Talk about a peak experience! A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those profound personal moments that ranks right up there in Life’s Grand Scheme of Things. It involved a very good friend of mine, a buddy of many, many years. A guy I have never met.
Richard Starkey came to Calgary, and I was there to welcome him. Well, me and about a zillion other people. It was a teeming full house of rabid fans because Richard Starkey was in town — using his other name: Ringo Starr.
Maybe I should step back quite a few decades. When Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles to me from inside the big wooden RCA black and white TV cabinet that long-ago Sunday night in the living room of our old house in Parkvale, somewhere between All My Lovin’ and She Loves You, my whole entire world changed.
Myself and most of my buddies immediately began getting headaches from concentrating so intensely on growing our hair, and many of us in the Optimist Drum and Bugle Corps marching band realized that the reason we were lugging heavy, badly-played instruments on parades is because we were destined to become the Beatles soon after our parade days were done.
Many of us baby boomers will freely admit that the John, Paul, George and Ringo performances on the most popular TV variety show in the universe was indeed a ‘peak experience’ in the truest definition of the phrase.
Peak experience. I remember learning about the concept of ‘peak experience’ in psychology class at Red Deer College a long, long time ago, a class that I never missed on account of many good looking girls took psych classes.
The popular 1960s psychologist Abraham Maslow expounded upon the phenomenon of ‘peak experience’ as an “especially joyous and exciting moment in life” theorizing that it “involves sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, wonder and awe” and also possibly entails “an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth.” And if that doesn’t describe the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, I don’t know what does.
I have had many significant and lasting peak experiences in my life — ranging from my first Dairy Queen banana split to the birth of my children, but this was unexpected.
When the Ringo Night arrived and me and my better half squinted through our binoculars from waaaaay up in the third balcony at the Jubilee Auditorium, and the All Starr Band started playing, the crowd went wild. And don’t think the entire crowd was a bunch of old boomer-type people wearing tight, bulging Beatles T-shirts they had kept since they could actually fit a size medium. OK, most of them were, but there were also nine-year-old kids and there were 90-year-old kids, I kid you not.
Absolutely true: right in front of us a little boy was wearing a real Beatles cap, the kind Ringo always used to wear, and he was singing various Beatles songs to his parents before the show started. And a couple of rows down, sitting in the aisle seats, a frail little old man with wispy white hair and a suit and tie, held hands with a frail little old lady with wispy white hair in a long, flowered Sunday dress. As they adjusted their hearing aids, you just knew it was going to be a special night.
And it was. When the huge neon star behind the two drum sets lit up and Ringo came trotting out to centre stage, smiling and waving, every single soul in the entire building leapt to their feet and didn’t touch the ground again for two straight hours.
Now I’ve been to my fair share of concerts, events and public spectacles but I have never experienced anything quite like that. And after Ringo sang a few of his own hit songs as a front man at the microphone, another drummer playing behind him, he took two steps, I’m not kidding, two steps toward his own drum set and we in the crowd went completely crazy again. He hadn’t even sat down at the kit and we were all screaming like teenaged girls in the audience of the Ed Sullivan Show.
And when he kicked those Ludwigs into gear and launched into Yellow Submarine and bopped his head back and forth like, well like Ringo Starr, it was too cool to contemplate.
And through it all Ringo came across as the down-to-earth, peace-and-love kind of guy I believe he is. He played and sang like the drummer of the best musical group that ever lived. He joked about having fun and then he showed us how. He gave us who he is and he gave us his music.
He jumped around like a kid who gets to live a dream, and he talked about love and about treating each other better. And although I’ve demonstrated a million times that I like to exaggerate, I’m not kidding when I say he looked and acted like a 30-year-old rock star. And oh, did I mention that Ringo turned 70-years-old in July??!
But when the young septuagenarian ended the night with a classic, I looked around at the 9 to 90 crowd, and every one of them was swaying and smiling and singing. “I get by with a little help from my friends. …”
Maslow says a peak experience “leaves a permanent mark on the individual” evidently “changing them for the better.” So call me a weenie, but when Ringo said “Good night Canada!” and sang “All I am saying, is give peace a chance …” and then left the stage, I freely admit, like most people there, I had tears. Peak experience tears.
Thank you tears from a kid in front of an old TV, watching the Ed Sullivan Show.
Harley Hay is a local author, filmmaker, musician and freelance columnist. His column appears on Saturdays.