I am a child of the seventies, it must be said. The earliest songs I can recall hearing on the radio and grooving to were things like "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks. "SOS" by Abba. "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by Peter, Paul & Mary. "Love is Blue" by Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra. You get the idea.
When I was a very young child, living with my mother, I was subjected to her then-favorite music, which was Motown. I listened to The Fifth Dimension, Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Temptations... Sadly, I don't really remember much of that, being very young. I would be significantly older before I would appreciate that music.
What I do remember, however, was a fondness for The Monkees. According to my mother, I had evidently memorized every fact about these guys that I could. Their birthdays, the color of their eyes, etc... Where I got all this information at the age of four, I really don't know. But I remember being a bit of a ham as a kid, too. Loved being the center of attention. I had this little plastic toy guitar with the pictures of The Monkees on it. And I had a tiny little phonograph. I had a Close 'n Play, too! Remember those?
Anyway, whenever someone would come to visit, I'd plop that little phonograph on a stand in the hallway, cue up "Daydream Believer" or one of their other singles, and go to town! I'd strum that little guitar, shake my four-year-old butt, and wail along with Davy and/or Micky until the guests would go away. Sometimes this would take several plays of the record, I recall.
Still, these were very limited memories of my musical youth. About a year later, Mother moved out west and I moved in with my grandparents. We didn't own a stereo, then. We listened to AM radio. KDKA in Pittsburgh, actually. KDKA had, all through my adolescence (and possibly still today), this almost obscene fixation on the song "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band. That, I think, is enough to turn one off of AM radio for eternity.
However, all was not lost. Their daughter, fifteen years my senior, had left her small but interesting collection of 45 rpm records behind when she went off to college. (Unthinkable!) These were the only recordings I had, until I started buying my own. Or coercing the babysitter into buying them for me. Whichever.
She had an impressive collection of Beach Boys singles. So I guess I listened to them a lot. And there were lots of other things in there. I remember things like "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" by The Hollies. A song I was much too young to appreciate. "All You Need is Love" by The Beatles. Again, too young to really appreciate. However, I did like the flip side of that one, which was "Baby You're a Rich Man." That was cool, and what a nice thought! There was "Susan" by The Buckinghams. That was her name, after all. Made sense she should have that one. The flip side to that, I remember, was called "Foreign Policy." Once again, it seemed I was too young to quite grasp the meaning behind it. (And if you, dear reader, are unfamiliar with the songs listed in this paragraph, I strongly suggest you track them down.)
As I said, I eventually started buying some of my own singles. Just to give you an idea, some of my early purchases were "Rockin' Robin" by The Jackson Five, "Crocodile Rock" by Elton John, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by Robert John... I have no idea why there was this animal theme running through...
At any rate, I grew older, and by the time I was twelve, my record collection (or rather... *ahem*... my 8-track tape collection) was filled with things like John Denver, The Carpenters, Neil Sedaka, The Beach Boys, The Captain and Tennille, Arthur Fiedler & the Boston Pops, and Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Need I say more?
Then, when I was thirteen, something amazing happened... But before I tell you what it was, let me tell you how it happened.
I collected comic books as a kid. Actually, I collected them up until just a handful of years ago, when my budget would no longer allow it. But at this particular point in time, when I was 13, I was in a phase where I'd buy darn near any comic that had a decent chance at being a collector's item one day. This included all first issues, anniversary issues, significantly numbered issues (like #100), or any that said "special edition" or some other such advertising propaganda. This phase didn't last long, but fortunately, at this point in time, it was in full swing.
Marvel Comics used to publish a magazine-sized comic called Marvel Super Special. I recall issue number three being on the stands around this time. It was a comic adaptation of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'd "discovered" science fiction that year, so this was cool. Issue number four soon hit the stands. I bought it because, after all, it had the words super and special in the name of the book.
Issue number four was devoted to a rock band. Perhaps you've heard of them...
I looked it over, rather dubiously, and said to myself, "Well, Sue did have that one single that wasn't bad..." I bought it. I read it.
When I was done, I thought, "That was kinda interesting. I wonder what some of their other music was like..."
As it happens, I was visiting Sue in West Virginia not long thereafter. She bought me the tapes of what is sometimes known as "The Blue Album," a compilation double-set titled The Beatles 1967-1970. We went home and I plugged the first tape into her stereo, meanwhile looking over a magazine I'd bought, which was devoted to the group and reprinted lots of their lyrics.
The first song on that collection is "Strawberry Fields Forever." And it about blew me away. This was nothing like what I was used to listening to. Okay, so it wasn't as musically advanced as some of the stuff that was out then in 1977, but it was still better than just about anything that was on the radio. And remember what kind of stuff I'd been listening to!
Practically overnight, The Beatles became my inspiration. Soon I had all their American releases, knew far more about them than I ever had about The Monkees (though I never stopped liking them a lot), and well... Let's just say that I became rather obsessed.
The family never quite understood it. My peers certainly didn't understand it. But one thing led to another. My love for The Beatles soon took me into rock and roll roads that my peers had never even heard of. By the time I graduated high school, four years later, I was regarded as being one of the foremost "experts" on rock music in my school. During my first two years of college, I was a disc jockey for the school's radio station. I brought my own records in, since my collection was two or three times the size of the station's!
To this day, I'm constantly the one that many of my friends turn to when they have an obscure question about the genre. But after all these years, am I more impressed by any other band than I am by The Beatles? Well, to put it in terms that any net surfer will understand: LoL!
And I do laugh out loud... every time I hear some moron stating that This Group is more popular than The Beatles, or That Group has more hits than The Beatles, or whatever inane piece of drivel they want to spout. I honestly don't think it is possible for any group to ever be as popular again as The Beatles were. For any band to have the same long-term impact on the entire music industry as The Beatles did.
Anyone familiar with their accomplishments... not just their music, but what they did in terms of creativity in the studio... has to be in awe of what they did. And to think that by the end of the group's career... when the four went their separate ways... leaving behind a legacy that will be (probably forever) unmatched... the oldest of them was only 30 years old.
Sure, I'll readily admit that there are plenty of guitarists better than George Harrison. Better drummers than Ringo Starr. I really doubt there are any songwriters out there who could match, overall, the talents of John Lennon and Paul McCartney... but again, this isn't the point. I could tell you right now about some bands that impress me musically far more than The Beatles. (Renaissance, Yes, Pink Floyd, to name just a few.) But The Beatles were far more than just musicians/singers/songwriters.
To me, they were the band that caused me to get serious about music. I took up the guitar at age fifteen. And while I don't play anywhere near as often (or as well) as I once did, I value that ability. Music is, you see, a passion of my life. You who have perused the rest of my web page, here, know that writing is a passion of mine, also. Music, in fact, is a bigger passion. I know, however, that I lack the talent to make it in the music world. But that would have been my dream...
Not a minute goes by during the day when there is not a song running through my head. I can't remember a time when this wasn't the case. Even in grade school I remember the mental soundtrack of my life.
The Beatles helped create the soundtracks of our lives... All of rock and roll today is indebted to them in several ways. And though you can say that The Beatles themselves were indebted to the likes of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and scores of other performers... None of them, nor any since, carries the same kind of widespread impact.
Especially on me.
