Part 1 (1/2)
I Met the Walrus.
How One Day with John Lennon Changed My Life Forever.
Jerry Levitan.
TO MY BELOVED PARENTS,.
CHONON AND JUDITH LEVITAN.
THEY HAD FAITH IN ME,.
BELIEVED IN ME, AND LOVED ME.
My favorite photo. John and Yoko sweetly holding each other's hands and looking at each other's fingers. I was struck by how beautiful Yoko was.
”I REMEMBER FONDLY, HOW YOUNG JERRY CAME TO US AND DID THE INTERVIEW, WHEN SO MANY JOURNALISTS WERE TRYING TO SPEAK TO US. HE WAS NOT ONLY BRAVE BUT VERY CLEAR AND INTELLIGENT. BOTH JOHN AND I THOUGHT IT WAS A VERY PLEASANT EXPERIENCE.”YOKO ONO
1.
MEET THE BEATLES.
I was nine years old when the Beatles first performed on the was nine years old when the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. It was February 9, and like millions of other families in those days, we sat around the TV each Sunday night at 8:00 in 1964. It was February 9, and like millions of other families in those days, we sat around the TV each Sunday night at 8:00 P.M P.M. to be entertained by that awkward yet strangely captivating impresario. That night there was a special buzz to his show. He was to showcase his latest find, four lads from Liverpool, England, who were taking their country and the music world by storm. The Beatles were something special. Girls screamed and fainted at the sight of them. Their mop-top haircuts made them controversial and gave them a slight edge of mystery and danger. Everyone antic.i.p.ated their appearance for different reasons. I was practically vibrating from all the excitement.
Sullivan came on the black-and-white TV and in his distinct speaking manner said, ”This city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles. Ladies and Gentlemen...the Beatles!” With that announcement, my family and a nation were mesmerized as they opened the show with ”All My Loving,” accompanied by high-pitched, never-ending screams from teenage girls. John, Paul, George, and Ringo were confident and cute as they performed four other songs (”Till There Was You,” ”She Loves You,” ”I Saw Her Standing There,” and ”I Want to Hold Your Hand”) between the other acts, including a magician performing a card and saltshaker trick, an impressionist, and a comedy acrobatic troupe. The Beatles took my breath away. I had officially witnessed my first great spectacle.
Ringo kept the happy beat on an elevated stage looking down on his mates on a set that had huge arrows pointing at them. Paul played his distinctive, violin-shaped left-handed ba.s.s; George was on lead guitar. But John-standing in that quintessential Lennon style, defiant, guitar high up against his chest, legs apart-was clearly the band's leader. They bounced to the beat, well dressed in black suits, thin black ties, and pointed Beatle boots. And, relative to most other people at the time, longish wavy hair. This was a new kind of rock and roll star. The camera would cut away to shots of young girls in various fits of ecstasy and insanity, and a smattering of boys, who were in rapt, yet reserved attention. At one point their first names were flashed on the screen under their faces: ”Paul,” ”George,” ”Ringo,” ”John: Sorry girls, he's married.” The cultural phenomenon that was the Beatles was well underway that night as a history-making seventy-three million North Americans tuned in to see what the fuss was all about.
Something happened to me when I saw the Beatles for the first time. Before then my heroes had been comic book characters like Superman and Batman. But the Beatles were something better. They were superheroes with instruments and great musical powers. They were instantly familiar to me and I trusted them immediately. I had found new heroes to wors.h.i.+p.
It couldn't have been a better time for the country to meet the Beatles. Just three months before their introduction to North America, the world was jolted by the a.s.sa.s.sination of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy represented hope and a new beginning for the baby boom generation.
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When JFK died so violently it shocked the world. Canada was no exception. I remember sitting in my cla.s.sroom in school when an emergency announcement came on from the princ.i.p.al that President Kennedy had been shot and school was cancelled. I left cla.s.s that day and watched teachers and random people on the street weeping for themselves and the fate of the world. I came home to my devastated mother and aunt. It was as though the world had come to an end. For the burgeoning television generation that I was part of, the coverage of Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sination and its aftermath was overwhelming. That heavy cloud was the backdrop to Ed Sullivan's gift to North America that February night. It has been said so many times before, but the Beatles really were what the Western world was waiting for. Everyone, particularly my generation, needed a reason to believe that the world was a good place, that our lives had meaning, and that our future held promise.
Exposure to pop culture was limited in the early '60s. There was no MTV or VH1-only television variety shows, movies, radio, and print. That meant that if you wanted to know what was happening in the music scene you had to listen to your favorite pop radio station, catch the hottest TV show, and speak to your friends to keep up. My brother, Steve, and sister, Myrna, were older and more in tune with what was happening and I went along for the ride. They had the turntable and the records. I had the comics.
Before the Beatles, the pop charts were filled with bouncy pop tunes like crooner Steve Lawrence's ”Go Away Little Girl,” the Four Seasons' ”Walk Like a Man,” ”He's So Fine” by the Chiffons, and ”Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton. These were sweet, nonthreatening songs that the whole family could love. One-hit wonders sung by finely groomed white teenagers filled the airwaves. It was a far cry from the hip-shaking, lip-snarling ”Jailhouse Rock” of Elvis Presley just a few years before.
Elvis had been drafted into the army in 1958, sent to Germany, and rock and roll had taken a turn for the worse. During his absence the charts were littered with fluff like ”Venus,” ”Alley-Oop,” ”The Chipmunk Song,” and ”Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.” When Elvis and his particularly ”deviant” music left the scene, the moguls of the recording industry-with some prodding from parent groups and congressmen-encouraged a cleaner, whiter diet of all-American pop.
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Some musical gems managed to sneak through, however, and many of these reached the Beatles when the Atlantic s.h.i.+ps docked in the port of Liverpool bringing goods from America, including records like ”Kansas City,” ”Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” ”Mack the Knife,” ”Hit the Road Jack,” and ”Please Mr. Postman.” It was these songs plus those by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and of course, pre-Army Elvis that had the greatest influence on the Beatles.
The day Elvis was inducted into the Army, March 24, 1958, John Lennon was seventeen years old and Paul McCartney just fifteen. The world's greatest songwriting team had met less than a year earlier, on July 6, 1957. That day, Paul McCartney impressed John with his ability to sing all the lyrics to Eddie Cochrane's ”Twenty Flight Rock.” Within a day, he was invited to join Lennon's group, then called the Quarrymen after John's high school, Quarry Bank. Within weeks, Paul's younger mate George Harrison came on board. A few years later, the ill-fated Pete Best was dumped to make room for Ringo Starr, and the Fab Four as we know it was created. Within five years they would be on the cusp of history-making stardom with the release of ”Love Me Do” in the UK on October 5, 1962.
Right around the Sullivan broadcast I remember working on a school project on the Guttenberg Bible one Sunday with a cla.s.smate at his place. We were teamed up and I was fixated on cutting and pasting text and photos onto the bristle board. He was busy spinning records, one in particular, Meet the Beatles Meet the Beatles. He played it over and over again. At first he was annoying me because I was doing all the work. But the distraction slowly became fascinating. ”Listen to this one,” he would say. ”Paul sings lead.” ”That's John on the harmonica.” Increasingly my attention was drawn away from what I was doing and I was standing side by side with him at the hi-fi in his parents' recreation room watching the record spin and examining the alb.u.m.
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Most of the songs were familiar to me. You had to have been on the moon not to have heard ”I Want to Hold Your Hand,” ”I Saw Her Standing There,” or ”All My Loving.” The less-played songs were visions into the group's future. George's ”Don't Bother Me” with the bongo beat. The minor chord in ”Not a Second Time.” The affectations had already become pop legend: ”Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The harmonica. Inventive harmonies. Ringo shaking his head and all those crazy rings. Examining that alb.u.m and listening to the songs over and over while we neglected our project was like going through a portal to a new dimension.
Meet the Beatles was released on January 20, 1964. The release of the singles ”Please Please Me,” ”From Me to You,” ”She Loves You,” and ”I Want to Hold Your Hand” was already causing sensations everywhere with their distinctive, joyous sound. The harmonies and hooks were different and enticing. The Dave Clark Five, Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, the Animals, and the Rolling Stones would all travel the intercontinental road to America paved by the Beatles. North America's appet.i.te for a new style of pop and rock had become insatiable. was released on January 20, 1964. The release of the singles ”Please Please Me,” ”From Me to You,” ”She Loves You,” and ”I Want to Hold Your Hand” was already causing sensations everywhere with their distinctive, joyous sound. The harmonies and hooks were different and enticing. The Dave Clark Five, Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman's Hermits, the Animals, and the Rolling Stones would all travel the intercontinental road to America paved by the Beatles. North America's appet.i.te for a new style of pop and rock had become insatiable.
By 1964 the charts were being filled with a different range of music than the safe and clean tunes of just a year before. ”I Get Around” by the Beach Boys, ”Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison, and alb.u.ms by Bob Dylan, Dusty Springfield, the Yardbirds, and the Rolling Stones broadened the range of music for young people and the possibilities for change. These songs left the increasingly ba.n.a.l and novel songs of the early '60s in the dust and the Beatles were leading the way, even writing chart toppers for other bands (the Stones' first big hit, ”I Wanna Be Your Man,” was a Lennon/McCartney original).
It didn't take long for the Beatles to infiltrate the pop lexicon. There were numerous references to them in situation comedies and films and parodies on variety shows. Comics would wear wigs and mimic the Liverpudlian accent. They would sing badly and goof around. Peter Sellers recorded ”She Loves You” (inspired by Dr. Strangelove) reciting the lyrics in a German accent. That is how the establishment saw them-fun loving, harmless, and cute. But kids at the time knew differently. They understood that the Beatles were leading the vanguard of a new era of music and pop culture.
I was not a stranger to music and performers. My father played the mandolin with pa.s.sion and style. He had a discerning taste for talent. In fact, the night the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan Ed Sullivan he taught himself to play ”All My Loving” perfectly. He would often say that had he been dropped off in Hollywood as a young man he would have fit right in. That my father so overtly liked the Beatles that first night reinforced my instincts. he taught himself to play ”All My Loving” perfectly. He would often say that had he been dropped off in Hollywood as a young man he would have fit right in. That my father so overtly liked the Beatles that first night reinforced my instincts.
My parents were the first generation of my family in North America. They had left Europe a few years after the ravages of World War II and found themselves with their young daughter in Canada. They were en route with other refugees to New York City, but the quota system detoured them to Halifax, Montreal, and then Toronto. Steve and I were born in the New World. When I was ten, we moved to a middle-cla.s.s suburb called North York. It was an area mostly populated with concentration camp survivors. Looking back, I would place my friends' parents in two categories: the Bitterly Affected and the Hopeful Rebuilders. My parents were in the latter category. They had their dark moments, particularly my father, but they worked hard to build a family and give their children a promising future. My mother loved to sing and write; my father loved to dance, play the mandolin, and tell stories. My Uncle Mike told jokes, squeezed the accordion, and belted out either a song he wrote or a popular tune. Our home was a variety show, and whatever gave us kids joy, my parents supported.
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My mother Judith and my father Chonon.
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The Levitan clan with my uncle Mike.
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Me at 14. Photo by Haim Riback As I approached my early teens, I had fully embraced everything the Beatles represented. From music to clothes to hairstyle to outlook on the world, they were the standard bearers. Before then I was familiar with their songs and had seen the films Help! Help! and and A Hard Day's Night A Hard Day's Night. Adults talked about them all the time, mostly with alarm, so I knew they were important. For most people, the phenomenon that was the Beatles became very much an individual identification with each member of the group and wanting to please them. When George said jelly babies were his favorite candy, the Beatles were showered with them on stage and in the mail. Starting in 1963, the Beatles made it a practice to send a six-or seven-minute Beatle Christmas record to fans of the official Beatles fan club. The recordings were improvisational and comedic and once included an appearance by Tiny Tim.
Paul had this to say in a 1963 Christmas record the Beatles sent to their fans: Oh yeah, somebody asked us if we still like jelly babies? Well, we used to like them, in fact we loved them and said so in one of the papers, you see. Ever since we've been getting them in boxes, packets, and crates. Anyway, we've gone right off jelly babies, you see, but we still like peppermint creams, chocolate drops, and dolly mixtures and all that sort of things. (Yes! Yes! Oh yes!) Girls would go to concerts and wave signs that read ”I Love You Paul.” It took a bold boy in those days to let a specific alignment to his favorite Beatle be known. But as time went on, even boys would ”choose” the Beatle they liked best and have arguments and discussions about why. Paul was the cute, lovable one, always aiming to please. George was reserved and mysterious.
Ringo, fun loving and forlorn. John, witty, wry, and otherworldly. The four personalities that were the Beatles were under such scrutiny individually and as a band that the screaming fans and the relentless marketing of Beatlemania unwittingly contributed to the group's disintegration by the end of the decade. No other rock group, not even the Rolling Stones, ever experienced anything like that.
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Though I loved them all, and was particularly reverent of the songwriting partners.h.i.+p of Lennon and McCartney, I idolized everything about John: his courage and c.o.c.kiness, his humor and whimsy. Intelligent, always on a quest, and fiercely original, John was who I wanted to be. He had an imagination that captivated me. There was honesty and real pain in his songs, no matter how upbeat the sound was. I think I related to that. John confronted the hards.h.i.+p of life and morphed it into messages of hope and joy.
Early on I developed a pa.s.sionate identification with John, though I could never have predicted where that pa.s.sion would eventually take me. One of my friends was adamant that George was the best in the group. We would argue vehemently about that to the point where I would not speak to him for weeks. The truth is that I would have proclaimed my admiration and loyalty for each of them to the outside world. I loved George and Ringo and idolized Paul. But I had to let it be known, in a missionary way, that John was unquestionably the leader, that he was the best, and that the other Beatles knew it too.
As I got older I was witness to the evolution of the Beatles and their constant preeminence in pop. My siblings would buy the new alb.u.ms, and I would sneak into their rooms and listen to them when they weren't there. They did a lot of covers in their first few records-tributes to their favorite artists-like ”Baby It's You,” ”Chains,” ”Twist and Shout,” ”Long Tall Sally,” ”Money,” and ”Roll Over Beethoven.” In the summer of 1964, when I was ten, my sister took my brother and me to see A Hard Day's Night A Hard Day's Night. That film was a sensation in glorious black and white. The Beatles at their mischievous, musical, and marvelous best.
A Hard Day's Night, the alb.u.m, had bouncy interesting tracks starting with the jarring guitar chord that opened the t.i.tle song. ”Can't Buy Me Love” always brought me back to my favorite scene in the movie where the Beatles ran around a field in fast motion playing silly soccer like the happy brothers they were. John gave ”I Should Have Known Better” its hook with his harmonica playing. Both John and Paul wrote beautiful ballads-the acoustic-guitar-driven ”And I Love Her” and John's ”If I Fell.” This was a special alb.u.m because of its connection to the movie and because of the increasing complexity of the songs. And for the first time, there were no cover songs. All songs, except one by George, were written by Lennon and McCartney. That was virtually unprecedented in pop music.