I Feel Fine

I’ve made money, in varying, modest piles, playing four different instruments at one time or another. I never learned to play any of them properly. Funny that; the topic of playing them properly never came up — it was rock music. I’ve been paid to show up and own the instruments occasionally. It ain’t rocket science.

My older brother can play properly. He’s a scholar, and a performer, and a teacher. That’s the correct formulation for any endeavour, by the way: learn, do, teach.

Anyway, I told him, a long time ago, that I wanted to learn to play the guitar. He said fine, and plopped The Compleat Beatles down in front of me. It’s two very heavy books of sheet music of all the Beatles’ songs. It’s in there, he said; just learn it.

I remember how he had painstakingly learned to play Beatles and Stones and assorted pop songs in our parents’ living room by implacably picking up and dropping the needle on the scratchy records and listening to little bits of it over and over and over, and pecking them out on his guitar. And then he would perform them with his friends and get girls mooning over him like a Beatle.

He was eight years older than me, and I got interesting looks from some of my teachers in high school, of the female eight-years-older-than-me variety: You’re Garrett’s brother? He didn’t… ahem — er, mention me, did he?

I got away with murder, I’m tellin’ ya.

Well, he’d figured it all out a long time ago, the hard way, and so could point you right to the right place, right away. And he’s right, of course, the distillation of the american country blues and pop song and the british music hall ballad is all in there. The Beatles dug it all out of there for you.

All that’s left is for you to go and get it.

Lennon flubs the lyrics halfway through. Like it matters.