There Will Be An Answer

Film director Danny Boyle recently talked with NPR’s Audie Cornish to introduce his newest film, “Yesterday.” I’ve never been much of a movie theater fan – while I love butter-drenched movie popcorn, I hate paying ten cents a kernel – but as I listened to Boyle talk, the premise of this film fascinated me. What if any knowledge of the Beatles, any memory of their music, any image of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, was stripped from the minds of everyone in the world? Seemingly only one stumbling singer, Jack Malik, remembers them, and so he begins to introduce this amazing music as his own to his handful of fans, and ultimately, to the world.

It sounded like a fun concept for a movie, and promised a meandering stroll down Penny Lane – oops, I mean memory lane. Larry was certainly shocked to hear me ask, “Want to go to the movies?” Those words seldom come out of my mouth, but I’m glad they did. Writing in Vulture, Nate Jones suggests that “’Yesterday’ is the kind of movie that works best if you turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.” Side by side with a yellow submarine. Works for me.

As an added attraction to the film’s story, there was Kate McKinnon, my favorite actor from Saturday Night Live, cast as Jack’s agent of greed. As I watched her stride through Jack’s life, I couldn’t wipe from my mind the impromptu yet spot-on impression she recently did of Marianne Williamson, spiritual guide and presidential candidate. McKinnon has convincingly imitated Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Kellyanne Conway, and Elizabeth Warren, and I’ll never forget her SNL rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in November 2016. What an amazing talent.

Yet I digress from the Beatles. How can we possibly imagine a world without John, Paul, George or Ringo? The Fab Four made their first U.S. appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on my 9^thbirthday in 1964, but I wasn’t among the seventy-three million who watched their U.S. debut. Yet I was soon as enthralled as they were, making my first forty-five purchases of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (with “I Saw Her Standing There” on the B-side), back when forty-five still meant a record. For Americans, even the nine-year-old ones, it had been “a hard day’s night” since the assassination of President Kennedy less than three months earlier, and now the Beatles were somehow allowing us to breathe again, to sing again. 

By the next year, they were once again speaking for us: “Help, I need somebody.” Personally, corporately, they were singing what so many were whispering in the darkness. Yet they were also optimistic, reminding us that “we can work it out,” because, as their 1967 hit promised, “All you need is love.” After all, we can get by “with a little help from our friends.” 

Unfortunately, their optimism regarding relationships didn’t carry over into their partnership, and in 1970 they went their separate ways. Still, the music continued. As Paul McCartney said, “I loved music too much to think of stopping.” John’s solo album, “Imagine” soon made its way to my turntable, and I often sang along: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one . . .” Even now, I still yearn for a world where all people live life in peace. 

In one poignant scene in the film, Jack tries to remember if Father McKenzie was darning socks, and why Eleanor Rigby was picking up rice in a church. I couldn’t remember either, but I do remember the category Eleanor and Father McKenzie belonged to – “all the lonely people.” Maya Angelou understood: “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” 

All these years later, it’s not just about four young men from Liverpool. It’s about the music, and how it reaches us deeply, or, as Anne Porter describes, it “wanders where we wander.” Somehow, without knowing us, the Beatles spoke – and still speak – for us. That’s what music does. In times of trouble, in our hour of darkness, the notes whisper: “There will be an answer.”