Theoretically, there should be no wrong way to appreciate the Beatles 50 years after they landed in America.
Mitch Albom pushes that theory to its limits -- maybe beyond -- by opening his Sunday column with a third-paragraph slap at Free Press readers too young to have experienced Beatlemania and presumably too unsophisticated to get "why the Beatles actually are worth commemorating."
Let me explain why. . . . Let’s start with this: Fifty years later, their music is still better than today’s. . . .
Their song construction, their melody lines, their harmonies, their lyrics, their inventiveness, their breakthrough use of symphonic instruments . . . combine to make the seven years the Beatles recorded together the richest production of pop music ever created by a group.
Ever.
Mitch Albom plays keyboards with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of writers who raise money for charity.
Message to "the young people," as 62-year-old Ed Sullivan called them when he introduced the Fab Four a half-century ago today: Close your eyes and he'll diss you.
Mitch, who was a 5 1/2-year-old in Passaic, N.J., that historic Sunday, recalls reconstructs that "you barely could hear the Beatles for all the screaming girls."
You see, young person, what the Beatles did was take their influences — Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Elvis — and morph them all into their own early sound. . . .
So we’re not crazy, young person, not foolishly nostalgic, nor lost in the past. We were just blessed to have a truly great musical band to soundtrack our younger years, one that is not embarrassing to listen to today.
Yes, he goes there: Albom uses "embarrassing" in closing a column more than a few online commentators say is just that.
Let's hear from the chorus on social media and under the Free Press commentary:
- Susan Steele: Mitch is becoming a cranky "old" man. The other day on the radio he was waxing nostalgic about Johnny Carson. Carson was great. The Beatles were great. BUT there is still great music today and there are still great late night hosts today.
- Joel Kurth: This just in: Someone thinks the music they listened to as a kid is better than the claptrap kids are filling their ears with nowadays.
- Donna Givens Williams: This article is trite, culturally dismissive and arrogant. Why compete with your kids? Your music will NEVER move them like their own. . . . People have different tastes, music affects them differently and bands have different styles. My Dad would not consider the Beatles a band, not when compared to the Duke and Count Basie.
- Ryan Healy: The Beatles made phenomenal music, but children today aren't born with built-in time machines. I was raised with what I was raised with, which was alternative.
- Robert Decker: Whatever works for you is all that really matters.
- Nathan Ouellette: Your taste in music is purely your own. What gives you goosebumps may simply sound "ok" to another. What touches someone's soul may sound like noise to you. . . . There are surely musical equivalents to the Beatles for every generation thus far spanning across all genres. . . . Enjoy what you love and keep it in perspective.
- Susan Whitall: Macca would never dismiss newer music. . . . I've always liked music from before "my time," and music from after. I've never understood why it has to be a generational thing.
