MALLINation

A proper video game for real Beatles nerds might go something like this:

Level One:

You have to successfully play for 8 hours straight for bored German lechers who just want to see the naked girls at the Reeperbahn in Berlin’s red light district circa 1961.

Level Two:

Successfully dress in outfits that most give off a “rough trade” vibe while simultaneously thrilling crowds at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in order to attract the attention of closeted record shop impresario Brain Epstein. Remember he has to be besotted enough to neglect his family business and manage you full time!

Level Three:

Paradoxically one of the hardest levels – keep from getting sacked as The Beatles drummer a la Pete Best on the eve of their first recording session.

…and so on. Of course the new Beatles edition of the popular game Rock Band has a sanitized fantasy version of the Beatles ascent free of band acrimony, romance managerial or otherwise, and a chronology that makes the aforementioned Beatles nerds wince as the final level is a version of the concert on the roof of Abbey Road studios during the Let It Be sessions (which everybody knows happened before they even recorded their last album, Abbey Road).

Of course how marketable or fun would a game be if the last level was pitting your lawyers against the other players to decide what terms the band’s partnership would be dissolved on?

More to the point, the game is a hoot for fans and newbies alike. It’s easy to play but hard enough if you set the levels properly, and it does give a renewed wonder and awe for the intricacies of their arrangements and the awesomeness of their talents.

For those preferring a more old fashioned evaluation of the Fab Four there are also the remastered albums available separately or in recession busting stereo and mono box sets. The sound is revelatory – the rhythm section re-emerges as an underrated marvel first, then the gorgeous inventiveness of George’s guitar playing and finally the singular nature of John’s voice and Paul’s amazing vocal range and the harmonies they all made together.

A friend of mine wrote me via Facebook in response to a message I’d posted there about the power of hearing George’s perfect guitar solo on “Nowhere Man” revealed in all it’s glory, the final note shimmering and clear. He wondered if it was wrong that he’d never paid attention to the Beatles and owned none of their albums despite being a music fan.

It reminded me of a girl I once dated who was also very passionate about music but had more than a blind spot for the Beatles – she disliked them. I was fairly outraged by this – disliking the Beatles is like saying you’d prefer no oxygen please, or that chocolate tasted like dog crap.

I think what happens with the Beatles is a resistance based on the fact that you are supposed to like them. When you are told that they are the greatest band in the world I think it’s easy to get the sense that there is nothing to hear in them that already hasn’t been heard and if so many people like them, how can they possibly be that good?

The answer is that there is no one Beatles but many – many styles, songs, and four distinct personalities that allow very different sensibilities to connect to them. I watched a snippet of a documentary the other night on Cirque Du Soleil‘s Vegas Beatles extravaganza Love in which Yoko took the troupe to task for their staging of “Come Together.” Her insistence was that they had missed the message of it being a political song.

Watching it I thought “Shit Yoko, you missed the message, it’s not political at all!” In fact, Lennon has said that the song is actually based on a dream he had about his own funeral and everyone “coming together” to view the body – “over me” as it were. This is especially chilling when you know that the weird echoey plosive whisper that sounds like “shooptuh”  throughout the song is actually Lennon murmuring “shoot me.”

Really though neither of us is wrong in our wildly divergent experience of the song, nor was the Cirque Du Soleil in viewing it in an orgiastic manner (come together indeed.) The songs are elastic enough to contain many layers of meaning from “Please Please Me” which is seen in some circles as a  coded ode to mutual oral sex to “Back in The U.S.S.R.” which some Nixonites took as a bald-faced declaration of  support for the Soviets (“I’m backing the U.S.S.R.” to their paranoid eardrums)  rather than a tongue in cheek goof on The Beach Boys clean cut celebrations of Americana.

Perhaps the most poignant part of the renewed focus on the Beatles this year is that the album, the format they raised to the level of ultimate artistic musical expression, has been diminished in relevance to pre-Sgt. Pepper‘s levels. I pass no judgment on this – their singles were as magnificent as anything they did and the rise of MP3′s and downloading has given me more access to new music than ever before – perhaps too much more.

It’s fitting then that they also stand at the cusp of a new era – with a game. They may not be the first to have done so but simply in taking the plunge the boys from Liverpool once again prove their power to legitimize and popularize a format. I expect a Rock Band:  Rolling Stones in..oh…6 months?