How many rock bands have achieved immortality? What is it that places them beyond good and evil? It is impressive to see how entire generations, those who were there and those who were not fortunate, stand up in the light of a song, an album or, sometimes, a simple gesture. The fervor towards rock bands becomes as great as that which one has towards a god. Fans have that ability to swear blind faith almost on a par with religious devotees. A Buddhist and a George Harrison fan don't have much different, except for the hair. The word “fanatic” is used in both cases, religious and musical admiration, for one reason: we believe that there is something much greater than us and to that we give our being.
The first time I heard a song by The Beatles was on a cover of Come Together by Michael Jackson. The first time I saw the face of one of the band members was in Say, say, say, by Jackson and Paul McCartney himself. I'd be about seven or eight years old. Thanks to a digital encyclopedia that my dad had bought, one of those CDs that one put on the computer and they were running after installation, but every time it was going to be used, having already installed it, I still had to put the CD on, I could have my first contacts with the history of Rock. I remember taking the mouse and bringing the cursor to the photographs with the faces of the artists and bands. When he clicked, a fragment of one of his most iconic songs began to play. When I clicked on the image of The Beatles, Let It Be sounded.
Just like the first time someone found sense to go to church and pray, my thing with The Beatles was a matter of religiosity, epiphany, high identification. At such a young age, I had no idea what the lyrics of the song said, but the melody was enough for me to give myself completely. She never let go of me again, nor did I let her go. The first full album I listened to was Help! What came next was an attempt to understand everything that had to do with the band and I ended up encountering a tremendous fact, which made my fervor more than intense. John Lennon and I were having birthdays on the same day.
With Let It Be, then, began my pilgrimage. This song, precisely, is celebrating 54 years since it reached number 1 on the Billboard charts in North America. I wasn't born by then, and what a shame. Seeing The Beatles is one of the things I would do, without hesitation, if I had the chance to travel back in time. I would do that, and attend a Queen concert, and go to a Bulls game, with Michael Jordan on the court, and see Ronaldo in the Inter Milan jersey, before his first serious injury, and Millionarios, with my dad, but the Blue Ballet team. Anyway, I'd do so many things. But, back to The Beatles... I spoke to the fan who made, through radio, so many people in Colombia expand our knowledge and fanaticism around the band. He is one of the most educated music journalists to talk about it in our country, and he is also a great guy.
For Manolo Bellón, disc jockey and author of the book The Beatles. The story, the key to Let It Be is to have been a subject of wide connection with fans, so it entailed in its lyrics. In Colombia, at that time, Radio 15 was the youth station par excellence. “There they told us that The Beatles had disintegrated, that the group had ceased to exist. It was very shocking news for fans. Let It Be, in its lyrics, has this air of farewell, of letting it be. The impact of knowing that those guys we had grown up with, who we had grown up with, weren't going to make more music together, was really hard and ended up, for obvious reasons, getting everyone to listen to that song a lot of times. I was already working on radio at the time. One was guided by the charts that came from Billboard magazine and as the songs went up, they could receive more and more dissemination. But what generated the impact of that possible separation was something intense. Not only on Radio 15, but also on Radio Tequendama, which was his direct competence, the one that Gonzalo Ayala directed.”
I ask him about the first encounters of The Beatles' music with Colombian music lovers: “There was no other way to find out about things except from what the newspapers published and what was heard on the radio. I remember very clearly when, in April 1964, the band's first songs started playing on the radio: I want to hold your hand, She loves you and all the discography that began to arrive over the years. The impact it caused on us, as young people, was in those guitars that sounded loud while they sang songs of love. Immediately, we found something that we identified with. It was the harshest expression of adolescent love.”
How is it that one becomes a worshiper of these subjects, of their music? I have my theories, but Manolo has his own. We talked about how this music ends up changing the lives of people like us and how, in some way, they become our reason for life. In this regard, Manolo tells me: “When I started working on radio, which I did it out of love for the microphone, because of the need to communicate, I didn't expect to find this wonderful music. In the 60s, when I stood in front of the microphone of Radio 15, after having previously listened to those melodies, I understood that I had fallen in love. That's what happened. I fell in love. But that love had already been confirmed before, when I started listening to them. All I've done in my career is communicate my passion for The Beatles. Thank God that there have been people who have been enthusiastic about what I have done.”
It is 54 years since that first time that Let It Be occupied the first Billboard charts, and 54 years have passed since those golden times that will no longer be seen again. We have his music left, that will always be there. You just have to let it be and that's it. Decades will pass and someone will talk about the 64, the 74, the 84 years that have passed, and it will continue to be talked with the same intensity, because this band is one of those who achieved immortality. His music will be eternal, like our fervor.
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