Here Comes the Sun – A Story of Love, Heat and Short Shorts at the Abbey Road Beatles Fest
By: Brad Linzy
When the illustrious Editor of the CCO contacted me to cover the Abbey Road on the River Beatles Festival in Louisville, I pounced at the opportunity. In spite of being born less than three years before John Lennon’s tragic murder in 1980, (DAMN YOU, CHAPMAN!), I consider myself an avid Beatles fan, albeit one who couldn’t care less who was really the Walrus, or about Paul’s lack of footwear, or whether he is, indeed, dead. Although the Queen can and does periodically bestow posthumous knighthoods, corpses, they have found, do very little in the event of an actual invasion, unless you’re talking about catapulting them over the castle walls to spread disease….but I digress.
I must admit, no amount of fanaticism could account for soldiering on in the Saturday daytime conditions with which I was presented. Having been several years since I’ve covered such an event in the Ohio Valley summer sun, I can surely be excused the faux pas of wearing long, blue jeans in 95 degree Kentucky heat. The local idiom “it’s hot, Don†doesn’t really cut it here. A more accurate expression might have been, “the Ohio River is nearing boiling point, Don!†or “is it me, or is the sun becoming a Supernova, Don?†Either way, Don wouldn’t have heard you because he would have been too busy talking to the hallucinations resulting from his heat stroke. Never before had “Here Comes the Sun†taken on such a hellish, sinister meaning.
My first order of business upon reaching a nice, sweltering shady spot was to take a sharp knife and cut those blue jeans down to size… Unfortunately, in my zealotry, I cut them a good four inches too short, and in conjunction with the calf high socks I had on underneath, the resulting fashion statement was…well, parade worthy, to say the least. It had something of an Officer Dangle a la Reno 911 element to it. I was one knotted t-shirt away from looking like a character from a Damon Wayans skit. “It’s ok,†I thought. “At least I still have my rainbow-colored press bracelet.â€
Still, it amazes me the number of people who will turn out on such a day to an event. I’m sure even if the news said a comet was about to hit earth, you would still have some hillbillies (likely family members of mine) setting up a tailgate party to watch it. To Louisville’s credit, at least their riverfront has a smattering of green grass and a few trees to absorb some of the blazing rays, a lesson Evansville would do well to replicate on its own riverfront, which is for all intents and purposes just a giant slab of heat-trapping concrete.
Also to the credit of organizers, the Festival was split up into multiple stages, most of which had at least some shaded areas close by, and there seemed to be just the right amount of venders with reasonably priced bottled water. A quick count on my part revealed no less than three large stages, a small acoustic lawn pavilion, a poolside pavilion, and another indoors pavilion inside the Galt House Hotel. Direct access to the Galt House pool was a particularly nice touch on this day. But as nice as a dip in those beckoning waters sounded to me at the time, and in spite of being now properly attired in my Dangle shorts, I had also brought with me my 24-pack abs, which is really not something that all those innocent women and children needed to see, so it was back to watching the bands.
Never in my life have I seen so many Rickenbackers, Hofners, and Gretsch guitars in one place. And how does one go about finding a Paul McCartney lookalike, who also happens to play bass guitar, and also happens to SOUND like Paul McCartney, AND is left-handed to boot? In what weird science periodical was that advertisement placed? And what cloning service filled the order?
The bands were of varying abilities and ages, but they all were enjoyable. I did hear an inordinate number of “Paperback Writer†and “Come Together†reprisals, while I was clearly screaming out demands of “Happiness is a Warm Gun†and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),†but other than that I spent most of my time musing about which era of Beatles outfit would be the coolest in this heat. You definitely don’t want to be the early Ed Sullivan era Beatles with the black suits. That’s just suicide. And you really don’t want to be the early 70s Beatles with the white suits either. While white is cooler than black, at that time they also had massive, woodsman-type beards which would definitely itch and retain heat on the face. I settled on the beardless Beatles in India with the white togas and flower wreaths around their necks. Strangely, I didn’t see any Beatle lookalikes from that era. Most were jamming in black suits with pant legs intact…ouch.
Thankfully, around 7:00pm the sun sank behind a building and instantly the heat receded by at least10-15 degrees. A collective sigh of relief went up from the crowd, and it was just in time for the pièce de résistance, a live 90-minute reproduction of the George Martin produced “Love†album, performed by no less than four different bands, including a horn section, a string section, and jumbotron projections of psychedelic imagery in the background. If The Beatles had all lived til today and decided to do a reunion/farewell tour, I imagine this is very much what it might have looked and sounded like…and it was amazing! What a testament to the lasting power of The Beatles’ music that in a venue of these many thousands of people, ranging in age from 0-100, scarcely a soul could resist tapping a foot, bobbing a head, dancing, and singing along.
In this time of political and economic uncertainty, I probably saw more genuine smiles in that one place than I’ve seen in quite a while, and the reason is simple – these four blokes from Liverpool, England wrote some of the greatest music of all time, and festivals like this are as close as most of us are ever going to get to seeing them perform live. Unless you own a Delorean with a flux capacitor, the time for seeing The Beatles perform their music is gone. But anywhere good musicians can get together, The Beatles’ music can still be made and enjoyed. They won’t be suppressed by bad economies or hellish weather. Their music can be recreated by a couple kids with guitars or a hundred piece orchestra. It sets as well in a bar or backing up Cirque du Soleil. It is music for all people from all walks of life, and I suspect as long as Louisville chooses to put this event on, people will come, because every year brings a new crop of young people waiting to become Beatles fans.
Heading to my car on the way back from the event I saw an elderly couple kissing one another the way they probably hadn’t kissed in ages. A little further I saw people exiting the KFC Yum Center having just infected their minds willingly with Nickelback. And inside my car, I threw on a Beatles CD and listened, rather ironically, to “I’ll Follow the Sunâ€.
