I was cooking myself a hot dog in the kitchen when I heard applause coming from the living room. This wasn’t the normal type of applause you hear for human beings or great performances; this was applause that jumps up and down, grabs the surrounding countryside by the throat and points wildly at the stage. I ran in and found the TV still on from watching Dragnet. But the sound was incredibly loud coming from the TV speaker, sounded like a million hands clapping.

So amazing did the reception seem that I didn’t touch it, didn’t try tofigure out where it was coming from or how to control it. Besides, I was also getting a terrific picture in full living color; hands clapping and sending out energy ripples, expanding and multiplying in a hypnotic manner. The room was filled with the sound of applause, sending shivers up ipy spine. Then from out of the clapping you could hear a drum, one drum laying down a beat. It was Ringo Starr, sitting at a drum set as the applause faded, knocking out, smiling, bobbing his head up and down at the camera.

Wham! Three more guitars! It’s John, Paul and George, they’re doing “Doctor Robert,” crooning away, having a great time. They’re in early sixties Beatles fashion, mod clothes, Beatle haircuts and so forth. Where’s Ed Sullivan? y

Wait: this image is on a TV set the camera is watching, it backs up to show us. Only the smaller set is in color. Backs up further and here are four modern Beatles sitting around, watching this TV. Talking, interested, making little Beatle-like jokes. But Ringo is still playing a trap set, into it, watching the TV to keep time with himself.

“Look at that hair,” says John.

“What do you think?” asks George.

Embarrassed, John shrugs. “It’s hair, I guess.”

Paul is spooning ice cream into his mouth.

This is the Beatles together on one screen. I can’t believe it, but here it is, right on my TV set. Forgetting about my hot dogs, I sit down, glued to the set.

“Look there,” says Paul, “how I play left-handed guitar.” .

“I’m just loose enough,” says George of his lead guitar.

“I guess if we had a leader, I was it,” says John, looking through his glasses at the camera.

The song ends and they applaud themselves, then John turns the channel. It’s a cartoon, looks like a' scene from Yellow Submarine. Ringo is still stamping out the same beat, even though there’s no more music to play with.

Now they’re turning, faster and faster, 33 RPM, the table they’re sitting at is the spindle and they’re on an LP going around and as the needle comes closer and closer to them, they start chopping up the grooves with furniture to Ringo’s beat. They make a three foot gouge and the needle gets to it, snaps in the middle and skids wildly across the record, sending them flying. Ringo goes with his trap set, still playing, a shot of him drumming upside down.

When they land, > they see that they’re all bald. “Yow!” shrieks Paul, running his hand through his non-hair. They’re lying in thick foliage that waves and towers over their shiny heads. “You guessed it,” says Ed Sullivan, suddenly present. The camera zooms back and the foliage they are in is the hair of a giant Beatle wig. To escape this and their baldness, they ride guitar cases down a waterfall of the makeup running down the side of Paul McCartney’s nose under the hot lights of the Ed Sullivan show. “This is beginning to be too much like Hard Day’s Night,” a flash cameo appearance by Brian Epstein says, filmed before his death.

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“Sounds like Brian,” says George sadly and they are all obviously upset, looking awkwardly around, forgetting the words; Paul’s voice cracks on a note and John can’t look the audience in the eye.

Back at the studio, two television psychiatrists are discussing Beatlemania. “This is the adolescent adjustment to a world they did not make and don’t care to understand. It’s the result of Benjamin Spock’s campaign for parental permissiveness and the Oedipus Complex.”

“John especially.”

“It can’t last. They don’t understand what they’re doing and neither do the fans. They can’t last with just autographs; someone’s going to have to write about them.”

“Yeah! Two three four . ..” Ringo’s drumming has drowned them out. They look up and the scene swings into the next cut on the album, “Day Tripper,” but the words they’re singing are entirely different. Instead of a girl leaving him, the lyrics are about revolutionary struggle, how even the most young and absurd student can learn to be strong and turn into the king of the slaves. All through it they’re laughing. “What’ll the Beatles do now?” asks George.

“Now they drop a fifth and pick up the lead harmony in minor chording with upbeat tempo,” says Paul, firmly. “Upbeat tempo,” he repeats, and Ringo complies.

The music is being amplified through a tiny component, no larger than the head of a pin, and the guitar sounds are coming out like the music of different animals laughing and singing and crying.

“Print!” says the director, and they all stop except for Ringo.

“Hey wait a minute, just a second, hold a moment,” says John, irritably.

“All right boys,” says the producer, taking the film from the director’s hand. “You’ve done a good job, we’ve got what we wanted and we’ll let you know in the morning.”

“Well, OK,” say the boys while Ringo plays with his brushes on the high hat.

That night at Paul’s house they’re sitting on the couch talking it over, while Ringo plays drums in the basement. “Is it no good or is it any good?” asks George, referring to the contract and the Maharishi’s advice.

“It’s no good!” shouts Ringo from the basement, smashing at the cymbals.

“Yah, he’s right,” says John. “Me sister agrees.” But he doesn’t even have a sister, I’m thinking to myself, then see that they’re all looking at me from the screen.

“That’s the secret” flashes in white lettering across the TV screen, not the one I’m watching, the one they’re watching. So that’s the secret, I think, going out to the kitchen to get the hot dog. So that’s why the album envelope on Magical Mystery Tour looks as though it had been dipped in blood. It had nothing to do with Paul’s dying or being the Messiah or anything of the sort. I return and munch unconsciously in time to Ringo’s rhythm while on TV the Beatles are reunited with everyone they have ever been married to.

“With the Beatles,” says Yoko, “it was never a matter of creative expression seeking expression through the limits of creativity,” I am not sure that’s what she said, because the sound was going bad at that moment. I was getting tired of watching the Beatles on TV. I had had enough of them. I had been watching for a certain period of time and it was enough, already. But I didn’t turn it off because I wanted to see how it came out, even though it wasn’t as interesting as it had been originally.

“Wait a minute,” said Yoko, “turn the sound up so you an hear what I’m saying.” I couldn’t do that, since I had no control over the applause end of it anyway, so I made turning motions with my fingers at the knob.

“And now,” said the announcer, “here is the dentist who first tricked the Beatles into taking LSD.” On he came with a white double breasted jacket and gleaming teeth which he flashed' at the audience. “I’m the one responsible for ’the Beatles going psychedelic. I put it in their tea, so ...” then, in time with Ringo’s drumming, which was considerably faster than it had been on the record, this nameless dentist began singing “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” I figured he must be an actor, because his singing was terrible.

“We agreed to patch up our differences and appear on this show in honor of the occasion,” said John, the other three looking aimlessly in different directions. “This had better get better soon,” said George.

“It better,” agreed Paul.

WHAM! Ringo slammed the snare with both sticks at the same time “It’s better!” he shouted, “It’s better!” WHAM!

Paul sat down and put his hands to his ears. “Where’s the director?” he asked.

The director couldn’t come on because he’d gone home shortly after the Beatles came on; not because he didn’t like them and didn’t want to be around or because he thought he was incompetent to handle the show, but because part of the contract was that he would go home when they came on.

They picked up their instruments and joined with Ringo in this first-in-along-time live performance by themselves over the TV airwaves. They were doing “Bungalo Bill.” Were they working chronologically through all their songs? Would they do Abbey Road by the end of the show? I wished I had something to drink with the hot dog.

Then, amazingly, there was a knock on the front door and when I went to answer it, there they were, this time for real.The Beatles, at my house! It was too incredible to be real, but here it was, right in front of me! How could they do this and still be on the television at the same time, as a quick glance told me they were, still doing “Bungalo Bill” from the white album.

“Maybe it isn’t really live,” suggested George, reading my thoughts right out of my head.

“Perhaps those are our doubles,” smiled Paul.

“Perhaps time has no meaning, and we can be in two places because simultaneity is irrelevant, as it would be in such a situation,” suggested John, thoughtfully and slowly. Could it be that they didn’t know how they were doing this themselves?

I had them come in and sit down by the TV so they could watch it with me. I thought of bringing out some dope to smoke, but my parents would have smelled it, come down and hassled us. Besides, I didn’t want to be stoned for this, one of the most outrageously significant experiences of my entire life, no doubt about it!

“What are you guys doing here?” asked myself, wondering first of all why were they making a personal appearance at anyone’s house, and, if so, why mine of all people, how they had gotten here, how they had found me — could this be some mistake? Would they read my mind again as George had just a moment ago?

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“No.” said John, reaching out to hold Yoko’s hand and finding it not there, scratching his leg. “No more mind reading. All your questions will be answered in the next song,” and gestured toward the TV set. There they were on the screen again, only the song they were singing was about me! The Beatles were singing about me! The lyrics explained what was wrong with my car, why my brother hadn’t answered my last letter, what I was going to get for my birthday next June, who I was going to marry and all sorts of other questions, all being answered, all so personal that I had no idea that I had asked them myself in the first place! I looked over at the Beatles in warm living flesh sitting on my household furniture and they were looking from the tube to me, smiling, looking very smug.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41.

“Pretty proud of yourselves aren’t you?” I said, suddenly annoyed.

“There he goes,” nodded George. Ringo, who had ridden in on a motorized cart with his trapset still playing it started a very long, moderately fast roll of drumming from snare to tomtom to high hat to cymbals, a galloping, climbing rush of sound.

“Wait a minute,” I began again, distractedly, “you Beatles think you’re pretty smart, catching me at a time when I’d be the only one around, putting yourselves on my TV set and then blowing my mind by coming here in person. Yoii think it’s just great that this is an incredible thing that you’ve staged for me, don’t you!”

John looked at the others, then at me. “If there’s a leader to the group, I guess I’m jt.”

“Oh brother,” ■; I said sarcastically, “you’re not even the Beatles anymore. You’re just four separate guys now, since Paul sued Apple for the money he thought you owed him.”

“Here comes Abbey Road,” said Paul, pointing at the screen. Sure enough, still in time to Ringo’s playing, even though he was now playing drums in my living room, and not waking anyone up, which I found increasingly suspicious, they had begun to play “Maxwell’s\Silver Hammer.”

' “Yeah, and I suppose Dylan’s going to come on, too, huh?” Right now I can admit I don’t know what prompted me to say something like that, and they looked puzzled themselves. George shrugged, took out a cigarette, fitted it in a cigarette holder and lit up. “Mind if I smoke?”

“I don’t mind at all, so go right ahead,” I snorted. “Look you guys, all this stuff about my future life and family and so forth, that isn’t what I wanted to know at all. You’re answering questions I haven’t even asked! Look, you know I’ve been a fan of yours for as long as either of us can remember, right? Wasn’t I listening to your records back in the early sixties? Didn’t I wish I could join in when my classmates were sending notes around the room having contests of who could name the most Beatle songs in a half hour? Yes I did! I even went to JM Field’s and bought a Beatle wigi a cheap crappy one that I couldn’t wear because it looked ridiculous and would have fallen apart, f got it to save until it was an artifact of my childhood and I can bring it out now and show it to you if you don’t believe me.” They didn’t say anything; I knew I had them now. “The point is, I bought all sorts of fan magazines just because they had your faces on the cover. The first Beatles album I bought was Rubber Soul because my older brother — the one you just explained why he hadn’t written lately — told me it was your best one. Was it good! Every time there was the slightest bit of news about you I snapped it up so I could find out what the lies, were about the lives you four were living. But I never went to any of your live concerts because that was too expensive and dumb to do. But when Sergeant Pepper came out, I played it so much my brother couldn’t stand to hear it anymore himself. I’ll probably put it on and listen to it after I finish writing an article about this fantastic experience. What an album!

“When, after all those great albums that I had bought and listened to and enjoyed and probably even learned a few things from, but mainly got a kick out of because they were good music — and there is no denying it — even then, and I suppose I’m jumping ahead of the story some, but there are parts that I can leave out — when Paul officially quit the group and the whole Beatles thing went to pieces and you started turning out mediocre individual albums, well, what I want to say is this — even though the thing about you four is perhaps that you harmonize well together or something like that, or that your timing was right so you could be turned into superduper stars as you were — even though you went through that scary spiritual mystic business about Paul being dead and so forth — and I might remind you I wrote about that one myself, it was rather weird in a certain sense — the thing I want to know is this: Why did you kick out Peter Best and get Ringo instead, just when you were starting to make it?”

“Run for it,” yelled Ringo, jumping from the drums, even on the TV set, that is, jumping from both drum sets at the same time; and the four of them ran out the porch dpor before I could browbeat them into answering me with a straight answer. But it had nothing to do with my questions. They had finally made too much noise with their drumming and music playing and taking over of TV sets because about 85 kids my age who had also been devoted fans had found out they were at my house and came storming over, smashing the place up, dismantling the TV and taking its various wires, tubes, resistors and coils as souvenirs, knocking me down and ignoring my cries to leave the place alone for fear of waking my parents up.

And right now, I swear, as I’m typing up the final draft of this, they’re playing “Polythene Pam” and the whole medley from Abbey Road on the FM. You figure it out. ^