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Do you need to be gruntled?

http://gruntle.me/pictures.php for all your gruntling needs. I just saw a kitten cuddling a guinea pig, and I am now utterly gruntled.

Meme: on a variety of topics. Today: The Beatles

as requested by solariana


When I was a child, my Dad used to record the Top 30 from the radio, and every so often we—I don't know quite who 'we' is in this context, probably my mother and I—would listen to the them. We had more early-sixties than late-sixties stuff, and no fresh pop music on tape at all after mid-1969 until I started taping it myself when I was at boarding school. *pause* Okay, I was at boarding school from April 1970, but I don't think I taped stuff for a few years, not until my Dad also gave me his old record player.

So I got to be very familiar with the most popular songs that were just a little bit out of date, and familiarity, of course, tends to mean that those are the songs a person loves.

Among other things, this meant that I loved the early Beatles stuff, when they were pure and joyful pop. And increasing consciousness came as the Beatles got more experimental, or, as I probably put it, weird.

All this changed gradually, of course. For quite some years I owned Abbey Road and the red album and the blue album (but not the White Album) on vinyl, only getting them out of the house a couple of years after the record player had gone… eh, I procrastinate, it's a thing.

But nobody who grew up then, even if a little too young to be really 'into' popular music (my coming-into-awareness decade was the '70s), could fail to notice the Beatles. I, as a good girl, very much preferred them to the Rolling Stones (still do). I had a mild crush on Paul, and subsequently George. If I'd been a little older, I could well have become a Fan, but by the time I was old enough to be buying records and sticking posters on my wall, the Beatles weren't together any more. And Wings never lived up, never. I kinda liked George's solo stuff, though.

By and large I prefer the songs which John sang lead on, which I *think* (somebody will know) were the ones he mostly wrote, as he was a much more interesting lyricist than Paul. (I have a suspicion Paul was more musically interesting—certainly an accomplished pianist of my acquaintance admires McCartney harmonies.) Although I have always loved 'The Long and Winding Road', which would seem to be a Paul song, and of course Yesterday. I still have great fondness for Love Me Do, and Please Please Me, and And I Love Her, and I adore the bass line on Can't Buy Me Love, which is so adventurous, it goes off on a little journey all on its own which miraculously works with the song everyone's actually singing. Brilliant. Also very fond of The Fool on the Hill and—unexpectedly—Back in the USSR. But I can probably make a good go at singing along to any of their songs. I toy with the idea of having All You Need Is Love played at my funeral. It kinda depends on me dying soon enough that there'll be people attending who actually know how to sing along!

I was too young to be much interested in their breakup (I do so envy the people who were in the right place at the right time to hear that rooftop concert!), and wasn't quite the right age to be devastated by Lennon's murder, but I was pretty horrified. I was pleased to see Paul McCartney at the Olympics, although… not sure he should still be singing. Sometimes you need to retire.


To fill in the last few days, go here.