Sydney, 1974

As a young child growing up in the 1970s, music was all around me. It was common for my family to sit down and listen to an album. My father would take the record out of its sleeve and carefully put it on the turntable, and I would wait expectantly for the hiss at the beginning of the record to disappear and the music to begin.

The range of music styles in our house was varied, from concept albums like War of the Worlds to Harry Chapin’s Verities and Balderdash and the wondrous multi-layered harmonies of the Beach Boys.

Of all those, one album has stood out and continued to play in the background throughout my life – The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Each time it was played, my mother would carefully take the album from the shelf and describe how she bought the album on the first day it was released. I would go to my regular spot lying on the floor, my hands supporting my chin reading (and singing) the lyrics, being careful not to touch the treasured album sleeve that was even older than me. Sergeant Pepper was always different because it was emotional.  I thought the band was kind to allow Ringo to sing on With a Little Help from My Friends and loved the fun nonsense of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds that reminded me of a Spike Milligan poem. Each song had a different feeling.

Image by Michael Leonard, sourced from The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, 1969.

Everything was fine until we got to When I’m Sixty-Four. It has a real old-time music hall feel to it and inevitably my dad would look at me and sing the lyrics, “When I get older, losing my hair many years from now”. He didn’t have a lot of hair, so perhaps that time wasn’t all that far away. So, did that mean that he was already old? I pondered on this as the song carried on. It inevitably reached the chorus: “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?” What was that? Will my dad get to an age where he will need me to feed him? To a five-year-old child that was a horrific idea. Especially to an only child. There’d be no brothers or sisters to help me out. I’d even have to learn to cook!

As that young age I only really heard the lyrics that made sense to me. Maybe we all do that at any age. I didn’t hear much of the other words, except for something about “wasting away” and “scrimping and saving”. These only added fuel to an already smouldering the fire.

Each time it was played a surging panic set in. How long did I have left before my bald, elderly, and poor parents required feeding? And how could they possibly go out until a quarter to three in the morning if they were in that condition? I’d be worried sick.

I worked out that I had until I was 36 to learn how to cook and care for my parents. I had always been kept in a safe, protected family unit where my parents provided me with everything. How much more of that did cushy lifestyle did I have left before it was payback time?

My father was clearly keen to bring these issues to my attention because he always sang that particular song to me. The Beatles were considering it so much that they went to the trouble to write a whole song about it. All of these thoughts ran through my mind in the two minutes and thirty-seven seconds of the track.

Fortunately, this misery abruptly ended when the story of lovely Rita the meter maid changed the mood.  But some nights When I’m Sixty-Four continued to haunt me and this small sensitive kid had nightmares on many of the nights that it was played.

Many years later I bought Sergeant Pepper on CD (on the day it was released, I might add), and every time I got to that track, I would skip over it.

A jaunty little tune with a bite in its lyrics about ageing has followed me all my life. When I reach the mystical age of sixty-four, I wonder what state I will be in. Thank goodness my parents didn’t run a market stall, or I may have also been haunted by Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

Today my parents are well past sixty-four. I have never had to feed them but always need them. I even sang the song back to my dad on his sixty-fourth birthday. And despite living long enough to answer the question that John, Paul, George, Ringo, and my father posed to me when I was five, I still don’t want to hear that song.

Stereo Story #643

The Beatles collection of Stereo Stories

 

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Martin has been influenced by the sound of music from a very young age (not the musical, but the actual sound of people playing music). His writing often likes to celebrate small things in life that have a profound influence. After a hiatus, he is again sharing his tales and ideas in an adventure that makes its progress by simply placing one word in front of the other.