Posted on: April 9, 2024, 05:46h.
Last updated on: April 9, 2024, 06:07h.
When our daughter was 3, I gave her the most unfathomably special gift I could think of, something I dreamed of having at her age but knew I never could … the memory of having seen the greatest band of all time perform live.
The closure of “The Beatles LOVE” on July 7, announced earlier today, reminded me of a fantasy I once cultivated for her that the Beatles were still all alive, together, and young.
OK, a bald-faced lie.
It wasn’t difficult when you live in Las Vegas and The Mirage is wrapped in an ad featuring the faces of a 20something John, Paul, George, and Ringo blown up larger than the name of the resort.
The DVD of all the Beatles videos had just been released and, while enjoying it with her one day, I figured, why not bend reality a little?
After all, my influence over her would soon give way to her peer group’s fondness for whatever even worse version of Justin Bieber waited in the pop wings. And wouldn’t it be awesome to experience, through her eyes, pure love of the greatest music ever made — without any thoughts of acrimony, death, aging, or any of the other dreaded inevitabilities of life that accompany the listening experience for fans of the real group that stopped making music together in 1969?
My daughter was too young to see the Cirque show — 5 is the minimum age — but we posed for photos jumping like the Beatles in the sculpture in front of the theater. We ogled the merchandise in the adjacent Beatles store. And when a tribute show called “B: A Tribute to the Beatles” came on Groupon, I knew immediately what I needed to do.
OK, so I’ll burn in hell. She will require years of therapy. She’ll never trust anything told to her by another man.
But hold on. Doesn’t nearly every American parent do the same exact thing to their kids with Santa Claus?
Telling that lie is acceptable, just so they can experience the magic in their eyes and vicariously return to their own childhoods? But substituting a still-performing Beatles for Santa Claus is wrong?
Sorry, I don’t see it. And besides, I don’t want her ever trusting another man anyway.
Unreal Love
My plan goes even better than perfectly. My daughter’s eyes pop as she sings and dances along to all her favorite songs: “Twist and Shout,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Eight Days a Week.”
And even after multiple screenings of “The Beatles at Shea Stadium,” during which the music is nearly drowned out by the jet-engine squeals of 50,000, it doesn’t even occur to her to question why a tiny theater at Planet Hollywood would house the most popular band in the world on a weekday afternoon — or why it would be half empty with no line at the box office.
“Would you like to pay only $20 more for seats in the front?” the ticket agent out front asked.
No, I replied. I would like to pay $20 less for seats in the back, because she sort of knows what they’re supposed to look like from all the videos.
After the show, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity transpires that even I hadn’t thought of … for her to meet the Beatles! They’re standing right in the freaking lobby, anxious to meet her because everyone else is walking right past them.
Alas, just like all kids eventually bust their parents in the Christmas lie, my fantasy comes to an end. It’s during one of our visits to what we still referred to as “the Beatles Hotel.” My daughter, now 4 and able to read, sees a bass guitar for sale in a collectibles store and reads that it was signed by Paul McCartney.
In its display case is a photo of Paul playing the bass. The real Paul. In 2015.
“That’s Paul, dad!” my daughter screams. “Why is he so old? Daddy, why is Paul McCartney so old?!”
Umm, because of all the chimneys he has to slide down in a single night?
As soon as she turned 5, my wife and I took her to see “The Beatles LOVE.” She sang and danced to that, too. But it wasn’t the same. She occupied the real world now, the one where the Beatles broke up acrimoniously, where John and George were dead and Paul and Ringo grew old, and where magic is no longer a thing that’s real.
