{"id":11546,"date":"2014-02-14T01:53:01","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T08:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=11546"},"modified":"2014-02-14T01:54:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T08:54:51","slug":"that-beatles-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2014\/02\/that-beatles-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"THAT BEATLES MAGIC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/h1>\n

THAT BEATLES MAGIC<\/b><\/h1>\n

According to Jeff Alan Ross<\/h3>\n

It was one of those truly bizarre moments.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d gone over to the Grand Hyatt Hotel to see if I could get into <\/span>The Fest for Beatles Fans<\/i> with the wristband a friend of mine, from my hometown of Madison, Wis., had handed me the night before. I figured they\u2019d change the color the next day, and I was right.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wanted to catch Peter Asher\u2019s wonderful show <\/span>Peter Asher: A Musical Memoir Of The \u201960s and Beyond, Featuring the Music of Peter and Gordon<\/i>, and reconnect with his bandleader\/guitarist\/keyboardist Jeff Alan Ross. I\u2019d promised to write about Jeff the last time I saw the show: He\u2019d been in Badfinger, and was now doing \u201cBaby Blue\u201d in the show instead of \u201cDay After Day,\u201d thanks to the rediscovery of the song\u2014and band\u2014from the song\u2019s play at the end of the series finale of <\/span>Breaking Bad<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was about to message him on Facebook when I saw that not only had he listed his cell number, but that he was from Madison! He was a few blocks away when I called him, and when he arrived at the hotel, I told him I, too, was from the Madcity.<\/span><\/p>\n

It only got weirder. We went to the same Junior High (Charles R. Van Hise\u2014I was a year ahead). I mentioned I was going to see a James Madison Memorial High School buddy play that night in the Village\u2014Joseph Waters, now professor of electronic music at San Diego State and leader of the band Swarmius; Jeff was in a band with Joe! I asked if he knew of Dr. Bop & The Headliners and my friend Beefy, a.k.a. Troy Charmel, a.k.a. Bob Kenison, and he idolized Beefy, from when he was a kid watching Beefy\u2019s Beatles-influenced 1960s band The Gentlemen and learning how to play \u201cBlackbird\u201d and \u201cMartha My Dear\u201d from him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"JeffIt was so ridiculous that Jeff could hardly talk straight when Peter\u2019s manager brought over Erica Jong to meet him. So I told him about my recent conversation with Beefy about The Beatles, and \u201cI Want to Hold Your Hand\u201d in particular.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody sort of has their own personal vibration,\u201d said Jeff, picking up where Beefy left off.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Inner music,\u2019 is what I call it. If you\u2019re a music fan, certain things pluck your strings. For example, there\u2019s a Billy Joel song, \u2018All About Soul,\u2019 that every time, at one point in the song\u2014every time it goes to the bridge\u2014I <\/span>cry<\/i>. It\u2019s just so powerful! As a musician, the only way I can describe it is, the chord structure and melody and way the whole thing sounds. For some reason, it just works for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I kind of know what he meant. Every time I listen to Richard Thompson\u2019s \u201c1952 Vincent Black Lightning,\u201d when he gets to the end and his voice rises on \u201cI see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome\/Swooping down from heaven to carry me home,\u201d I inevitably start crying as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone gets that,\u201d Jeff continued, meaning that kind of emotional impact from a song. \u201cUltimately, what most people are looking for when they\u2019re writing songs is a hit song\u2014\u2018I Want to Hold Your Hand,\u2019 basically.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But he, too, remembered going \u201cOh, my God! What is that?\u201d when he first heard \u201cI Want to Hold Your Hand,\u201d just as Beefy and I had.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard innumerable people say the same thing: \u2018What is it about the song?\u2019 It was unlike anything anybody had ever heard\u2014the way the voices and guitars sounded. But also, it was the song <\/span>itself<\/i>\u2014and Peter Asher is the proof!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Asher tells a wonderful story in his show, about how Paul, who was dating Asher\u2019s sister Jane and was living with the Asher family, called out to Asher from the family\u2019s music room, where he and John had been working on a song. Paul then played \u201cI Want to Hold Your Hand\u201d on the piano, which Jeff then sings in the show.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey asked me what I thought,\u201d Asher relates. \u201c`It\u2019s very good,\u2019 I said. But it was such a great pop song, and there was something about being there at the point of creation. A magical moment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jeff\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just the guitars,\u201d added Jeff, \u201cbut the chords and musical structure. And when those voices start singing! That\u2019s what we heard that first time, and didn\u2019t know what to say. That and the musical structure and the way they worked together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And it was a universal response from those who were there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone heard it and went, \u2018Oh, my God!\u2019 And if they knew exactly what it was, there would be a formula\u2014but nobody else did it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To paraphrase Beefy, then, The Beatles did it all, and that\u2019s why they\u2019re The Beatles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking now as a songwriter, Jeff concluded: \u201cEverybody searches for those things, and hopes they come up with the elements that drive people. We have our own musical beings: That\u2019s why some people love classical music and jazz, and others can\u2019t listen to it. Not everything works for everybody, but that being said, \u2018I Want to Hold Your Hand\u2019 is probably as universally loved as anything that was ever written.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jim Bessman<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THAT BEATLES MAGIC According to Jeff Alan Ross It was one of those truly bizarre moments. I\u2019d gone over to the Grand Hyatt Hotel to see if I could get into The Fest for Beatles Fans with the wristband a friend of mine, from my hometown of Madison, Wis., had handed me the night before. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4976,1058],"tags":[24,7321],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11552,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546\/revisions\/11552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}