City Lights: For the Beatles, all our loving in a tribute show
I shared the same planet with the Beatles for one year, three months and two days. That was how old I was when John Lennon died, not that I learned that until nearly a decade later. By the time I first encountered the group, courtesy of the movie "Yellow Submarine," it had long since been reduced to a thriving industry and a beloved — but irrevocably gone — part of the past.
We still perform Sophocles' plays and trek to the Egyptian pyramids after thousands of years, so I have no reason to doubt that the Beatles' music will have similar staying power. Just this summer, my wife and I visited Liverpool and took the Magical Mystery Tour bus ride, which guides tourists by the childhood homes of all four Beatles and points out historic points of interest — this street where two of the band members walked to school, for example, or this trail where one of them rode his bike.
The Beatles were not infallible musically (even the most diehard fan can probably name a least favorite song or album) and were all too fallible as human beings. Biographers have prospered for decades with accounts of Lennon's temper, Paul McCartney's bossiness, George Harrison's moodiness and Ringo Starr's substance abuse. We have been told countless times — including by the Beatles themselves — that they were men and not gods.
But we still gawk at that bike trail through the bus window. At least, I did.
