A Fan’s Recollection of a Lost Family Member in Light of ‘The Love We
Make’
Although
I was directly impacted by the events of 9/11 — my uncle Ari had worked on the
103rd floor of Tower 1 — it wasn’t until two years later that I had
a similarly life-altering run-in with the Beatles. I was at my desktop, late at
night, when I stumbled across a well-known image of the thousands of reeling
fans who swarmed the Dakota in the hours immediately following John Lennon’s
murder. There was a shot of one such fan staring numbly into the camera,
holding up a picture of a young John with the simple, piercing question of
‘Why?’ The ability for one man’s death to have such a taxing effect on
thousands of people the world over piqued my interest in these Liverpudlians
and set me on the path to my own brand of Beatlemania. But it was their music,
of course, that really got to me and caused me to pick up the guitar and begin
penning my own songs, poems and drawings, an interest and preoccupation I
shared with my uncle, Edward “Ari” Lichtschein.
My
recollections of Ari — my family always called him by his Hebrew name — can be
neatly broken down into two categories: those that occurred before his death
and those I created after it. I was 13 in September of 2001, and my memories of
him, while affectionate and playful, often seem to be as affected by family
videos and pictures as by actual remembered events.
That
being said, I do recall him playing guitar in our house on numerous occasions.
He was a macho guitar player, a gruff strummer rather than a delicate
finger-picker; for him playing the guitar was more about pomp and less about
introspection or calm. I’ve got a vivid memory of him howling his way through
“Wild Thing,” and another one of him coarsely strumming bar chords as I watched
from the side, awestruck. He was a fanatic of both popular and independent
music. After his passing, I was giddy to discover Beatles CD’s, biographies of
Lennon, and compendiums of interviews with the Fab Four in the belongings of
his my family inherited after his death. Though the pain I felt at losing Ari
was largely realized after the fact, I always found it fitting and most
appropriate that music, especially that of the Beatles, offered me such a powerful
means of solace.
Which
is exactly what Paul McCartney gives as his motivation for organizing and
performing at the Concert for New York City in Albert Maysles and Bradley
Kaplan’s new documentary The Love We Make. Having grown up in the shadow of World War II, Paul recalls that “you
saw how [people] dealt with [tragedy], they dealt with it with humor and
music.” And such is his mindset in attempting to ease the pain and devastation
of a city left so vulnerable by the tragic events a mere month earlier.
Maysles, whose previous work with McCartney includes 1964’s What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A.
— which documented the Fab Four’s
first foray into America — retains his fly-on-the-wall cinéma
vérité style, capturing many mundane moments in the superstar’s day-to-day
life. Whether it’s hearing Paul muse about pacifism and his father while
his face gets swathed in make up, or seeing him chat with his driver about how
Roger Clemens fared in a recent Yankees/Mariners game (“second rate,” is the driver’s
verdict), or simply watching Paul chomp into an Entenmanns’s donut as he stands
around during band rehearsal, the artfulness of Maysle’s direction is in his
ability to fully blend into the background; when, in 1964, Maysles instructed
the Beatles to ignore the crew during filming, McCartney recalls that “We
thought that was the best bit of direction we’d ever received.”
The
film follows Paul in the days after 9/11, in his preparations for the concert,
which include an appearance on the Howard Stern Show and an interview with Dan
Rather, all leading to the film’s grand finale, the concert itself. The show,
which took place at MSG on October 20, 2001, features celebrities such as
Leonardo DiCaprio, Jim Carrey, Steve Buscemi, Bill Clinton, and Paul’s daughter
Stella rubbing elbows with billed performers including Mick Jagger, the Who,
James Taylor, Jay-Z, and Bon Jovi. New meaning is given to Billy Joel’s “New
York State of Mind,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” (performed by David
Bowie), and Elton John’s “Your Song” as shots of firefighters swaying and
singing along with their spouses overwhelm the cameras. The Who power along to
“Won’t Get Fooled Again,” joined on drums by Zak Starkey, Ringo’s son (“Isn’t
he great?” Paul gushes backstage). And then there’s Paul himself. He smatters a
couple of Beatles numbers alongside cuts from November 2001’s Driving Rain, before unveiling
‘Freedom,’ his post-9/11 celebratory anthem for the grieving city.
The
film’s beauty is in its gentle combination of gravity with joy, pain with
heart, and suffering with resolve. The very first number aired in the film, a
blistering, furious version of “I’m Down” dissolves crisply into shots of a
serious-faced Paul in an interview discussing his whereabouts on the morning of
the 11th (he’d been taxiing to his plane to Britain when he heard
the news). The suffering of the city seems to be mellowed — if only briefly —
for the duration of the concert. “Like
everyone else, I thought I wanted to do something…something else,” Paul says,
explaining his involvement in the concert. Recalling how in his younger days,
listening to Elvis’s “All Shook Up” helped him overcome an agonizing headache,
he again expresses his belief in the healing power of music, in its ability to
unite and offer respite to millions of people. He brings New York a night of
celebration and joy sorely needed in a time of confusion and chaos. This desire
to march on in the blizzard of anguish reflects wonderfully of the actual
experience of 9/11, with the momentous grief and horror brought on by the
attacks getting offset by the hope and resilience of a city uniting to console
and shoulder the weight of those more directly impacted.
Ari
would have loved the film, I’m sure. He was a hardcore fan of the Stones and
the Who, having seen them both perform in the 1980s, and he’d have been
overjoyed watching Mick continue to strut his stuff and Pete windmill his
guitar. And that’s to say nothing of his admiration for Paul McCartney and the
Beatles. Before my 9/11 experience, I might have said that Paul’s belief in the
almost “magical” healing properties of music sounded a bit outlandish, but
having gone through Ari’s loss using music as a remedy removed any doubt I may
have had.
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