Closed circuit to Michael: Look away!

Here it is, 09/09/09! The Beatles remasters are hitting the streets! This will surely be the biggest day in music-selling history since Guns n' Roses dropped a pair of poops called Use Your Illusion I & II on a unsuspecting public. Can you feel the excitement?

I can't. And I wish I could. Much like when people start driving around honking their horns and shouting about their favorite sports team around the time of the Super Bowl or the World Series, I wish I felt what the fuss was all about. The Fab Four has just never gotten to me, though.

As you can tell, I'm a classic rock fan, and usually anything that carries the whiff of long hair, bong smoke and smoking Marshalls gets an instant thumbs-up from me. Despite having given the Beatles a few chances, though, they've never grabbed me.

The first time I was aware of them as a musical entity was after John Lennon got shot. Then I started hearing about their cultural importance to the Vietnam generation. At the time I was probably surprised to hear that there was once a band more popular than Kiss, since that's what I was hung up on at the time.

By late high school I had fallen into classic rock Never Neverland, and was stuffing my ears with all the music I could find: Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones; Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young, Hendrix, Joplin, The Doors, so I was ripe to be initiated into the world of The Beatles. I rented a long documentary on them, but it didn't convert me like one viewing of The Kids Are Alright had done for me with The Who. I also checked out a book at the library that attempted to document every Beatles gig in history. Reading anecdotes about the boys gathered in the dressing room saying, "We're going to the toppermost of the poppermost, Johnny!" didn't resonate with me, either. I more related to Pete Townshend's quote, "When you hear the Beatles without their voices they're actually pretty lousy."

In high school Rob dubbed Revolver for me, and I do love "Eleanor Rigby." I've often paused to ask myself if I'm just a Father MacKenzie, writing the words to sermons no one will hear, no one comes near (like at this very moment!). "Tomorrow Never Knows" was also a undiscovered goody. Most of the other tunes, though? Nah. Then someone left a cassette of Sgt. Pepper's at my house. "When I'm Sixty-Four" was novel, but I'm afraid it turns to dust in the face of Led Zeppelin I in my book, and I would go further to say Led Zeppelin has actually been more of an influence on rock over the past 30 years, except since Oasis and these bowl haircut alternative bands showed up.

Sgt. Pepper's actually is a great example of why I don't even feel like The Beatles are a rock n' roll band: that's not a rock album! "Love Me Do" is not rock n' roll. "She's Leaving" is not rock n' roll. "Hey Lawdy Mama" from Steppenwolf is rock n' roll, but most of the Beatles catalog sounds like English show tunes or something.

I said look away, Michael!

Later on I bought Let It Be and that sealed it for me. The Beatles were just not going to earn significant shelf space in my CD collection. I traded that disc in and that was that. More recently, though, I've bought the red and blue anthologies just to have the hits, and those are great collections, but I've only listened to them once.

Oh, yeah, and I've seen Imagine at least twice, too.

So I don't feel the fervor, however much I would like to. I'm kinda catching it, though. Maybe when the original CD's get dumped en masse at the used CD store and I can get `em for $5 I'll go get some. Or maybe when I'm 64.