Rambling about the Beatles & When I'm 64 . . .

Paul McCartney composed this whimsical love song when he was sixteen years old. Eight years later "64" would become an unexpected hit and take its place in the most significant album in the history of 60's rock and roll.

I refer, of course, to the song, "When I'm 64," and the album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. "When I'm 64" was released in 1966 as the B-side of the juke-box single, featuring "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."  In 1967 it was placed on the Sergeant Peppers album.

Everyone back then loved the Beatles. They were a sensation that even they couldn't explain. At first it was all fun, a fusion of Buddy Holly, Elvis, Carl Perkins, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry and Little Richard by a British guitar-playing quartet and hits like "Twist and Shout."

Then something happened and art imitated and abetted the changing world.*

In 1965, the Beatles produced the transitional album Rubber Soul, the first album where John, Paul, George and Ringo had complete control of the music, and, where the Beatles produced songs like "Norwegian Wood." "Twist and Shout" it wasn't. A year or so later, the Beatles went "all in" with Sergeant Peppers. Everything about it was different from the iconic album cover, to the full orchestra, to songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and with it rock and roll had the permanent imprint of the psychedelic age. Fifteen million albums were sold worldwide. It was a tidal wave.

The White Album followed in 1968, a double album set, and so also the beginning of the end of that short-lived musical era. The despair of John Lennon, and to a lesser degree the other members, permeates the album in songs like "I'm So Tired," "Revolution 1," and "Revolution 9." Notwithstanding, some of their best music is found in the White Album: Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and McCartney's "Blackbird."  (Sidebar: Now,  fifty years later,  the Musak version of "You Say You Want a Revolution" plays in continuous loop on elevators across America, leading me to think that Lennon's despair was not so misguided.)

Abbey Road and Let it Be, released in 1969 and my favorite albums, were the final albums for the Beatles and with few exceptions for 60's music in general. By the time you get to Led Zeppelin and "Stairway to Heaven" in 1971 it's over. Indeed, many of its luminaries were gone: Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin come to mind, and the Beatles as a band were no more.

Many of us who came of age in 60's were formed in some way by the music of the Beatles. I was 15 when the song "When I'm 64" was released on Sergeant Peppers.

I'm 64 today.

-------------------------

*Sorry for the gross simplification but you try to explain the 60's in a sentence or two.

.

.

Rest in Peace, Merle Haggard

More Summer Talk: 50 years of the Cape May - Lewes Ferry

Yesterday (1964)

Today

The Cape May-Lewes Ferry celebrates 50 years of service this year. That's fifty years moving passengers and vehicles across the Delaware Bay from Cape May, New Jersey  to Lewes, Delaware and back. By my calculation that puts the start date at 1964. I started riding the ferry in 1965. I was thirteen.

The 1964 ferry was a bulky boat made of thick sheet metal, half-dollar sized rivets, layers of paint, chipped off paint and rust and driven by a diesel engine that you felt and heard and that shot a plume of black smoke into the summer sky (top picture). What kid could resist it?

The highlight of a ferry ride for me in 1964, besides the joy of being at almost-open sea, was watching that big old thing dock. It was there that the ship's size and weight was appreciated. Under the captains guidance, the ship slowly drifted sideways until its metal bumper guard met the dozens of telephone-pole pilings driven into the sea bottom. The pilings bent under the mass of ship as it creaked along the wood towards the landing.

Today, ferry-goers ride in tonier ships (color photo) and docking is as smooth as silk. The old telephone poles have been replaced with neatly grouped pilings with smooth plasticized cushions. Hardly as much fun but I still watch it dock when I ride the ferry.

My most vivid memory of Cape May-Lewes ferry travel was one summer day in 1965 when my buddy Billy Velvel and I hitchhiked the five or so miles from our home in Rehoboth Beach to Lewes, purchased round trip tickets for a quarter, and then hitchhiked from Cape May up the Jersey coast to Wildwood. It's very likely that neither of us had any more money than the cost of the ferry ride and that both of us were shoeless.

I mention that because on this particular trip the hitchhiking failed us on our return to Cape May and that last ferry ride home to Lewes.  We ran, hitchhiked, and ran some more hoping and praying that we we didn't miss the boat. There would be hell to pay with my parents if we did because a) they didn't know we were across the bay in New Jersey, and b) mom or dad would have to make the four hour drive around the bay to pick us up.  And then there was the problem of knowing how we could even call them. Failure to make the return trip was certain death for me. (See image below)

Thankfully, we made it with just a couple minutes to spare.

I get to the beach these days once or twice a year to visit family and to enjoy all that is enjoyable about the eastern shore. And more often than not, I stop by and visit the ferry and every couple of years I take the trip from Lewes to Cape May and back. I'm never, ever disappointed.

Except at the end because the trip is over, and because I still want to see the old, fat ferry crunch the old, creaky telephone poles.
.
.