My Musical Notes 12 - Tribute to the Beatles

1984 was the breakaway year when I bought a lot of music and hear a lot of new sounds. It was then that I decided to end my ignorance of the Beatles and listen to the great band. Yuvavani was only playing ABBA, Boney M, Beegees and the Beatles and Elvis etc had faded off. But they were still the superstars and I wanted to check them out. John Lennon., Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Rex Harrison.

So one visit to Sangeet Sagar I spotted this 'Tribute to Beatles' cassette and bought it. It was a nice compilation by EMI with 'A Hard Day's Night', 'Yesterday', 'Ticket to Ride', 'Help', 'Can't buy me love', 'She loves you'. 'I want to hold your hand', 'I feel fine', 'All my loving', 'Love me do', 'Please please me' and 'Day Tripper'. I knew immediately why they were so popular of course. It was easy, happy music with catchy lyrics that were easy to sing along and made life sunny and nice. The sounds were simple and joyful and there was a simplicity to it that was accessible.

Before long I could sing every song along with them. I learned 'I want to hold your hand' hoping it will come in use sometime. I thoroughly enjoyed 'Help and though that its lyrics made so much sense. The slow ballads 'Yesterday' and 'Ticket to ride' are all-time greats.

A lasting memory of Beatles is this one time when we were stranded in a cyclone near Nayudupeta, Nellore. This was the Hyderabad Under 22 team and the favorites to win that year. Unfortunately, the train got stranded for four days and we were stuck with no food and no way of going anywhere. Water came up to the floor and we slept two to a berth. There was this youngish couple, thirty or so, modern and western music types and the lady sang Beatles songs all evening on the second or third evening to perk up the moods. She sang so well and we all tried to pitch in as much as we could. Beatles will always remind me of her. We returned to Hyderabad without going to Madras because our opponent had claimed a walkover while we were listening to Beatles. We also were reported in the news for helping out other passengers in the crises - nothing big - just small things.

Another special memory is that of Subbu who brought his cassette player to Nagarjuna Sagar when we were in our first year Civil Engineering and we walked along on the bund in the twilight, the player playing 'Can't buy me love', 'Yesterday'. 'She loves you'..and all of us singing loudly as we traipsed along, the world at our feet.

Countless parties we played the songs, sang along. Easy journey songs on long drives when driving fatigue gets to us. Always in the car.

Thank you Beatles.