We all remember those moments when a work of art opened our eyes and ears. Those “I didn’t know you could do that!” moments fill us with an uncontainable, restless excitement to respond in some way with a creative outpouring of our own, only we don’t yet have the words to express what we’ve encountered.
I felt that way when I first heard The Beatles’ “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” on my mother’s record player in the late 1970s. It was wicked, enigmatic, mesmerizing — a taste of adulthood’s forbidden knowledge. Since I still don’t understand the lyrics, it holds much of the same magic for me today.
My mother was a snob about popular music, for the most part. The Beatles were the only rock ‘n’ roll group she would tolerate among her LPs of Tchaikovsky and Broadway musicals. This made me a social outcast in middle school until I acquired my own portable radio in 1983, on which I listened secretly to Prince singing “Raspberry Beret”. Perhaps that’s why it took me until last year to figure out that “Octopus’s Garden” was a metaphor for the female anatomy.
This week, fans commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ American TV debut on the Ed Sullivan show. That makes me feel old, but this song makes me feel like a rebellious teenager all over again.