Walking through the Portal

In the process of watching the remastered and updated Beatles Anthology.

So a few thoughts, mainly for my friend and Beatles aficionado, Brian Hassett.  This is not about the Beatles being amazing, ground-breaking, or culture icons.  It is not even about the music.

In the Anthology, McCartney talks about the film The Girl Can’t Help It, how the opening scene goes from black and white to colour and the impact on the Beatles in terms of music changing.  This was the first time his generation saw performances in colour of Little Richard and Fats Domino, their rock and roll heroes.

My memories at Centriller and Westbrook are mainly in black and white and oddly green.  We had a big yard, lots of trees on our property, there were still farms on the north side of Lakeshore, and across the street, Watson’s apple orchard was still in production.  The streets were lined with large maples.

There are events that still stand out, but were experienced in black and white. I can remember news reports of Sputnik and Alan Shepard being on the rocket into space.  We had come through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but living in Canada at that age, it was remote, maybe you saw it on the headline of your parents’ Globe and Mail or Telegram. There would have been some grainy black and white news report on one of the four or five stations available in Bronte at that time.

In 1963, I was 12, and other than catching a bit of American Bandstand on a Buffalo station, I really don’t remember much music other than things like Telstar, the Twist, and some of the novelty songs like Purple People Eater…oh, and the Chipmunks.

There was the routine of school, playing road hockey, out on our bikes, and skating on a flooded creek on our property and tobogganing on a small hill with my friends.

Like most people, November 22, 1963, was a bright flash of lightning which froze that moment in time, seared into your memory.  Again, this was the disconnectedness of being a kid and living in Canada.  However, our teacher or principal, Mr. Thompson, coming into the class to announce the assassination was unusual; class was the routine of lessons and the landscape the blackboard; but the Principal and his announcement did more than catch our attention.  You knew who Kennedy was, but not much more; there was no who, what, where, why, and how.

Given the magnitude of the event, the next 3 or 4 days left clear memories again in black and white, driven by the constant flow of information and reporting on the television.

A month later, we were approaching Christmas with the hope those things you saw in the almost daily flipping of the pages of the Eaton’s Catalogue were going to end up under the tree.

Top of my list was a transistor radio.  A Japanese radio at that time cost $20-25 and a 9-volt battery around $1.50.  This was a lot of money.  In today’s dollars, that cheap plastic with a few transistors would cost around $250.  That 9-volt battery would be $15-16.00.

On Christmas morning, waking up, unwrapping that present, installing that battery, turning it on, and finding a station was the equivalent of going from black and white to colour.   Your world had changed.  You were no longer confined to your neighbourhood.  You could listen to Toronto and Hamilton’s stations; your world got a little bigger.  At night, particularly when we went to our farm in Sundridge, you could pick up WABC with Cousin Brucie in New York City as the radio signals bounced off the ionosphere, fading in and out.

Your world of music also expanded at an incredible pace as you could access a far larger range of artists and music.  There was the top ten, new songs rising up the charts, pick of the week, and more.  In this new, more colourful world, there was new music from a very far-away place: England and London. A world you maybe saw in an encyclopedia or on a grainy black-and-white TV screen with a reporter standing on Westminster Bridge with Parliament in the background. Quickly, you learned the names of the songs, the groups, and their members.

You learned about the single-coloured CHUM Chart, which in a way provided a map of your music world.

TV was still in black and white, and the early photos of the Beatles were the same and in one dimension. But in your mind, the songs were in colour; they talked about relations, places, things to do from the beach to sidewalk surfing, dating, cars, drag races, and loss.

Then came February 1964 and the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.  Still in black and white, but you saw them move and talk (briefly); suddenly, they were in two dimensions and very, very real.

In the space of these few months, it was like a floodgate had opened; as you moved between CHUM, CKEY, and CKOC, you heard the same top 10, but also new groups, the Dave Clark Five, Moody Blues, Beach Boys, and more.  Your music world was expanding at an incredible pace, and held in your hand on that transistor radio and CHUM Chart.

Being in 1964, old conventional rules were still part of school life.  There was a girls’ door and side to the playground and one for the boys.  At the back of the school, there was a gravel path and then the playground.  In front of the doors, there was a paved area with an imaginary line that separated the girls’ and boys’ sides of the path and playground.  And activities could not have been any more different.  Boys would be running, maybe kicking a soccer ball, and at lunch, a game of scrub baseball.  By the boys’ door, on the pavement, was a bit of a gambling den.  Flipping hockey cards and shooting marbles.  The girls were playing hopscotch and skipping rope.

By spring 1964, this changed.  We brought those transistor radios to school.  The girls and boys would stand respectfully on either side of the imaginary line, radios playing and flipping between the radio stations.  We were sharing music, talking about it, the groups, and what was new we had heard.  For the first time, girls and boys had a truly shared interest, something in common we were on equal ground. There were likes and dislikes; people picked their favourites.

By the early spring, the Eaton’s and Simpsons catalogues would arrive at the door.  At 13-14, while the toys and bikes were still pages to be found, you began to pay more attention to the clothes. Not quite the fashion you saw on the rare photos of your favourite group, but there was colour and some style that didn’t look how your parents dressed.

As the weather grew warmer, recess and lunch were a lot more fun, no boots or heavy coats and mitts.  You may have gotten some new running shoes.  You got to do an Easter egg hunt at home and a chocolate bunny, boxes of fireworks appeared at Allans and Field Day would be held in June.

On the radio, the music world continued to expand, change and become more diverse.  There were even more Beatles records and new groups.  There was one announcement that caught your attention….a Beatles movie, A Hard Day’s Night was coming in June.

Meeting up at the imaginary line between the girls’ and boys’ side by this time was breaking down…part of the change from black and white to colour.  The transistor radios were still playing, but the conversations focused on the movie, getting to downtown to the ODEON on Lakeshore, who was going with who, what day, what show, money for popcorn and more.

A group of us went. I can’t remember all of us, maybe Edith, Joan, Mary Lou, Pete, Bill, Allan—it is a bit of a blur.  I still can remember the ticket office, the candy counter, the smell of that theatre, the feel of the seats, older kids in the balcony and trying to find the right seats.

The theatre was full, everyone talking and an incredible buzz of excitement.  The curtains drew back and the screen flickered to life.  There was the incredible opening cord and on the screen the Beatles running down the street towards you.  The theatre erupted with screams, people standing and it didn’t stop.  While the movie was in black and white it was in a way like stepping through a portal to the future, Alice through the looking glass.

It wasn’t just the music, there was the fashion, the humour and irreverence to authority—a different relationship between youth and adults, there was freedom to do what you wanted to do.  It was breaking free and running around a field and getting into trouble with the police.

Part of the change from black and white to colour and walking through that portal, we did this as a group not just as friends, but all of us as we were entering into teen years at the same time.  The world was changing, it was in our hand on the radio, on the screen.  It was more than the music.  Somehow in this very short period of time all these things came together.  Each one in a way a new colour.

It was a very rare point in time and culture.  Trying to look back, I don’t think I saw anything quite like it in my daughter’s life. Yes, there was fashion and music (Spice Girls and major events (9/11)), but it did not have the new media, tv, radio, and that compressed time and space.

Most importantly, that music revolution combined with a new accessibility never available before and created a foundation which continues to this day.

That transistor radio, 9-volt battery, paper music chart, black and white tv broadcast from New York City, opening cord, and sight of the Beatles running down the street towards you on the screen were the portal to the future.