The Beatles Through the Window Pane

The Beatles Through the Window Pane

So I’ve told my story up to when I went off to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore after graduating from Arcadia High in California. How I was still basically a classical music snob but now pretending to be ‘cool,’ by getting high and acting like I dug rock music.

Basically, I chose the Peabody because it was about as far away from Arcadia and my parents as I could get, but it didn’t occur to me then that Baltimore was as far away from Arcadia as you could get but in a way that involved much more than physical distance.

Think about it for a second. Arcadia, at that time, was as middle class, white breadish as you could get. It was only a generation prior to mine that a law against black people being out after dark was enforced there.

Contrast with Baltimore; predominantly black, traditional home of the Underground Railroad, home of John Waters, H.L. Mencken and Edgar Allen Poe. None of this did I know until I arrived there.

Upon my arrival at the Peabody, I met my new roommate and soon to be best friend, Dave, aka, Big Nose.

Dave was a Connecticut Yankee in the true sense of the term. He was tall, imposing, loud and colorful. He had a wonderful vocabulary of slang and was known to go through the dictionary looking for unique and colorful words.

One, in particular, that he found one day was ‘hippodrome,’ which was an arena where bizarre events occurred and, even though this was usually used to describe the Greek Arena, it became our term for the Peabody. But I digress.

Dave and I were soon fast, partners in crime and this included regular pot and alcohol. This was  an expensive music conservatory as Animal House. You get the picture.

At any rate, the day came that Dave wanted to try LSD and, of course, he wanted me to come along. I was reluctant at first but finally decided to tag along. Our LSD was what must have been the last of what was known as ‘Window Pane.’ This was very pure and next to impossible to have a ‘bad trip’ on.

As the evening progressed, I was walking around our dorm rooms watching the posters in action and I happened to step into a room where Dave and some other friends were listening to the White Album by The Beatles.

This, for me, was an epiphany. All at once, I understood The Beatles lyrics, not just the song that was playing, but their entire catalogue. I understood The Beatles.

I sat down and began to talk about how Lennon and McCartney were the greatest songwriters since Franz Schubert. The whole musical playing field was suddenly leveled for me and I saw beyond specific musical genres and what was generally said about them.

To my surprise, my friends seemed a bit shocked and didn;t see the obvious like I did. To them, rock was still rock and classical was still classical.

They made comments to the effect of; “Uh yeah, sure,” and “don’t worry, Brian, it will be alright in the morning.”

The drug wore off, but the opinion didn’t. If anything, it was just the beginning; soon, with the help of Aleister Crowley, I would be turning into Hunter S.Thompson before I even knew who that was.

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