The Wah-Wah Man

I can never be rid of the image. I see it when I’m not looking at it. It pops up in my mind at unexpected times, triggered by nothing. George Harrison on the cover of his third album, All Things Must Pass, sitting in a chair on a huge lawn with a stand of evergreens in the background, his estate I’m assuming, and I know he loved gardening and landscaping, and to judge by the big rubber boots that are foregrounded and disproportionately large, he’s been working. The garden gnomes surrounding him are a nice, jocular touch. His big floppy hat seems well matched with the abundance of hair tumbling down and over his shoulders; it seems like part of the garden. I like the image. It feels at home in my head. It always had a weird familiarity for me, having done a lot of yardwork myself. And the misty English cold seems familiar, as that’s the same weather we have in the Pacific Northwest. I once invested money in an upright piano invention and found out he’d made an investment in it, too. So I felt a little connected. And to this day I never think of him as dead. His music is still going strong. For me, anyway. Occasions to discuss music with people in their 20s are slim. I did have a casual conversation with a twenty-something guy once that didn’t know who Led Zeppelin was. I used to wonder when I was in my 20s if I’d swing with the times, flow with the zeitgeist, morph into different identities as I progressed with the times. Didn’t happen. I still listen to the Beatles. I have no idea what the current hit songs are. This disinclination among the young to work shit jobs for peanuts, I do understand that.