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.