THE BEATLES AND HOW ALL WE STILL NEED IS LOVE

It’s not one of my favourite songs or recordings by the Beatles, but hearing “All You Need Is Love” as part of the soundtrack to the very underrated film “Across The Universe”, which tells a story linked with some excellent covers of the music by John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, resonated with me like never before.

Watching the movie and hearing the song, I remembered rushing home to watch the ‘live’ performance of it by the Beatles via satellite, something quickly written by John for what was a historic event in 1967 for the BBC, and an opportunity created for the group by (manager) Brian Epstein.

Though it’s said that the Beatles didn’t either care or understand the importance of this event when going through their Sgt Pepper’s period, created was something of a global love-in when they performed the song for millions of television viewers with assorted celebrities in the studio audience.

These were those days when nothing the Beatles did were questioned by us hardcore fans, and though the original Beatles version was okay, what I heard last week was something strangely compelling- slower, ethereal and chilled.

Listening to the song made me realise just how important the music of the Beatles and their backstories were- and still are- to many of us.

We have lived alongside them, supported their work and whatever else they were going through.

Whatever this was has made us stronger and took us away from things like the awful negativity of today’s new abnormal with so much of nothing going on and which makes everything shapeless, shameless and shallow.

The songs of the Beatles spoke to each of us in different tongues. 

They still do today for someone like me who continues to listen to their recordings like some form of therapy and want to know everything about them and their inner circle- but not in the ways that “content” is casually inhaled and exhaled on various online platforms. 

The Beatles meant something. They were “influencers” and Key Opinion Leaders before anyone cared about labelling anything that moves. 

Their popularity was not based on views and followers. It still isn’t. It was always about keeping their music and themselves real, no matter how flawed they might have been.

Who are we to talk?

The brilliant Peter Jackson “Get Back” documentary released a few years ago was very much a reality series that showed us glimpses of their creative process, plus the friendship, the friction, the humour and where their women in their lives fitted in when the Fabs were working in the Abbey Road studio setting.

There was much to take in…but still not enough.

The life and times of the Beatles are and will continue to be about LOVE.

LOVE is a magical mystery train to those of us who board it and have that ticket to ride with day trippers, the fool on the hill, The Walrus, Eleanor Rigby, Nowhere Man, the Blue Meanies and others who live in our imaginations.

We need more of this LOVE and are always looking for LOVE because we have so much LOVE to give, but don’t always find the best homes for it.

So when the Beatles sing that “all you need is love”, something I once thought to be naive and cheesy, this takes on an entirely new meaning these days, because almost everything around us, including ourselves, and how we feel and think and DO, have changed and will continue to change until we’re no longer even here, and are on the way to somewhere else.

As for my life, starting from my teen years, it’s been led by the music of the Beatles and their Merlin in record producer George Martin and the genius of engineer Geoff Emerick.

Like the infamous “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus” controversy, there was always something else going on in Beatledom on a very different Glass Onion level.

There was,for example, the relationship with manager Brian Epstein and which happened and disappeared without the media dwelling on things that couldn’t be explained or didn’t need to be explained.

Let it be…

It was the urbane and genteel Epstein who saw that certain something in the Beatles after their roughshod years playing strip clubs in Hamburg, had complete belief in the group, and re-created their image by putting them in collarless suits and launched them to be young and cheeky Fabness.

Beatlemania was born.

One can’t help but wonder how Brian Epstein’s suicide in 1968 might have affected them- and their songs, especially those written in India where they had left to study transcendental meditation when receiving news of their manager’s death.

What might they have been thinking- these four musicians from Liverpool in their early twenties who had grown up so fast, seen band mate, painter and friend from Hamburg in Stu Sutcliffe, below, die of a brain injury, and were now without the person who guided their careers?

There were then the women in their lives and the roles they played in so much of what they did with Paul losing his lovely Linda to cancer and John finally finding peace and political activism and happiness with Yoko. 

There was the horrifying assassination of John, the spiritual passing of George to throat cancer, and the trust they had in those who were closest to them- Neil Aspinall, the charismatic and very intelligent Derek Taylor, Mal Evans who was fatally shot by the LA police, and longtime friend, designer and guitarist from their days in Hamburg in Klaus Voormann.

The arrival of American Allen Klein as business manager changed everything and pitted three friends against the other one-this being the Walrus who was Paul.

Those innocent days of writing songs together and sharing laughs and groupies were replaced by the Hey Bulldog ugliness and a period when the songs of John and Paul seemed to be about blaming each other for the band falling apart with that one-time love nowhere to be seen. 

Then again, were those musical jabs in photos and tracks like “How Do You Sleep?”, “Too Many People” and “Dear Friend” also love letters, but this time, expressing hurt?

Despite so much upheaval going on in their lives that could have had most of us go off the rails, the foursome, once known as the Beatles, and now on their own with wives, ex wives and girlfriends, somehow always seemed to find the inspiration to get back to where they belonged- the recording studio and the stage and rooftops- and carry on. 

Just as they sang to bring the album Abbey Road to a close, “The love you take is equal to the love you make”.

Dedicated to all the fab women in my life.