Memorybilia: The Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

One record, one memory …

I can still picture the street vividly in my head. Two rows of terrace houses facing each other bookmarked by a reservoir at one end. The houses were built narrow, designed to have more units per-street by compromising on basic comforts. The workmanship in our home was sloppy, with globs of hardened dark grey cement blotting various areas around the house, which made it feel like we were residing in an incomplete construction site. The house itself was a marvel of impractical architecture — it had two bedrooms but three bathrooms. Sleeping space was a premium but we did not had to wait our turn to shower.

I was about nine then. Dad had packed us up hastily in the dead of night one day and moved us to the nose-bleed end of the industrial wasteland of Shah Alam. One day I was kicking a ball around the playground with my neighborhood friends at the playground behind our home in Taman Megah PJ, the next day I was no longer going to be able to.

This was Shah Alam in the 80s. There were no suburbs arranged in pretty rows. No airy cafes with rich espresso. There was dust. There was grime. And there was the factory shifts. To be fair, dad did not move us here because he thought Sri Muda was the new Seychelles. He moved us here cause he did not want us to be found. And to that end, no one was going to bother looking for us in this wasteland.

I’ve said many times over the years, in various forums and mediums, blog posts and even a wedding speech, that one of the greatest heritage my dad ever gave me was The Beatles. If I were to put it broadly, he gave me music, but it was a love affair that began with the Fab Four. More specifically, their 1964 album, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.

Our copy was a bootleg on one of those blue Jensen cassettes. Bootlegs were common back in those days, just get your local record store to sort you out with one. Our copy had tracks such as ‘Octopus Garden’ and ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ dubbed to the back-end of each side. Why waste perfectly good tape space, right?

I was ten. I was not supposed to get what Lennon and McCartney were going on about, but I did. When you’re that age, music appeals to you on an almost biological level. It’s not very considered and well thought out. I did not know what modern music sounded like and that what I was listening to was music that appealed to kids my age, but 20-years earlier. It’s like a line drawn on the ground on music that you like and those that you don’t and your body gets to decide. And for some reason, from the moment I heard that ringing bar chord of the title track that signaled the kick-off for the record, I was hooked.

It might have to do with scarcity. It’s not like my dad had an extensive record collection to dip my fingers into. Most of his cassettes were taken away along with the public auction that emptied our previous home because we were really late on our rent. What was left was a rod-shaped cassette player which resembled a police baton more than it did an instrument of joy and one cassette. Yes one. This one. I have said more than one prayer to the heavens that it was ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and not Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘We Made It Happen’. Perhaps the lack of choice made it simple to like The Beatles. But a lot of people would probably say that The Beatles are not difficult to love.

It’s ironic that listening to this record now, it seems almost clairvoyant. The money and love dichotomy, so vividly accounted in the title track and ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, the insecure love proposition on ‘If I Fell’ and of course this line in ‘I’ll Cry Instead’,

“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder that’s bigger than my feet
I can’t talk to people that I meet
And if I could see you now
I’d try to make you sad somehow
But I can’t so I cry instead.”

… which is essentially my life in a microcosm, all form some part of the narrative of my life. Well it’s either the record was clairvoyant or that I’ve essentially purposed to live out a life worthy of this 1964 record.

It’s funny, if I turn up this record these days, one track seem to bring me right back to that street in Sri Muda. I can feel the humidity, the rustle of the trees outside, shielding the sun from our porch. I can remember the musky mattresses we slept on in the night and the uneven staircase I used to play on to pass the time. ‘If I Fell’ remains one of my most cherished songs from the Fab Four. In a record jam-packed with pop revelry, the track sticks out like a wet blanket, a downer, an anti-social, determined to drag the rest of the party down to earth. Built around a slow waltz shuffle and pensive harmonies, it’s The Beatles with a stronger dash of reality. Less coordinated haircuts and suits.

But ultimately this record was about the bright, unabashed backbeat pop that dominates most of the tracklist. The rock and roll covers were left behind, replaced by an opulent sense of songwriting confidence. This remains the only fully Lennon/McCartney record and we all know what this partnership eventually leads to. From the no-nonsense saccharine pop of ‘I Should Have Known Better’ to the kaleidoscope pop of ‘A Day in the Life’ on Sgt Pepper’s just three years later may seem like quite a jump, but make no mistake, it was all honed here on this record.

There are specific transitions in some of the tracks here, namely the ‘When I’m home’ bridge of the title track, or the ‘And when I ask you to be mine’ line nestled at the end of the chorus of ‘I Should Have Known Better’ that just hits a special sweet spot in my heart. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the apex of the Lennon/McCartney dynamic. How they would construct a song that seemed destined to barrel ahead with a predictable vibe but then they just yank the carpet from under your feet melodically by shifting the vibe from hopeful to bittersweet. It’s something that has influenced my listening habits even until today. I try and pick out that same transition in tracks I’ve listened to over the years, and when it presents itself, I normally get my panties all up in a bunch.

In more ways than one, this record was a haven for me. A place to go to when things were getting jagged, to be soothed by the melodies of Lennon and McCartney. A place to escape the dreariness and boredom that threatened to consume my childhood, by indulging in the sounds and hooks of my dad’s teens. I’ve since concluded that the music of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ provided both a sense of entertainment for me, but that it also gave me a glimpse of the person my dad was, before the world’s weight came crushing down on his shoulders. To a time when he had hope and aspirations ahead of him, and not something he looks at only longingly on his rear view. It distracted me away from looking at the ghost of a man he has become, after seeing life disappoint him in so many different ways. And I preferred to see him as what he was and not what he had become at the time.

For about a year, I held on to that cassette like my life depended on it. I was starting to wean myself off my action figures as The Beatles provided me a portal to the adult world. Not because they sang about love, heartbreaks and everything in between, but because for the first time, I was as excited about something that adults were as well. My dad was talking to me more, explaining the songs, how they related to him and what he liked about them. My dad eventually brought back more retro bootleg cassettes back home, from the likes of The Hollies and Gerry and the Pacemakers, but this record still held a special place in my heart because it brought me through a relatively dark period in my existence.

There’s a cliche about how music can save. It’s no cliche, at least to me.