“I Want To Hold Your Hand”!

THE QUESTION

You know it’s interesting that the current writing contest, to which this particular little piece of writing is submitted herein, is on the subject of songs and their impact on someone’s life. I have to admit that I’ve often wondered about that.

Although there have been, of course, many songs exacting their influence on me over the stretch of my sixty some years of honey-gazed glory - ahem -, all of them having their impact on me in so many ways, there is definitely one song that defined me for the rest of my life. Well, at any rate, it certainly defined how I would relate to music forever after that moment. Let me tell you about it a little bit more.

1964

The year was 1964 and I was sitting in the back seat of my brother’s car. I was six years old and my oldest brother was driving his used but beautiful 1959 Toxedo black and silver Chevrolet Impala with superb red leather interior. It was the same car in which he had driven me around previously and each time I drove in it, I felt special. On this day of Spring 1964, things were about to become extra special!

You see up until that day, as a little French Canadian boy in Montreal, the songs I had heard were mainly of the country and western flair. I remember the songs played in the house from time to time. I mean I didn’t feel anything extra special you know, but I remember enjoying it. It was just something good that happened on occasion at home, as opposed to the regular rather dark ongoings that I had started noticing.

However I do remember a few “sing-alongs” in the living room of our Montreal home with that kind of music playing and it was fine, if you see what I mean.

NEW VIBRATION

On that day however as my brother drove and I sat on the back seat of his beautiful car, an incredible sound overpowered me. I can only describe it as a magical moment where everything I’d heard before suddenly seemed washed over by this new vibration or sound that I had never experienced before. That sound was the sound of four voices singing the words “I want to hold your hand“!

It was amplified over some sort of a sound mix of other noises, of which I had no idea, an array of instruments and a broad echo-like sound which blasted my ears and simply overtook my mind and senses. I could not stay still and I started singing along in the back seat without knowing the words! I was suddenly immersed into a new sound, a new vibration! It was The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, a new sound taking over the airways!

Now dear reader, I ask you to please consider that as a boy I had yet to learn a single word of English at that point! I therefore had no idea what the words meant. But the feeling inside of me that was born from hearing those four voices singing together along with the instruments that made the beat and the rhythm definitely created something new in me!

It created a whole new reality around me. I tell you it was almost as if I could taste the red leather in the car, smell the echo in my head and see the notes of the music playing in my ears. It truly was a magical experience and one that I have never forgotten ever since!

WITH THE BEATLES

In fact as I am writing these lines and as I further reflect on this moment I have to wonder if it wasn’t perhaps the start of a friendship or relationship with the Beatles. Indeed, deeper introspective thoughts bring me to conclude that it was perhaps the start of a friendship-like relationship, almost little-to-big-brother relationship within me with John Lennon, the leader of the group.

“How could that be?”, one has to wonder! After all, It’s not as if I knew the man personally, I mean I had no idea! I certainly had no premonition that I was about to suffer through my childhood and that he would help me through his songs! Of that I had no idea at that point, but I was to find that out in due course.

I didn’t yet know that the hearts and souls of adults could be abominably dark and dysfunctional. I’d seen their hurtful behaviour between themselves, but I was still unaware of the depth of their ugliness. I still trusted them.

On that wonderful sunny afternoon driving in my brothers car, I was forever transformed by the Beatles’ “I want to hold your hand“ and it would always stay with me. Each time the song would play after that, it would naturally always bring me back to that moment in an almost euphoric intensity of joy! Other songs would soon take hold, of course. Songs such as “Help!“, “You’ve got to hide your love away”, “Please Mr. postman”, “It won’t be long”, etc., would all accompany me throughout my childhood in the 60s.

Indeed they would do much more than simply accompany me, they would prove to be a refuge from hardship and family pain!

CHILDHOOD TO COME

As I was singing “I want to hold your hand“ with The Beatles as an innocent 6-year old boy in my brothers car that afternoon, perhaps with premonition, but unbeknownst to me, my family was falling apart.

My mother was separating and she would soon move from Montreal to Ottawa, where I would start my new life with her and a new father. We woukd later be joined by my two brothers and my alcoholic step-father’s brother, himself a legendary alcoholic in his own right. It was a childhood that did have its magical moments, no doubt, but it was a hard and devastating time in the end.

THE WALRUS’ START?

On a brighter note , it was while in Ottawa, after we had moved there, that I heard the second Beatles song that really hit me hard. I was on the bus going home from school when I heard it, and it made me so happy!

Throughout my childhood, the Beatles made my reality a happier one because of their songs and of how they made me feel whenever I sang them.

I survived my childhood, as we must all do, and drew strength from it later on as I tried my best to make good and achieve positive outcomes in my own adult life. But there’s no doubt that music and songs were a big part of being able to make it through. Perhaps that little 2-minute magical song, “I Want To Hold Your Hands” is what indeed held mine at times. It certainly felt great every time I experienced it. Thank you John Lennon and The Beatles.