One, two, three, FAWWH!!!

Yes!!! The perfect way to start engaging life musically. You carried me, measure for measure, a mother barely (days!) out of your teens when I was conceived. I have ears because you bore me. That’s nature. But what my ears hear, as early as music has had meaning in my memory, will never bore me. You bequeathed to me the purest musical excitement and vigor and, above all, affirmation when you put those dusty records on…Rubber Soul, with your favorite song on it, and Abbey Road, the one with the wacky “kid”s” song sung by the warbling fellow on it, and Pepper and all the rest. That’s nurture.

Hoold me…[WHAP–WHAP!]…loove me

Yes!!! The happiest sound there is. The happiest sound I have ever known. These handclaps, they’re different. So many handclaps in so much popular music, but you gave me the snappiest, the most dynamic, the most vibrant, the ones that mean the most for me in particular, the ones that help to create the happiest sound there is. And you did hold me as long as you could, and you loved me long enough that it’s still palpable for me almost a quarter century since you’ve gone. No sadness survives, though…only unbridled, buoyant delight. Because unbridled, buoyant delight is what each and every note, from Love Me Do to I Me Mine, share no matter the tone nor topic. It’s like opening a bottle and drinking joy from it, every time I put on any record under this band’s name. There is no more precious gift you could have left for me.

I need to laugh…and when the sun is out…I’ve got something I can laugh about…I feel good…in a special way

Yes, their sound is ubiquitous. Yes, a sound that belongs to the entire culture can also be a sound that belongs especially to you, a sound that belongs especially to me, a special sound that you and I share as part of our love. That’s the magic you revealed to me. I hear the world in a refrain of sound, and the world hears these refrains resounding but that doesn’t make it less ours—it makes the sound even more ours. You flourished from New–York–area girl into screaming, scribbling fan–collector into strong–as–iron single mother making your way for us on the Suncoast. The world needed you, and I still need the world, and from you I can hear the world in a refrain of sound.

Some have gone…and some remain

Yes, these vibrant sounds live on, and the memories of them belong to you and to me and to John the writer and to Marty the director, who wrote: “Whenever we saw the Beatles, somehow it made us happy to be alive…the spirit of joyful collaboration [is] intimately connected to the music, and in a way it’s just as lasting…that will never die.” It’s the most clever trick of all the pop song tricks, the trick of etching into memory through replay after replay not just melody or meaning but shared feeling that spans immense gulfs of time and space. And through this magic, though you have gone, you also remain.