The White Album

I placed the CD carefully in my boombox. Then...a whirring noise, a digital counter, the sound of a plane taking off: Back in the U.S.S.R..

April 1995 saw The Basketball Diaries and Friday, and Clinton hadn’t gotten into any sexual trouble yet. The Oklahoma City bombing had already become part of American history. In West New York, New Jersey, Latin culture thrived. A dense square mile of restaurants from El Salvador, Colombia, Peru were laid out in an almost chinatown arrangement along Bergenline Ave. Kids with different accents and bone structures dressed in baggy pants, ranchero hats, hippie dresses, guayaberas and polos. Kurt Cobain’s posthumous popularity hadn’t waned, but lived alongside posters for the latest bachata and merengue stars. Early Marc Anthony trumpeted from apartments and car windows. I was fifteen years old and slowly letting go of that survivor mode I’d been in since my family left an uncertain life in Venezuela back in ‘93. Punto Fijo, Venezuela: a tiny desert town, twilight of my childhood, heat like I’d never known. We came to America searching for a better life. It was a sacrifice for all of us, little food, holey shoes and cheap, extra-large clothing for a couple of years. But we were together, and we always laughed and worked and laughed and worked; by the mid-90’s, it was looking up for the Barragans.

My sophomore year was slowly coming to a close. It had turned out way better than my freshman year. As a result of joining the Memorial High School Marching Tigers, my extra-curricular life received an infusion of vitality. Football games, parades, concerts, inaugurations, if the Mayor of West New York needed some live entertainment, the Tigers were there. I played the baritone; picture a smaller, forlorn concert tuba. Its tone was melancholy like the wistfulness in the voices of Billie Holiday and Mercedes Sosa. Even if the song was happy, the sound had a tinge of blue. My father sang like that too. Our band director, Mr. P, ecstatic to finally have two baritones, went gun-happy arranging harmonies for baritone two. “Two baritones!? That hasn’t happened since the 80’s!” Mr. Passanti was a trekkie. “Live long and prosper.” He was also morbidly obese, like a heavy tear drop. He died of a heart attack a few years ago.

On Baritone One was Tommy. I think he was Ecuadorian, light complexion and light hair; he could have been from Argentina. Tommy was cool. Rock n’ roll persuasion, always in a rock t-shirt: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, lots of Rolling Stones. He was the guy who would be courteous to your parents and respectful to your friends, but would still smoke the old doobie and be a teenager. Band rehearsals were a good time because girls liked him, so there'd be a bevvy of them around during breaks. Those Memorial High School girls seemed so knowing. The voluptuousness of Latinas in first bloom; their full lips, red and smiling, dark eyes or blue or green, different shades of Latin, I felt x-rayed by them. But Tommy made it look easy.

Turned out Tommy was into The Beatles. And one day, he brought The White Album to school. He’d propped the double CD on his music stand, directly to my right. There was something loud about that mute, white cover. “The Beatles” typed in gray, off center to the far right, almost vanishing. I was vaguely familiar with the band because of my father’s diverse record collection. My concept of them, however, was limited to the Beatlemania years: girls in hysterics and mop tops. I’d watched a Hard Day's Night and hadn't found it funny. It was my parents' music, del tiempo del Rey Pepino. Not that I didn’t love oldies, but my fifteen year old absolute knowledge of music failed to see The Beatles as relevant to my heavy metal sensibilities. Happiness was shredding Enter Sandman and growling like Phil Anselmo from Pantera. Yet, there was something about that all-white cover. I’d seen solid color covers before. At least, I thought I had. Metallica’s black album was an example, but on that one there was a near invisible Metallica logo on the upper left corner and that don’t-tread-on-me snake on lower right. Spectrum: a band of colors formed when a beam of white light is broken up. I saw the choice of white as bold. “Tommy, can I see that?”

It was a double album that came with a booklet. I flipped through the pages: John Lennon, tight-shot of his face, tinted blue, looking stoned and singing to a mic; George Harrison’s face smiling, a black-and-white shot with a foggy shape blocking his right side; Ringo Starr, his eyes warm but morose, the wind sweeping his hair to the side; and Paul McCartney close up, unshaven, maybe sleepy, definitely the cute Beatle. They didn’t look like rockstars to me. They looked like artists. Whatever that word encompassed to my 1995 sensibilities, that’s what their pictures represented. I had no frame of reference for these Beatles. I’d never listened to anything between Rubber Soul and Abbey Road. I was missing a huge chunk of rock history. I was a blank slate. Perfect. “Tommy, can I borrow this?”

That night, I got home around eight from our rehearsal for the spring concert. My brother was at the downstairs neighbors' playing video games. My parents were in bed watching la novela. “Como te fue, mijo?” “Bien papi. Bien mami.” “Vaya coma, Eriksito.” “Si, mami. Gracias.” My mother always left me a plate of food, saran-wrapped in the fridge waiting for me. We had a cozy and spotless kitchen (my mom ran a tight ship), a medium, rectangular wooden table with four chairs for the four of us. When I came home after dinner time, I’d sit in my father’s chair and eat while listening to music. Tonight’s only difference was the record. I placed Disc 1 carefully in my boombox. There was a whirring noise, a digital counter, and then: The White Album.

“I don't know how you were diverted, you were perverted too.”
“Mother superior jump the gun.”
“Martha my dear, though I spend my days in conversation please remember me.”
“Half of what I say is meaningless. But I say it just to reach you, Julia.”

The songs were paintings: landscapes, abstracts, yellows, reds, brass sections, nylon string guitars. The nostalgia of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the lethargy of I’m So Tired, the sweet sentiment of I Will, The Beatles had achieved complete self expression. There was no difference between them and Van Gogh. Or them and Andy Kaufman, since there was nonsense and humor on some of those tracks. The brief song Wild Honey Pie repeated the line “honey pie” over and over and then ended with yelps and the phrase “I love you, Honey Pie”. And that was that. I replayed that song almost involuntarily. It made me laugh. Then there was Happiness Is A Warm Gun, poly-rhythmic, genre-defying and sarcastic. What to make of Revolution 9’s sound collage or the crassness of Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey for that matter? These songs didn’t seem like the kind of material written to make money or stay popular. This was their craft and the record their exhibition. That’s what I saw with The White Album and why I loved it.

That night, I brought the boombox to bed with me. I let it play through my sleep; whenever I woke up to go to the bathroom or get water, I’d start the record again, Disc 1, Disc 2.

One week later, I returned Tommy his CD. I’d already purchased the record for myself and bought Abbey Road along with it. My head was so full of Beatles that Tommy and I would beatlespeak through band period. “Another beatleconversation, guys?” Mr. P would poke fun. “Live long and prosper, Mr. P.” We’d shoot back.

Tommy is married now; I believe he lives in North Carolina with his wife and one or two kids. I haven’t spoken to him since he graduated. But, if he happens to be reading this: Gracias chamo! Te la debo.

Ciao,
Erik Barragan