Come Together

I'm listening to "Abbey Road" on YouTube - more than 50 years after it was released. Why?

This is a question that's been plaguing me for some time. It's not just this Beatles' album, I've rediscovered their "White Album" which when I bought it in my second year of university I thought was a Judas like betrayal. I heard it recently - admittedly in bed after a glass or two of wine - I thought it was tremendous.

Why 50 years on am I listening to and rediscovering this music? The impulses that drove me in 1968/9, in a bed sit in Willesden Green have long died. The terror of lectures on numerical analysis, or the boredom of the physics lab where I was so out of my depths are gone. Now the only terror is death and I take comfort from knowing that Paul McCartney is nearer the drop off zone.

Look, it's not just the Beatles that drag me back: it's from 1961 when I discovered sexual stirrings, no more than that, and Buddy Holly. A school mate called Colin lived on a large council estate at the back of our school. One day after school we went back to his house. Mum was preparing dinner and we slipped upstairs into his bedroom - to listen to Buddy Holly. The flood gates opened. No longer did I listen to "Uncle Mac" and "Children's Favourite"; now I was hard core and listening to Radio Luxembourg exposed to all that degenerative American music.

The question still hangs. Why now? Why am I spending more and more time on You Tube digging into my musical detritus? I've no real explanation except this.

As I age I feel an increasing sense of freedom, of thought, of emotion. Rather than age dragging me down, it's liberated me. I write all the time. I love the word on the page, I love the sense of life in my limbs, the sense of this wonderful world out there. I suppose retirement can bring that about - no fucking job responsibilities, not having to put on an act or face. No swallowing the bile you feel and for me a secure pension - so important. 

And a partner, my wife, with whom I feel secure and loved so I can sink into my memories and think so fondly of those four mop heads who provided me with the sound track of my youth - at least until Bowie came on the scene.