🍏 here they are, THE BEATLES!

a bumper issue with Mara of Maraviglia!

Sgt Pepper’s Happy Hearts Club Band

I say, HELLO!

This week I’m back with another bumper issue with a friend of mine, Mara!

Mara writes an excellent newsletter called Maraviglia, which is centered around her life as an American in Italy, and, quite frankly, is a HUGE amount of reading material for your inbox every week. It’s juicy. Subscribe here!

Today we’re talkin’ ‘bout everyone’s favourite band (you cannot argue this), The Beatles! I wanted Mara to jump on this issue because she literally has a tattoo of the Fab Four on her arm.

This is a special bumper issue, much like the Steely Dan issue. In this edition, we’ve got:

• mini-essays

• clippings from the FIRST EVER BEATLES FANZINES

• AND we each do a cover of a Beatles song!

Dear sir or madam, will you read our book newsletter?

It took us years a week to write, will you take a look?

✨ I Me Mine, by Mara

I think we all know by now that loving a band is more than just loving their songs or their style. It’s more than thinking they put on a good show, or have good hair, or have music videos that we could watch over and over.

If it were just about that, would we really get their lyrics tattooed on our bodies to ensure that the music makes its way through our whole lives with us? 

Would we really dedicate our time to reading about these bands and trying to understand why their messages touched us, in the same way that some people dedicate time to theology majors?

Having a favorite band is like having a religion. It has the power to weave itself into your very essence and shape and mold who you are, how you dress, where you go, and who your friends are, all with the common denominator of keeping the feeling of the music close and not letting it out of your sight.

For me, this spiritual experience happened when I was first introduced to the Beatles. 

I, like everyone else, don’t truly remember the first time I “discovered” the Beatles. They’re so engrained in our culture. In my tiny brain, they seemed like just another 60s band that resembled a glittery, psychedelic mushroom.

Growing up in America’s southern “Bible Belt”, I was always a little horrified that some people likened The Beatles to the antichrist, because of things like this John Lennon quote:

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.”

Flash forward to when I was 16, and my grandma got me tickets to a Beatles tribute show. I remember being a little angry because my mom made me cancel my prior plans to go with her. I didn’t expect much at all. But there was something that can only be described as a guiding force that got me to be at that cheesy cover show on that humid Memphis Friday evening. Because the music… The music changed my life.

Not that the band was even that great, but I heard the lyrics and the melodies and the harmonies and it was like an invitation to something bigger. I ran up to get as close to the front of the stage as I could with the same gusto as one of the American girls who cheered for the Beatles years and years prior during their performance on the Ed Sullivan show. All to be a little closer to the sounds and stories that were being translated on that stage. If they were messengers, I was part of the congregation. I was converted. I couldn’t stop smiling. I couldn’t stop dancing, my bubblegum pink bangs plastered to my forehead.

When I went home, I downloaded the first ever Beatles’ album, Please Please Me, and CIAO. They swept me away. I became a Beatlemaniac (for 10 years, that was my Instagram bio). I watched their movies. I titled my debut album Muscle Soles (like Rubber Soul, but I recorded it in Muscle Shoals and wore a very specific pair of rubber-soled shoes that I felt like Paul McCartney would approve of while recording). I moved to London. I studied their songbooks like hymn books. I watched interview after interview after interview— all with the goal of wanting to be closer to that feeling their music brought me. Their genius. I don't know why this band has affected me in a way that is so profound, but almost like finding religion, I feel lucky to have experienced such a phenomenon. It feels like something that was made just for me.

And I think that is one of the most beautiful things about songwriting and bands like The Beatles. Even when their music was made for the masses, 60 years later, it would still have an impact on a 16-year-old awkward Italian-American girl from Memphis, Tennessee and feel like it was written for her.

Just like stories that give you something to believe in, you listen with intent. You let them guide you through life. And they become a part of who you are.

Here is a picture of 16-year-old Mara and her friend that they photoshopped so they could be in a pic with Paul McCartney. Beautifully unhinged levels of fangirling here, 10/10, who hasn’t done this in their lives, honestly? Please tell us about your weirdly photoshopped teenage portraits.

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💿 Something for Everyone, by Olivia

I’ve spent over 10 years working in hospitality. Ice cream shops, five-star bakeries, and run-you-off-your-feet restaurants. But the best job by far was in a cafe at a rehearsal space. Theatre companies came in and out, spending weeks at a time with us before taking their shows on tour or to the West End. Like any hospo job, it had its gruelling moments, and sometimes my heart would break as I’d wash dishes for the fiftieth time that week while I saw excited people my age traipsing back to the rehearsal studio with their lattes.

But the wonderful moments outweighed the existential crises by the dishwasher. I loved the peace and quiet of walking into the empty cafe at 7:30am all bleary-eyed, and putting on the music for the day. Sometimes it would be a ‘coffee-shop hipster mix’ of Kurt Vile and Bon Iver, sometimes it would be a throwback with Police and The Cure, and some days, when I just wanted to feel happy, I put on The Beatles.

The best thing about putting on The Beatles is that nobody can resist singing along. You’d get customers coming in, ordering their flat whites or americanos and then they’d stand there, idly murmuring along to “From Me To You.” Everyone had this touchstone of Beatles lyrics – we all knew them, we all loved them.

One day I was having a “Beatles day” and some actors came in for their coffee break. I started talking to a couple of them about the band and the Peter Jackson documentary which had just been released. We compared favourite Beatles songs (I’ve always had a soft spot for their earlier ones which are poppy and punchy), and then one of the actors, an older man called Guy, asked me if I’d ever heard the remixed album for Cirque du Soleil. I had, but I like it when people are excited to tell me about something, so I let him explain how George Martin and his son Giles worked together, taking recorded stems from the entire Beatles catalogue to alchemise an album which brought their songs together in an entirely new way. I remember hearing the Love album when we’d bought it for a car trip when I was younger and I adored it.

Two days later Guy approached me. He told me he’d burned the album onto a USB, which he placed in my hand. I thanked him so much for this gift – even though I’d listened to it already, there was something special about someone taking the time to burn the songs for you, hand them over, and tell you to listen to them.

I went home that day and sat on my bed, and listened to the first breaths of ‘Because,’ which opens the album. The songs melted into each other, and soon I had listened to the whole album in one sitting. It’d been a while since I’d done that. I never got to thank Guy again for the gift, as his company left for tech rehearsals the next day.

My boyfriend and I swapped mix CDs on our second date. Four years on, I still have them sitting on my shelf in my bedroom, one called “Happy Happy Happy” and the other, “Sad Sad Sad.” It’s weird because 2019 isn’t that long ago, but now my laptop doesn’t even have a disc drive anymore. I feel like the physical act of sharing music has died away with streaming and playlists. The CD is nearly as defunct as the cassette.

So when someone goes to the length of burning you an album, it becomes more than just a collection of songs. It doesn’t matter if you’ve heard them before. Someone wants you to hear something as they hear it, and to have the joy of knowing that they gave you this experience.

This little exchange reminded me that music is a gift that keeps on giving. The Beatles are a gift that keeps on giving, and they’re a gift we are so eager to share with each other. They always felt like a group that everyone was tethered to, in some way. So when I listen to The Beatles, I listen with everyone.

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✩°｡🎧✮ COVER SONGS ✩°｡🎧✮

“I Will” by Mara

Guys. GUYS. Mara is an incredible singer, every song she touches is just beautiful and this song is no different.

“You Like Me Too Much” by Olivia

I wanted to choose something fun and recognisable but ended up doing a cover of a stalkery song off the ‘Help!’ album, because it got stuck in my head.

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📻 The Beatles Book

For this article I really wanted to have a look at some old Beatles memorabilia, so I popped in to the British Library and found these gems, The Beatles Book: the official Beatles fanzine from the band’s early days.

It really shows how people haven’t changed over the years. Fans are still fans, and have all the rabid fervour of slathering dogs at a barbecue. Just take a few excerpts from the fan letters:

A keen fan of swimming eh? Riiiiiiight. I’m so glad someone was concerned enough to enquire about the buoyancy of the Beatles. Just as an aside, I’m a keen fan of being sweaty and suntanned and throwing heavy objects, and an even keener fan of Lee Pace.

I can’t begin to explain how K-Pop stan coded this is.

Pant leg! Pant leg! Pant leg!

This one is my favourite because A) she falls over her own dog and B) she has to gulp a glass of milk to ‘revive’ herself. Milk was all there was for gulpin’ in the 60’s!

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🎙 Comments Corner… answer below!

1. Which band gives you (or gave you) ‘Beatlemania’ feelings? Like, who are you falling over your dog and gulping milk for?

2. Would you gulp an entire glass of milk or does this repulse you?

3. You’re making a mixtape for autumn. What are the first three tracks?

4. Fav Beatles song?

5. What’s a band that someone you love introduced you to?

🖼 Say Goodbye, and Hello!

Subscribe to Mara’s newsletter, Maraviglia for more about life as an American in Italy, as well as recs for books, podcasts, movies and recipes:

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