Fab

My Dear Fellow,

Family legend time. My parents' record collection was half-inched. It was loaned out for a party and never came back. Consequently, I grew up listening to the same dozen or so records they'd subsequently bought - over and over. Cat Stevens "Morning Has Broken", "Vincent" by Don McLean, "Song Sung Blue" by Neil Diamond. And this explains why I know all of the words to "Power To All Our Friends" to this day.

Oh also "Wombling Merry Christmas". That was mine. I played it all the time. It didn't have to be Christmas. I'm sure that can't have been annoying.

But in the mid-70's my dad splashed out on a "modern stereo". He immediately hit the shops and bought loads of tapes to play on it. Eight-track tapes. Which didn't fit any hole. 

"Bloody hell," said dad. And went off to exchange them for "The Best of the Shadows" and "All The Hits - By Cliff!" on proper normal Ferric tape.

He also got given loads of taped LPs from his mates. There was a bright green cassette with no listing which turned out to be "Oldies But Goldies" by The Beatles.

My sister pounced on it. I still don't know why. It got played over and over in her room. So it was actually Tups who introduced me to The Beatles and the two of us spent the next few years learning all the words and then being at first perplexed yet fascinated when they turned "weird".

"Oh, it was that bloody Yoko," mum informed us. "She was a very strange woman she was. Lived in a bag. Never washed her knickers. Dirty beggar."

Then John Lennon got shot, and The Beatles were EVERYWHERE. I remember we skipped school to spend the day taping everything so we could listen to it later. Tups' obsession grew. Her wall was covered in smiling moptops. She even joined the "Wings Fun Club" and got a Wings on tour jacket. I didn't though. I mean, come on. There are limits.

Our sixties odyssey started with the Fab Four but we branched out. Tups liked to get out of the house and walk the neighbourhood with a little battery-powered cassette player. I'm not sure what that was about. She was like an alleycat on the prowl, only with an annoying younger brother trailing behind her. We used to listen to Manfred Mann, The Searchers, The Kinks, The Move, The Tremeloes Jimi Hendrix and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

You might think this was a strange combo. You'd be right. It was the Reader's Digest "Superstars of the 60's and 70's" box set. To this day, I blame Reader's Digest for my love of the song "Pretty Flamingo".

Our parents were pretty happy with this state of affairs. I remember they drove us to Blackpool one weekend. Why kids from Scarborough would want to go to Blackpool I don't know, but there it is. It was pishing with rain and we listened to The Kinks Greatest Hits and all of Sergeant Pepper. Looking at the illuminations through windows streaked with rain like our own little psychedelic freak-out experience. 

Of course it couldn't last. We wanted to grow up and you can't rebel with your parent's record collection in your Walkman. Teresa decided to go fluffy blonde like David Coverdale and turned into a rock chick. I started listening to R.E.M. who my mum thought were miserable and whiny. She kind of had a point, but at least it gave me something that I could claim she didn't understand. 

So this weekend's trip to Liverpool, and our night at "Sunny Afternoon" was more than just a family reunion. It was like a memory reunion. In fact, it sort of felt like going home. But it was better than that, because it turns out my nieces love all this music too. I don't know what their associations with these songs are. I assume it's hearing their tapes over and over in the car on the way to school, or maybe Tups lulled them to sleep with "Goodnight" and "I'll Follow The Sun". 

What I'm trying to say is that I couldn't really argue the musical merits of these 60's bands over modern music because I have no taste and no clue. But I do know that music is mainly about memories, even if those memories are of places you never went and a time before you were born.

After all, whether you first heard The Beatles on the radio in 1962, or off a crappy copy of an LP in 1975 we still all share a moment when we first heard The Beatles. It might not be much, The Beatles may not even be your thing, but we can work it out.

El P.