![]() On 4 November, I gathered with my co-workers and the Congressman and watched in horror as everything we held dear was trounced by Ronald Reagan in a landslide election. I had spent the entire summer working for a Congressional candidate in my home district. That autumn in 1980, when I was 17, was tumultuous. It was a book I couldn’t get out of my head, becoming messed up with my own memories of the autumn leading up to Lennon’s assassination. The song Don’t Worry, Baby is Lennon’s earworm in Beatlebone and Barry’s Beatlebone was mine. ![]() It’s a dark book, but there is humour too: Lennon’s writing block is personified by the ghost-like presence of Brian Wilson (whose Beach Boys album Pet Sounds spurred Lennon and McCartney to write better songs). Morning engagements only”: this is the kind of passage that I would have called up Dad to read to him, to remind him of his own days performing. ![]() “Reception is deserted but they’re banging pots and pans together out the back. Some sentences reminded me of my recently dead father, who as a Mancunian lad in the 1950s, fancied himself a Teddy Boy. I also stopped for other reasons: Barry’s beautiful sentences kept me copying graceful passages into my journal. ![]()
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