All you need is love – and a nod from the Great Beyond
Beatles fans plan séance
POP CULTURE | Bruce Rushton
Robert Bartel is firm on one point.
He and his wife, Janice, are fans. Not fanatics. There is a difference, he says. But still, Bartel seems a bit chagrined when his wife reminds him that he did, in fact, take a photograph of the urinals at the Circle K on Clear Lake Avenue where Paul McCartney went to the bathroom in 2008 while sightseeing on Route 66.
“I’ve got it upstairs,” says Janice, who posits that she would have ripped the urinals from the wall and brought them home. Her husband had no luck convincing Circle K management to give him the surveillance tape that captured Sir Paul entering and leaving the store.
When it comes to the Beatles, there are no bigger fans than the Bartels, who long ago turned their basement into a poster-filled shrine to the band. Robert, a retired private investigator, has written two plays about the Fab Four. Janice has a scrapbook bursting with news clippings dating to 1964, plus a threering binder bulging with photos she took of McCartney, and a few of John Lennon. She recalls mornings when she waited outside the building where McCartney lived, just one of a regular throng, so that she could snap pictures when he left each day and when he arrived home.
This was when Janice lived in New York, long before she and Robert were wed in 1993. On Oct. 9, Lennon’s birthday.
Which brings us to the crux of the matter. Oct. 9, 2015, would have been Lennon’s 75 th birthday. And the Bartels are hoping he’ll pay a visit to their Springfield home, where they will hold a birthday party that will culminate in a séance, complete with a medium who is coming from Taylorville.
Central to the occasion will be a single strand of hair from Lennon’s head that Robert purchased a few years back at a Benld antique store that has since burned down, so thank goodness that he bought it when he did. He paid $75, but would gladly have paid more than twice that. And on Lennon’s next birthday, séance-goers will put the protective plastic sheath that contains the hair at the center of a table in the Bartels’ candlelit basement, hold hands and reach out to the Great Beyond.
“We’re calling it Come Together, Over Me,” Robert says. “We’re going to get pretty solemn about it.”
The medium, Robert says, has been in touch with Lennon and reports that he is at peace on the other side. What will he say, should he grace the Bartel home with his spiritual presence?
“He’ll probably say ‘Come together, over me,’” Bartel guesses. “If he says ‘Yoko,’ we’ll say ‘Oh, no – Yoko?’” In fact, Yoko Ono has stayed in touch over the years, ever since Janice sent her a sympathy card when Lennon was murdered in 1980. The Bartels have a congratulatory card that Ono sent when they were married, and they say that she also sends Christmas cards. They do not blame her for breaking up the Beatles.
Besides cake, next month’s birthday party will feature strawberries (think strawberry fields) and Coca-Cola. As part of a promotional campaign, the Coca-Cola company is selling bottles of Coke emblazoned with names on labels – Steve, Harry, Cindy and, of course, John, Paul, George and Ringo (you can order bottles with any names you like). There are, Robert says, photographs of the Beatles sipping Cokes, and so he plans on buying plenty of bottles with John on the labels.
“John says he shoots Coca-Cola,” Robert notes.
The Bartels are inviting Beatles fans they know, but say there may be room for more. Those interested in finagling an invitation should call them at 546-8385. It will be, they say, a candlelight love-in.
“Maybe we can reach out to John Lennon and communicate with him with our love,” Robert says.
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].
