Videogame returns Beatles to fashion
Amazing how everything old is new again
– even the Beatles.
It’s been 40 years since Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, so
to speak. And now the Beatles are more popular than ever, thanks
mostly to
… a videogame.
Videogame returns Beatles to fashion
Amazing how everything old is new again – even the Beatles.
It’s been 40 years since Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play, so to speak. And now the Beatles are more popular than ever, thanks mostly to … a videogame.
Guitar Hero came out with its latest version recently, this one featuring all Beatles songs and the chance to play as part of the fabled group. In addition, Macy’s is using their song “Come Together” in all its TV and radio ads.
There was also the sad news this week that Lucy Vaddon, who apparently inspired “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” has died.
Vaddon apparently was a schoolmate of Julian Lennon, John’s son, who came home from school one day with a drawing which he told his dad was “Lucy in the sky with diamonds.”
John took the phrase, made it into a song, and the rest is history.
Tragically, Vaddon was just 46 when she died, due to complications from lupus. She said in an interview some years ago that the song was kind of embarrassing for her, since everyone thought it was really about LSD.
I read this story, feeling sad for Vaddon, but also realizing that if not for the current Beatlemania, fewer people might have cared about her untimely demise.
It’s funny how the Beatles come and go. During the first wave of the British Invasion, back in the mid-1960s, I was too young to care. But of course, I know now that they were huge, a phenomenon that caused girls to shriek and faint, boys to grow their hair long and wear bell-bottom jeans.
And then there were all the changes they went through, from adorable mop-tops to truth-seeking hipsters. As they grew up, so did their music. It’s really an amazing transformation, when you compare songs such as “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to later works such as “A Day in the Life.”
The Beatles first entered my awareness when they released their animated film “Yellow Submarine,” which I believe was around 1968. I never got to see it – we were living out in the country at the time, I was 10 years old, and with four of us kids, my mother didn’t have time or money to take us to Beatles movies – but the images of the cartoon John, Paul, George and Ringo were permanently impressed on my preadolescent brain.
By the time I could afford to buy a Beatles album, they’d broken up.
Through the years, however, I began to realize how important the Beatles were, and how, in the space of less than a decade, they had changed music forever. Even now, when a Beatles song comes on the radio or plays from some speaker at a shopping center, I’m often struck by how good, how current, how fresh the song sounds.
It’s truly classic rock, in the best sense of the phrase.
And the Beatles have the potential now to be bigger than ever, what with the Internet and everyone’s instant access to the entire knowledge of the world.
I still have a problem, sometimes, with how their music is used these days. After all, “Come Together” as a theme for Macy’s? Have you ever listened to the lyrics of that song? It’s pretty weird. Hard to imagine how it’s going to sell clothing and housewares.
At any rate, I am hoping that this is an opportunity for up-and-coming generations to rediscover the wonder and the joy of the Beatles’ music. It deserves to be heard, again and again and again. It is, truly, music for the ages.
