
Seriously, I had that same thought and almost write it in the piece!
The Abbey Road cover is infamous?
in·fa·mous
[in-fuh-muhs]
adjective
1.
having an extremely bad reputation: an infamous city.
2.
deserving of or causing an evil reputation; shamefully malign; detestable: an infamous deed.
I really don’t think that infamous was the word you wanted to use.
Your dictionary is correct, but I wrote “infamous” because of all the “Is Paul Dead” controversy that surrounded the cover at the time. Did not mean to offend.
I was 23 when Abbey Road was released, and serving in the USAF at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base in northeast Thailand, on the Mekong River. It wasn’t much of a place for amenities, but a lot of guys would purchase reel-to-reel tape recorders because they were so inexpensive. A guy in my hootch had one at the ready when the Armed Forces Radio station played the album on a Saturday evening. We listened to it 2 or 3 times a week until it was time for us to go back to “the world.”
It was a long journey home. I was separated from the service upon my return, and on the first Monday that I was home, I went to the “sacred store” to purchase about 10 albums that had been released in the year I was away. Abbey Road was the first one that I sought out.
I just listened to the album in it’s entirety about 4 days ago through headphones. It is still a glorious work of art.