Beatley Moments | Page 57 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

My ‘Beatley Moments’ would number in the hundreds, but since I just found this site about 11pm last night and have been reading and replying to other posts ever since (apart from a few hours sleep), I’ll start with the most significant one:

I was one of two kids growing up in an Air Force family that had moved to 11 different bases, including both Alaska and Hawaii. When I was 15 and in junior high school in Hawaii, this big, tough-looking guy was in one of my classes. I got the impression he was some kind of bully, a ‘juvenile delinquent’ I didn’t want to have anything to do with. If it wasn’t for a study session when the teacher left the class and everyone was talking & walking around, I would never have thought twice about this guy if I hadn’t noticed one of his binders that had a picture of ‘Let It Be ‘ on the cover. After I told him how cool it looked, we of course started talking Beatles, and by the end of class we were new best friends through 10th and 11th grade, until our families eventually transferred to other bases.

Flash-forward about 3 or 4 years. I’m 20 years old, still living with my parents where my Dad retired in a small town in SC. I’m depressed as hell, I have no friends or social life (nor a job most of the time), and I miss those carefree days in Hawaii with my best friend Robert so badly. I’m an honor student at a lame community college, so for some reason they give me grant money of $200 to help with expenses, or something like that. If it was a ‘student loan’, then good luck in trying to get it back.

Now understand, I love my parents so much, and don’t want to hurt them, but I’m desperate to reconnect with Robert and get the hell out of Sumter.

We hadn’t written each other since our families had transferred out, but Robert’s had left before us and I knew they had been transferred to San Antonio, TX. I decide to call him, and it’s just that easy getting his number. So we talk, and it was like we’d never had any years pass since last seeing each other – in high school we were both just one rung higher up the ladder than the geeks who had all the looks and actions (but none of the intelligence) of what one might term a ‘true nerd’, or whatever they were called at the time. Like me, Robert was at loose ends, with no prospect of a girlfriend on the horizon (same here) BUT

NOW he’s living with his younger, ’popular jock’ brother in their own place, four (4) bedrooms, all by themselves..

At this time, I have a nice used car, my very first one; my 3.8 year older brother had gotten his license at 15 & always drove me anywhere I wanted to go, so I had no interest in driving and was almost 20 years old before even getting my permit. So, in early August, when my parents go on a weekend trip, I take my own trip across the country, with my $200 grant money, to go live with Robert and Tim. (I won’t go in to the guilt and other particulars about ‘running away’ at 20 years old – I just never wanted to upset the parents, and they knew how lonely and depressed I was)

On the way there, I decide to play John’s “Imagine ” album – I bought it for Robert because he’s always been a huge Lennon fan, plus it was a special edition I knew he didn’t have. I hate to admit it, but I never had any interest in John’s post-Beatles career; I had always been the Paul fan, and I love his early solo stuff, but my goodness, the man comes out with so many CDs, I can’t keep up with ’em! My obsession, my love of all time has been The Beatles – the lads, the legendary Group, the four of them as a unit – for me, music was never the same after the breakup.

But I don’t know if it’s the mix, or the instruments, or my mood and the beer I’m in the middle of drinking while driving, but this “Imagine ” music is pretty damn good.

Of course, I knew the whole deal behind “How Do You Sleep,” and aside from the chord structure, I was never that impressed with it – the lyrics sound childish to me, and the lavish production only reminds me of how fixated John was on venting his resentment at  McCartney (as well as other things Lennon opined about through hastily-written ‘digs’ that he recorded and released as quickly as possible, even as the topics themselves were fading from the news media and national interest).

But I kind of liked the jauntiness and sincerity of “Oh, Yoko,” thought “Jealous Guy ” was one of John’s most beautifully-realized solo pieces, and just absolutely FLIPPED and TRIPPED over “I Don’t Want To Be A Soldier”! I remember driving along I-40 in New Mexico sometime in the late afternoon and playing it over and over and over, and I’m wishing it lasted 20 minutes longer, like a Rare Earth groove (“I’m Losin’ You” and “Get Ready” took up entire sides of their LP’s) that you don’t want to end. There are a CD’s worth of Sting/Police songs (“Shadows In the Rain ,” “Walking On the Moon,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger”) that would have benefited from them playing out some extended jams on the originals, rather than just in concert (I still contend that “Shadows..” is almost a direct rip-off of “Soldier”) But I regress.

Stay with me, very rare Beatley Moment (for most people) coming up eventually…

Well, with just one flat tire and a two-hour nap, I make it straight through to San Antonio. I actually didn’t want the trip to end, but I can explain that ‘traveling jones’ in another comment.

Robert and his brother Tim are living right on the outskirts of the city, and their place is PERFECT! Four bedrooms, just like he said, AND they’re the only tenants in this brand-new 4-apartment building that no one else seems to know about. I get a great job at about my 68th fast-food restaurant, Robert introduces me to a guy named Terry that he went to senior year of high school with, and I find out he’s a singer.

I’ve been playing, and practicing, guitar to the point of bloody fingers like every other virgin player since just after my 15th birthday, but I honestly believe, in my stupid-ass youth of 20 years old, that I am one of the best vocalists alive. From 9 years old straight through to that time in my life, I can hit the Brian Wilson high notes with ease or belt out a blues tune like Paul Rodgers. Robert loves The Beatles as passionately as I do, but he isn’t musically inclined and can’t sing a note. But his friend Terry, on the other hand..

(Okay, let me zoom thru here best as I can, been writing two hours now – this is me “zooming”)

It is an incredible summer! Terry moves in, we’re singing and harmonizing on the Lennon/McCartney tunes, “I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party ,” “I’ll Be Back ,” “In My Life ,” just marveling at the blend of our voices, able to swap parts instantly; I’m playing killer rhythm guitar and Robert writes damn good lyrics that we make a couple of songs from – he was my muse, just his presence as my friend made me play relentlessly.

Now, Robert’s brother Tim, and Terry, too, are very handsome young men – the cute young wimmens be coming around more regular, y’ know? There are hot tub parties and all-night drinking and poker games, just a true bachelor’s life.

Summer is now passing, and we’re having beautiful fall weather. San Antonio has some of the nicest people of any place I’ve lived. We’re hitting the strip club every Friday night – Tim, Terry and I are getting paid bi-weekly, but on alternating weeks, so I give them money when I get paid & they pay me back the next week.

ANYWAY… In November I actually get high on pot for the first time ever, at 20 years old!! This sh*t is life-changing, people: my creativity is going through the roof, I’m feeling Every Little Thing I remember reading about reading from John, George and Paul‘s wild days in Hamburg, I’m having my own special ‘Rubber Soul ‘ experience, writing like a madman and singing entire albums worth of original material in my head, living like I thought artists in the sixties lived. I am so ready for winter to get here, thinking of all the high times ahead.

So it’s a Monday night, and the roommates see I’m in a good mood and are wondering why I bought us a couple of cases of Lone Star beer (that’s the only beer there is in Texas, ask any Texan), and why the hell am I watching Monday Night Football with them? I NEVER do that.

We’re joking around and getting totally stoned, my new favorite hobby.

Later that night, I come out of the bathroom, and Tim, Terry, a guy named Sean (the pot man) and my best friend and fellow Beatles fan, Robert, are sitting there in complete silence. Robert is pale as a ghost, and he’s trying to say something but no words are coming out. Then Terry finally breaks the silence: “Howard Cosell just said there’s a news report that John Lennon was shot.”

What? This isn’t real, is it?

We all sit there in the dark living room, just staring at Monday Night Football – it’s on a little black and white TV, which only (barely) picks up two channels; it’s also plugged into an extension cord that’s plugged in to the empty apartment next to us, because our electricity had been cut off about a week earlier. The TV is the only light in the room as we sit there and Howard Cosell – Howard Cosell, of all people – finally confirms the report that John Lennon has been shot and killed outside his Dakota Apartment building in New York City.

Robert jumps straight up and runs outside, and I’m right behind him. We’re standing in the parking lot, in 20-degree weather with only our shirts and pants on, not even any shoes, and this big, tough-looking guy I met in junior high school a few years previously starts bawling his eyes out, crying almost as hard and loudly as I am.

We don’t know what to do, how to act – I don’t even remember feeling the cold. We’re crying, and hugging each other, and just… “stunned,” like George and John are in that newsreel footage where they had just learned of Brian Epstein’s death.

For the longest time, it’s just the two of us sobbing and muttering things to ourselves. But it seems to come to both our minds at the same instant, and I manage to tell Robert, “I don’t know how the hell I would have gotten through this if I hadn’t been right here, right now, with my best friend and the only other person on earth who understands how devastating this is.” All Robert can say is, “God , I know what you mean. I love you, man.”

“I love you too, Rob, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now.”

Somehow, we’ve managed to get in my car. It’s about 1am, and we’ve got the heat going, and the quadraphonic 8-track tape of “Imagine ” that I had bought for Robert that summer is playing on the deck at such a low volume it’s barely audible. We’re talking for hours, who remembers what you talked about at a time like that? But Robert suddenly stops, and jerks his head around to look straight at me. It’s just popped up in his head, and through that fog of grief, he remembers. And then I remember again, too – it had totally slipped my mind.

“Goddamn, Tony, it’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

It was my birthday, a few hours ago, and I can still hear myself answering him.

“John Lennon was killed on my 21^st birthday.”

There was a gathering at Arneson River Theater in San Antonio on Tuesday evening, the 9^th, a few hundred of us there, with candles and just sharing a common sadness. At the two minutes of silence part, some drunk college punk is singing “Give Peace A Chance ” at the top of his lungs. None of us felt like joining him.

I went back to SC for Christmas a few days later, intending to come back to Texas by New Year’s. But I didn’t go back. There was just something about that tragedy, something too difficult to explain and even harder to imagine having to recall it again.

Robert ended up riding a bus all the way from San Antonio to Sumter, SC, and we rented a mobile home at a trailer park in Myrtle Beach from February to June of 1981. I’m not knocking on Myrtle Beach, it was an okay place. But when you’ve cut school with your best friend in Hawaii to hang out and go skateboarding in downtown Honolulu, or to the North Shore, and Hanauma Bay, where you snorkel in an undersea world straight out of a National Geographic show, along with a couple other of the most beautiful beaches in the world… it was just never the same for us anymore. We were no longer 15 years old and writing songs together, or having all-night Beatlessong lyrics trivia games, talking about our fantasy women we were going to marry someday.

We made it a point to catch Ringo on the Phil Donahue show that following March of 1981, a sad and distressing show that Robert and I were screaming at Phil’s dumbass audience from our recliners to stop torturing Ringo with the same goddamned questions over and over again: “But when John Lennon was killed, how did you really feel?” “Have you been in touch with Paul or George?” “Ringo, what’s your favorite memory of John?”

We had a dead Beatle and were praying President Reagan would follow when Hinkley shot him – Reagan was luckier than John Lennon , though. And looking back now, I realize that when John died, mine and Robert’s youth had pretty much died, too. He ended up going back to San Antonio, and, as so many of those younger friendships do when you’ve had a dozen best friends in a dozen different military bases, we simply lost touch and went on with our lives.

The only good part of this time in our lives is that it’s passed and grown old enough in the memory to not ache as much anymore.

Thankfully, there have been so many wonderful, amazing Beatle memories to collect in the library of my mind to have made all these years, decades, of indelible moments cancel out most every other bad memory I’ve removed to make room for.

That’s my penultimate ‘Beatley Moments’ story, and I thank this site, this forum, and the person who bothered to ask everyone about their Beatle stories/memories over two years ago and counting.

“Close your eyes… Good Night , sleep tight…”