with the beatles

I started to listen to The Beatles  pretty much when the pirating cassettes labels in Indonesia (in my case : Aquarius) reissuing their own compilation following the death of John Lennon in the 1980. My journey into Beatles catalogue pretty much followed what Aquarius issued.

I started with the pop-py songs like Hard Day's Night and later to more "serious" tunes like Strawberry field Forever. I was amazed by the range of their musical style. I had no access to any literature about The Beatles so I had to guess and appreciated little that I knew about them. 

Of course I learned how to finger pick their songs too. Aquarius included lyric and chords in the cassettes that really helped me. I also bought a special issue of song books and cassette from a (cassette pirating) company called AR. I am sure my guitar skill was much improved by learning Beatles songs.

I learned my first French lesson from The Beatles's Michelle.  

My Michelle

Michelle, ma belle

Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble

Tres bien ensemble

Many years later (around 1996) I learned that Paul said the word bien the way it is spoken by people from southern part of French. Of course back then I had no clue, it was all French to me

To me the coolest of George's melody was in the tune of 'till there was you. I didn't know that it was a cover version. I was not able to play it until I saw how it was done on YouTube. Listening to the original version would convince listeners how brilliant were the Beatles 

One puzzle that remained a mystery to me until the internet is around was which Beatle played solo on In the end. The solos begin approximately 53 seconds into the song. It turned out that all the three guitarists. McCartney, George Harrison and Lennon perform a rotating sequence of three, two-bar guitar solos. What a fantastic solos they all did. In fact in this song we have the only Starr drum solo even though he disliked solos.

In the end is also special as it ends with a deep cosmic philosophical line

And in the end

The love you take

Is equal to the love you make