A Beatlemania moment

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks Jung! We’re definitely enjoying the summer here, in fact a few days ago was the hottest day ever recorded in UK history. We’re roasting here … but loving it 😉 Reminds us of the scorching hot summers back home in Austria. Which actually kind of leads into the answer to your question …
Well, first, thanks for sharing the school bus story. That sounds like the cheerful, “everything-is-right-with-the-world” sort of childhood memory that would stay with you forever.

We have many like this regarding Beatles. We must have been in 7 or 8th grade (around 13 – 14) when for a time in our lives The Beatles took over everything 🙂 And I mean everything. I don’t think we talked about anything else or listened to any other music for a good solid few months if not a year (thank god they have so many songs :-)). I’ll never forget this one day, when I walked home from school, listening to (of course) the Beatles on my MP3 player. I think I’ve written about this day before in one of the blog posts and it seems like a pretty insignificant setting but for me it sums up the effect the Beatles had on us. I got off the bus, the sun was shining and it was playing “Getting Better”.

And for a moment I didn’t care about anything else in the world. School, friends, heart-ache, worries, … All I could think of was how in the world music can be this beautiful. And I cried and I cried because I was so happy that something like this exists. And it wasn’t the lyrics in particular that evoked those emotions, it was about everything those 4 boys created, the beauty and spirit and this feeling of friendship and unity you felt through their music. I was the closest to real-life magic I ever felt … forget Harry Potter or flying carpets, the Beatles were witchcraft, that’s how good they are 😛

Like I said, walking home from school, getting emotional over a rather cheerful Beatles song doesn’t sound that significant but it’ll stay with me as one of my most precious memories of my teenage years. It showed me what music can do, how it can transform and move you in ways few things can.

Stay beatley 🙂

[Jung Roe]

Thanks so much Lisa for sharing your memorable Beatles/music moment. Loved reading what you wrote.

It is also so fitting and wonderful, that song “Getting Better” that moved you so much, years later you would do such a wonderful acoustic version of it with Mona that would move all of us here at the Club, and later to the rest of the world. Music is such a wonderful thing that enriches lives and can move your soul so deeply. Some of Beethoven and Mozart’s music, and the first time I heard your San Francisco, The Wide Wide Land, The Little Drummer Boy and many others are a few examples where I felt music move me so deeply because of its sheer beauty. You know they talk about examples where people experience moments of pure joy because of the beauty of a piece of Art, well you experienced that through Beatles music, and many of us here like myself experienced it through your music. I guess inspiration is contagious.

Stay cool in that summer heat.  Best of wishes to you and Mona, and your parents.

Stay groovy and Beatley back at you!  🙂

[Jacki Hopper]

Good Q Jung and love Lisa’s reply….

I’d like to share a Beatlemania Memory… Thanks in part to my 2nd oldest brother and his funky cool Grade 5 teacher who was a huge Beatles fan….. Thanks to her, I belueve that’s how my 2nd oldest bro got into Beatles in which turn I did, but then again, Mom was a Beatles fan…. Lol

OK, back to the memory… One night during the school year, This Grade 5 teacher with her love for The Beatles decided to have her class do a Beatles Appreciation concert. I think all the Grade 5s/6s at the school had to do a concert or something, I don’t recall my Grade 2 class doing anything… So

that night they did a whole slew of Beatles stuff… Oba Di Obla Da stands out clearly in my mind… I enjoyed it as much as Mom did, don’t think Dad or my oldest brother came, I don’t recall for sure but I vividly remember that concert and loving it… Now as a bonus… Fast fwd 35-40 yrs later at a special school closure event that I found out about through a former school him who happened to be the bank teller I was dealing with doing my banking and she recognized me and told me… I went and low and behold… That now retired Beatles loving teacher was there…. Lol so I went up to her and told her my 2nd oldest brother  was in her class and I recall the Beatles concert she had the class do… She laughed and sort of remembered… She was more impressed of the fact I remembered….

[Jung Roe]

Thanks for sharing your Beatlemania moment Jacki.  I bet that teacher must have been quite touched to be remembered by you like that so many years later.  I stopped believing in coincidences.

[Howard]

Yes, good question Jung, and great replies from Lisa and Jacki. My earliest Beatles memory is from 1963 when I was sitting on some steps at school (grade 6, age 11), trying to sing along with a couple of mates our version of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ – “She was just seventeen, you know what I mean, and by the way she looked, she was way beyond repair, And how could I dance with her mother…. when I saw her fall, through the floor” LOL! Paul wrote this song in 1962 when his girlfriend of the time, Celia Mortimer, was 17.

Probably my biggest Beatles’ moment was in 1967 when I purchased my first album ever, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. I still remember all those occasions lying on the lounge room floor playing it over and over while reading the lyrics on the back of the album. I also remember insisting that any visitors also listen to the album with me! Anyone who didn’t appreciate it wasn’t worth knowing.

My older brothers were Rolling Stones fans and of course, I became one too. We had all the Rolling Stones albums in the sixties, but not all the Beatles albums. It wasn’t until around 1973 that things changed for me. I remember being taken by a friend to the house of a Beatles fan who at the time lived at his parents’ home. In the basement, he had the best stereo hi-fi system I had ever seen, with the biggest, most powerful speakers. He also had the recently released Beatles’ ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ albums and we played both double albums that night. Well, I was blown away with the quality of the sound as well as the music and lyrics as the songs blasted in beautiful stereo out of those speakers. I was hooked!

Now, Lisa, I do remember the story you and Mona tell of that occasion when you were just 14, touring Austria in a bus and sitting up the back listening to the Beatles’ soundtrack on an mp3 player and demanding that your uncle listens to “I’ll Follow The Sun”.

Thank you for sharing your “Getting Better” moment with us. It is very touching to hear how others can be moved by music in the same way we can. I remember first hearing the Hollies “Bus Stop” on the radio as a young teenager and also Herman’s Hermits’ “There’s a Kind of Hush”, a song I would love to see the MonaLisa Twins cover. But I guess you would be working hard on your much anticipated third originals album.

I am a real fan of your version of Sandi Thom’s “I wish I was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)” from your 2007 live concert. It is sung with such passion and sincerity, I truly believe you!

“Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In seventy seven and sixty nine, revolution was in the air
I was born too late, into a world that doesn’t care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair”.

Thanks again for sharing your Beatles experiences, Lisa, Jung, and Jacki.

 

[Rudolf Wagner]

Love all your stories!!! Thanks for sharing 🙂

[Jung Roe]

Hi Howard.  Thanks for sharing your Beatles moments!  I have to say you didn’t waste anytime with your very first album ever, going straight to the top creme of the crop album “Sargent Peppers”.  🙂  That is an album one can never tire of over listening to, it is so great.  The Beatles Red and Blue albums I am sure introduced so many to the magic of the Beatles music I think.  I remember those two albums in my older brothers collection early on, and then that  Biology trip when I felt the full force of the Beatles magic.  It seemed the 70’s is when hi-fi stereo technology for the household really took off.  I remember my dad’s first real good hi fi system with massive speakers that could make the whole house shake.  When my parents left the house, that hi fi system was utilized by the 5 household sibling to it’s fullest.  What musical joy.

[Jung Roe]

Your story Lisa lately reminded me of a story my mom told me a while ago.  When she was in her teens her father died of an illness and the Korean war broke out.  Life became suddenly bleak as my mom’s world came down around her.  During those times she use to listen to Beethoven, and his 5th Symphony in particular.  She use to listen to it when things were overwhelming and it made her feel better and gave her strength.  There was always Beethoven music in the household ever since I could remember.   Music can be a great consoler during the darkness and give strength and courage.  It’s a powerful and wonderful thing!

[Matt Hay]

I’m about a year late, but the link in Jung’s reply to David led me here.

Thinking of Beatlemania – or maybe just intense Beatles memories in this case – my mind was instantly cast back to the late 1980’s. I was in my Bohemian early 20’s, where most nights I ended up sleeping on someone else’s floor in numerous shared houses in Inner West Sydney. I was much closer to my sister then, and used to hang out with her friends. She had an Indonesian bf for a couple of years, and when his friends came over, there were times when the air quickly thickened to fog with the smoke from numerous clove and ‘herbal’ cigarettes.

Most were Javanese, and spoke in slang so impenetrable even most other Indonesians can’t understand it. When someone brought out a guitar, the Rolling Stones were the most popular requests. But there was this one guy called Donny with the most battered 12 string imaginable, and he played mostly Beatles. He was also a pretty good busker. His version of ‘Oh Yoko’ is the one I still hear in my head 30 years later. One time, Donny, my sister Liz, and I practiced the best part of a week to play at an pub’s open mic down the road. We were going to perform ‘Mr Moonlight’ and maybe ‘Brown Skinned Girl’ by Harry Belafonte. Anyway, drink and/or drugs got in the way, so that never happened.

Another friend of Liz’s called Ara, was from Sumatra. He was the sweetest guy, but was ostracized by most of the cool Javanese as a provincial. Anyway, he ended up being my sister’s flatmate for awhile after her bf left her. Ara’s accent was very strong, but his versions of ‘This Boy’, ‘In My Life’, ‘Baby’s in Black’ and Rod Stewart’s ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ stay with me to this day.

These memories are bittersweet – maybe more accurately, some are sad, some wistful, some still bring a smile to my face as I recall them. After Ara’s visa expired, I never saw him again.

Donny died about a year later from a heroin overdose. A few years later, I pawned his guitar for $20 and couldn’t reclaim it (my sister was understandably mad at me for years over that).

I started recovery from addiction in my late 20’s and have been sober and clean for 25 years.

Sober, and in my mid 30’s, I did get to perform on stage once. A flatmate lent me his strat and amp for a short-lived talent night at this cool innercity club called Kinselas. I played a 20 minute set including ‘Don’t Think Twice’ and didn’t embarrass myself – despite an on-the-spot 5 second soundcheck and a 2000W searchlight aimed directly at my eyes.

Well, this turned out pretty personal, so hopefully no-one will read this. If you have though, thanks – that was quite cathartic for me.

[Jacki Hopper]

Hi Matt, wow, what a Beatlemania memory…glad you’re  clean and sober, keep on…. I applaud you for sharing, not easy to having divulged  as you did but at same time can see how you found it to be cathartic/theraputic/freeing-liberating…. Thankyou for sharing with us.☮

[Jung Roe]

Hi Matt, thanks so much for sharing your story.  Sometimes the personal stuff is easier to share with strangers, well all are very good people here with the common bond of love and passion for MLT and their music.  I’ve done my share at the Club too.  It looks like music was always a part of your life through the ups and downs and serves as a link back to some of those fond and bittersweet memories.  Music’s been that way for me too.  And that’s great you got to perform on stage that one time.  The one time I prepared, memorized a piece and performed at a small piano competition to an audience in my 30s is one of my fondest memories that will stay with me for life.

[Matt Hay]

Thanks Jacki 🙂 Thanks Jung 🙂 Your lovely replies are much appreciated.

Yes Jung, it’s great to tick off ‘public performance’ from the bucket list. What did you play?

[Howard]

Thanks for sharing those stories of your uounger days Matt. I must say they aren’t too far removed from some of the stories I could tell about my twenties in particular. I haven’t been quite ready to go there, apart from one post where I related the story of the day in the early seventies when myself, a couple of brothers and a couple of girl friends were listening to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon”, stoned, while lying on the living room floor, with the stereo turned up exceptionally loud. We got a shock when two police officers appeared at the open door. Well, that story is a topic of it’s own somewhere in the Forum.

I also had some similar experiences to you and your Indonesian friends when I met, through a work colleague from Switzerland, a Korean American who was the most far out there person I’ve ever known. He introduced us to some interesting music and to some interesting experiences through his access to high quality cannibis and hashish. Of course the two went together (the Cannabis and the music). I believe his father was an American soldier in the Korean war and he was conceived in Korea. Compared to us, he was very worldly. One thing he taught us was how to make our own (water filtered) bong out of two plastic cups, a small copper pipe and an aluminium milk bottle top.

It was during these days I was introduced to the music of the likes of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention (whom I saw live in the seventies). Very interesting times indeed. However, these days I get high on the music and videos of the MLT and don’t need the drugs.

[Jacki Hopper]

Ok , though not exactly Beatlesmania direct related, still drug related and inspired for encouragement…

My first ever rock concert did not go well, as I was unfamiliar with what Marijuana and Hasshish, etc smelled like as I was never exposed to… Yet…. Until that night…

Here I was with my friend at time, her Mom, we were enjoying, after awhile the funny aroma wafted our way… Jacki gets buzzed… I felt sick, went to get up to go to bathroom, couldn’t feel my feet, felt dizzy, nauseated, weird overall, anxiety, panic attack set in… Finally got away to get fresh air… Never threw up but felt better… Came back… My friend, her mom, laughing at me.. I didn’t think it funny… Then they realized I was serious, (they had assumed I knew what the funny aroma was about, no I did not).. I gave dope heads a piece of my mind a few rows below us in the stands, they moved… I was not impressed… Got back to my friend’s place, got 2nd buzz wind, couldn’t sleep for 2 hrs, finally did, when awoken, felt like a Frikkin hangover idea ( I don’t drink alcohol or smoke)… My 2nd oldest bro whenever he held jam sessions in basement, that same funny aroma wafted up through the vents… I was not impressed… Turned me off drugs… No worrying about me ever wanting to do… Even now, I still get annoyed at an outdoor /indoor show if I get wiff of it, it ruins the concert for me….

Now for the inspiration aspect… Because of MLT, and I think I’ve mentioned this elsewheres but I’ll say here again for anyone that never saw the other posting…

I have done the odd karaoke thing, as I do enjoy singing but stage shy….

Fast Fwd to when I discovered MLT, their Beatles takes inspired me to have a boost more confidence when up singing so, for my sis in law ‘s 50th Bday bash, karaoke was part of it… I got up and sang various songs but I let loose on “I Saw Him Standing There”, because of MLT’ s version… Lol… I got a few hollers of aporoval/applause… Then I got even more frisky…. Sung a few times awhile  with same song, other songs at a few open mic jams…. Thanks to MLT for further boosting my singing on stage confidence…. ????️?

[Jung Roe]

[postquote quote=99032][/postquote]
Hi Matt.  I played a simplified version of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (1st movement).  Since then whenever I listen to that music, I can feel every note and I can follow it in my mind and fingers.  I guess it’s because it’s the only song I ever performed so rings special when I hear it.  I’d like to try to learn something Beatles transcribed to piano, maybe Across The Universe, as the instrumental parts in it are simply sublime.

[Matt Hay]

Ahh, yes Jung, that is a beautiful piece of music. Beethoven is my Beatle of the Classical era 🙂

Thanks Jacki. While I learnt to enjoy myself on cola or lemon squash with drinking friends at parties and pubs, a 2nd-hand high from pot smoke is something I quickly learnt to avoid! Thankfully, my nephews are teenagers now, so none of our group smokes at parties.

Good on you for breaking through that barrier, and continuing to sing in public. It’s never too late to do your thang!

Howard, must have been amazing to hear music like Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa when it first came out. I’m a bit younger, so the closest I came was to acts like Divinyls, The Angels and Midnight Oil 😀 I didn’t discover artists like Zappa, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and The Who until 1985 via pirated tapes when overseas. Like a kid in a candy store I was … “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” !!!