My Mental Orgasm When I First Heard “Come Together”

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While eating our sumptuous lunch treated by Dagupan City’s Mayor Belen T. Fernandez at the Emerald Hall of the fully air-condition Stadia during the 3^rd Youth (Journalism) Summit, I asked Philippines Star Photo-Journalist Cesar Ramirez, 48, how his collection of old vinyl record long playing (LP) albums and his phonograph fare.

Our conversation led to Beatles where Cesar is a rabid fan.

“My first encounter with the Beatles was when my military father brought me to Zamboanga City when he was assigned at the Edwin Andrew Air Base, and where the famous Barter Traders thrive,” I cited.

A framed poster of the Abbey Road Album inside the house of a Beatles' fan in the Philippines.

I was in second year high school in the early 1980s when I kept hearing college students led by a “Beatle maniac” and rock and roll freak the diminutive Elvis Bolivar magnified to wide eyed and gullible school mates about music virtuosos’ John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.

“My music standard then was based on Cascades (on their songs like Punch and Judy, Last Leaf, others”. 

“…and Bee Gees,” Philippine Daily Inquirer's Correspondent Gabriel “Ging” Cardinoza, who was in our table, butted in.

“..yes Bee Gees with songs like Too Much Heaven, How Deep is Your Love, others being played by the blaring loudspeaker of the American Protestants’ ran college there whenever there was a lull in the occasions held outside the edifices,” I added.

FM or  Frequency Modulation  stations were still foreign during that time in our rustic town M’lang, Cotabato and one needed to install a prohibitive priced TV-liked antenna so one can enjoy non-stop music played by FM stations in Davao City – a three hours bus ride then.

When I asked the sales lady at the barter trade in Zamboanga that I want to buy a Beatles' cassette tape, the sales lady asked me what kind of albums.

“Anak ng baka, madami pala iyong albums ng Beatles na naka display doon sa shelves nila (Geez, I just learned that Beatles have countless albums that were displayed at the shelves there),” I told the duo who were amused by my naivety.

Because of my ignorance, I randomly pinpointed to the blue covered tape with title’s A Hard Day's Night.

“Veinticinco!” the Tausog-Chinese sales lady quipped the twenty five pesos tape in the Spanish sprinkled Chabacano vernacular.

When I played it at my Japanese Sanyo’s cassette that my father bought too in Zamboanga after I disembarked from the C-130 military cargo plane at Awang, Dinaig Maguindanao’s airport, I squirmed as if I eaten a raw ampalaya (bitter gourd) as my Cascades and Bee Gees honed eardrums were too culture shocked with those yelling and fast paced singing style of the album’s Tell Me Why and Hard Day's Night.

“Law-ay man sang Beatles (Beatles suck),” I told those sons of peasants college students who bought lines and sinkers the bravados and marvels of the baggy and faked Levis lousily garbed Elvis to them.

Elvis, the son of a vegetable vendor, side slapped the back of my Marine white sidewall head and told his gullible and unsophisticated friends not to believe my declaration.

“Ignore him, he doesn’t know what he was talking,” Elvis vigorously warned his pals as if I committed “blasphemy” to his fabulous four gods.

I told Cesar and Ging that after two years, I stumbled with the flamboyant self-styled Bimbo Solis, a soccer star in our town, who brought his powerful sounding U.S made RCA boom box at an outdoor soccer game, where a Come Together song blared its melody and lyrics where a "Shoot!” quipped from Lennon, as the first word of the song, accompanied by his hand claps and McCartney's heavy bass riff and Starr’s drum roll instantly enthralled me.

“Shoot!
Here come old flat-top, he come grooving slowly
He got ju-ju eyeballs, he's one holy roller
He got hair down to his knees
Got to be a joker, he just do what he please…

(Chorus) Come together, right now
Over me….”

“Geez, man that was not only scintillating and psychedelic but sheer serendipity,” I told myself.

 I felt I had my first orgasm and ejaculation brought by that great song composed by Lennon to a requested political jingle of Timothy Leary when he ran against Ronald Reagan in the governorship race of California in 1969.

 “Who sang that song?!” I cried to Bimbo who was enmeshed in deceiving with his dribbling football skills the vaunted soccer funny man Elvis, yes, that sonnafabitch who side slapped my almost shaved head that rocked my long chin, who retorted in between his huffing and puffing: “Beatles!”.

“Beatles?” Those guys with lousy songs like the Beach Boys in Hard Day’s Night?” I quipped.

Until I saw the tape cover of the album titled Abbey Road (click story here) sprawled at the Yanks funded well-manicured grass, just like Camp John Hay in Baguio City, of the school field.

An album where the Fab Four in a single file walked on the right side of the zebra crossing at a street called Abbey Road in London with Lennon leading, followed by Starr, a barefoot McCartney, and Harrison.

For me, Abbey Road is the best album of the Beatles’ 11^th album. Its Side B's songs Polythene Pam, She Came Into the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, and Carry that Weight I could sing with my acoustic guitar with feelings. I could shed a tear to the sad melody of the last song The End. It was literally the end of the Fab Four as Abbey Road was their last album (not Let It Be) before they separated with each other. 
 In the early of 2000s I even bought a more than three feet by two- and- half feet poster at Odyssey Record Bar at CSI Mall in Dagupan City and asked someone to put it in a portrait so I can conspicuously display it at my room’s wall.

“Come Together” was released as a double A-side with “Something” composed by George Harrison and as the opening track of Abbey Road. The single was released on October 6, 1969 in the US and was on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 16 weeks, and reached No. 1, according to Wikipidea.

Rolling Stone ranked "Come Together" at Number 202 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Number 9 on their list of the Beatles' 100 Greatest Songs.

      Video on the best rendition of Come Together by Rock Star Steven Tyler

(You can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)