It would not be entirely accurate to say I was first in line at the music store.
I was not first in line, because, technically, there was no line.
It was just me.
I was there to purchase the new Beatles album, which was released yesterday. These were words -- new Beatles album -- I never expected to say again in that order. The last new Beatles album to hit the stores was "Let It Be" in 1970, and the boys had already broken up by then, meaning Linda McCartney would soon be allowed to play keyboard in public.
As any historian who has studied that era will tell you, that's when things really started to go bad.
The Beatles' breakup was one of the two cataclysmic world events of my formative years. The other, of course, came when Sandy Koufax retired.
But now, unaccountably, all these years later, there is a new Beatles album (I love writing those words). It has caused some excitement.
And, in fact, there are long lines in Britain, where, I believe, the Beatles hailed from. There are no riots there, though. There are no 14-year-old girls in the throes of a kind of ecstasy that, looking back on it, might be unseemly for anyone who is not Madonna.
The Beatles are back. Beatlemania, well, that's another story.
"It's just me?" I said to the guy behind the music-store counter.
My face must have betrayed some injury because he was kind enough to say, "Well, we have gotten a lot of calls. In fact, we've gotten more calls about the Beatles than we have about the new Pearl Jam."
The double-CD (I still want to say record) will probably go to No. 1. I mean, if the Eagles' warmed-over compilation of their career is No. 1, anything can top the charts. The suppliers shipped 1.4 million new Beatles albums to the U.S., where I bought mine on sale for $23.99, which isn't bad for 56 songs -- 36 of them never officially released.
Of course, it isn't actually new Beatles. John is still dead after all. Tomorrow is the 14th anniversary of his assassination -- the night when the music really died.
If you want an idea of what John means to me, one day my friend Tony and I were trying to pick out a single most important influence in our lives. We both decided on John Lennon, which sounds right if you're, say, in college. Unfortunately, we had this discussion three years ago.
After listening to this new album, I haven't changed my mind. This is the early Beatles. This is the Beatles as a rock band, not as a studio group or even as a phenomenon bigger than, as John once said, Jesus himself. These were the Beatles who changed the world.
They're live, in the years 1962-65, playing on the BBC, British radio, which is why the album is called "Live at the BBC." Much of the stuff is from 1963, in other words, before the British invasion. Before the Maharishi. Way before Yoko. Back when the lads actually liked each other.
The songs were discovered in the BBC archives in 1981 -- a find some compared to the unearthing of King Tut's tomb -- but the Beatles were in no rush to release them. The delay had something to do with having high standards for their work. Standards, of course, go only so far. When they did release this album, they also included a chance to buy Official Beatles Merchandise. Oh, well.
The album begins with the band introducing itself. "I'm Ringo, I play drums. I'm Paul, I play bass. I'm George, I play guitar. I'm John, and I also play guitar -- and sometimes the fool."
Then comes the music. It's bar-band music. It's John covering Chuck Berry songs. It's Paul covering Little Richard. It's the music they grew up with.
Mostly, it's loud and it's fun, the way rock was before Bobby Vinton came along. It's the Beatles doing the Everly Brothers and the Beatles doing Elvis and the Beatles doing Carl Perkins. John even covers an Ann-Margret song (really). It's "Johnny B. Goode" and "I Got a Woman" and "That's All Right (Mama)" and "Young Blood." There's plenty of early Beatles, too.
Apparently, there is still talk of really new Beatles songs, in a new Beatles project. There can be no Beatles without John, of course. As I might have mentioned before, there can be no group called "Most of the Beatles."
This album has all of the Beatles in all their original glory. What more in life could anybody reasonably hope for than to hear the stuff they sang when she was just 17? You know what I mean.