Drawn from a previous post, and not part of my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1).
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
THE BEATLES: I Should Have Known Better
Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Produced by George Martin
Single (US B-side of "A Hard Day's Night") from the album A Hard Day's Night, Capitol Records, 1964
One weekend when I was in high school (probably in '76- '77, my senior year), one of the NYC TV stations we received via cable in suburban North Syracuse played the Beatles' 1964 movie A Hard Day's Night. I don't remember how many times I had already seen it by that point. Four-year-old me saw it at The North Drive-In in Cicero during its first run. I saw it at least once on TV (on the night of the 1968 presidential election, on a cathode-ray double bill with Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella), and probably another time or two or three after that. I may have also seen it at The Hollywood Theatre in Mattydale at some '70s matinee; I know I saw Let It Be and Magical Mystery Tour paired at the Hollywood, so it's plausible that A Hard Day's Night played there too, maybe with Yellow Submarine? I don't know.
(I do know that I had only seen their 1965 movie Help! on TV. I think. Or maybe it was Help! instead of Yellow Submarine on a double bill with A Hard Day's Night at the Hollywood. I should have kept better notes as a teenager.)
Anyway, my point is that I had certainly seen A Hard Day's Night a few times prior to its screening on WPIX or WOR or WNEW or whatever Big Apple TV station on that late '70s Saturday night. I already regarded it as my all-time favorite movie, edging past Duck Soup, What's Up, Doc?, Batman, various Humphrey Bogart flicks, and any of my other most cherished cinematic treasures when I was in my teens. I'd inherited a copy of the film's paperback novelization when my sister moved out, allowing me to re-live A Hard Day's Night at will, even in those days before home video became commonplace. I loved the film without reservation, and was delighted with the opportunity to see it again.
I watched the movie at home, alone. As it ran, right after the scene where the Fab Four sing "I Should Have Known Better" to a select audience of Paul McCartney's very clean grandfather and some girls (including George Harrison's future wife Patti Boyd) in the train's luggage compartment, my phone rang. It was my friend Tom, also watching the movie (possibly for the first time) over at his house. That song, he said. Do you have it? I replied in the affirmative, and he said, I'm borrowing it, and hung up. Back to the movie. On Monday, I brought my family copy of the film's soundtrack LP to school for Tom to borrow, and he returned it to me shortly thereafter, presumably having now added it to his cassette library.
All these decades later, "I Should Have Known Better" is one of a few songs that still immediately bring Tom to my mind. It's a good memory, even given its tragic aftermath. I've written many times of how Tom's suicide in 1979 devastated me, haunted me, and I don't intend to use a title like "I Should Have Known Better" as a rueful commentary on that.
No. I hang on to the good memories, too.
And it is a good memory: A memory of watching my favorite movie, and a memory of its connection to one of my best friends. It's a good thing, a great thing, in spite of all that came afterward.
Should I have known better?
That's not for me to say.
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