Changing All Those Changes

1:

One night, Paul sat alone in the studios. It was 1968, a warm night in September, and the sun had long since disappeared from the London skies. He had placed himself in the corner of the recording studio with his guitar in his lap, running his fingers up and down the neck and messing with different notes. In the order he was playing them, they didn't sound right.

It was getting late and he was tired. Unfortunately, there's not enough coffee in the world to stave the sandman off forever. But, he had told John, indignantly, that he was going to come up with something, here, tonight, no matter how long it took. Oh, yes, you just watch, he'd said. I've done it many times before and I'm going to do it again. I'm going to write a song that'll be so brilliant, so wonderful, that no one will pay you and your own songs any mind.

The Beatles had come down from a high - literally and figuratively - since releasing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band a year ago. Things were much more tense than they'd been before, once they sat down to begin work on their new album. Each of them was anxious to go their own way creatively. George was questioning their winning formula of John and Paul as songwriters, claiming he could write a song just as well as them. Ringo was talking about doing another movie. And John and Paul couldn't seem to agree about anything. They were dismissing each other's songs left and right, and both wanted control of the way the album was going.

The silence of the studios felt unnatural to Paul. It seemed someone was always bustling about, going someplace they weren't. But he was alone tonight. I'll come up with something, he'd told them angrily, once you all shut your traps and give me some peace and quiet. But here he was, with all the peace and quiet in the world, and nothing was coming to him.

He rubbed his eyes, half tempted to throw in the towel. But he couldn't just give up now, or else he'd have to face John the next day with nothing to show for himself. He was compelled to stay. He had to live up to his word. He couldn't let John get the best of him.

What happened to him? Just a few years ago he was cranking out hit after hit. Had he lost whatever he had then? Had he really changed so much so quickly that he just wasn't up to par anymore?

And, if he really had changed... how?

Paul sat back against the wall defeatedly and wondered.

When he'd first starting writing songs, he was a mischievous, longing teenager, apathetic about anything that wasn't music. He would have dropped everything to be home in time to see the latest Elvis television special, and all of his free time was spent sitting with his guitar in the next room, much to the dismay of his father and brother. He slicked back his dark hair every morning, and always found time to stop at the NEMS record shop after a day of tormenting classmates. And every night, on his record machine, he would admire Eddie Cochran's deep, rugged growl, and swear to himself that one day, people would be in awe over records of his own.

Now, here he was ten years later. He didn't bother much with his hair anymore, and had actually grown a sizable beard to go along with it. Since he left Liverpool, he'd become a member of the biggest band in the world. He was bombarded by a crowd of screaming girls wherever he went. He couldn't even count all of his hits. Without a doubt, there were people out there that admired him every bit as much as Teenage Paul admired Eddie.

Maybe he just burned out. After all, a person can only have so much success.

The clock struck midnight. Paul glanced up at it warily, listening to the breezy chimes as they sounded one by one. Ten... eleven... twelve. Yes... he could count it now. The end was coming. Everyday, it was getting closer.

Now there was a thought. Paul paused. Even more than Eddie Cochran, Paul had idolized the man behind that line. He hadn't thought about him in a long time.

After pondering it for a second more, his fingers fell into the familiar old chords and he began to strum them. It was a hopeful little melody, and yet now it seemed more bittersweet than anything else.

Softly, to himself, Paul began to sing. "Everyday, it's a-getting closer... going faster than a rollercoaster..."

It felt so natural. Just like that, he was a teenager again. He remembered the first time he'd ever heard that song. It had been a rough day at school and he was breezing down the crowded street. He bumped into somebody and instinctively apologized; all the person did was curse back at him. All of a sudden, as he walked past an open shop door, he heard a crackling voice coming over a radio. He stopped in the doorway, halted by the mesmerizing melody.

"Love like yours will surely come m-y way... A-hey, a-hey hey..."

Paul asked the man behind the register about the song. His name was Buddy Holly, he found out. An American fellow.

Since then, Buddy Holly had been Paul's hero. He bought every one of his records as they became available, watched every time he appeared on TV. He was his biggest fan... right up until the cold February day the newspaper came that announced his death.

As Paul played the song now, he could still hear that familiar hiccuping voice. That was how the Beatles got their name; remembering the man that each of them had so admired. Paul never got to tell him that, how important he had been to him. He wished he had the chance.

He rubbed his eyes again and slumped back. He would resume his writing again in a minute... or two. He just needed to relax and think for a little while... Just think...

Before that minute could pass, Paul gave in and drifted off to sleep with his guitar still in his lap, a warm, melodic voice soothing him in the back of his mind.