Take a sad song and make it better 2.0

My son as Paul for a sixth grade project: Note the
left-handed guitar. The map shows all the 
places around the world where the Beatles
played.

A friend of mine put up a post on her blog the other day about a misfortune she had encountered and titled it "I should have known better." The minute I read that, I sang, "with a girl like you." the next line of that song in my head and the melody stuck with me for the rest of the day.

As I read down through her post I learned an 11-year-old relative whom she labeled a Beatlemanic, had suggested that title. In a subsequent exchange of comments, she said she was glad younger people were liking the Beatles and they were holding up through the years. I agreed with her and mentioned my own son who had grown up with them and they remain among his favorites.

And, of course a thought train began running through my head until it stopped at a date when the Beatles played a very important role in our lives. At the time, I was involved in contentious custody battle coming out of a divorce with his mother. I had tried to protect him from it as much as I could but I knew it was affecting him. We lived together week on and week off. He was of an age, maybe 9 or 10 when he was discovering music. He was trying just about every instrument around and eventually settled on the guitar which came later. At this time he was using one of those Casio keyboards.

Blues Brothers for Halloween around 2000.

Around that time he also discovered the "Blues Brothers" movie and we must have watched that a dozen times. One night after watching it, he asked me how you play the blues. The best I could come up with was that blues expresses emotions and to play it you have to feel every note deep within yourself and the note has to come out of you. Of course, the next question was what does that mean, feel every note?

That stopped me for a moment. But for once I had an idea when it was needed, not two days later after he went to his mother's house.

Knowing his interest in the Beatles, I suggested we listen to "Hey, Jude."  While we were listening I asked him if he knew what that song was about. There are some pretty obscure lyrics in it, for sure. He shook his head, "no." And I told him Paul McCartney wrote this song for John Lennon's son Julian when John and Julian's mother were going through a divorce. And I told my son maybe he could understand that and feel it considering it was a lot like what he was experiencing. Then I went through it line by line and did my best to explain them and how they spoke to what Julian might have been feeling.

On the cover of the Rolling Stone, 2 extra Beatles.

When I'd finished, we got out the keyboard. That song has a very simple melody and I was able to work it out for him note by note and before long he could play it. We did that often – I wish I had recorded our version of the Star Wars theme song which we also worked out note by note. I don't think we ever got to a really expressive bluesy rendition of "Hey, Jude," but it had served its purpose and I noticed through subsequent years he found solace in music, often with the Beatles.

A few years later we flew to Tacoma, Washington, to see Paul McCartney in concert. just the two of us and just for a weekend. Toward the end of the concert, Paul hit those first notes of "Hey, Jude," and I think we both shivered. I remember putting my arm around my son and I also remember fighting the tears welling up in my eyes as I recalled how important that song had been to us at a moment in our lives.

Listening to it as I write this and I can feel it all over again.  Try it.


Take a sad song and make it better, the first time around