Spent the day deep down into the dissection of Beatles songs. I’m up to my elbows in singing harmonies “on the 3rd of the scale” and using my “nose voice”. A mountain of charts and mp3’s have arrived from Andrew Barashko of Toronto’s “Art of Time Ensemble” and I am behind the eight ball preparing for next week’s 45th anniversary Sgt. Pepper reinvention concert. I get to sing a lot of John Lennon stuff and, for most fans of my vintage, the John chair is the catbird seat. I’ll try to live up to it.
As kids playing road hockey, we chose our favourite player and announced “I am Bobby Orr” or “I’m Andre Boudrias” (me) before the tennis ball was dropped. It was that way too with the other kids when it came to the Beatles. We picked our favourites. Mine was George. That seemed doable. I was too nervous to pick John or Paul. I played violin and couldn’t yet sing. George was close enough to that skill set. My recurring dream was not of being in my own famous band, but of being in George’s position on stage with the Beatles…or Keith Richard with the Stones or Pete Townsend in the Who. The first few dreamtimes were frustrating because I could only play the tennis racket. As I get older I know more of the material in real life and do a better job in the dreamworld. I used to be petrified when the dreams first started. I didn’t have the skills and felt like an imposter about to fail. Well…I still feel mostly that way. That’s excitement. Right?
I used to go to sleep with the radio on and, as it hit the perfect song, I’d try to conjur “the lucky pretender” dream. Well…flash ahead to today. I rub the genie’s lamp and somehow I bust a weird wormhole in the wall dividing the parallel worlds. I’m diving in.