The Day the Music Lived

Every time I stood up, I saw flashing lights and felt as if I was going to pass out. Though my most recent chemo infusion was two weeks ago, I continued to suffer its side effects. As I lay on the sofa where I tried in vain to muster the energy to get up and do something productive, when a Beatles song, “Penny Lane,” cued up on the radio. I cannot listen to the Beatles without recalling the days in 1964 in which I was introduced to the British rock group.

 

Military service isolates its members to varying degrees from popular culture in the civilian world. Every weekday the occupants of barracks on the US Naval Training Station in Bainbridge, Maryland assembled on the roadway in front of the World War One- vintage wooden structures and marched in military formation to the Communications Technician School, then called Radio “A” School. The barracks were not air conditioned, resulting in open windows to catch whatever breeze presented itself. One memorable day, we were taking our usual shortcut to barracks when I heard music coming from an open window as we passed.

Wow, I thought. Who is that?

I had given up on ever hearing another revolution in music like Bill Haley and the Comets, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis and that of Elvis's magic in his recording of "Heartbreak Hotel"during the first incarnation of rock music. The music I heard that day haunted me. I decided that it must have been a throw-away tune that some barracks dweller would appreciate but would disappear into his record collection to be heard only by his friends.

The “A” school had a policy in which, at the halfway point of the six-month long course, attendees in the top 10 percent of the class would be awarded with a day off. I was too broke to go off base, so I resolved to spend my free day at the base library, then attend a movie at the base theater with the last few coins in my possession before payday (“the day the eagle shits.” In Navy parlance).

An open rack in the library featured a teen magazine with the image of four young men on the cover.

Holy crap,” I thought. Look at all that hair!

The magazine cover featured the Beatles, of course, and "all that hair" would be considered neatly trimmed by the standards that followed. The song I heard as I marched under a barracks open window was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Soon after that day, my long-hoped-for revolution in Rock music arrived. Now, sixty-four years later, I remain a faithful Beatles fan, and I long for the third revolution in rock music, when I might again be thrilled by a new sound- a sound not before heard by human ears; a "third wave" in rock music.

I am an old man now, so please hurry.

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