Performer: The Beatles
Songwriters: John Lennon, Paul McCartney
Original Release: Penny Lane single, Magical Mystery Tour
Year: 1967
Definitive Version: none
As I mentioned, after
opening my eyes to Yellow Submarine, my aunt Nan gave me all of her scratchy
Beatles 45s (although, truth be told, they might have not been hers, just ones
that she me on my own). I was quite familiar with Penny Lane and its
far-more-psychedelic B side.
When my baby-blue Decca
Phone suitcase record player was in its glory, we lived in Columbus a short
walk from the Upper Arlington suburb where Dad had grown up and obviously
aspired to return as soon as he had the wherewithal to do so.
Our house on Norway Drive
was small but cool. We had a huge yard, front and back, that had a small
stream—Cranbrook—dividing the front. It was a three-bedroom ranch house, and my
bedroom was on the far left front of the building. I had a window to the front
yard and one to the side, and a closet with sliding doors in the back.
Dad, who was (and is) and
excellent carpenter, built the desk, dresser drawers (bright red, blue and gray
on white-painted wood) and toy box that lined two of the walls. My single bed
was in the corner. It was a pretty cool room, and that’s where I’d play my
records from the record player that was next to the closet along the wall
opposite of my bed and a bit behind the door to the hallway.
I had a pretty good
collection of 45s for a kid in kindergarten who didn’t have older siblings. I
suppose my aunt Nan was helpful in that regard, but it wasn’t just from her.
Dad had played guitar in a college rock band, and even though he wasn’t exactly
into cutting-edge stuff—Pinball Wizard aside—he at least gave me a few things that
went beyond Disney movie soundtrack albums.
Aside from the
aforementioned Beatles 45s, I had The Monkees’ Pleasant Valley Sunday and Last
Train to Clarksville, Snoopy vs. The Red Baron by The Royal Guardsmen and The
Tra La La Song by The Banana Splits, which was my favorite TV show back then.
That might seem normal for a kid in the late Sixties, early Seventies, but I
also had Amos Moses by Jerry Reed and Roger Miller’s Dang Me, dang me, they
oughta take a rope an’ hang me, high from the highest treeeeee-yee, woman would
you weep for me? Classify those under WTH.
I spun those 45s—most of
which I still have—to death during the day, while I played with my Hot Wheels
or my plastic dinosaurs, which came later, or my baseball cards, which came
later still, on my woven choo-choo train rug.
I always liked this song, at
least the first 90 percent of it, anyway. It wasn’t featured in Yellow
Submarine, of course, but it certainly fit in with other music that was.
But the backward-masking
stuff at the end flipped me out. (And this was before I knew the whole
Paul-Is-Dead story, where John in disembodied voice supposedly says “I buried
Paul” but really says “cranberry sauce.”) To this little boy, it sounded like a
group of Arabian bandits charging through the desert. (Listen to it now and
tell me you can’t hear that.)
At night, when it was time
for bed, Mom or Dad would put on what I called My Pretty Music to lull me to
sleep. It was like a cross between Montavanni and the Ray Coniff Singers. I
created images in my head based on each tune, and each tune corresponded with a
color in the rainbow. I almost never made it to the blue or purple song before
falling asleep.
When Mom died two years ago,
I went through almost every one of her records, desperate to try and find My
Pretty Music, but I had no success. I seemed to recall trying the same thing
years before only to find the album had been lost. To this day, I couldn’t tell
you the name of the album, but I still can hear almost every tune in my head.
No Arabian bandit music there.
Because I don’t know who did
it, it’s music I almost certainly never will hear again in my life, and a part
of me weeps for that.
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