The Beatles are magic.
Here I sit in one of countless rows of lush red velvet seats, my eyes directly in line with the center of a stage that, although lacks a performer, twinkles with stars. The letter M is emblazoned on every surface like a personal message, calling out my name - “McKenna, McKenna…” I’m counting down the minutes until the clock strikes eight, watching as people of all ages scramble to find their seats, clutching boxes of buttery yellow popcorn and cups sloshing fruity drinks. Finally, the lights dim and the audience roars as a familiar figure takes the stage - Ringo Starr, tiny and silly and barely a hundred feet away from me.
My life has been divided into two sections: before The Beatles and after. The first moment I truly heard their music, it was as if something clicked into place. As if some screw in my brain was tightened and suddenly the world was bursting with color and life. From that moment on, The Beatles carried me through my adolescence and into adulthood. They were by my side as I crossed the stage and received my High School Diploma. They were there as I packed 18 years of my life away and moved it all into a tiny dorm far from everything I’d ever known. And they were there when I dipped into some of the lowest moments of my life, slipping into darkness before packing my bags yet again and returning home.
image: source
In my world, The Beatles have transcended being just a band - they are fantastical beings, almost deities, and I worship the ground they walk on. They are my greatest loves and my biggest inspirations. I plaster their mop-topped faces all over my walls and my clothes, I pick up every cheesy Beatles magazine I see in the grocery store, and I collect every book I can find, even though I already know their story inside and out. There are no other souls in this universe that have affected me in quite the same way as those of The Beatles. I could only imagine what seeing even just one of The Beatles in person could do to me.
I spent almost two years with these tickets in my possession, patiently awaiting the day I’d finally see a Beatle in the flesh. I anticipated some sort of epiphany, some life-changing moment or out-of-body experience where I’d feel one with the music and the universe. I expected this night to become instantly one of the best nights of my entire life, to leave that venue a changed woman. But when the show ended, and I stepped back out into the bustling streets of Philadelphia, my pleather boots splashing into a puddle as rain drizzled from the black sky, I realized I was exactly the same girl I was when I woke up that morning.
I was so sure something fantastic was supposed to happen, something absolutely incredible that would flip my world upside down. I've had a moment like this at nearly every concert I've been to, a moment of sheer elation and other-worldliness, and yet here I was, seeing a Beatle, and nothing happened. Did I do something wrong? Did I miss something? Did I wear the wrong shirt?
Ringo, on the other hand, was vivacious and excited, putting on the show of a lifetime, accompanied by his All Starrs, who seemed infinitely grateful to be there at that moment. Ringo comes alive behind his drums, but even if he’s just sitting on the sidelines, he would be equally as happy to be there. I’ve never seen an 82-year-old with so much energy. I laughed and smiled as I watched him jam with his band, my knee bobbing to the beat as they played every hit song they’d each had, from “I Wanna Be Your Man” to “Free Ride” to “Rosanna.” It was an endless string of musicality and star power. And yet, there was a sadness lurking in the shadowy corners of my mind.
My view of the show! The current All Starr lineup was: Edgar Winter, Warren Hamm, Steve Lukather, Ringo Starr, Hamish Stuart, Gregg Bissonette, and Colin Hay
The show was incredible, but it also served as a reminder that what was once The Beatles now only lives on in memory. It felt like I had plunged into a tub of freezing ice water as I finally recognized that I will never get to experience the magic of The Beatles live. I am instead forced to pick up the scraps they have left behind and string them together, creating my makeshift experience of Beatlemania. I’ve always known this on some level, but it took a performance of “Octopus’ Garden” to really understand.
As those familiar guitar licks rang out, I was overjoyed, filled with elation, before a pit opened in my stomach and I was sent hurtling into blackness. I was sucked out of the moment as I remembered that I’d watched the construction of this song in Get Back. All I could see was that scene, with Ringo sitting at the piano and George standing by his side, strumming his guitar and helping Ringo with the chord progression. Together, they breathed life into the song, building it from the ground up, a beautiful and intimate moment shared between two brothers. Tears welled in my eyes as I thought of sweet George and how I’d never be able to sit in the same room as him as I was doing with Ringo right then.
While I love Ringo, I’ve never felt as emotionally connected to him as I do with George. George Harrison is my hero. He is the standard against which I measure myself, the light I look toward for guidance. I would give anything to tell him how much he means to me, but this can never happen - at least, not in this plane of existence. It’s difficult to relay the feeling of mourning someone you never knew - it’s an empty aching clawing at your heart, a wet sadness with nothing but time to dry it. It’s strange to feel you’ve lost something you never had to begin with, never even existed at the same time as. George passed away on November 29, 2001. I was born on August 9, 2003. I will never experience George in the way that I have now experienced Ringo, and it breaks my heart.
Sitting under a hundred feet away from Ringo, however, was not life-changing. It wasn’t epiphanous or earth-shattering. No light beamed down from the heavens to shine on me. I wallowed in a pit of disappointment, as if the floor had been ripped out from under me. But I have now come to understand that beneath that floor was something all the more stable. Suddenly, I realized that the ordinariness of something I had hoped to be extraordinary was far from a tragedy.
I first had to understand that being relatively unaffected by Ringo’s performance did not erase the power The Beatles had or have over me. It does not erase the joy they have brought me or the lessons they have taught me. If anything, being unchanged by being in the same room as a Beatle is a testament to the sheer power their music has. It reaffirms the idea that you don’t need to see them live to be hugely impacted by them. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on front-row tickets or a time machine to witness them in their glory because it’s all right there in their records, oozing out with every note.
The Beatles are magic. They transcend time and space and enter a plane of their own, creating an entire universe within their songs. Seeing them live is a perk, no doubt, but not a necessity. They are just as powerful and life-changing when heard from the grooves of a record or the speakers in your headphones. So maybe I don’t need to witness George in the flesh for his impact to be solidified. Maybe I don’t need to yearn for what isn’t and can simply accept what is. I caught one live Beatle, but perhaps it’s time to set another free.
The heavens may not have parted and the world may not have stopped turning, but something incredible did happen: I saw a Beatle in the flesh. I danced to his pounding drums and laughed at his jokes, I witnessed Ringo Starr in person, and that is something I would not trade for all the riches in the world.
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