My hmphs

Every once in a while, I come across someone who just doesn’t get the Beatles, or who doesn’t even like them.

I try to keep an open mind about this, since there are some groups that I simply don’t get, either (see my Joy Division issues).

David Bowie? Yeah, I can understand that. Bob Dylan? Sure. But The Beatles? Come on. Here are 20 reasons why there will never be anyone like the Beatles - ever:

1. During the week of April 4, 1964, The Beatles occupied the first five positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart (12 in the Hot 100), the top 2 positions on the albums chart, the no. 1 position in the British singles chart, the first two positions in the British albums chart and the no. 1 position in the British EP chart, - the most complete domination of the British and American charts in history. Nowadays, you’re lucky to have one top 10 album and single at the same time.
2. To date, the Beatles have sold over 1 billion records. That’s billion, with a B.
3. They have the most no. 1 albums in the British album charts (15), and 17 No. 1 hits.
4. They hold the record for the group with the longest span between no. 1 albums in the Billboard albums chart (36 years and 51 weeks, 1964 to 2001). In 2000 - 20 years after John Lennon was killed, their greatest hits compilation, 1, spent eight weeks at no. 1 and sold 13 million copies in its first month of release.
5. They boast 20 No. 1 hits in the United States, (19 No. 1 albums), with 24 consecutive Top 10 hits from 1964 to 1976 (six years after they broke up), a record for a group. They also have 12 no. 1 hits in Germany, 23 in Australia, 21 in the Netherlands, 22 in Canada, and 13 in Malaysia.
6. According to the United World Chart, the Beatles have 16 of the 100 most successful tracks of all time, and also 7 of the 100 most successful albums in history.
7. The Beatles recorded four of the Top 10 Greatest Albums of All Time, according to Rolling Stone magazine, and three of the Top Five. (I will ignore the fact that Abbey Road was only No. 14. Blasphemy.)
8. They were ground-breaking pioneers almost from the beginning, being the first group ever to employ feedback in 1964’s “I Feel Fine.” One of their first hits, “A Hard Day’s Night,” features an opening chord so revolutionary that people are still trying to figure out. 1965’s Rubber Soul saw more innovation, from the use of a sitar in “Norwegian Wood” and tape loops in “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Then there are the backwards vocals in “Rain” (a first) and a Moog synthesizer on several songs on 1969’s Abbey Road.
9. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is arguably the greatest album ever made (indeed, it topped Rolling Stone’s list). While it doesn’t have the strongest material, the album was a landmark in recording. It popularized the concept album - something that would serve as inspiration to The Who and Pink Floyd.
10. “A Day in the Life” from Sgt. Pepper may have been the crowning achievement of the group - a five and a half minute song composed of two suites - one by Lennon, one by Paul McCartney - that are totally different in sound and texture, yet complement each other perfectly. The song features two cacophonous crescendos from an orchestra, the final one climaxing in a single E major piano chord that lasts 42 seconds.
11. One may not like songs such as “Yesterday” and “Hey Jude,” but they are unrivaled in their popularity, and the melodies are unforgettable.
12. Paul McCartney actually dreamed the tune to “Yesterday.”
13. “Helter Skelter” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” are considered two of the first heavy metal songs.
14. They have 23 of the Top 500 songs of all time, again according to Rolling Stone - the most of any artist.
15. Their iconic No. 1 singles notwithstanding (”Love Me Do”, “From Me to You”, “She Loves You”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “A Hard Day’s Night”, “I Feel Fine”, “Eight Days a Week”, “Ticket to Ride”, “Help!”, “Yesterday”, “Day Tripper”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Paperback Writer”, “Yellow Submarine”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Penny Lane”, “All You Need Is Love”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “Lady Madonna”, “Hey Jude”, “Get Back”, “The Ballad of John and Yoko”, “Something”, “Come Together”, “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road”), some of their best songs weren’t even on any singles or B-sides: “I Should Have Known Better,” “You Won’t See Me,” “Rain,” “For No One,” “Across the Universe,” “Two of Us,” “Dear Prudence,” and “Because” are all just album filler.
16. They revolutionized the science of recording, using multiple tracks instead of playing live. Producer George Martin used varying tape speeds to make Lennon’s voice sound high (”Tomorrow Never Knows”) and slow (”Strawberry Fields Forever”); he also brought in string musicians to accompany certain songs (”Yesterday”). In another session, McCartney utilized bass drums halfway down a corridor to achieve a staccato sound in “Mother Nature’s Son.”
17. In an age where other people wrote songs for the flavor of the day - think the Brill Building songwriters doing all the work for the Shangri-Las and the Dixie Cups - The Beatles surprised everyone by penning their own hits from the beginning. As a result, they helped usher the singer-songwriter movement that popularized the late 1960s.
18. Their ability to cross over from media and teen idols to musical innovators is one-of-a-kind. Their chart success is unparalleled; but despite their popularity, they managed to continue to improve throughout their career.
19. Their place in popular culture is unrivaled - Their movies, their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (in which they played to 74 million people), the “bigger than Jesus” comment, the refusal to play in concert after 1966, the Maharishi, the painstaking production work, the beginnings of the drug culture and LSD fad, “Helter Skelter” and Charles Manson, the “Paul is Dead” phenomenon, Yoko Ono, the rooftop concert, the cover of Abbey Road, the subsequent solo years, and the hit singles created from rough demos of the late Lennon.
20. Oh, yeah; they accomplished all this in seven years.

Beat that, Oasis.

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Every time I hear Rita Coolidge’s “(Your Love Is Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” I am immediately taken back to 1977, the first time I heard the song. I was all of 8 years old, and I was riding back from the Henn Theatre in Murphy, N.C. after seeing Star Wars for the first time. My sister had stopped and gotten the soundtrack for the movie as well.

As the opening chords begin, I can still remember sitting in the back seat of our 1975 Chevrolet Impala station wagon, peering over the front seat and seeing my sister holding the album. I can even smell the scent of the new album as my sister unwrapped it.

And I can’t remember where I put my wallet this morning.

Music - or perhaps, our ability to process music - is an amazing thing. We can recall lyrics to songs we haven’t heard in years, remember the exact placement of each grunt and ad-lib, and instantly recognize songs when given a five-second snippet.

And yet this link to emotion and past events is something even more profound and mysterious. I can understand associating music with major milestones in one’s life - for instance, your first kiss or a dance at your wedding - but the Rita Coolidge song was playing on the way back from a movie. (Granted, not just any movie - Star Wars!) Other songs evoke vivid memories of seemingly mundane events: Dancing in college to “Word Up!”, Riding to a hay ride with “Love Shack” playing in the cassette player, and even recycling aluminum cans while listening to the Sundays’ “Can’t Be Sure.”

But deep down, these incidents may hold some special place for me, and the music serves a soundtrack, a marker to those happy or memorable moments. Other times, though, the memory is probably sparked because of some overwhelming emotion caused by the song: Hearing U2’s “With or Without You” for the first time and knowing that the group had just moved to a new level, or the moment I finally got the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

So now all I need to do is play music every time I put down my keys, and I should be set.

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Every year after school was out for the summer, my friends and I tested our manhood by becoming one with nature and braving the elements. Camping trips at age 16 are a perfect example of the confusion and contradictions that come with adolescence. We would set up camp somewhere in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, smoke cigars, chop firewood and stay up all night spitting, cursing and trading stories about the cutest girls in school - you know, manly stuff.

But we would also swing on vines, consume loads of Mountain Dew and Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls and Oatmeal Cream Pies, and listen to the radio for 48 solid hours, or until our set of D batteries went dead.

My friends and I loved junk food and spitting, but we worshiped music. We sucked in every new song as if it were pure oxygen, playing it relentlessly until it kept us up at night, bouncing around in our brains. Then when the next single came our way, we moved on and started the process over.

I wish I could say that we were ahead of our time and listened to the Violent Femmes, XTC and the Smiths, but growing up in North Georgia had its limitations. This was before the Internet went mainstream, and you could download any song you wished. We had to attach coat hangers and aluminum foil to our antennas just to get a clear reception from the radio stations in Atlanta and Greenville, S.C.

That meant lots of pop music - Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, the Human League and Journey. Eurythmics were about as avant-garde as we got. But it was all we had, and we clung to it.

The weekend of May 30 was the date for our annual camping trip in 1984. Fresh from our sophomore year in high school, we were ready to kick back, eat Little Debbies and crank up the radio so that every living mammal in the back woods of North Georgia heard “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”

It was a memorable weekend. The Eastern United States was in the path of a solar eclipse, and we watched in awe as  the day grew dim and birds ceased to chirp. No fear, for the jam box was busy; amid all the “Footloose” singles and Lionel Richie ballads, every station seemed to have added three new songs to their rotation:

• “Sunglasses at Night” by Corey Hart - Feh. It had that new-wave/synthesizer sound, but we never could take seriously a song with a chorus that began, “Don’t switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no.”
• “What’s Love Got to Do with It” by Tina Turner - I thought she was a washed-up creation of Ike Turner. I was about to be proven wrong with her Grammy-winning song.
• “When Doves Cry” by Prince and the Revolution.

We had been Prince fans for about a year, having bought 1999 and worn out several copies of the cassette. There were rumors that he had a new album coming out that would be a soundtrack to his own movie. We were hoping for something bigger and better than 1999, and this was our first listen to the brand new single.

When the DJ announced the single, we gathered around the campfire and heard the stripped down funk, which sounded so solemn with strings and the minor key. We didn’t know what it sounded like when doves cried - we didn’t even know what that meant - but Prince seemed to have captured its essence. No one spoke during the song and afterwards, we all looked at each other and felt that we had heard something different. This was almost baroque in comparison to “The Reflex.” We changed it to another station to catch another spin. And we continued doing that for the next 48 hours, and didn’t mind when it stayed lodged in our brains.

Purple Rain came out later that summer, and we basked in the aura of “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Take Me With U” and “I Would Die 4 U.” We giggled at the adolescent filth of “Darling Nikki,” but solemnly endured all eight minutes and 45 seconds of the title track. We felt older - that somehow, this was more serious, mature music. Over the next two years, I discovered R.E.M. and U2, and Top 40 radio suddenly fell by the wayside. Just in time, too - I missed the whole Bon Jovi thing.

With the Internet, fans can instantly learn when their favorite bands are in the studio, get updates from insiders on the latest news, and download pirated versions of their CDs in MP3 format weeks before the release date. But 20 years ago, My friends and I heard the future sounds of music in the middle of the Appalachians, huddled around a boom box as if we were listening to FDR’s Fireside Chats, pretending we were grownups.

I can almost smell the cigar smoke now. Hand me a Swiss Cake Roll.

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