My grandson learns to dig the Beatles
I had a very close relationship with my maternal grandfather, Harry Levine. He emigrated to the United States more than 100 years ago, escaping the endless pogroms of Belarus.
He married my nana Betty, another Belarusian Jew, his bookkeeper when he started his business, Steinway Electrical Supply Company: I have the announcement welcoming him to the Queens, NY, Chamber of Commerce in 1921. My father married Harry and Betty’s oldest daughter Phyllis, circa 1948, and I was born a year later. My father joined the family business, so I spent much of my young life at Steinway Electric, and we would come for dinner in Astoria a few times a week, and sleepover on Saturday nights.
At dinner I used to love to sit next to Papa, especially once I entered my troubled early adolescence. He would always give me a draw of his cigarette, a puff of his pipe, a sip of his beer or his highball. Sometimes there would be Champale, a hybrid of malt liquor and sparkling wine that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. I always got a buzz: nicotine and alcohol, what 11-year-old wouldn't? I was happy, which I wasn't when home with my parents and younger brother. In other words, he taught me how to smoke and drink, and cope. He also made breakfast on Sunday mornings, so was my role model as a man who cooks.
I became sober in May, 2010. In July 2024, I became a grandfather for the first time to Ezra, the son of my daughter Liz and her husband Aaron. After a very few months Ezra and I established a bond that even surpasses that of me and my Papa. He also calls me Papa. He lives close by, he sleeps over often, and spends the day when mama and/or his dad has to go to the office. When he's not here, he picks up Liz's phone and says, "Papa," which means he wants to FaceTime, and we do.
I don't regret not being able to teach Ezra to smoke and drink; he's a little young for that, anyway. But there are other important traditions to pass down: reading and music. At 18 months, he has a keen mind, is verbal without fully speaking yet (but knows a lot of words and understands everything that is said to him), and by the time you read this, he will likely be walking.
Also: Ezra digs the Beatles.
This is not accidental. I thought it was my duty as a grandfather to turn him on to something essential and substantial, that would give him some sense of the shared musical culture of our era. That through-line is still The Beatles. The opening gambit was a no-brainer: "Yellow Submarine," animated, on You Tube.
I decided he was ready as his "Sesame Street" musical tastes got more sophisticated. "Sesame Street" is a wonderful source of music for children, especially guest stars who adapt their hits for the show, like Ezra's first crush, Norah Jones. There's a cool Adam Sandler segment of him plucking a guitar trying to make up a song that rhymes with "Elmo," the current male star and Ezra's favorite Beatle...I mean, Sesame Street character. The oldie "Do De Rubber Duck," the 1996 reggae version featuring Ernie in the bathtub with other Muppets, an anxious Bert outside wondering what's going on, is another. Destiny's Child, featuring a younger Beyoncé, smile as broad and radiant as Diana Ross, show Elmo, Grover, and Zoe "A New Way to Walk."
For months his favorite has been the guest star-studded "Monster in the Mirror," Grover's greatest hit, featuring everyone from Robin Williams to Glenn Close, PBS news hour anchors, Ray Charles, the Simpsons, and a dozen more. Ezra would refer to this song as "wubba" or "woo-woo," for its chorus of "wubba wubba wubba wubba-woo-woo-woo."
But he's a little bored by all the repetition, so when he says, "woo-woo" it means he wants to hear his favorite song now. Until last week, it was "Yellow Submarine." His musical interests evolve quickly.
We have a piano, and Ezra has shown an intuitive grasp of musical dynamics: he starts by pounding keys, then repeats what sound to him like chords. Then he plays more softly. He'll knock the wood front of the piano, a few taps, for rhythm breaks, occasionally clap his hands twice for more rhythm, and return to the keys as he plays his own variation on Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso." Figuratively, but not far off.
When I was 11 or so I'd bang on my grandparents' piano and immediately give everyone a headache, so I'd go to the den for a time out; I'd look at the fire escape from the fourth floor window and contemplate suicide, making a great leap. Maybe I could bounce up, like my sneakers had Flubber, from The Absent-Minded Professor, (1961). The only records they had were 78 rpm discs of Chopin, who I insisted on calling "choppin'." Choppin' didn't interest me.
There is so much Beatles stuff on YouTube, including the beautifully animated version of "Yellow Submarine." Ringo, who sings it, is Ezra's first Beatle right now, because he also sings "Octopus' Garden," which is on YouTube in a very badly-animated version, with angular drawings of each Beatle that don't quite look like them. There are also some non-Beatles videos on our You Tube playlist, including lots of Elvis tunes, and a kids' favorite from Australia, "Do the Propeller" by the Wiggles, which Ezra is loving.
There are many black and white videos, such as the Beatles' lip-synching "Twist and Shout" in front of a sedate audience (probably German or Dutch TV; continental teenagers were so well-behaved), as well as "She Loves You" with the screamers on The Ed Sullivan Show. Ezra likes the beat of "Twist & Shout": When he's able to walk, it's only a matter of time until he dances to it. I have yet to do the Isley Brothers' test, but I have a feeling he'll always prefer the Beatles cover.
The video of "Hello Goodbye" also features the Beatles' in their Pepperland costumes; hula dancers, because the Beatles' wanted hula dancers, I guess, come out and shake their hula booties during that song's coda. You can see John Lennon making eye contact with his dancer, as if to say, "stick around, come backstage as soon as the cameras are off and you can take off that lei."
There's a video of the mania surrounding the Beatles' at Shea Stadium in New York, accompanied by the studio version of "Eight Days a Week." It's taken a little time for Ezra to warm-up to the title song of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and its segue to "A Little Help From My Friends." Since this is Ringo's friendly familiar voice, I'm sure he'll get into the latter. The problems with these and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" is that there is no motion in the video, just the "Pepper" album cover on the screen.
After "Yellow Submarine," there were a number of color videos of the Beatles romping around, early examples of sometimes sullen, sometimes psychedelic, music video. In these, the Beatles' are dressed in their colorful, anachronistic/nostalgic to adults "Sergeant Pepper" outfits. And wouldn't you know, Ezra loves these. The post-Pepper-but-still-weird one that has most captivated his imagination is "Strawberry Fields Forever."
The key to the video of "Strawberry Fields Forever" is explained in a story in Ultimate Classic Rock magazine online. The key line, sung by Lennon, is "No one, I think, is in my tree." There is an upright piano, already sodden with paint, on the grass, and a mess of wires stretching up into a tree branch. At first I thought it was a really archaic mellotron, but no: It is the long of stretches of piano wire made into a web of sorts on the branch of the tree. Better not tell Ezra what's inside the guts of that piano; he'll do what the Beatles did and tear it apart.
He even likes the long instrumental coda. A few days ago when he was cranky, I tried a few other videos first, but when "Strawberry Fields Forever" came on, he gave me a nod and a smile, as if to say, "this is the song, Papa, this is the song!"
I didn't have the same advantage when I was younger, when my grandparents on Saturday night would settle in for the "champagne" music of Lawrence Welk. But that was OK: I was already buzzed on my papa's Champale. Ezra might have liked Welk too, because "champagne music" meant bubble machines, and Ezra's first word was "bubbles."
This article originally appeared in Wayne Robins’ Substack and is used here by permission. Wayne’s Words columnist Wayne Robins teaches at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and writes the Critical Conditions Substack:
https://waynerobins.substack.com/.
Header image: The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album cover, containing "Strawberry Fields Forever."
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