The first time I ever heard the Beatles album, "Let It Be" was in 1970 when it was just released. I was 13 years old.
It's no distinction but I was at the time a long-time Beatles fan. So many millions, if not BILLIONS, of people have come to love the music of The Beatles since they appeared in the 1960s that saying you like them is like saying you like water. But at the time, it was different, it was MAGICAL.
When each album was released you were ready, you ran down to the record store and bought the LP as soon as you could.
But I was on vacation in Pittsburgh, PA, near where my mom grew up, in the cool city apartment of my cool single uncle whom we called "Timer" for obscure family reasons. It was...cool.
He lived in this area of Pittsburgh, a city I never knew well since I was only there as a kid, in a cool apartment on a very steep street on a hill, overlooking the "Three Rivers" that intersect there. Timer seemed to me to be kind of a Jay Gatsby smooth East Coast preppie, never burdened by a wife or girlfriend so he seemed especially cool and free. I didn't realize until years later that he was gay. The signs were all there but it wasn't talked about then as it is now. Sadly, Timer died young of brain cancer. This was way before AIDS.
I remember my eyes alighting on the album like a precious jewel, when I saw it it seemed to blot out everything else in my field of vision. Almost tremulously I asked if I could listen to it, and Timer said, "Sure!", and he put the LP on his hi-fi for me, a nice one with FULL STEREO, and he gave me HEADPHONES to listen to it. I remember sitting there with a feeling of disbelief at my own good fortune. Nobody else in the world had anything better.
I don't really remember listening to the specific songs and yet I somehow remember listening to all of them. I remember the awe I felt as each new one came on, "Let It Be" had a certain sophistication, refinement and spirituality to it that were mesmerizing.
I mean, just think of it: listening to something like "Let It Be", immediately after it was released, it was like being anointed. I was completely free of 44 full years of gummy, complicated context. It didn't compare to ANYTHING. It came out, and gently, and with sublime dignity, it created its own dimension to float in.
There is a certain pleasure to that that is beyond expression.
I remembering the sun streaming in through his windows and watching the glittering dust particles float lazily as I listened. I was really too young to realize what a perfect moment it was, but it felt like time had just opened up, and everything was just there all around me, and there was no notion in my head that I didn't have everything in that moment. No anticipation except for the music, no need, no discomfort or worry, I could have been hanging upside down by my ankles and I would have just hung there, a sense of eternal completeness occupied every part of my mind and body.
All thoughts of what had been and what was to come were silenced as I sat in quiet delight listening to "Across the Universe". I'm going to type some of the well-known lyrics now not because I think anybody wants to read them, but just because I want to FEEL it.
Words are flowing out like endless
Rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the Universe.
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy
Are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me.
Oh my God! Please forget you read anything before the lyrics started; they capture much better than I could the exact way I felt then.
Except the part about the dust sparkling in the sun beams. That magnified the whole experience immensely by simply, eloquently mirroring the feeling of the lyrics.
It was...again...magical. Just...
Magical.
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