The Essentials

I was around 16 years old when I first met the Beatles. Of course we'd been acquaintances all my life - as a character asserts in the film Sliding Doors, they may as well be called the Fetals since it seems we come out of the womb knowing their music. Just from listening to oldies radio with my parents in the car I probably knew more of their songs than most other bands. I had seen parts of the anthologies on TV (when the ABC network redubbed itself A-Beatles-C) and admired their disembodied heads on the cover of my mom's beloved Meet the Beatles album and learned "Hey Jude" on the keyboard and even bought their greatest hits CDs, which taught me the rough trajectory of their musical journey.

But I didn't know them, truly know them, until I went to Best Buy with a mission: I wanted a complete Beatles album, to see what the fuss was really about. I chose two of their last ones, the "White" album and Abbey Road. I've always read the ends of books before the beginnings to see if the trip will be worthwhile; perhaps my choices in albums reflected a similar impulse. I went home and put Abbey Road in the CD player beside my bed and turned off the lights and had a listen. The first half of the album was good, filled with some songs I already knew from the radio ("Come Together," "Here Comes the Sun"), some playful absurdities like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Octopus' Garden," and some truly dark stuff like "I Want You (She's So Heavy)."

But then the plaintive piano chords of "You Never Give Me Your Money" began, and as the b-side medley played on, one song spilling into the next, I remember thinking to myself, "I didn't know music could be this good." Then and ever after, the Beatles became to me the best that music can be - the paragon in everything they touched, the most affecting, the most revolutionary, the most essential.

It's been many years since the shine of first love wore off, and while I've always carried my Beatley affection with me, it's been awhile since I've revisited their whole catalog. But I happened on Bob Spitz's new "definitive" biography of the band at the library the other day, and I've been consumed with it ever since. I'm 200 pages in and we've only just invented the name "The Beatles" (spelled Beatals originally), while Ringo is nowhere close to being in the picture, but it's great fun to read about genius in its infancy. The book is an amazing account of their early days, well-researched and absorbingly told, and reading it is rather like watching planets slowly align: getting their first guitars, Paul and John meeting at the church fete, little George showing off his amazing technique for the older boys.

As I've been reading, I've been listening to the albums, working my way through in no particular order. I just arrived at the best first song on a first album I know of - "I Saw Her Standing There." There's Paul's great count in, the "one, two, three, FOUR!" that immediately ushers you into their rip-roaring act as if they were jamming away right in front of you. And then the great lines that whisk you into their circle, make them and you in cahoots: "Well, she was just seventeen / You know what I mean." Then the "oohs" and the harmonies and the joyous trills and the handclaps and then it's over before they've let you come down, all the trademarks of the great early songs. All that greatness, and it's just the first song.

Revisiting the Beatles' music and biographies reminds me of why they are still so important nearly half a century after they began. I think it's because their music embraces the negative capability that Keats attributed to Shakespeare and all great artists; it still has an air of mystery and uncertainty about it. How can four unassuming lads from Liverpool become the most important musicians of the 20th century? How can their music affect people in such a personal and yet globe-spanning way? How can simple notes strung into a melody inspire veneration, evoke sentiment, and penetrate to the core of a 16-year-old girl lying in bed, just having a listen? Within the mystery lies the greatness.