Mentions The Beatles

Such a lovely story:

Eventually, Miss Parsons tells us about her department’s annual production. It’s called Oakfield’s Got Talent, and she wonders whether James might perform? When I ask him, I get a fervent yes; to reduce the chances of anything unexpected happening, she agrees to the suggestion that I should accompany him on an acoustic guitar.

[…]

I reach for a piece of paper that is serving as a cue card, and James reads it out: “This next song was originally by the Velvet Underground, and it’s called” – he then slows down – “I’m. Waiting. For. The. Man.”

When we play it, James sounds like Mark E Smith from the Fall, barking out the words, and rising to the conclusion of each verse – “Oh, I’m waiting for mah man” – with a loud sense of triumph. A few times, he drifts away from the microphone, and yells the words into the air. We have worked out a procedure for this: I say “Microphone! Microphone!” out of the side of my mouth, and he returns to the right spot.

I don’t know if many of the audience quite understand what they are listening to: a less-than-wholesome song about copping dope in 1960s Manhattan, the grimness of withdrawal, and the rapturous pleasure of yet another hit of heroin. But they like it: we get a second round of applause, and I do that showbiz thing of camply extending my arm in James’s direction. There are a few whoops, and he picks his way down the wooden stairs to the right of us, before taking a seat in the audience.

Ginny and Rosa are there. To us, the meaning of the six minutes James and I have just spent on the stage is pretty obvious. If you are repeatedly told what your child can’t do, it starts to eat at you. Certain words hover over you: “severe”, “profound”, “impairment”. You miss superlatives; whatever successes your child achieves, they don’t tend to feel like the same ones other kids experience. But here is something James can do – brilliantly, fantastically, wonderfully – on the same terms as everyone else. Better still, he loves doing it, and it makes him the centre of attention.

It is a gorgeous summer evening, and everything feels as if it is surrounded by a lovely glow. When we get home, James does not sleep, but I do not mind at all. “I want to do that again,” he says. “I want to do that again!”

The Beatles’ first LP, “Please Please Me,” had been released the previous March, and the single “She Loves You” had come out in August. That summer, the four of them had moved from Liverpool to a hotel in London’s upscale Bloomsbury neighborhood. Screaming girls were fainting at their performances. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” would be released in November, and by December, the Beatles would have released four singles and two albums, all while appearing regularly on the BBC and playing almost 200 concerts in 1963 alone. For the first time in their young lives, the four working-class boys who’d grown up in a bombed-out city had money, and demands on their time were piling up. Needing a break from touring and recording, in September Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr visited Greece. John Lennon and his wife went to Paris. George chose to visit his sister, in Benton, Illinois (pop. 7,000).

His two weeks there, starting on September 16, might have been the last carefree moments of an increasingly hectic, difficult and arguably tragic life. In America, no one knew who George was or cared. He was just Louise Caldwell’s skinny little brother, a 20-year-old with a weird haircut, who said he played the guitar and sang a little, and was gaga for American cars, especially ones with tail fins.