Me and the Beatles
and how they saved my life.

Good evening
I am wanting to share
with you.

I love guitars.
I have one now.  I didn’t then.  I was 12 years old.
I had a Beatle haircut….
I bought my first one after seeing the Beatles
in the Portland Coliseum in August 1965.
Paul, John, George and Ringo.
The first chord twanging loud.
It was “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
That is all I heard of the concert.
The rest was yelling, crying, screaming.
My two brothers also on their seats
standing and crying and screaming at the top
of their lungs.  I was tossing and screaming.
It was Beatle Mania.

It was like a fire spreading almost instantly through the arena
of 20,000 people.  That is all it would hold.
Later that month I bought a guitar, a fake japanese fender
with painted shitty pick ups
and an amp that was home made
and butt ugly.

The family and I went to Seattle the next day.
Dad pulled into the Edge Water Hotel.
A thousand fans blocked the gate and the police
escorted our black 1958 Impala in.
The Beatles were staying there.

What are the odds we would end up there not knowing they were.

I then fell ill.
Double pneumonia.
Had it for 13 weeks.
Stranded at home.
Face bloated
with water and infection.
They had to use a scalpel to drain the fluid out.
Ears jammed up.  Lungs full of liquids.
I could hear nothing.
Only a faint hiss.  My hair long and greasy.
The Doctors said I would die.
What saved my life was drawing pictures of all The Beatles and their equipment.
Vox amps, Georges Gretsch Tennesean guitar, John and his 3 pick up black Rickenbacker
and Ringo and his grey simple 4 drum kit.  Ludwig. and Paul and his famous Hofner violin bass,now titled the Beatle Bass.

30 years later I bought all the gear.  All of it.
Then I made the recording studio I drew.
I recorded all their songs off Rubber Soul.

That saved my life again later.
Creatively speaking.

Next, of course I got to meet a couple of them
when I worked in Los Angeles recording and production in music.
1980.

True Story.

r.w. mcewen
Nov. 9, 2017
When I am 64

Russell Brand
Published on Nov 8, 2017

A reading from a chapter of my book Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions.

Get it here in US: http://tinyurl.com/ydcwz3kd
Australia: https://t.co/Ri1XSonD2X
UK: http://tinyurl.com/ycs8gu6b
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Listen to my Under The Skin podcast here https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/u…
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Another person describing a possible way forward:

Around 9:19 she outlines a four-step approach to difficult conversations.  Well worth thinking about…

(This relates back to my previous post on Daryl Davis, and to Suzanne’s posts on political morality a while back, and, more recently, on the art of listening .)

Thane has said that sometime in the future we will do Translation with sound or music.  Here is something that may be a step in that direction.

“How can a song – written by a perfect stranger – feel as if it were written about you? Composer/artist/producer Claudio explains her art, purpose and technique, and finishes with an exclusive unveiling of her new track: “I was a Rockstar”.

“In her solo live performances, Claudio creates and orchestrates songs with complex layering in real-time using music technology. To her, the art is in making sure both the technology and technique are driven by the heart – and achieve a delicate balance between control and instinct. Rachel Claudio is a Perth-born/European-based artist/composer/singer/producer and university lecturer.

“She works with major labels and composes scores for film and TV. Her live video performances have captured the hearts and minds of millions of viewers.

“This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx”    

Eros was the Greek god of love and sexual desire. Some claim that he was one of the first gods to emerge from primeval Chaos, hatched from the world-egg, and thus is considered to be one of the eldest gods.

They reason that none of the other gods could have been born without Eros.

There are other theories as to his parentage: He is held to be the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, or Aphrodite and Ares, or even Aphrodite and Zeus. A lyrical fancy even holds that he was the son of Iris, goddess of the Rainbow, and Zephyrus, the West Wind.

Here is a fragment from Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths:

“But the Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros, whom some call Phanes, was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion.

Eros was double-sexed and golden-winged and, having four heads, sometimes roared like a bull or a lion, sometimes hissed like a serpent or bleated like a ram. Night, who named him Ericepaius and Protogenus Phaethon, lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in triad: Night, Order and Justice.

Before this cave sat inescapable mother Rhea, playing on a brazen drum, and compelling man’s attention to the oracles of the goddess. Phanes created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe, until her scepter passed to Uranus.”

In more recent mythology, Eros is portrayed as the son of Aphrodite and Ares, and one of the younger deities. He is represented as a playful, winged boy with a bow and arrows. He wounds both gods and men with his unerring and irresistible arrows of desire.

His arrows come in two sets: golden arrows with dove feathers for love, and leaden arrows with owl feathers for indifference.

Eros’ brother is Anteros (“returner of love”) and his wife is the mortal Psyche. The story of Psyche and Eros is found here.

In the Dionysian Mysteries, Eros is the most ancient deity and referred to as protagonus (“the first-born”) who emerged from the cosmic egg of Nyx, the goddess of night. According to the philosopher Plato, Eros is the striving of mankind to the pure, the good, the beautiful.

Eros’ Roman counterpart is Amour/Cupid. His name means “Desire”.

One time, a gang of huge and terrible Giants attacked Mount Olympus, hurling rocks and fire-brands at the palace of the gods from their mountain tops. There were 24 of these Giants, sons of Gaea, Mother Earth.

When one of these Giants, Porphyrion, broke through the Olympians’ defenses and tried to strangle Hera, Eros shot a timely arrow at the monster and wounded him in the liver.

His anger turned to lust and he then attempted to violate the Queen of the Olympians. This so enraged Zeus, seeing his wife about to be molested, that he raced up to Porphyrion and struck him down with a thunderbolt.

When Hera and Athena were trying to figure out how best to assist Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece, they approached Aphrodite for help. The goddess of Love located her mischievous son, who was playing dice with the boy Ganymede, and cheating at that, and instructed him to go to the palace at Colchis.

There, Eros let fly an arrow at the heart of the witch, princess Medea, causing her to fall in love with the hero Jason, and consequently leading to the recovery of the precious Golden Fleece by the Argonauts.

It was also Eros who shot an arrow of love into the heart of the most beautiful mortal woman, Helen, making her instantly fall in love with the Trojan prince Paris. This infatuation led to Paris and Helen running away to Troy, which prompted the infuriated Greeks to begin the Trojan War in retaliation.

(majorolympians.org)

“Progress is the law of life: man is not Man as yet.”

―Robert Browning

November 7, 2017 (wordsmith.org)

To record language is to shoot at a moving target. Language evolves. Words change meanings, sometimes unrecognizable from their origins. Back then (c. 1300), the word “girl” meant a young child of either sex. A “boy” was a male servant.