#92 "Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles

I always have a few Beatles posters on the walls of my classroom, which I much prefer to the dorky educational Parts-of-Speech ads a lot of my colleagues display. I take great pride when people occasionally say, "This looks nothing like a classroom. It looks more like... a college dorm!" I have nothing around me but music posters, movie posters, and pictures of artwork that I admire. I figure if this is going to be the place where I have to spend a lot of my time, I might as well make it a place I like being. As a result, my love of The Beatles is no secret.

When George Harrison died a few years ago, there were tons of students who came by to talk to me about it. I remember this one kid who showed up the morning after to see if I'd heard the news and how I was doing. We talked for a while and I tried to explain to him what it felt like. I was sad because George Harrison seemed like a pretty good guy. He wasn't some jackass gangsta rapper shooting his mouth off all the time who ended up getting gunned down in the street. He wasn't some angry screamer spewing hate and violence in his lyrics. From all accounts, George Harrison was a good person. He sang a lot about love, peace, and a transcendental state of mind. He stood up for causes too, and is credited with staging the first all-star benefit concert when he put together the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. That was one of the main reasons I was sad. It's not that I knew George Harrison. It's just a bummer when the world loses one of the good ones.

I also tried to explain to this kid that I felt like I'd lost one of the giants of my childhood, and that was a hard thing to put my head around. The Beatles were such big figures in my memories of growing up. I can't tell you how many times we listened to their songs, looked at their pictures, and pretended to be them. I wouldn't say they were necessarily my heroes, but they were these sort of larger-than-life figures that I admired, along with other entertainers, athletes, and public figures of that time. I'll feel the same way when Gil Gerard dies. He was Buck Rogers on Thursday nights, the one night a week I was allowed to stay up until 9:00 to watch his show. I'll feel the same when Dexter Manley dies, the Redskins' defensive end who was almost a living cartoon character. When you're a kid and you see these people on tv or in the newspaper, they almost don't seem real. And then one day, they end up getting old and dieing just like everybody else. It's a sobering reality and when I've experienced it a few times over the years, it's like discovering that Houdini really couldn't escape from all of those ropes and chains. He just hid the keys in his mouth and resorted to other slight-of-hand maneuvers. The world seems a little less magical.

I know when The Beatles broke up there were people weeping in the streets, but if there's anything great that came out of it it's that George Harrison came into his own. For years he'd been the little brother of the band... the guy who nobody really listened to. He was the guy who seemed to hate being a Beatle more than any of the others and the one who blossomed the most when they were done with. "Here Comes the Sun" was apparently written when George was tiring of the business end of being a rock star. He was weary of the "long, cold, lonely winter" and looking forward to "spring" coming. It has always been one of my favorite Beatles' songs. It's a real toss up between this and "Don't Let Me Down" for my #1.

One curious little fact about this song: In 1977, Carl Sagan spear-headed a movement to put the sounds of Earth into space. A collection of recordings from all over the world was included in a Voyager satellite and was supposed to represent the history of humanity for any extra-terrestrial lifeforms who came upon it. Many things made it onto this record, from many different forms of "hello" to the sounds of a variety of earth animals. Also included were quintessential musical compositions, from the work of Mozart to Bach to Stravinsky to even Chuck Berry's "Johnny B Goode." Apparently there was a movement to include "Here Comes the Sun" as well, but contractual issues with EMI prevented its inclusion.

"Here Comes the Sun" is from the album "Abbey Road." To hear the song, click on the icon in the widget jukebox along the side of the blog.