Where the cedar leaf divides the sky
I heard the sea.
In sapphire arenas of the hills
I was promised an improved infancy.
Hart Crane, who wrote this opening stanza in “Passages,” knew that there was no such thing. Certainly not in his world. He leapt to his death from this SS Ibiza off the Gulf of Mexico after running out of his Guggenheim, his friends with money, his family. He was 32. It was not a good time to be gay, and it was not a good time to need money in America. In the depression, was he depressed?
I think about Crane whenever there is a new mix of a Beatles album. It is the closest thing I know to an improved infancy. I’m not stuck in the past. There are new things that I still love (stay tuned). But they’re The Beatles and I have no objectivity. The only Beatles album in my parents’ collection was Hard Day’s Night, American version, which leaves off “Anytime at All” and “Things We Said Today.” But, even though my father was born in the year of Paul and my mother was born in the year of George, that was it. At age 8, I received some money from my grandfather. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but, suddenly with this unthinkable luxury, I had enough money to buy the album of my choice. This, my friends, was a huge deal. That moment was the beginning of something I would do for the rest of my life. At that moment, as a consumer, I began to create a musical identity of my own. A candy bar would have been gone right away. This could be consumed repeatedly. I suddenly found myself seeing that picture of the lads, but looking different than they did on the Hard Day’s Night cover. They were wearing sunglasses, against a black background, and they were in on a joke, the cleverest imaginable. I did not have my own record player yet. I had to be astonished in public. I managed.