2010-07-20 - 11:15 a.m.

So, you know, during the World Cup naturally I was watching highlights of previous World Cups and so I found some footage of the 1966 championship game, which happened in London. I watched the highlights and they played slower than they do today but then I started watching the fans, the thousands of people in the stands. They wore coats, and hats, and when they wanted to cheer they stood up in orderly bands. There were orderly dark-framed eyeglasses. There were women in gloves, men in old-fashioned sideburns, pearls on some necks. In general, the people in that stadium look nothing like the Beatles.

And yet the Beatles, just a few months before that game, had recorded "Tomorrow Never Knows." I'm in serious Beatles-listening mode right now. I've got lots of thoughts about them.

Here's one: Watching those highlights, and then listening to the drum beat in "Tomorrow Never Knows," it's hard to imagine those two worlds existing at the same time. What I'm saying is that my mom always said to me, about the sixties, "We changed everything." And now I think I finally, really, get it. Things were motoring along nicely, with the cars-in-driveways and the chickens-in-the-fridges and then shit got weird and goddamn.

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