Fab Foundations # 2: "In the Beginning”

(Personal reflections inspired by Beatles songs)

Song: “Michelle”
Album: Rubber Soul
Release Date: December 1965

One of the unique peculiarities of my extended family is that there is not a single descendant of “Flower Power” age (which I equate to being in your collegiate years during the late 60s – early 70s).  This is particularly striking to me, because my extended family is very large.  My paternal grandparents had 5 children and my maternal grandparents had 12.  Between the two there were over 70 grandchildren. My Mom was one of the youngest in her large family, which rounded out in the early 1940’s (my Dad’s family was a bit older).  My oldest cousins are not much older than I, born in the mid to late 50s. This leaves a gap of about 12 years or so, within which that Flower Power (aka Age of Aquarius) generation was born. 

And so, in terms of family, my parents had no strong ties to the counter-culture movement.  This can also be said for their taste in music. Neither my Mom or Dad gave much thought to the fledgling years of Rock and Roll. Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis were not on their radar.  My Dad loves classical music, particularly Mozart.  He’s also big into symphony orchestras.  My Mom grew up to musicals and other sing-alongs from the 30s and 40s, which her family would emulate around their piano. Their music, along with wholesome early-70s soft-rock radio play (“Summer Breeze”, “A Horse with No Name”, “Precious and Few” etc.) was what I was exposed to in my pre-teen years.

Which makes it kinda fascinating to me that my parents would introduce Beatles music into our home (see Fab Foundations # 1) around the time of my adolescence. Simply reading my first 2 paragraphs here, you would think this to be a big leap for them.  But my parents are not the type you can shoehorn into a class or category of culture. They can be flexible and adaptable because they are grounded in faith, hope and love, which has had a rather significant influence on me.

The other piece of that puzzle, however, was that the Beatles and their Rock & Roll contemporaries were beginning to prove by that time (early 70s) that they were not going away any time soon.  Their music had staying power, which continues to be proven to this day.  Anything with staying power eventually makes its way across generational divides.  There is a strong corollary to my parents’ story here. The Beatles and a handful of their contemporaries (several of whom I’ve already written about in this blog) are also adaptable, and they also are grounded in faith, hope, and love. 

My adolescence also coincided with the family move to 17 Park Road, Franklin Massachusetts, an old Victorian house with a sprawling porch wrapped around it, nestled on a hill near the center of town.  Before moving there from a few blocks away, the entire house had to be gutted, remodeled, and painted.  I did not think of it as home until about six months in.  Not soon after, it became everyone’s home; friends, cousins, neighbors.  My parents still live there.  Not long ago, an older cousin who had moved to Texas after college, was back East visiting family and arrived at 17 Park Road for a Christmas party.  As we talked, he mentioned what a wonderful home it was.  I realized at that moment that the house was new to his eyes.  I stared at him somewhat incredulously: “You mean to tell me you’ve never been here before?  Everyone-and-their-brother has been to this house!”. 

Yeah, that about sums up the vibes of 17 Park Road. 

Being about twice the size of our prior home, there was space to get away from the hustle and bustle of family life if you wanted.  I am the oldest of six, and so this was a welcome commodity.  One place to escape was the living room/dining room space, which was often closed off in the winter, seeing as Dad, in protest of OPEC oil prices, shut off the radiator heat and went full bore with wood stoves (my brothers and I got very good at chopping wood in those years).  The family record player was in that living room in the early Park Road years (my soon to be Santa-delivered record player had not arrived yet… but that’s a story for another time), along with my parent’s album collection, which by that time included the Beatles “Red Album” (1962-1966). Ignoring the chilly air, I’d close myself off in that space and listen, read the album sleeve, and listen some more.

The first song I really locked into was “Michelle”.  I suppose it could then be said that “Michelle” is the foundation for this blog site.  Why “Michelle”?  Well, it so happened that I was infatuated with a girl named Michelle at that time.  However, there was way more to it than that.  This song was sophisticated…. the melody, the lyrics (half in French), the instrumentation, everything.  It put me in a different world.  I was no longer just sitting in the family living room.  I was connecting to something much bigger and broader. I had the distinct sense that I was tapping into a universal sensation.  My innocent, insular world was beginning to break apart. 

“Michelle” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoBLi5eE-wY ) paved the path for far deeper dives into the Beatles (and others) catalog in the years to come.  It’s primarily a Paul McCartney song (John Lennon contributed to the bridge) which has had me thinking these past months – as I prepped for this series – that McCartney played a vital role for many of us Beatles fans as a bridge to the great beyond of Lennon, Dylan, Townshend, Young, Reed, Richards, Davies, Waters, and others.  Breaking out of innocent, insular lives was not going to be done by diving into the deep end.  That would have been too much of a quantum mental leap.  No, a process was needed, and McCartney guided us in.

This past Thursday and Friday, I spent, appropriately, in the French-speaking city of Montreal, Quebec, with my daughter Charlotte, who is getting her master’s in biology at McGill University and needed to initiate an Environmental Policy course before continuing the course and her field research in Panama this coming semester.  The two of us left home in Pepperell, Massachusetts at 3 am, drove up through New Hampshire and Vermont on a beautiful moonlit nite, and watched the sunrise over Lake Champlain as we island hopped our way to the Northeast corner of New York (Rouses Point), and the Canadian border.  I dropped Charlotte off at her class on the MacDonald Campus, and not long after, checked into the funky little AirBnB we stayed at on the western corner of the island of Montreal. 

I was too exhausted to write…. but not to listen.  I queued up “Michelle” on the laptop.  The music resonated through that charming, immaculate, French-suburban home ("Michelle, Ma belle").  I was alone with my thoughts which brought me back to those solitary evenings in the living room of 17 Park Road.  A then and now moment of sorts.  Oh, what has transpired since!  It’s the stuff that hundreds of Music and Memory blog entries could be written about.

- Pete