Mukilteo Musings

Larry King Live

No, I am not going to write about Paris. I do not particularly like Larry King. In fact, I have a hard time watching him because to me he looks like a skeleton and skull with skin stretched over---kind of like the mummy at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe on the Seattle waterfront.

However, last night I watched Larry King Live with my two children and I could have watched it for another hour. It was some of the most enjoyable television I have seen since "Dancing With The Stars" finished. Larry's guests were Paul and Ringo, the two surviving Beatles along with Yoko Ono, John's widow, and Olivia, George's widow. They were celebrating the one year anniversary of a Cirque du Soleil performance in Las Vegas incorporating Beatles music.



There they were together, Paul and Ringo, talking and joking about the amazing impact they had on the world. During the commercials, I was discussing with my kids how huge all of it was back in the day and how nothing has come along in 40 years to equal it. I do not think it is possible these days with our scattered and schizophrenic media. Back in 1964, people had only owned TV's for about five years and everybody watched the same shows. On Sunday night we all gathered around the television to watch Ed Sullivan. These four attractive and charismatic young men in their twenties with long hair and with music like we had never heard before blasted into history at exactly the right moment by appearing on that show.

Every single pre-teen and teenage girl in the entire country saw them and could not get enough. At school we could not talk about anything else. I was completely smitten at age 11 and I have loved them ever since. Even by the time I was in high school, we were still dancing to Beatles songs at our dances. "Hey Jude!".....mmmm.......sigh. The Beatles changed with us. As we became disillusioned with race relations and Vietnam and grew our hair even longer, so did they. Single after single became the number one song in the nation. At one point, the top ten songs were all Beatles. It was just incredible.

Ringo made the statement or understatement, actually, last night that he expected folks his age to recognize their music. But, he found it shocking that young people know the music, too. My children were surprised to hear him say such a thing because they know the songs and the words even more than I do. I still can picture my father saying to me they would never last. In his opinion, it was just a little teeny fad. Dad, that was more than forty years ago and your grandchildren sing and play their music. You were right about a lot of things but you were so wrong about the Beatles!

I have promised myself I would live my entire life without going to Las Vegas which represents pretty much everything I abhor. I am thinking I just might break the promise in order to see the Cirque du Soleil performance.

I guess I can forgive Larry King for tonight's interview because last night was just wonderful.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/27/beatles/index.html