By Johnny Fontaine

I’m not sure what The Beatles and current racial issue discussions on campus have to do with one another. Maybe it’s something to talk about other than discipline and discrimination.

It was at the age of 13 that quiet George Harrison met boy genius Paul McCartney, and they later linked up with two rough and tumble guys named John Lennon and Ringo Starr, starting a small little combo called The Beatles. I remember watching my oldest brother and his friends come over to a fifth floor walk-up apartment in the Bronx during 1967-68, the year of Sgt. Pepper’s. They would lug crates, wires, amps, girls, and all this musical equipment up from street level. I’m not saying they ever sounded anything like Beatlemania, but they wanted to be those guys.

Millions and millions of people, male and female, went bat shit over what four boys from Liverpool, England sang, thought, smoked, read, wore, ate, said, and did. I was one of them. It was what the world did wide before the Internet was even a gleam in some techno geek’s eye. I used to borrow the LP’s from him and my oldest sister and wear additional grooves into them on a crap piece of stereo system, sitting there with the headphones on and learning how to tell George’s voice from John’s.

They’re both gone now…Harrison from cancer and Lennon from some whackadoo with a gun and “The Catcher in the Rye”. Remember what Lennon said about The Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ and the reaction? What has been reacted to and reacted over here on campus recently seems similar.

I admired George, the Quiet Beatle. He wrote “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for The White Album, then took Eric Clapton into the studio to help with guitar work (Eric also would later woo George’s wife, Patty, away from him). This is the same youngest Beatle, Harrison, mind you, that later wrote “Something” for Abbey Road, a fairly decent love song considering Paul’s “Yesterday.” George was shy (Paul McCartney called him “my baby brother” at news of his death) but he wasn’t buying into the worldwide hysteria of Beatlemania. When The Fab Four dissolved at the beginning of the 70’s, his first solo album was the monstrous and magnificent All Things Must Pass. He did the Concert for Bangladesh before anyone thought about corporate sponsorships or paychecks before principles. One should also check out his later solo album, Cloud Nine, and his work with The Traveling Wilburys to reference his ability to communicate from within such a volatile industry…he never played at being a rock star. He never played politics or publicity with his principles It was said many times his gentle nature was one of the things that kept the disharmonious leanings of Lennon and McCartney together. The White Album had its varied meanings to each of them. One of them believed color didn’t matter. There’s a more stable and strengthened humanness beyond the exterior that needs mending and healing, too. Long time Harrison friend Gavin DeBecker said “He died with one thought in mind-love one another.”

I was a college disc jockey in 1980 when Lennon (Give Peace A Chance, Imagine) died. The station didn’t want to open because people felt they lost something. I played music anyway. Grinding fraternities into non-action and demanding resignations are places where this situation on campus had lead to giving peace the once over. But I’ve wondered recently if more quiet passion inside such a potentially volatile situation wouldn’t open more doors and forums of communication for both sides right now? 1968, that same year, taught many lessons to college campuses in this country around issues of war and race (again, the guitars that gently weep again today).

This is one of those “dare to be great” moments when the students can become the teachers. Not only are University officials and local media watching but it also remains to be seen how the difficult public embracing of issues such as these are accomplished with student body patience, administration tolerance, faculty and staff acceptance, community prudence, and a willingness of everyone to have healthy boundaries of communication and negotiation.

So, instead of writing about racial reciprocity (that’s another column), I write about another Beatle dying. I hope mutual respect on behalf of all parties involved in our University’s continued growth model integrity and accountability in all that must pass.

Johnny Fontaine is a freshman Communications student, full-time staff member at U of L, Editor/Publisher of WILD EMBRACE REDUX, and currently drafting a novel: PARADOX. You can contact him at [email protected]