Jayne Juffe
Out of all the characters we read about, I related to Lewis’s love for Paul McCartney. That does not mean that I did not relate to being a woman of colour like Esperanza or being a huge nerd for pop culture like Claire, but it was the love for both the person and the music that made Lewis an instant relatable character. I, too, as a teenager was obsessed with The Beatles and all of its members. Unlike Lewis, my favourite Beatle was George Harrison. Lewis and I also grew up in different eras, and he was closer to the dismantling of The Beatles and their solo careers. Being born in the late 1990s, I was born after John Lennon’s death and very close to George Harrison’s. Lewis and my life have very different timelines in Beatles history. Even though Paul McCartney is releasing new music, Lewis’s fascination was also with his second band Wings. As a teenager, I was heavily influenced and enamoured with The Beatles and George Harrison.
Part of being a teenager is finding your interests and throwing yourself almost completely fangirling about different things, and The Beatles was definitely one of my obsessions. My mother grew up when The Beatles were becoming the legends they are today, and I learned about them at a very young age. We had vinyl records from their original release (specifically Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour) and many of the best-of CDs playing in the house. When I was about ten or so, I took one of my mother’s childhood bands and went wild.
Lewis is more obsessed with the music rather than the people who made the music, and that is another way where he and I differ. Not only did I love the music (and I tried to learn the guitar to play the songs), but I also read so many books that detailed their individual pre and post-Beatles lives. I absorbed information about these four young men and quickly became more knowledgeable than my own mother, who was alive for all of The Beatles’s success and dissolution. That is a detail that is brought up constantly when my love for The Beatles is questioned by people who are the same generation of my mother. Like Lewis, I instantly bond with people who share a love for The Beatles and George Harrison in particular. There are casual Beatles fans everywhere, but when you meet someone like when Lewis met George, it takes that fanaticism to a whole new level because of the shared love and excitement.
One particular wonderful memory of my love for The Beatles was when I was turning 14, and Martin Scorsese had produced a documentary about George Harrison called George Harrison: Living in the Material World. The US release date was on my birthday, and I knew it was the best gift I could have received. There are countless books, documentaries, and movies about John Lennon and less so about Paul McCartney, but George Harrison is constantly overlooked in the history of The Beatles. So when I heard about this documentary, I was elated and excited and everything in between. Not only did the documentary come out in 2011 (the 10th anniversary of George Harrison’s death), but it came with a coffee table book with photographs and interviews from the documentary. I have the book sitting on my bookshelf and occasionally sit on my floor and go through the blue-tinted pages. It makes me remember the times I spent my high school days reading interviews, biographies, and watching all of The Beatles’s movies. It reminds me of the happiness I felt and how obsessed I was, like the teenage girls who fainted during Beatlemania. Like George in If I Ever Get Out of Here, I have made mix-cds for my friends, and you bet I put multiple Beatle tracks. My love for George Harrison also increased after I found out he was close friends with Monty Python contributor Eric Idle with Monty Python being another teenage obsession of mine. These crossovers only strengthened my love for George Harrison and the person he was rather than just the music he produced. It was refreshing to read about a character that loved Paul McCartney and his music in the a similar way that I love George Harrison and his life.
Representing Adolescence @ Pitt 