Supplied
- Title: Reunion: A Rock ‘n Roll Fairy Tale
- Author: Gary Burr
- Genre: Novel
- Publisher: Adave Books
- Pages: 226
Let me take you down
’Cause I’m going to strawberry fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry fields forever
The Nashville songwriter, producer and first-time novelist Gary Burr has written Reunion: A Rock ‘n Roll Fairy Tale, an entertaining if unambitious what-if yarn that imagines reunion concerts by the four Beatles in New York’s Central Park and London’s Hyde Park in 1998. Obviously, in this scenario, John Lennon was not assassinated on Dec. 8, 1980.
The book is fun – guaranteed to raise a smile for Beatles fans at least. Its fiction is fact-based, conjured by an informed author. One imagines Burr watched Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back documentary intensely, because a lot of Reunion’s dialogue has the vibe of the real thing. Lennon cracks jokes, Ringo Starr is charismatic, an impatient George Harrison keeps checking his wristwatch and Paul McCartney keeps his bossiness somewhat in check.
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They are a democratic quartet in 1998, and Burr nails their Liverpudlian wit and needling repartee. Harrison: “Remember, we must accept the world as it is. We can only change our mental attitudes toward it.” Lennon: “Well, you certainly got your money’s worth from the Maharishi, didn’t you?”
The reputation of Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, is somewhat rehabilitated. Characterized as a dragon lady and blamed for the Beatles’ breakup, Ono, in this fairy tale, is wise, softened and approving of the reunion.
Over all, there’s more humour than bickering tension. Introducing the band on stage at Central Park, David Letterman stresses the monumental significance of the reunion. “You know,” he quips, “I had tickets to see Cats.”
The straightforward narrative is presented in 55 short chapters. It begins with the death of McCartney’s wife, Linda McCartney, who died of cancer in 1998. The group, which split apart in 1970, reconciles for a pair of charity concerts for the benefit of cancer research.
The concerts are proposed, conceived, prepared for, rehearsed and performed with little drama. A better novelist would have developed a parallel story to accompany the nuts and bolts of the shows. At 226 pages, this feels like half a book.
In the early 1970s, Pete Townshend of the Who wrote the song Pure and Easy, about an eternal note of music which, when struck, galvanizes humanity and restores a united consciousness: “The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering.” The premise, while certainly hippie and maybe even a little dippie, speaks to the power of music.
I thought of Pure and Easy toward the end of Reunion.
The first song performed at the Central Park concert is A Hard Day’s Night, a Beatles classic which announces itself with a crashing mystery chord played on guitar, bass and piano.
Author of Reunion: A Rock ‘n Roll Fairy Tale, Gary Burr.Supplied
The technical breakdown of the complicated chord has been debated for years – in 2004, Dalhousie University mathematics professor Jason Brown published a report titled Mathematics, Physics and A Hard Day’s Night – but lay people recognize it instantly. (Chances are it’s in your head right now.)
The author refers to it as “the Chord.” Before the reformed Fab Four strikes it on stage, Lennon suggests to the crowd that it is the Beatles’ job to “make everybody feel young again.”
It was an unfair job and a heavy weight. But when the Beatles were the Beatles, the world was springtime and groovy. Upon their breakup in 1970, the world grew older overnight. And when Lennon was assassinated, something died with him.
In Reunion, the Chord is hit – the noise we are hearing is a million people cheering in Central Park.
We long for more Beatles. With his 2021 book Like Some Forgotten Dream: What if the Beatles hadn’t split up?, Daniel Rachel creates a historically feasible final Beatles album beyond Abbey Road and Let It Be.
In Danny Boyle’s fantastical 2019 rom-com Yesterday, a 78-year-old Lennon is alive, well and dispensing wisdom in a cottage by the sea.
But if Lennon were alive today, as McCartney and Starr are, it’s hard to imagine him participating in a reunion. In his 1970 song God, he sang that he didn’t believe in the Beatles: “The dream is over – what can I say?”
For some, the dream is not over. For those Beatles believers, Reunion is sure to strike a chord.