Fab? Drab!

Hope & Joy Takes A Holiday

1979. New York City. Pennsylvania Hotel, across the street from Madison Square Garden. Tucked under my arm is a yard-tall Paul McCartney for Hofner stand-up: black & white photo of Paul playing his famous Hofner violin bass, printed on a thick piece of corrugated cardboard with an attached fold-out stand. Something you would’ve seen in a music store circa 1965, I found it God-knows-where and knew instantly it was worth much more than I paid. So I rode the LIRR from Lindenhurst to Penn Station and hit the Beatlesfest. Wandering the hotel’s ground floor, zig-zagging from one vendor to another, I held up Paul McCartney and said “How much ya give me?” It didn’t take long.

Hundred bucks?

A stout, balding man in a tie-dyed T-shirt thrusts five twenties at me before I can counter his offer. I gra the bills, pocketing an $80 profit ($10 for the standup, $10 for the round-trip train ticket) and debating how much to spend on Beatles shit from Beatlesfest.

In 1979 all four Beatles were still alive. It’d been nine years since they’d gone their separate ways. I’d been listening to them nearly my entire life, their emergence on the world stage circa 1962 aligning nicely with mine. It was probably in my mother’s cream-with-red-interior Dodge station wagon I first heard I Want To Hold Your Hand in glorious monaural sound via AM radio. W-A-Beatles-C went for the Fab Four hard, playing their records every hour, several times an hour, until our Liverpool lads had became inescapable. It was on a visit to Aunt Georgie’s in the Bronx four or five years later when her teenage daughters, my cousins, bestowed upon me the first four Capitol Records releases in mono – Meet The Beatles, The Beatles Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night and Something New – because they’d gotten new “stereo” (it was “processed” stereo, done studio sleight-of-hand). Now I could listen to The Beatles whenever I wanted, with my mother’s permission (hers was still the only stereo in the house). Thank Jesus mom liked The Beatles. You could dance to them and she loved to dance (Dad? Ugh. Stick in the fucking mud).

The Beatles accompanied me through much, including that brilliant yellow Lawn Guyland summer when Glenn Katz and I scraped barnacles from the hull of his soon-to-be jailed father (a lawyer, he’d run a Ponzi scheme on his wife’s relations, supposedly investing their money in property while sugar-daddying an expensive mistress) Harvey’s cabin cruiser. My Panasonic shoebox cassette recorder held a copy of the Beatles ‘65 and Glenn and I, flat on our backs under the boat, sang along loudly to every song as we finished scraping and began painting. Harvey paid us each $200 and took us out on the Great South Bay, where Sheila, Glenn’s mom, lay on the foredeck yelling up to her husband on the flybridge, Harvey! Can you make the boat not ROCK so much?

Sheila, what do you want me to do? I can’t control the WAVES.

Harvey’s $200 was long gone but the $80 in my hand was pulling me forward at the Pennsylvania Hotel Beatlesfest, sniffing out something I just had to have. I bought an album or two and a few Beatles Vari-Vue™ pinback buttons, those lenticular wonders that were like early 3D animated GIFs you could wear. Most prices, even then, were nuts… but it was all original Beatles releases and tchotchkes and there was a metric ton of it.

Flash forward to this Sunday. Beatlesfest 2025 at the Hyatt Regency, Jersey City. I’m just off the light rail from Weehawken Lincoln Harbor to Exchange Place, a ride I made every week when Aerial View was heard over WFMU. Exchange Place is home not only to WFMU but to the dramatic Katyn Memorial, placed there by proud Polish-Americans to tell the forgotten story of Stalin’s 1940 massacre of Polish army officers and intellectual leaders. It’s cool and overcast but I’m wearing long-johns and excited about volunteering for Rock CAN Roll, turned on to the opportunity by my friend Susie. She texted me Saturday, asked if I was willing to help a few hours asking Beatles fans for canned goods or money in exchange for free admission. Sure, why not? I had no plans for Sunday other than catching up on several books (Confidence Man, Kubrick and Man’s Search For Meaning) and magazines (Mother Jones, New York & The Atlantic). The Hyatt Regency Jersey City juts out on a pier into the Hudson River and I looked south to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, sad for how moribund they seemed in light of the authoritarian America now being birthed. No wonder the Beatlesfest has lasted so long: the hope & joy embedded in their early output and the angry questioning of their later records is needed now more than ever.

I take the escalator up to the Hyatt lobby, head to the Beatlesfest check-in desk for a wristband and get on line. Within two minutes a rising WOOP-WOOP-WOOP alarm begins. And doesn’t stop. Then a voice crackles over the PA: This is an active fire alarm. Please exit the building as quickly as possible. Please do not use the escalator unless absolutely necessary. What the fuck? Really. Heads are swiveling all around, no one quite sure whether to leave or ignore the alarm. I exit, down the stairs instead of the escalator, and just through the automatic doors I hear oncoming sirens and within minutes spot a fire truck headed our way. Is the hotel burning down? I think of Paul McCartney’s father, a voluntary firefighter, as five Jersey City firefighters in full gear trudge into the hotel. I’ve called Aimee, founder of Rock Can Roll, to let her know why I’m not inside by 11:30 AM, my requested arrival time. I’m sure it’s nothing she says. Probably someone smoking in their room. No one’s left. Come on in. I follow the firefighters and meet Aimee at the top of the escalator. She ushers in me over to the reception desk where a volunteer attaches a red prismatic wristband around my left wrist. Inside, it’s a few steps to Aimee’s booth, where she’s setting out banker’s boxes full of yesterday’s donated canned goods. She’s impressed when I lean the boxes against the wall at an angle so the contents can be seen.

That’s a good idea. I wish I had thought of that.

“It’s all those years doing truck shows…”

Aimee gets the rundown on my SiriusXM Road Dog Trucking years while we place the raffle box, the cash box and various bits of promo material, like news clippings featuring a picture of Ringo wearing a Rock CAN Roll T-shirt. We’re in a hallway across from the video theater and author/podcaster room and terminating in a food kiosk serving coffee, breakfast sandwiches, cheeseburgers and muffins (blueberry or corn). To the left of the food kiosk is a tall cocktail table with an open laptop showing Karen Karaoke’s videos featuring kids murdering the poppiest Beatles songs. Karen herself chats up the food kiosk workers, showing every sign of wishing she’d shut up already about yet another moppet making Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da worse than it already is.

Aimee fills me in on her standard spiel, asking for canned goods or a donation, pointing out the raffle levels ($5 for one entry, $10 for three, $20 for ten). As Beatles fan enter our zone it’s easy enough to play off what’s screening in the video theater (The Rutles) by intoning “The Rutles said and we believe it: all you need is lunch. Help us feed the hungry by donating canned goods or making a donation.” More often than not, my pitch works. Aimee’s impressed.

Hey, you’re pretty good at this. Susie said you would be.

“It’s all those years on the radio.”

The fans run the gamut from wide-eyed kids to the hobbling ancient, united by their love for John, Paul, George and Ringo and questionable taste in Beatles-wear. I’m gobsmacked by the sheer quantity of tacky crap on to which a Beatles logo can be slapped, while pondering where else this shit can be worn without embarrassment. Is it really necessary, outside Beatlesfest, to signal your Beatles love? Is it necessary INSIDE Beatlesfest, since everyone knows why they’re here?

Aimee and I are doing well, cajoling donations out of nearly everyone who passes the Rock CAN Roll booth, chatting up everyone from a former Marine who enters the raffle and a mom with her teenagers in tow who does not. After a few hours of Karen Karoake’s videos I need a break and Aimee sets me free for a bit to check out the marketplace on the 9th floor. Just off the elevator bank a band is playing Beatles songs but I keep walking and find a room full of authors flogging all manner of Beatles-adjacent books. One is about every copyright the band ever won. Huh? Another is about Yoko’s art and I think about buying a copy for Sweet T. but there’s no visuals. Obviously, the author couldn’t afford the rights to republish Yoko’s work. I put it down and move counter-clockwise past the copyright book, one about Ringo’s drumstick collection (kidding but maybe not) and land in front of Laurie Kaye’s booth. She begins her pitch I was the last person to interview John Lennon for the radio and recites the bullet points of her radio career. I told myself I wouldn’t spend a cent at Beatlesfest but I tell her “I have to support a radio colleague.” and she personalizes my purchase. While I’m saying my goodbyes to Laurie, the woman at the next booth over gets up and parks herself just off my right ear, shouting into it over the band down the hall. Her book is about Beatles fashion and it looks worthwhile but she proceeds to harangue me for what seems like five minutes, not taking a breath or pausing but working herself into a spittle-flinging froth. I’m going “Uh-huh” and “Okay” and nodding my head, trying to figure out how I get out of this. She picks up a copy of her book, begins leafing through it, continues telling me how groundbreaking and influential The Beatles were sartorially. I think of the clothes in Get Back and would love to learn more but this woman is hitting me in my ear with her spit. I’m stuck between being polite and wanting to tell her to fuck right off. Finally, I tap my watch and say I’m volunteering downstairs and have to be back in 5 minutes. It’s not quite the truth but not really a lie and it does the trick. She unlatches from my ear and I spin away from her, muttering “Holy fucking shit.” In the marketplace I encounter one vendor after another selling the same latter-day Beatles shit. Anything/everything you can put a a Beatles picture on – keychains, stickers, lapel pins, T-shirts, scarfs, fountain pens, mittens, beanies, caps, water bottles, etc., etc., etc. – is available, yours between here and the nearest landfill. I count two vendors selling legitimate vintage Beatles merchandise, including a few Vari-Vue™ buttons I’d need a loan to buy.

Back at the Rock CAN Roll booth Aimee is looking to break it all down early and I help her pack it all away so she can get home at a decent hour. With nothing but the clear Plexiglas™ raffle box left on the table, we decide it’s time to find a winner. Aimee shakes up the box and I reach inside, rooting around for a slip of doubled-over paper. I pull it out, unfold it. It’s the Marine. Aimee is pleased and I tell her if she ever needs help again to let me know.

On the way out of the hotel I have my favorite moment. An impromptu band is on the 2nd floor landing playing early Beatles numbers and they’re not bad at all. Before I exit I watch a song and a half, impressed by how thrown-together they seem, like a bunch of fans toted their instruments here and decided to have some fun. On my way to the light rail I search my phone for Beatles music but there is none.

So much for hope & joy.