What children think of the Beatles
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/beatles/article6825010.ece
Their parents love the Fab Four, but will today's children download
Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club on to their iPods?
September 8, 2009
Will Hodgkinson
Forty years after they split, do the Beatles have relevance for a new
generation? Does anyone really care about Hey Jude and All You Need
Is Love in an age when High School Musical and the Nintendo DS rule the world?
I'm putting the Fabs' longevity to the test with the help of my
children and their friends. Rowan (7), Fred (6) and Isabella (6) are
joining Otto and Pearl Hodgkinson (8 and 6) in a Beatles study session.
For an agreed fee a bar of toffee each the panel will listen to a
selection from the band's repertoire on original vinyl format, before
giving their considered opinion on each song. All I ask is that panel
members refrain from attacking each other until the session is over.
Apart from Rowan, who claims only to know about the beetles in her
garden, panel members are vaguely aware of the Beatles. "They look
like me so I like them," offers Otto, proud possessor of a mop-top bowl cut.
"They are a rock band from olden times," adds Isabella. "They did
lots of songs," says Pearl, somewhat unhelpfully, but then Pearl's
musical interests are focused entirely on the soundtrack to Mamma
Mia!, so she can be forgiven.
Resolving to give the study session a chronological overview, I begin
by putting She Loves You on to the record player. "She loves you,
yeah, yeah, yeah," sing Lennon and McCartney on their Number One
smash from 1963. "No she doesn't," Otto says.
"I thought it was quite strange," comments Rowan when the song is over.
"It's different from most of the songs I've heard."
"I loved it," says Isabella. Why? "I don't really know."
After musing for a while, index finger lodged in nostril, Fred
concludes: "It's good."
We move on to Help! (1965), surely a kids' favourite with its
impossible-to-forget melody and chorus brimming with character. But
the panel is less than illuminating. Comments range from "it's quite
good" (Fred) to "I liked it" (Isabella). We're not getting anywhere.
And certain members of the panel keep escaping to the swing at the
bottom of the garden. Perhaps this early material is too
straightforward. We need something more far-reaching. How about
Norwegian Wood (1965)?
George Harrison's sitar and John Lennon's tale of a failed seduction
mark the Beatles' burgeoning experimental phase. The children are intrigued.
"The singing was sad but the music was happy," comments Rowan.
"It's about a guy that nobody likes because he's really lazy," says Otto.
"He's a poor man looking for a zero pound shop," adds Fred, elliptically.
Now for a track that children have loved for the past 43 years:
Yellow Submarine. Everybody knows this one, and everybody sings
along. So I decide the panel is ready for a more subtle musical
moment: Eleanor Rigby. This ode to loneliness, from the Beatles'
landmark 1966 album Revolver, showcases Paul McCartney's gift for
empathy, perfectly capturing sadness with such evocative lines as
"writing a sermon that no-one will hear". The children are
uncharacteristically quiet.
"It's about lonely people. It's about poor people," says Rowan, looking sad.
"It's about ragged tramps in newspapers on the street," says Otto,
upping the tragic imagery. "But the Beatles weren't poor. They were
famous. Fame leads to riches. Riches lead to a Nintendo DS."
"The Beatles need to buy houses and cars, and a helicopter," reflects
Isabella. "But they still want to make the poor people feel a bit better."
"I think they wrote the song when they went into a graveyard," concludes Otto.
The conversation appears to have taken a maudlin turn. I try to cheer
the panel up with a blast of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
but the social problems highlighted in Eleanor Rigby are still in
everyone's minds. "Sgt. Pepper is lonely," says Otto. "He's scared
and he's got no friends."
Pearl, the more pragmatic of our children, explains Sgt. Pepper's
loneliness thus: "he's a sergeant and he's a pepper. It's not nice."
We need a psychedelic trip into the unknown. We need Lucy in the Sky
With Diamonds. As the gorgeously arpeggiated melody unfolds the
children lie back on the sofa, blissed out. "This is about a guy on
an adventure who sees lots of exciting things," says Isabella
casually, nailing in a few words the meaning of a song that entire
theses have been written about.
"There is a girl called Lucy in a marmalade sky," begins Otto. "Then
her boat sinks and she lands in a marshmallow pie. Then a giant shoe
falls down from the sky. Then John, Paul, Ringo and the other guy
come out and go arrggh! They have two ninja swords, 14 laser canons
and Darth Vader. Then the sky fills with diamond warriors who kill everyone."
Otto's interpretation is perhaps more violent than Lennon and
McCartney intended, but it's no less surreal. The Sgt. Pepper album
does appear to be firing up the children's imaginations, so we
continue with Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite ("flyable", says Fred,
"in an evil circus") followed by She's Leaving Home. This was
inspired by a news report about a young runaway. Rowan offers her view first.
"It's a calm song. It's about a wife creeping around in her dressing
gown and telling her husband that the baby has gone."
"The baby has gone to America," adds Isabella.
"Actually," corrects Pearl, "the baby went to Alaska."
Now we're ready for the highpoint of the Beatles' oeuvre and what
many serious-minded rock critics consider to be the greatest song yet
written: A Day in the Life.
"It's about a healthy, lucky man, but he's upset so he finds a magic
photograph and goes into it," explains Otto, gesticulating wildly.
"Then he sinks down into Evil World and goes into a dream, and while
he's sleeping everything goes wrong. He's really unlucky and he's
basically nothing now. He has no wealth. He's just a frog. Not even a
frog. He's an insect."
"The animals kept on dying and nobody knew why," offers Isabella.
"There was one person in the night who went to see what was happening
outside. And he saw loads of dragons coming out of the sky, killing
the animals."
"It's like when sailors go to sea and there is a really big storm and
they all get knocked off the boat and washed ashore," says Pearl,
quietly. "And they know who was doing it [causing the storm,
presumably] because there are loads of serpents."
Moving on, it's time to investigate the classic songwriting in the
autumn of the Beatles' career. All agree that Blackbird, from The
White Album (1968), is a nice, happy tune about blackbirds. Then I
play Helter Skelter.
Helter Skelter inspired Charles Manson to kill people. Watching the
effect it has on the children, I'm beginning to see why. Fred
attempts to smash up an inflatable guitar. Rowan, Pearl and Isabella
link arms and spin around until they fall down. Otto kicks over a
chair. Our cat yelps and dashes up the stairs.
The panel is worn out. The children don't want to listen to the
Beatles anymore. They want to claim their toffee and get the hell
out. But we can't end on such a violent note. What better way to
bring the study session to a close than Hey Jude, Paul McCartney's
three-chord, seven-minute epic, written to comfort Julian Lennon
during his parents' divorce in 1968?
"Who's Jude?" asks Otto as McCartney plinks on the piano.
"Why is he singing like a girl?" asks Rowan. "This is boring."
But Hey Jude's surging coda wins over even the cynical Rowan. Soon
everyone is chanting along, just as crowds do the world over wherever
Hey Jude is played or performed. It's testament to The Beatles'
remarkable achievement. Forty years on, the songs retain their charm
and power. And whether A Day in the Life is about serpents, dragons
or an unlucky man that turns into a frog no, an insect is anyone's guess.
There's one last thing to find out: what these children think about
the Beatles after such extended exposure to them. Unfortunately, the
panel's powers of speech have been exhausted. The most I can get out
of them is that The Beatles are "very good". But the following day
Otto's friend Willard, an articulate nine-year-old, comes over. I
play Norwegian Wood, A Day in the Life, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
and Helter Skelter to the boys. After careful consideration, Willard
explains the Beatles' place in society today.
"Now it's all about the pop and the urban," he tells me. "This is the
time for Lady Gaga and Beyoncé. The age of rock has gone, but you can
still put on Helter Skelter for the old geezers and enjoy it.
Actually, The Beatles' songs are much better than the modern songs."
"The Beatles are great," concludes Otto, with the conviction of
someone who knows about these things. "The modern songs are a pile of
dog c**p."
.
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