http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2011-08-2012.mp3
In the fall of 1967, I was a deeply uncool 13 year old who knew relatively little about the Beatles.
My English teacher that year was Tyler C. Tingley, freshly graduated from Harvard. Tingley started bringing Beatles records to class. I'm talking about Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Tingley's point was that this music represented a rich cultural poetry unfolding in real time.
We could not even begin to appreciate it without developing a certain kind of critical antennae. We had no such antennae and it had never occurred to us that pop culture and rock and roll music would ever ask anything of us. Tingley talked to us about symbolic meaning. He talked about the influence of James Joyce on John Lennon. For me, for most of us, this moment was like a catapult, launching us into literary exegesis. The world was never the same.
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***This episode originally aired on November 8, 2012***
