Post-Fab -- a 50-year retrospective

First ... watch and listen to this.

Now that you have, we can proceed.

If there's one thing that the four individual members of the Beatles did -- for better or for worse -- is that once the party ended, they cleaned up, went home, and got on with their lives and careers. We might have cringed at some of the things they did, but for four people who achieved the height of their fame before they even turned 30, they approached middle age remarkably well adjusted. Even John Lennon.

The biggest scandals any of them endured were marital ... John's split with his first wife and his ongoing drama with Yoko Ono ... and the George Harrison/Patti Boyd/Eric Clapton menage a tois.

They may have had their drug issues, but there were no Keith Richards cases among them. Once they split, the only drug problem was Paul McCartney's extended stay in a Japanese jail for being busted with marijuana.

After they split, amid bitter acrimony, they worked hard to repair their relationships. And from all indications, they were all cool with each other by the time John Lennon was killed in 1980.

Most of all, besides the wonderful music they gave us, they all taught us individual lessons on how to live in a fishbowl, crash, burn, reinvent and ultimately survive.

All of the above is -- if nothing else -- an introduction to this retrospective on them. And it comes by way of a brief Facebook conversation I had with a friend over the fact that listening to one of the Beatles' many knockoff groups -- in this case "Rain" -- was not the same as actually seeing the group.

I know what she meant. Nothing will ever replace the freshness and vitality of John, Paul, George and Ringo when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. They were so fresh, and so ... alive! ...that you'd have thought they were going to jump out of the TV and perform in your living room. It's not an exaggeration to say they took over the country -- an invasion that was certainly a diametrical counterpoint to the pall that enveloped the nation in the two months following JFK's assassination.

And to those who say it was all clever marketing and nothing else, save it. I've seen plenty of groups, and products, marketed to death. And few of them captured our imagination the way the Beatles did.

There was quite a lot that went into the Beatles. Part of it was the music. It was good. But most of it was simply them. Yes, they were young, and yes they had teen idol good looks. But what really cemented their conquest of the United States were themselves. They let their personalities show from the earliest. John was the wise guy; Paul the charmer; George the the laconic deadpan who was liable to come out and say anything; and Ringo the sad-eyed clown. It might have been a coincidence, or it might have been tightly scripted, but what came across were four individuals who -- when you put them together -- all complemented each other in every way imaginable.

The Beatles went on and did great things over the course of the sixties. But to me -- and perhaps millions of others -- nothing will ever come close to the fun they generated in 1964. And when you're 10 (and perhaps even a few years older) you have no idea of words like "supernova," and how they applied, in metaphorical terms, to groups like the Beatles.

Because that's what the Beatles were ... an exploding star that was never destined for longevity, but that -- during its time to shine -- shone brighter than any other.

We thought it was always going to be this way. Our parents thought otherwise. My father used the words "flash in the pan" quite often during that time. They weren't of course. They dominated the music scene for the rest of the decade in one way or another.

But they were never meant to last, and that has nothing to do with how good they were (or weren't). Groups like the Rolling Stones, Who, Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and so many others, lasted so long because they Beatles did all the hard work. They're the ones who penetrated the market. The rest of them just followed along, free from all the hubbub and ballyhoo that accompanied the Beatles everywhere they went.

We all have our unique functions in life. The Beatles established the template, and they set the bar as  high as it could possibly go. But as George Harrison once said, "(the fans) gave us their screams and gave us their money, but we kind of gave them our nervous systems." Their fame was destined to crumble under its own weight.

The biggest surprise is that it took 2½ years for them to act on what had obviously dawned on them long before. Again said George, (for some reason, Harrison's perspective on this outshines those of the other four), "(people) used us as an excuse to go mad ... then they turned around and blamed it all on us." The Beatles may have still been in their 20s, and they may have had boundless energy, but from February 1964 through August of 1966 rare were the moments where they weren't recording, filming or touring.

Now, factor in how volatile the culture became during that 2½ years. The Beatles may have swept everyone along with them, but I maintain the changing culture swept them along just as much. It was sort of a chain reaction. They discovered marijuana through Bob Dylan. They had LSD dropped on them by their dentist at a party. Their exposure to the world -- and all that was in it -- certainly opened their eyes. And they certainly had the means, as cutting-edge musicians, to partake in all of it.

John Lennon once said that by 1965, Beatlemania had become incomprehensible. "We were smoking marijuana for breakfast," he said. If you still have your LP cover of "Rubber Soul," look at it. Yes, the picture was distorted, but the looks on the faces are not. They look tired, a little world-weary, and certainly a lot less energetic than the four moptops that appeared on album covers just a year and a half earlier.

And the songs! There was a world-weary resignation in a lot of those songs. These were four guys growing through the natural maturation process that occurs in everyone in their 20s ... and they were doing it in public, through their music. No more "yeah, yeah, yeahs,"

I've never been one to burrow through the lyrics of songs for hidden messages. But you don't have to do much burrowing to see what was going on with "Rubber Soul." The bloom was starting to fall off the rose, as far as they were concerned. They were ready to bust out and become musicians and not just matinee idols.

They always said that once they did something, their biggest goal thereafter was not to do it again. They didn't want to write the same song over and over ... and they didn't want to make the same albums over and over. Their quest to find new direction, perhaps nudged on by their burgeoning use of hallucinogens (along with their thirst to learn more and more about the mechanics of recording) took them to places none of us had been.

"Rubber Soul," to me, was the first of three albums that any objective, sane person would have to include in the 100 of all-time rock albums. There isn't a wasted song on the record ... nothing that you could even come close to calling "filler."

"Revolver" was/is the perfect album. It still contained elements that harkened back to 1964 (such as "Here, There and Everywhere), and they did try to recreate a certain sound with "Eleanor Rigby's" string quartet (reminiscent of "Yesterday"). But the song's maturity certainly overcomes any attempt on their part to cash in on a particular sound.

Every song on "Revolver" (even the original British version) is fully realized and handled with care. Not one of those songs seemed to be written with the haste that would indicate a last-minute plug-in to fill space. And of course, "Tomorrow Never Knows" was certainly a portent of things to come with its experimental nature and otherworldly lyrics.

People always talk about how ground-breaking "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was, but to me, "Revolver" gave the best indication of where they were as a group ... what they had become, whereas Pepper, I think, was more of a snapshot of the era. Pepper is like the old, faded photograph of the family that was taken 40 years ago at the summer cottage. It might have been a marvelous time, but in a year or two it had all changed.

It all unraveled after Sgt. Pepper. It's one thing to be the heartthrob of teenagers everywhere. It's another thing to seen as either sages of the western world or Svengalis who are leading all the lemmings off the cliff. After "Pepper" there was very little middle ground.The underpinnings were starting to give, and the whole thing would collapse within two years.

And, like everything else they did, the Beatles took the extraordinary measure of chronicling their denouement. Rifts that had started to develop during the recording of the "White Album," really started to crack open by the time they got around to filming "Let it Be," and certainly some of that came across.

They rallied for one last time, with the brilliant "Abbey Road," whose two more enduring songs ("Something" and "Here Comes the Sun") were both written by Harrison.

And that segues into another reality that hit the Beatles. George Harrison -- of the four -- was the one most responsible for altering the chemistry (not, as people insist, Yoko Ono). He didn't want to spend the rest of his life being the little brother. And there was no reason why he should have, either. The emotional gap between, say, 20 and 23 closes considerably as we all approach our 30s. And it's quite likely the group could not handle three people with competing egos (thank the lord Ringo didn't have one to match or there's no telling how much earlier the group would have fallen apart), let alone two.

It's ironic that as the Beatles approached the peak of their creativity (1965-1967), the luster that accompanied them began to dim ... in their eyes if no one else's. They wouldn't be the first people, of course, to discover fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. But as the baby boom's most visible supernova, everything they did, and went through, had enormous repercussions. And that certainly took its toll.

In early 1966, John Lennon, in a long interview with a British journalist, said that he thought that Christianity would eventually shrink and perhaps vanish, and that in his mind, the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. He also said that while he had nothing against Jesus, he had all kind of problems with "apostles" who were "thick and ordinary ... it's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

Considering the legions of Jimmy Swaggarts,  Jim and Tammy Faye Bakkers and Westboro Baptist Churches we've had thrust upon us, Lennon's words were downright prescient.

It spoke volumes about the Beatles' influence on the culture that the reaction to this was so swift ... and so severe. Lennon was hounded into holding two news conferences during which he ostensibly apologized but actually didn't. The incident did two things, really. First, it showed how popular and influential the Beatles become (again, Lennon was on the mark), and second, it gave us an early glimpse of a man who, once freed from the constrictions of Beatlemania, would charge full bore into strident activism.

Other groups have split and reunited. Or they've reformed with different musicians. Bill Wyman is no longer with the Rolling Stones. They've had two guitarists (Mick Taylor and Ron Wood) since Brian Jones was replaced (and later died).

The Moody Blues have lost two of the members extremely instrumental in the recording of their remarkable string of albums (Mike Pinder and Ray Thomas) yet continue to tour with other musicians. Fans like me might miss Pinder and Thomas, but their absence hasn't stopped the Moodies from touring.

Jethro Tull has had such a traveling road show of support musicians that it's impossible to keep them all straight. But Tull still sells out venues all over the world.

Yes reformed without Steve Howe. Emerson, Lake and Palmer became Emerson, Lake and Powell for a time (both Howe and Carl Palmer were busy at the time with Asia).

The Beach Boys launched a 50th anniversary tour two years ago even though two of their founding members, Dennis and Carl Wilson, are dead. Nobody seemed to care.

Steve Winwood (a favorite of mine) was a sort of wandering minstrel in the sixties and seventies, going from Spencer Davis to Blind Faith to Traffic. Eric Clapton as well.

The Eagles survived first without Bernie Leadon (though Joe Walsh was all right!), then without Randy Meisner (they just plugged in Timothy J. Schmidt and said "let's go!"), and finally, without Don Felder (whom they didn't even bother to replace).

Nobody could honestly make similar claims about the Beatles. There's no way they could do what these other groups have done. A Beatles tour with anonymous musicians standing in for George and John? That would be unthinkable. Even one member's absence would be too keenly felt.

Neither John nor George wanted to do that when they were alive. McCartney once said it would be like reheating a souffle. And I agree. Their moment in rock history may have been brief, but what they lacked in longevity they more than made up in significance. They gave us so much, and more important, they allowed us in to watch it all. Even if it was simply my sister and me singing a Beatles song in our living room as kids (as we often did), the vibe they created was present. And you can't say that about everyone.

So while these knockoff groups like "Rain" try to recreate the Beatles mystique with period costumes and Beatle-like banter on the stage, all that stuff is really superfluous. And it doesn't add anything. You might be able to close your eyes for a second and, through the blur, see four guys up there who resemble the Fab Four at their zenith, it's obvious they're not the Beatles, and no amount of costuming is going to change that.

And it doesn't matter anyway. The music endures. It's enough. It fosters such a sense of community that it doesn't need gimmicks for people to want to hear it.

Still, and especially during this month when all the retrospectives were being shown and broadcasts, I have to admit there were a couple of times where I thought that, yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we could all be transported back to 1964, sitting in the comfort of our living rooms, huddled around a black and white TV set watching this curious phenomenon that was about to be unleashed upon the world. Because it was never better than it was then.

Mr. Tambourine Man

It was Bob Dylan's 72nd birthday last Friday and like everyone else, I dove into his archives to post a line or two from his vast repertoire on Facebook. I chose a song I'd always liked, "Mr. Tambourine Man," and quoted the last verse.

"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free/silhouetted by the sea/circled by the circus sands/with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves/let me forget about today until tomorrow."

The song presents some pretty vivid images ... but to me, that's always just what they were. Simply images. There seemed to be no connection to anything resembling a theme. It was free-form, word association, metaphor upon metaphor, and it was something he kept going back to, time and again, during that mid-1960s period when he was working on reinventing himself from a modern-day Woodie Guthrie to something the world had never seen.

What he started, for example, in "Mr. Tambourine Man" he perfected later with "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and other pieces that just seemed to be a loosely-connected jumble of lines that presented their own messages as they were sung. You couldn't dwell on them long, because if you did, you wouldn't hear the next line, or the one after that.

This is why no one knew what to make of him. Who, people wondered, thinks of this stuff? Don't follow leaders, Watch the parking meters? Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift? Maybe the one line everybody could understand was "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

It must be drugs, they supposed. And maybe it was. But we're coming up on fifty years since a lot of these songs happened, and I'm becoming less and less patient with people who dismiss the entire smorgasbord of 1960s music as  a 100 percent drug-induced purple haze.

That's not fair. People who didn't grow up then don't understand. These were baby-boom kids just careening into adulthood, better educated and more worldly than most of their previous generations. Their education sparked more creativity, and, yes, perhaps that creativity manifested itself in their choice of substances. It was all one package. And Dylan certainly was in the middle of it. 

I  had to find the right version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" to post, though. YouTube has a collection of Dylan singing strictly acoustic versions of the song live. And, well, sorry. Dylan wasn't always good live. In fact I went to see him once and almost walked out. He was three-quarters the way through "Like A Rolling Stone" before I even knew that's what he was singing. Finally I caught a "didn't yooooouuuuuuuu?' in there and said, "ah, 'Like a Rolling Stone'."

Ditto "Ballad of a Thin Man." There was lots of noise and a bunch of unintelligible lyrics that ended with "Misaaaaahhhhh Jones," before I knew what the hell he was singing.

I used to joke that it was easy to do Dylan. All you had to do was get a newspaper and read any story with that nasal, rhythmic wheeze we all know and love. Every so often, you elongated a word.

"Three members of a family were taken into custody toDAAAAAAAAAAAAY for having a MEEETH lab in their BAAAASEEEEEEment." I even tried it out on a couple of my cousins, who had to admit, I was right. It sounded like a Dylan song,

(Before we continue, back when "We Are The World" was recorded, and Dylan sang his bit at the end, a "how-it-was-made" video was shown on MTV, where Quincy Jones had to coax "the jester" to "Sing like Dylan ... you know." Whereupon he imitated how he wanted Dylan to sound, which ended up being similar to "Like a Rolling Stone.")

I found the right version. It is actually the version he recorded on "Bringing It All Back Home," which is just him, his ever-present harmonica, and a very subdued and beautifully counterpointed electric guitar. And I found it hypnotic.

Interpreting songs is so much easier today. All you do is go on Wiki and if the song's important enough, they'll tell you what it means. Apparently "Mr. Tambourine Man" was important enough, because every cock-eyed interpretation of this song is on there, from the obligatory "drug references" to something that rang a little truer to me: he was singing about his muse.

I think that's closer to what the song means. Except I don't think he's singing about his muse ... I think he's singing to it.

Dylan began to write "Mr. Tambourine Man" in early 1964 after being at the Mardi Gras. He was unable to sleep and, apparently, got up and wandered around Bourbon Street in the wee hours of the morning, when everything was being taken down and packed up. One can only imagine that at some point during the party, he saw someone banging on a tambourine.

I know this feeling! I know restlessness. And I know what it's like to be stuck on something you're writing to the point where it eats away at you in the middle of the night. It can really creep you out, yet at the same time it's an exhilarating feeling.

You've got your finger on something, but you don't know what. You're struck wide awake at 2 a.m. by a dream that spells it out for you clearly (well, at least I have) and you're afraid that if you don't get up right now and get it down on paper, you'll either forget it entirely or, at the very least, you won't be able to put it into words once you get the opportunity. In other words, you whiff.

It may be exhilarating, but it's also frustrating. I've been startled awake by more stories that seem wonderful as I'm emerging from REM sleep ... yet when I try to reconstruct them in the real world, as opposed to the surrealistic theater of the dream world, I can't.

I see "Mr. Tambourine Man" as kind of a reflection of that. It seems that he, too, was struck awake by something. Only what?

Without sounding too ponderous, here's what I think: Dylan was always a reluctant "spokesman" for  a generation. He sang what he felt, but I don't think he was ever comfortable being the "prophet" for the disaffected youth of the sixties. He's even said this. But the mid-sixties, he was pulling away from the traditional folk stuff and being pulled toward a much more mind-expanding method of expression ,.. and it was something that, Lord knows, was truly unique to him. Whether these were images or vibes he felt while he was stoned, or whether he just sat up all night thinking about them didn't matter. There were his ... they reflected how he felt,  and the images were intensely personal.

I think Bob Dylan, first, last and always, felt his songs belonged to him ... and not to the ages.

So, I pose the question: What if "Mr. Tambourine Man" was Dylan's way of trying to figure it all out? What if he was asking his "muse" which way to go? You don't need to be too deep to understand the basic premise: He was putting himself into the hands of his muse, and vowing to go where it took him. If it meant foregoing the folk scene forever, so be it. If it meant pissing off the folkies in Newport by playing an electric set, well, they were going to have to deal with it. He was going where the  muse took him.

So I heard lines like "take me on a ride upon your magic, swirling ship/my senses have been stripped/my hands can't feel to grip/my toes too numb to step ..." and saw it as a plaintive plea to his muse to lead him somewhere, anywhere, because he couldn't move anymore where he was. He needed a place where he could find music that gave voice to his ever-growing consciousness (whether unduly influenced by drugs or not!).

And this line just jumps out at you: "the ancient, empty street's too dead for dreamin'."

Now, he could have been talking about the fact he was wandering around New Orleans, unable to sleep, and seeing the remnants of the party that had been going strong just hours earlier. But in keeping with my metaphor,  he could also mean that he'd gotten all he could out of his folk muse. It had dried up. And he needed to find another one to rejuvenate himself. I don't know. I may be full it here, but I think one of the things that make brilliant people brilliant is that they're forever searching for new challenges. They're never satisfied ... forever restless ... they understand that to stagnate is like dying a slow death, artistically. Change is vital, even if the change isn't always understood, or accepted, by those around you.

If you need an example, there's Brian Wilson. He obviously got bored writing and singing surfer songs, and he should have been. He was a genius when it came to constructing music, and his surfer-boys songs, as much fun as they were to listen to and sing, were probably only taxing one-tenth of his abilities. Maybe even less.

And when he tried to break out of the the box, he met with intense resistance from the rest of the group, who didn't understand (and more to the point, didn't want to understand) his need to challenge himself. But he did ... first with "Pet Sounds" and afterward with "Good Vibrations." Neither was popular at first with the likes of Mike Love, who was quite content to wear the uniform and sing about cars and waves. "Pet Sounds" was an enigma to fans who only saw the Beach Boys as metaphors for summer fun in the sun. But Brian Wilson passed the test of time. Those are beloved pieces of music now. "Pet Sounds" is considered one of the best albums ever recorded ... far ahead of its time, perhaps, but -- today -- the seen as the forerunner to the type of "concept album" that was later perfected by the Beatles and "Sgt. Pepper." As for "Good Vibrations," is there anyone who doesn't like that song?

This, I believe, is what Bob Dylan unleashed with "Mr. Tambourine Man." He was lucky in one sense that Roger McGuinn and David Crosby liked it, and recorded a stripped-down version of it (one verse only) with The Byrds. It made the song accessible and familiar to a generation of fans who would have never heard it otherwise.

I see the song, today, as a validation of all people for whom restlessness is a way of life ... for all people who find that being stuck in ruts ... even if the ruts are making them fabulously successful and wealthy ... can just drag you down. No Dylan ... no "middle period" of the Beatles, where their songs started to be a lot more mature, and centered around adult experiences. No "Rubber Soul." No "Revolver." None of that music that, almost 50 years later, still stands as their best.

This is what Dylan was looking for. To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free. He wanted to sing his music, his way, wherever it took him, and to be able to experiment with it.

You see, I get it. I've been there. I'm forever feeling the creative constraints of a job I've been doing for more than 40 years. It's a nice job, and I've made a decent living doing it. But I also know that somewhere within me, there's more. There's better. It's terrifying. And it keeps me up at night all-too-often.

Let me forget about today until tomorrow. Can a brother get some sleep????

"I'm ready to go anywhere/I'm ready for to fade/into my own parade/cast your dancing spell my way/I promise to go under it."
 
 

Tuesday Afternoon on a Friday night

I never paid much attention to the Moody Blues in high school. Outside of the truncated single to "Tuesday Afternoon," which was part of the soundtrack of my Summer of 1968, I never really got into them. I liked the singles like "Question" and "The Story in Your Eyes," but otherwise, I didn't know a whole lot about them.

That changed in college in a rather curious way. I had a crush on a girl my freshman year, and after finally summoning up the nerve to ask her out, she rejected me. After that buildup, and that rejection, I was devastated. But life went on.

I had occasion to go to the Harvard Coop and while waiting in line to pay for a book, I heard the most exotic music coming over the bookstore's sound system. I was strange sounding, and it was hypnotic.

It was, as it turned out, the second side of "Days of Future Passed," the Moody Blues debut album (well, the debut album of the so-called "Core 7" albums that elevated them almost to cult status with their fans.

And after hearing that album in its entirety, I became one of those fans ... and part of that cult.

I remained a part of that cult for a long time until, somewhere around the early part of the last decade, I decided that they were starting to mail it in just a little too much. They'd tour every year, but the set list hardly ever changed. To me, they were going through the motions, and after having seen them at least once a year throughout the 80s and 90s, I'd decided I'd had enough.

I never stopped liking their music ... I just stopped paying money to see them.

I've always gone through phases with music, and through the last 10 or so years, I went through plenty of them. I rediscovered Brian Wilson in a big way, as well as Supertramp, Pink Floyd and even Fleetwood Mac.

All the while, I've been communicating since the 90s with a group of Moody Blues fans. And we've all bemoaned, at one time or another, the group's seeming lack of effort to give its fans anything beyond what it gave them last year ... or the year before that. Even the stage banter is the same.

I'm 58 years old, and I've had a feeling for a long time that my rock concert days are numbered. My ears ring from all the shows I've seen, and probably because of all the times I crank my music through my headphones while I exercise. The music I like best can be politely called "classic rock," and the last show I attended was a 2009 Brian Wilson concert where at least half the crowd was even older than I was.

But my son decided to give me two tickets to see the Moody Blues at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, and, well, I'll go anywhere for free. Oddly enough, the show was on Friday the 13th, and that's not exactly the greatest day for gambling (which is what Mohegan Sun is really all about). I blew through my gambling money in roughly the amount of time it takes to walk out of my house and into my car.

I'd never been to Mohegan Sun before. I've never been to Las Vegas, been to Atlantic City once, Paradise Island 35 years ago on our honeymoon, and on a cruise that had a casino. I had this vision of of being in some club-like atmosphere with the Moody Blues on same kind of stage that would accommodate Wayne Newton.

Not exactly. The venue is huge. It's a regular arena, not unlike the DCU Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. I guess I have to get out more!!

And I crossed another very important threshold at this concert. For the first time, I saw people -- my contemporaries -- patrolling the floor in Hover round scooters. That's a little disconcerting. Yeah, man, let's rock out in our scooters. It reminds me of a commercial I once saw where there was this group of scooter-riders square dancing. I kid you not. It was supposed to depict how you can live a "normal life" with the help of a scooter. I have to tell you, it was hysterical.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of the Moodies either. Graeme Edge, the only original 1964 Moody still with the band, is 71. Justin Hayward and John Lodge, the primary songwriters, are the only other Core 7 Moodies still performing, and they're both well into their 60s (though someone really needs to tell Lodge that leather pants on 60-somethings have the potential to be really hideous).

Ray Thomas, the flautist, has retired and though I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Norda Mullin, the new flautist, I'm one of those people who has to see for himself.

When I was young and full of angst and pretension, the Moody Blues answered all my questions. They actually reacted to this perception of them with their hit "I'm Just A Singer in a Rock 'n' Roll Band," but it's true. For me,and many others, their songs had an other-worldly quality about them that, if they didn't define life in black and white, certainly helped put restless emotion into some kind of perspective. I still think one of the most brilliant songs Hayward ever wrote is "The Actor," because that's exactly what I get out of it ... a man so pent up with restless emotions and feelings that he doesn't know what to do with himself.

But do the Moody Blues have the answers for middle age? For approaching senior citizen-hood (kind of makes the line in "Late Lament" that "senior citizens wish they were young" kind of ironic)? Perhaps. Once again, it was Hayward, writing "The Swallow," off the "Strange Times" album, wrestling with the notion of slowing down and simply enjoying the fruits of all he's accomplished.

"It's so strange/life in the really slow lane/take it easy/that's what we'll do/just me and you."

But can these "Kings of Classic Rock," well, rock? That was the question I asked myself all while driving down to Connecticut. Was I going to see a rock show? Or was I going to see a series of mid-tempos ballads as a concession to their advancing age?

The Moodies are like a lot of classic groups/acts. They have a coterie of lifers who follow them from venue to venue comparing notes on shows. I'm not one of these people. I've always been content to go to my shows and go home afterward. I'd be more inclined to hang around with John Irving than any rocker anyway.

So all I wanted out of the evening was a good show ... and some indication that these guys who go around the world almost annually aren't still practically stealing money.

Once good thing about being a supen fan: you know all the songs ... even the ones that never get any airplay. So when a group pulls out the chestnuts, you're actually happier than you'd be if it stuck to hits. And to me, this was the most pleasant part of the show. The Moodies performed one song -- "You and Me" -- that I don't think they've ever done, as a group, live (maybe Hayward did it during a solo tour, but I'm not even sure of that).

"You and Me" is off the "Seventh Sojourn" album that was the last of that "Core 7." He wrote it with Edge, and I don't want to say it has religious overtones, but one could take the line "the vision of our father, touched by his loving son" that way.

The reason I like it, and have always liked it, is that it reinforces their plea that fans not look to them as messiahs.

"You're an ocean full of faces/and you know that we believe/we're just a wave that drifts around you/singing all our hopes and dreams."

With all that deep philosophizing, the song rocks. It contains lengthy guitar solos in both the intro and the outro, and Hayward performed them both flawlessly. The Moody Blues always got, I think, more brickbats thrown at them than is necessary, and their reputation for pretension is probably why they're not in the rock 'n roll hall of fame. But Hayward's always been underrated as a guitarist. Maybe that's because he doesn't look tortured enough up there. Has has a casualness that belies his skills. But make no mistake, the man can play that thing!

Another wonderful chestnut was "Are You Sitting Comfortably," off "On The Threshold of a Dream," which may be -- out of the seven albums we've been discussing -- my least favorite. I always thought that album, along with "To Our Children's Children's Children," gave critics the "pretentious" ammunition.

But I like that song, because of the haunting flute that accompanies it. I never though Ray Thomas was a bad flautist, but compared to Norda, Ray's a beginner. Norda brought that song to life in a way I've never heard

Ditto "Isn't Life Strange," which is one of those songs that always sounds better live than it ever did on vinyl. No matter how clear the production is on record, there are some songs that just can't be captured the way they're intended, and that's one of them.

The Moodies always do a splendid job with it in concert, and it was even more splendid this time. The arrangement was just a little different, and Norda does things with the flute that enhance the song even more.

I wish, I wish, I wish they'd done "The Actor," because Norda could have made that special too. As it is, she got huge ovations from an extremely appreciative crowd.

I find with the Moody Blues that I had a tendency to drift off, and get lost in the sound, and the ambiance of their best songs, and miss the message of them completely. I don't care for "I Know You're Out There Somewhere," and tend to zone out whenever I hear it. But for some reason, I listened to the words this time. And they are plaintive. If you've ever been in a situation where you wonder whatever happened to an old lover, or even a girl/boy you once had a crush on, the song has some significance.

I've always thought the lyrics to "Isn't Life Strange" were somewhat ponderous, and for that reason, it was never a favorite of mine (though, as I said, I do like to hear it live). But usually, in any song, or any good piece of art, there are moments that kind of sum them up. Whatever the songs may mean to someone else, I zero in on parts that have relevance to me and that's what I take from them. Such as ... "to throw it away/to lose just one day/the quicksands of time/you know it makes me want to cry."

It may not have been what John Lodge thought he was writing, but as you get older, you realize how precious time is ... and how unresolved issues, and lingering anger, do nothing except waste precious time. For whatever reason, that's what I was thinking about when Lodge was singing that song.

Edge seems to be cut out of different cloth than Hayward and even Lodge. Edge has a bawdiness about him that kind of makes him a little less mystical (even if he's the guy who wrote all the hippy dippy poetry of the pretentious days). He stepped out from behind the drum kit to chew the scenery through a hellacious rendition of "Higher and Higher," the opener of TOCCC, and the one that introduced the album as a tribute to the 1969 moon landing.

And it kind of looked as if Edge has hit the gym lately. Even though Gordon Marshall has taken over the bulk of the difficult drumming, Edge did his share of it. He also looked very spry for a septuagenarian, jumping around the stage during "Higher and Higher."

He has a standard joke about his senior citizen hood, saying he recorded "Higher and Higher" when his teeth were white, his hair was brown, and the V sign meant "peace." Now, he says, his hair is white, his teeth are brown, and the V stands for viagra.

The Moodies always do "Tuesday Afternoon," and it's a song I never get tired of hearing. It's the first song I ever heard by the Core 7 group, and it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before. I still love it today. Maybe even moreso these days.

"Nights in White Satin" is one of those songs I have to stop and really listen to whenever I heard it, even if it's for the 1,000th time. Hearing it at Harvard University back in 1972, after having been rejected by the girl of my dreams, added to my melancholia big-time. And I suppose there's a part of me that just gets transported back to those days in 1972 whenever I hear it. It's another one of Justin's "restless songs," I think ... where he totally nails the emotional passion of falling in love. There's a reason it's become a classic. It's hard to believe he was 19 when he wrote it.

If I have a criticism, it's that they continue to play some songs as breakneck speeds, such as "The Story in Your Eyes," the fast part of "Question," and "Ride My Seesaw." I'd just like to see them slow those songs down so they can be savored.

But on the othr hand, the audience sings the slower part of that song in much the same manner McCartney fans sang "na na na na-na-na-na" when he performed "Hey Jude." It's reverential. And you really understand, when you hear the multitude of people singing, how much those songs really mean to people ... and I include myself in that.

Seeing that show tonight was like reuniting with an old friend who I'd, shamefully, lost touch with over the years. I came away wondering why I'd ever been so rigidly unwilling to make them a part of my life for the previous 12 years. What made them special to me in the 1970s is still what makes them special to me today ... they have that ability to speak to the soul, which is a difficult thing to do. Anyone can provide logic. It takes a special person to bore through all the masks and all the pretensions and connect with the soul.

They Moody Blues still do that better than any group I've ever listened to. There's no age limit to connecting with a person's soul ... which means that my most plaintive question was answered. Yes, the Moody Blues have something to offer to people like me, who have to add the words "at heart" next to the word "young."

Oh, Danny Boy ...

First, to all, a Happy St. Patrick's Day. Even if you're not Irish, you can't help but get swept up in at least some of the spirit of the day. On March 17, we're all Irish, just as we're all Jewish the minute we step into a theater to see "Fiddler on the Roof."

Being half Irish (on my mother's side), I sometimes resent the overt implication that St. Patrick's Day is an excuse for a) local politicians to get together to lambaste each other with a smile on their faces before they go off to carve each other up for real; and b) people everywhere to get rip-roaring drunk. I don't drink as a general rule, but even before I reached the point in my life where alcohol ceased to be a part of it, there were two days on which I made SURE I didn't drink: New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day.

The first is a night for amateurs. The second was more a reaction to what I consider to be blatant ethnic stereotyping ... the drunken Irishman. And what's worse is that I know a lot of Irish people who absolutely -- and with great glee and vigor -- help perpetuate that stereotype. Think of any other ethnic group consciously aiding and abetting such uncomplimentary stereotypes. It just doesn't happen.

I don't know what that means. Either we're perpetually good sports about it (which is, I think the case), or we're too drunk to know the difference (which I'm sure is not the case!).

I won't say that I didn't do my share of Irish pubbing back in The Day. I've been to a few. And even if I was never the type to get falling-down drunk when I went out, I always enjoyed the music. And to me, being Irish is more about the music than anything else.

And I certainly have my list of Irish favorites. So, in recognition of the day, here are some of my favorite Irish tunes.

Whistling Gypsy Rover, whose best version is by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Where a lot of Irish folk songs are built around "the troubles," this one's not. It's' just a nice little song about a guy who loves -- and wins the heart of -- a woman. It speaks more of the strong streak of sentimentality that runs through a lot of Irish music than it does the perpetual "troubles."

The Wild Colonial Boy, this version also by the Clancy Brothers with Tommy, although that's not the only one. This one just has an introduction by the redoubtable Ed Sullivan. Again, if there's anything that Irish do well (other than drink), they tell a good story. And this is a great story.

One other thing: love those heavy sweaters that Clancy Brothers used to wear all the time. Now, if you know anything about being on TV, you know that the lights on those sound stages emit heat that makes you feel like you're about 10 feet from the sun. So those Clancys must have lost a ton of weight that night.

It's not technically Irish, but if you've ever heard Roger Daltry sing Behind Blue eyes with the Chieftains, it qualifies. Actually, just put the entire catalog of the Chieftains here.

When she's not ripping up pictures of the pope, Sinead O'Connor can sing some wonderfully moving songs. The Foggy Dew, accompanied here by the Chieftains, is one of them. And this would seem to be a more traditional type of "troubles" song, also recorded in 1966 by the Clancy Brothers, about the uprising of 1916. I just really like this version.


Black Velvet Band. This is the Irish Rovers' version. Now, is one of the great pub singalong songs of them all. I doubt there's any Irish person alive who doesn't know the chorus, and even if you don't have a drop of Irish in you, it's refrain is easy enough to memorize.

There are a lot of versions of this, but this is my favorite. The Irish Rovers get a couple of songs on this list, but curiously enough, "The Unicorn" is not one of them. I don't know why. It's never been a favorite of mine.

And it's No, Nay, Never, no, nay, never, no more ... I've played the Wild Rover ... no, never, no more. This one by the Dubliners.

Again, a very cool sing-along song, best managed after you've, ahem, had few pints. If there's any reason to lubricate yourself at the pub, by the way, it's only so you can be brave enough to belt out some of these songs. Because the best part of going to hear an traditional Irish folk band is the camaraderie of singing them.

And don't forget to clap four times between the first and second "no, nay, nevers."

I don't know if this can be considered a traditional Irish song, because it was a hit with none other than Michael McGear, a/k/a Michael McCartney, a/k/a Sir Paul's Brother. But when you hear the Irish Rovers do Lily The Pink it might as well be an Irish song, right? I guess any song adopted by an Irish band, and sung with the proper brogue, automatically becomes part of the repertoire.

Here's an oddity for you. The Chieftains are great in their own right, but they sometimes do their best stuff collaborating with other artists. The Star of the County Down, which they did with Van Morrison, is is a rousing song, not unlike many others, that probably sounds best in a pub, in a party (or at least a social) environment. Just like scores of other Irish folk songs.

But what makes this unique is that the song (or at least the tune) has been co-opted by Mother Church. Because unless I'm mistaken, the last time I heard it (before I went and found it to download here) was at Sunday Mass.

You can't have a list of favorite Irish songs without having at least one of them by U2. I've provided a live version of Sunday Bloody Sunday here.

As Bono says in the introduction, it is not a rebel song. There are actually two instances of "Bloody Sundays" in Irish history. The first happened in 1920, when British soldiers fired into the crowd at a football (soccer) match in retaliation for the killing of some undercover agents. The second (and the incident this song refers to) occurred in 1972, when British paratroopers killed 13 Irish citizens at a civil rights protest in Derry, Northern Ireland.

I've saved this one until last. It is the only one of the 10 that would be considered traditional to my mother -- as opposed to traditional in a folk or rock sense. But of all the Irish songs, this one probably best portrays the poignancy and the tragedy of a lifetime of struggles and troubles on the part of the Irish.

It is, of course, Danny Boy, sung here by "three Irish Tenors." That's what it said on YouTube, anyway. I have no idea who the three Irish tenors are.

It is probably impossible to determine for sure how many Irish boys were named Daniel after this song. Thousands ... maybe even hundreds of thousands.

But it has a curious history. For starters, the words were written not by an Irishman, but an Englishman, Frederic Weatherly, and the tune we hear today was not the original tune. What we commonly know as "Danny Boy" today was adapted from "Londonderry Air" in 1913. And while it would certainly speak to a father's advice to his son on the eve of him going off to war -- presumably in the never-ending "troubles" -- when you consider this history, it has a much more universal meaning, doesn't it?

Perhaps, in a general sense, it is a father's mournful hymn to his son as he prepares to go off to any war, and, thus, the song has a timeless quality to it that makes it almost unique. All I know is that whenever it's sung, and by whomever it's sung, you can hear a pin drop ... even in the noisiest pub otherwise. That's how much respect the song commands, and that's how powerful its message is.

May the road rise to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

And may you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you're dead.

Davy Jones and the Prefab Four

There are a couple of things swirling around my head tonight. First, at the age of 58 (which is how old I am), you seem to be on an eternal death watch. Someone who helped define your youth seems to die every day.

And second, one of the best things about being a kid is that you think everything is real. You may find out different when you get older, and mature enough to absorb it, but unless someone punches a hole in your innocence when you're 11 or 12, you're spared the disillusionment of knowing what's really going on.

These two cultures clashed today when news came of the sudden death of Davy Jones, erstwhile singer/maracas player in The Monkees.

Here's the deal with the Monkees. It took two years from the time the Beatles and the rest of the Brits invaded America in 1964 for Hollywood to recreate them for a weekly sitcom. And by the time that happened, and the Monkees debuted, the actual Fabs themselves had gone well beyond being cute teen idols. John Lennon had already waxed philosophical about Jesus Christ and the apostles, and Revolver was in record stores and on turntables everywhere, with the weird sounds of "She Said, She Said," and "Tomorrow Never Knows" proving that these weren't your lovable moptops anymore.

So that's the first thing you have to know about the phenomenon that was The Monkees. They were, in 1966, what the Beatles had been two years prior. They also helped escort Gilligan's Island off the air, but that's another story for another day. I'd have preferred looking at Maryann over Davy Jones any day. But, alas, that wasn't my call.

The Monkees were sure a lot of fun. And when you've just turned 13, and you're about as unsophisticated and unknowledgable as you can be, all you see are four guys playing instruments and singing. You don't stop to ask yourself how, for example, there can be only one guitarist (Mike Nesmith) and such rich, layered sounds coming back at you from some of those impeccably produced songs. You think it's all on the level.

So it was, therefore, a shock to me when, over the summer of 1967, word got out that "the Monkees don't play their own instruments." It was like, "No. Of course they do. I see them on TV every week ..."

Now, it's 2012, and I've obviously done a lot of reading up on rock as it grew in the 1960s. And believe me, finding out the Monkees didn't play their own instruments pales in comparison to knowing, for example, that neither did the Beach Boys. With the exception of Carl Wilson (who did play some lead), the rest of the group didn't play a note on the recorded version of "Pet Sounds." All of that instrumental backing was done by a group of session musicians known as "The Wrecking Crew."

So let's get that elephant in the living room out of the equation now. The Monkees did not play their own instruments. The Monkees were, in fact, formed by Don Kirschner (among others) with an eye on acting ability first, and musicianship second. Two of the four were professional actors (Jones and Mickey Dolenz). The other two were musicians first (Nesmith and Peter Tork).

Peter Tork's best friend from his Laurel Canyon days was Stephen Stills, who'd auditioned for the gig, but whose less-than-perfect teeth disqualified him from consideration. Stills then went to Peter Tork and urged him to try out. Tork, obviously, got the gig.

There was nothing startlingly original about the shows. They were all pretty much based on the madcap exploits of the Beatles, as chronicled in both "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help." There was a plot that served more as a bridge connecting the songs that were featured than anything else.

It didn't go over well with the serious rock press, which, in 1966, was beginning to emerge (we're talking about something beyond "16 Magazine" and "Tiger Beat" here), and the Monkees were coined "The Prefab Four."

If there's something the producers and managers of the Monkees did right, however, it was connect them with some of the era's best songwriters. Neil Sedaka, Carole King and Neil Diamond penned some of their best songs (Diamond wrote maybe their most enduring hit, "I'm a Believer," while King, along with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, wrote "Pleasant Valley Sunday."

However, their most frequent collaborators were Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote countless feel-good songs that helped put the group squarely in the middle of the ever-changing rock 'n' roll picture of the mid-1960s. Among them were "Last Train to Clarksville," "Stepping Stone" and the theme song, "Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees."

Despite my serious disillusionment over how "fake" they were, I have to say that the Monkees were an incredible amount of fun. They did, for a couple of years at least, harken back to the days when the Beatles were the lovable moptops as opposed to emerging "spokesmen for a generation." I've always believed that by the second half of 1966, pop music, which prior to that had seemed to be heading in the same direction, became fragmented to the point where there was no identifiable person, or group, that specialized in playing the type of accessible music that just made you feel good.

This isn't to say there wasn't great music produced at that time. I mean, come on. Some of the best music of the entire rock era was produced in 1966, including both Rubber Soul and Revolver; Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations," "Paint it Black," and so many others. But you had to be a little bit sophisticated to appreciate it, whereas 11-year-olds whose suns had risen and set on "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," didn't have that anymore.

The Monkees, regardless of their origins and authenticity, provided that. And for that alone, they have a place in the Pantheon of music history.

But curiously enough, a funny thing began to happen to them, too. They decided they didn't particularly like being the "Prefab Four." Peter Tork was a serious musician, and he wasn't at all thrilled at being perceived as a phony. Neither was Mike Nesmith, who -- out of all of them -- was probably the most unhappy about the situation.

They, too, began to change. They went through a period where their songs started to sound more like social commentaries and less like the innocent pop songs they'd started out recording. If you want to know what I'm talking about, listen to "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones," which -- regardless of who recorded it -- is one damn fine album. A lot of those songs showed a maturity that belied their reputation as the "Prefab Four."

Davy Jones was picked for the show because he was British (not very hard to figure out) and because he had an extensive resume as a stage performer (he was The Artful Dodger in a London production of "Oliver."). He knew his way around the stage, and those talents came in handy for the weekly filming of the Monkees.

He won his role as the bonafide teen idol of the group rather by default. There was very little warm and fuzzy about either Nesmith or Tork (at least it didn't project that way from the TV screen) and Dolenz was too much of a gawky clown to be anyone's love interest, de facto or otherwise.

That left Davy Jones. And being the actor he was, he played the part very well. So, the producers would put Davy in the role of being almost the damsel in distress a lot of the time (well, as much of a damsel as anyone who's not a woman can be). He also got to sing all the slow ballads (I remember the show where he sang "I Wanna Be Free").

If you were at all cynical (and were the sixties not a very cynical era), it came across, I suppose, as cloying. You could almost hear the gears from the machinery that set all this in motion as they clanged and rattled. That's how cloying it could be.

What saved them, of course, is that it was all fun. And despite the many ways, and times, they could have taken themselves seriously, they really didn't. They, themselves, were under no illusion that they were anything but what they were. They rode the wave for as long as they could, and when one of the other of them got tired of it, they stopped (both Tork and Nesmith left the band for spells while the show was still in production).

In recent years, they became just one more nostalgia act .. .either with Jones and Dolenz, or -- once in a while -- with Tork. Nesmith, except for brief forays, did not take part.

They have a place. Whether they were fake, whether every session musician in the canyon played on those records, whether they were thrown together as part of a TV show and were not a real band, they connected. For a couple of years, they made life fun. And after all, isn't what entertainment's about? To make life fun?

Somewhere in this great land, Marcia Brady is in mourning. So are a lot of other middle-aged women and grandmothers ... and even a few crusty, cynical curmudgeons who can't let go of the fact that so much about the Monkees wasn't what it seemed.

Whenever anyone who played such a vital role in making your youth memorable dies, whether it's suddenly or after an illness, it is cause for great reflection. And when it happens, we don't differentiate between the great (the likes of John Lennon, George Harrison and Roy Orbison) and the ordinary (which is where I'd put Davy Jones and the Monkees).

But it doesn't matter either. Regardless of how great, or not great, they might have been, they made a contribution and need to be properly remembered and appreciated for it.

It's certainly a poorer world without Davy Jones. It seems as if the death of any baby boomer icon forces that generation closer to coming to terms with realities that it's spent much of its time trying to avoid ... that we all get older, we all suffer the indignities of aging whether we even want to admit that we've aged, and someday, we're all going to die.

Wednesday it was Davy Jones' turn. May he rest in peace.

Wherever you are, George, happy birthday!

A friend wrote the following on Facebook recently: "It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."

That passage has a great deal of meaning to me for a variety of reasons. It is, of course, important in any group endeavor that people understand that they often belong to something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

It's also true in relationships. If the dynamics of a relationship change too radically -- one way or the other -- it can often require a lot of work to absorb those changes without causing, as Obi Wan Kanobi might say, major disturbances in The Force.

So what does any of this have to do with music? I'll tell you. Today, George Harrison, had cancer not claimed him, would have been 69 years old. George was always the most intriguing of the four Beatles to me. He wasn't the face (that was Paul), or the brains (John), or the spirit (Ringo) maybe, but he was -- I think -- the soul of the group. And more important (to me, at least), he, of the four, was the most visible barometer of the band's journey through its different phases, and the ultimate changes in the group dynamics that led to its dissolution.

I saw that passage on Facebook and I didn't immediately think of George Harrison. I thought of the many friendships I've been in, and how easily things have changed in them when the dynamic got thrown off kilter by even the smallest of wrinkles. And it made me realize that in the end, whether we want to be or not, we are often what people perceive us to be. And when that perception changes, so, often, do the dynamic of the relationship.

Some friendships survive these changes ... others don't. And it's often up to the people involved to determine whether these friendships are important enough to evolve, or whether they're merely transitory events (sort like the reason/season/lifetime gauge).

There's a lot of different ways to go on dissecting "The Quiet Beatle." But what comes to mind today is how he grew both as a person and a songwriter, during the comparatively brief period the Beatles were together, and how that growth mirrored the changes that brought about the end of the group.

To understand this, you must know about the group's early days, where George was basically John Lennon and Paul McCartney's de facto little brother. That was his role. He was the tag-along, invited by Paul to audition for John. Legend has it he played one of the popular guitar instrumentals of the day (Raunchy) and that Lennon, suitably impressed, let him in.

He was in, but he was by no means an equal partner. He was sort of like the junior executive who got locked out of all the important meetings. And there was, at the time, nothing all that remarkable about him, other than that he could play guitar. Most people in the late fifties and early sixties just remember him as this nice, quiet kid whose parents tolerated rock 'n' roll, and who let John, Paul and whomever else practice at their house.

But that was the dynamic. Even after George started writing his own songs (he said he wrote "Don't Bother Me" because he was convinced that if John could write one, he could too) he was never to be confused with the real creative element of the band.

But something changed all that. And it began with George.

The point here is to keep with the first paragraph. Nobody (least of all me) is suggesting that George's forays into eastern mysticism or his increased yearning to be seen as an equal, as opposed to an adjunct, are necessarily bad. In the beginning, these yearnings gave the Beatles another dimension and truly set them apart from whatever else was happening at the time.

But, as the saying goes, the song remains the same. As the sixties progressed, it became impossible -- for this fan, anyway -- to view George Harrison as the guy in the middle. He quickly emerged as an individual, and perhaps that's because he was so far behind the other three in that regard through the early years.

Don't forget. When the Beatles came to America and performed on Ed Sullivan for the first time, George Harrison was two weeks short of his 21st birthday. Lennon was 23 and McCartney was 21. They had all this power, and all this fame, and they were kids.

Regardless of what or who they were behind closed doors, the Beatles quickly established public images that put Harrison squarely in the background. If you've ever watched a football game, you'll notice the backup quarterback stands on the sidelines in a baseball cap. That was George Harrison -- at least in the beginning.

He'd get a brief guitar solo in the middle of a song, he got to sing one per album, and if he was really good, Lennon and McCartney would let him record one of his own.

The problem was that as Harrison progressed through his 20s, and the Beatles careened through the sixties, George grew up. In the dynamic of the group, that probably wasn't supposed to happen. There wasn't enough room for three equals. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing Ringo was such an easy-going, simple, uncomplicated person or maybe the Beatles might have crashed and burned even sooner.

So there was George, as early as, perhaps, 1966 (Listen to "Think For Yourself" off Rubber Soul ... it's a fairly significant song), already growing beyond the parameters of the very narrow dynamic. He found the sitar, and Indian music, while the group filmed "Help" in 1965. You can see that from almost the very beginning, George was the Beatle least satisfied with the status quo.

And really, who would be satisfied at being cast as the tag-along all his life?

Nobody's suggesting that George Harrison single-handedly broke up the Beatles. Yoko Ono is generally given credit for that. And why? Because she also altered a very basic dynamic that held the group -- as tenuous as that hold was by 1968 -- together.

In fact, Yoko's alleged role in bringing the group down is so ingrained in our consciousness by now that whenever a strong female figure enters a famous man's life, she's referred to as a "Yoko Ono."

Mia Hamm, when she married Nomar Garciaparra of the Red Sox, was referred to by my sister as "Yoko Hamm." And these days, Giselle Bundchen gets the nod for the way she supposedly has neutered Tom Brady (though I don't see this one personally; Brady's doing just fine as far as I can see).

But the seeds that broke up the Beatles were planted well before John Lennon met Yoko Ono. She may have helped move the process along, but it was well under way.

As he got more prolific with his songwriting, George chafed being held back by the other two. If you watched the two-part HBO documentary on him, you'll know that he asked Eric Clapton to play on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" because he was upset that the other Beatles were treating the song too cavalierly.

George Harrison didn't break up the Beatles. But he began the long process of altering the experiment, as it were, and he did that simply by suggesting that he be treated as an equal within the group. Not a lot to ask.

It's been 10 years since he died. And while Paul McCartney has been knighted, and John Lennon has been practically canonized for being the spokesman of a generation (and I don't say that critically) I believe George Harrison emerged from the Beatles with a truer sense of himself than any of the other three. His wasn't a stress-free life by any means, and he could be, at times, quite the contrarian. But it seems, from hearing and reading about his post-Beatles days, that he stayed connected with his world, and the world around him, better than the others did.

Perhaps George said it best in the best song I think he's ever written, "All Things Must Pass."

"All things must pass/None of life's strings can last/So, I must be on my way/And face another day."

I always thought that at least part of that song was about the Beatles, and how they were wonderful for as long as they lasted ... but that they were also never meant to last forever.

And as an aside, that song was rejected by the group for the "Get Back" sessions that later became the "Let It Be" soundtrack album.

Now, some fans might object to this thesis, and it is -- of course -- their right to do that. But I think George Harrison was right. The Beatles came along at precisely the right time in U.S. history -- three months after the Kennedy assassination, when the country desperately needed something to smile about.

"Daylight is good at arriving at the right time/Its not always going to be this grey."

But they weren't the Rolling Stones nor were they U2. They were a supernova, with a unique and very, very fragile dynamic that was bound to change once the four members grew out of post-adolescence and started becoming men. It's just that the first one of the four to really do that was George Harrison, and, in so doing, made it possible for the rest of them -- particularly John Lennon -- to follow suit.

And that's why I think he was the soul of the group. He may have started the journey as the tag-along. But in many ways, he ended up being the leader in their emergence as mature men.

As I said, he was always the most intriguing of the four.

"It is important to understand that we are all playing in one place ... where each role is very important. And if you change a single role, the entire performance will need to be changed."

George was the first one to change his role. For a long time afterward, the Beatles continually tried to change the performance until, finally, the performance was permanently canceled.

As a fan, I miss what he could have contributed to this world had cancer not claimed him 10 years ago.

So, wherever you are, George, happy birthday.

Amy ... Whitney ... sadly the list goes on

I was a senior in high school, meeting a bunch of my friends on September 18, 1970, to go into Boston to attend a Credence Clearwater Revival concert. When we all met, one of my friends turned to me and said, "you see what Hendrix did?"

I had not seen what Hendrix did. But what Jimi Hendrix had done was taken an overdose of sleeping pills and -- in the grand tradition of the movie "This is Spinal Tap" choked on his own regurgitation.

For a 17-year-old high school kid about to embark on one of life's great adventures -- a night in Boston without any kind of adult supervision, to see the hottest group in the USA at the time -- Jimi Hendrix's death was a glancing blow. He certainly wasn't the first rock star in my memory to die under somewhat nefarious circumstances. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones had him beaten by a year ... July 3, 1969, when he drowned in his swimming pool at the age of 27. Abuse of drugs and alcohol had enlarged both his heart and is liver.

But it was stunning nonetheless. Here was a guy on top of his world. He was one of the great guitarists and showmen of the rock era, and his rendition of the National Anthem at Woodstock -- something that I had just seen for the first time just months before when the movie came out -- was already the stuff of legends.

To see him struck down, and in such an undignified way to boot, made a profound impression on me. I may have, from time to time, done a little weed in my younger days, but visceral mental images of the likes of Hendrix, Jones, and two other iconic rockers -- Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison -- who also died within that same year's period of time were enough to scare me away from any serious, or chronic, drug or alcohol use.

Ironically all four of the aforementioned rockers died at the age of 27, which -- obviously became kind of a dangerous age for those who indulged in the three vices of our era (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll).

Sadly, these were not the last four rockers to die from drugs, either directly or indirectly. The list is staggering. And beyond the simple tragedy of anyone that young dying due to his or her addictions, the loss to humanity of what these tremendous artists had to offer is equally tragic.

Whitney Houston is the latest. Last year, it was Amy Winehouse. I cannot say I was the biggest fan of either, though it was obvious both had tremendous talent, and the love their fans had for them was genuine. And besides, it hardly matters, at times like this, whether you like Whitney Houston or not. What matters is that she was only 48, and despite her enormous talent and fame, lived a tortured life because of her addictions.

I remember the 2002 Super Bowl, when U2 sang "MLK" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" with a scroll of all the 9/11 victims in the background. Very moving ... very meaningful.

I feel like doing that tonight. You could probably fill five blogs with the names of musicians who have died from drugs, again either directly or indirectly.

I'm of that generation that thought it was cool the way groups like the Beatles related their experiences with LSD through their songs. I loved songs like "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said, She Said," that -- as I came to find out -- were directly related to acid trips that John Lennon took in the mid 1960s.

And I was certainly one of many of my era who thought "thank God for LSD." It didn't mean I had to take it, but it was certainly responsible for some great music.

But was it? Did the condition of the artists when these songs were germinating help or get in the way? That's the age-old argument, and I've had it with many people over the last 30 or so years.

But when you think of someone as beautiful, and as beautifully talented, as Whitney Houston, lying dead at the age of 48, you can't help but think that even if drugs don't end up being the official cause of death, you're inclined to do the math. And you're inclined to say to yourself, "there's your answer." If drugs keep robbing us of our musical and cultural icons, whether they're Billie Holliday, Judy Garland, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Cobain, John Belushi, Dennis Wilson, Keith Moon or John Entwistle, then how can anyone claim that the drugs these people took did anything other than rob them of live ... and us of their talent?

I no longer think what I thought back in the late 1960s.

But if anyone needs a reminder of just how destructive substance abuse, or addictions, can be, here's a list of some of my more noteworthy chemical casualties. These were people who meant something to me, for various reasons. They're not all musicians but that's OK for today. They're all connected.

And by all means, feel free to click onto the link I've provided for "Where The Streets Have No Name" and listen while you're reading.

Jack Kerouac was a beat-generation author whose book "On the Road" was required reading for millions of people who came of age at the same time I did. In fact, I had to read the book my senior year in high school, right around the same time both Hendrix and Janis died. He died in 1969 of cirrhosis of the liver due to a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Judy Garland. She was Dorothy ... the very definition of wide-eyed, heartland America innocence. If there's a more iconic children's movie lead in the history of motion pictures, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you who. But because of the grueling schedule that went with the filming of the "Wizard of Oz," she was given artificial stimulants to keep her awake; and artificial depressants to bring her down. She was 49 when she died, never having completely freed herself of her addictions.

Elvis Presley. Look up his cause of death sometime. He could have started his own pharmaceutical company with what was in his body when he died.

Sid Vicious. Put me down as a fan of the early punk stuff, because if it did nothing else, it gave disco a swift kick out the door, and injected some life into a genre that was close to collapsing under the weight of its own excesses. And the Sex Pistols were certainly huge contributors. Heroin, among other things did him in.

Len Bias. Oh, to be a Celtics fan in 1986. The C's had just won the NBA championship, and Red Auerbach had just bamboozled some poor team into trading him a draft pick that turned out to be Len Bias, the fabulously gifted forward from the University of Maryland. Bias was the guy who was going to be the link between Larry Bird and the next generation. Only the day after Bias was drafted, he died of a cocaine overdose.

Mike Bloomfield. This guy was a tremendous blues guitarist who died in 1981 of some unspecified drug overdose.

John Bonham. Led Zeppelin, according to book I read a while ago about Laurel Canyon, was the No. 1 party band to pass through the LA rock scene. Apparently, no woman was safe when Led Zep came to town. The boys -- all four of them -- had gargantuan appetites for sex and drugs and booze and whatever else came their way, and their off-stage exploits were just about as legendary as "Stairway to Heaven" and "Dazed and Confused." One night, though, Bonham became very dazed and confused, consuming 40 shots of vodka, and then doing the "Spinal Tap" in his sleep. He did not come down for breakfast the next morning.

Paul Butterfield. As in "Paul Butterfield Blues Band." As in "died of drug-related heart failure."

Jeanine Deckers. I know. You're saying who? Well, she was the Singing Nun, who came out with that song "Dominique" in the 1960s. She was only 52 she she killed herself via barbiturates and alcohol.

Brian Epstein. None of the fun we had in the 1960s would have ever happened had Epstein, who was gay and who worked in a record store, not fallen for John Lennon after seeing the Beatles perform in their head-to-toe leather outfits one day. He worked day and night on behalf of the Beatles after that, and he was responsible for a good deal of the early success that just snowballed and became Beatlemania. But his was a sad life, too, and it took its toll. He died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.

Chris Farley and John Belushi. What's more to say? Belushi may have been one of the most talented comedians/actors of our generation ... and Farley wasn't too far behind. They both had a penchant of creating characters that connected strongly with us. Belushi's Samurai Warrior ... Brilliant. Farley's Matt Foley, or his nervous talk show host who interviewed Paul McCartney? Inspired. Drugs claimed both their lives.

Lowell George. I count "Dixie Chicken" as one of the great sing-along songs whenever it comes on the radio. I don't care who's watching. I'll just blast it to the top of my lungs. And Little Feat ... great band. One night, George collapsed in his hotel room and died. They called it an unspecified drug overdose.

Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. God, how could you not love The Band? I'll tell you how much I love The Band. The day of my father's funeral, after we got back from the restaurant where the post-service meal was held, I found "The Last Waltz" on TV and watched it from beginning to end. That's how much love The Band. Manuel and Danko were such integral parts of that group. In fact, in between long stints of the group's inactivity, Danko and Manuel used to tour together. Manuel fought with alcohol and drugs all his life, but relapsed once too often and committed suicide. Danko died of drug-related heart failure, just like John Entwistle and so many others.

As I said before, I could go on and on. The list is endless. The carnage is staggering. And even if Whitney Houston's not really my No. 1 cup of tea, she has now joined this damned list of drug casualties, just as Amy Winehouse did a year earlier.

And I'm reminded of another line, from another song, sung so many years ago: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn."