What the Beatles Mean to Me

This February marks the fifty-year anniversary of the Beatles arriving on our shores, storming the beaches of American pop culture and leaving in their wake a whole new landscape. What they mean to America is self-evident in the flurry of documentaries and other specials to mark the occasion when, on February 9, 1964, the Fab Four appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." What they mean to people who came of age during their peak, and who continue to look upon them as the peak of their adolescene or childhood, is very different to what they mean to me. I missed the wave by about fifteen years, and was just over a year old when all the talk of the Beatles re-uniting was forever put asunder by John Lennon's death in 1980.

When I began to be aware of the Beatles, it was at the start of my high-school years, almost twenty years ago (way to make me feel old, passage of time. Thanks a lot). Grunge was in, and Kurt Cobain was still among us on this mortal plain, but the music of that era didn't really *speak* to me (or if it did, it spoke in a language that I wasn't yet privy to, the obsession with childhoods ruined that didn't really apply to me because, in all honesty, I had a good childhood all things considered. Not a lot of fuel for the coming-of-age novel that I would like to write, but you can make that shit up anyway). My family could tell you that, when I got into the Beatles, I got into them big-time. I remember freezing my ass off sitting outside on the porch at my house (the same porch where I still like to retreat with a good book when it's not the middle of an Arctic blast outside) with a borrowed Walkman and a Beatles tape either bought or borrowed which I could then turn up to ear-blistering volume and hold a private commune with, no one around except my concerned family members warm inside, wondering what had gotten into me, this previously sports-obsessed kid with no father around, who always had his nose in a book (even if I didn't finish the bulk of the ones about WWII or baseball that I checked out of the local library, keeping their war and sports sections fully stocked well into the late Nineties). To them, I'm sure it looked like I'd lost my mind.

And in a way, I had; a chance glancing through the "Guinness Book of World Records" had revealed that I shared a birthday with John Lennon (October 9), and perhaps it was being fatherless (my biological father being a Vietnam vet who was never really in the picture, and whose absence didn't occur to me as "unnatural" except when I started to have step-brothers and step-sisters courtesy of my step-dad) that drew me into looking up to Lennon as an idol (indeed, after reading most of the good books about the Beatles and even some of the shitty ones, I still think of Lennon as the spirit-father I never had, even when he could be a dick to people and even abusive on a violent scale to the women in his life). Oddly, the first Beatle biography I ever read was one about Paul McCartney, whose left-handed bass playing style I modeled chiefly because, in the mirror, it looked like I was playing right-handed (to this day, I air-guitar that way, even though if I had a real guitar I'm sure I'd do it right-handed. It would sound terrible either way, as I am not a natural musician). I say ironically because, as I read more about the Beatles (including their acrimonious split in 1969/1970), I began to think of Paul as the asshole of the group or "the one who should've gotten shot" (a sentiment I'm sure Ringo and George might have shared with me at various points in post-Beatle life, especially when he took charge of the "Anthology" project and had an uncomfortable-looking reunion with his bandmates in a field somewhere in England to sit around and remember "when they were fab" or something like that.

In fact, I picked a good time to become a Beatles fan, as in 1993/1994 not everyone was buying into the myth yet. I even met a girl once whom I fell in love with because we both loved the Beatles (and John was our favorite, of course) and she had books about the Beatles that I'd never seen before. Brooke was my crush during my junior and senior years of high school, as the "Anthology" made it seem suddenly cooler to like the Beatles than it had been only a few years before (i.e., back when I was freezing my ass off listening to tapes of the Beatles, some of which mixed all the various stages of the band together to make for a confused attempt to make sense of their history). That history, represented by Philip Norman's "Shout" and Ray Coleman's "Lennon" and so on, became part of my history, as I became Walhalla's resident Beatles scholar and earned much derision from my peers in college my first time around because of my Beatles posters and "old-timey" music collection (by that time, I'd added the Who and the Kinks to my CD collection, along with Oasis and other English bands that seemed to be like the Beatles, but never the Rolling Stones. I actually believed in the "Beatles vs. Stones" mythology put forward by the press officers of both groups when, in 1964 or 1965, it seemed like a good idea to jin up interest in both groups by saying that they were the opposite of their most popular rival). The Animals came from another port city like Liverpool, Newcastle (port cities having a monopoly on American blues artists whose records were brought over by sailors and disseminated by music-hungry white teenagers, much as how rap became prominent because white American teens were tired of rock and sought out rap music, like my uncle did in the Eighties). The Yardbirds were blues purists when Eric Clapton played with them, becoming pop stars when Jeff Beck opened them up to the possibility of writing their own material. The Kinks were snarky before the word existed, both celebrating the quaint Englishness of their home and mocking it gently. And the Stones, when I finally let them in? Fucking fantastic, of course. The British Invasion was the best thing to ever happen to me.

I care about music because of the Beatles, maybe a little too much (as any girl who's ever recieved a mix CD in place of an honest attempt to tell them how I feel can attest). In "Rock and Roll" Lou Reed sings of a girl whose life was saved by rock and roll. That's how I feel about the Beatles, and fifty years after they came to these shores (and a little over twenty since I was freezing my ass off listening to various tapes of them, and the Who, and Pink Floyd, and the Byrds, and the Yardbirds, and on and on), I still think they changed everything for the better. Musicians could actually write their own material (so we have the Beatles to blame for Taylor Swift and her revolving door of ex-boyfriends), and make albums that were artistic statements and not just shit put together to fulfil a contract with the record company. They started their own record company, proving that just because you can make money for the big guys doesn't mean you know how to do it (I think Apple Corps survived mostly in spite of the Beatles). John's death in 1980, and George's in 2001, means that we will never see them ever reunite again (though a 1998 message board quip about "three more bullets" would actually get the job done, I still don't find it funny). But what they did for me, opening me up to caring about art far more than maybe is healthy, but still...well, for that I owe them a lot. Certainly a rememberance of them on the occasion of their fifty-year residence at the top of the charts in the hearts of fans and non-fans alike (I'd like to think that the cretins who mocked me for my Fab Four love in 1998 have since gotten married to the sounds of a Lennon/McCartney original, or divorced, or gay-married, because I suspect the lot of them were closet cases and that makes me feel better somehow). None of the other bands I like now, from the Velvet Underground to Vampire Weekend, would mean a damn thing to me if not for the Beatles. They made me less prone to want to get a haircut (when I did, it would be something resembling Ian Curtis, whose picture in his wife's memoir was my go-to on how I wanted to look for years). They made me more open to British things like Monty Python, punk rock (even though the punks despised the Beatles, I think deep down they knew how important the group was at least as something to rebel against), Manchester music (Joy Division and New Order chiefly), and on to the works of Graham Greene and Jack Higgins.

The Beatles still rock my world, as much as the time that I finally heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" as more than just background music. That was my turn-on song, as it happens, and yeah I know they recorded their fair share of crap. Everyone's favorite band has a b-side or even an album that you'd rather not get brought up when you're trying to make the case for them as important (I think "Sgt. Pepper" is overrated and the "concept" album is bullshit, if that helps). "Run For Your Life" comes to mind, or the cover of "Mr. Moonlight." But it's too easy to pick apart the misses, too easy to ignore the hits that still hit on an emotinal level. Any group that can put out "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" on the same single has to have done something right. The Beatles matter to me, their story is essential to understanding popular culture in the postwar period, and they just fucking rock. I feel sorry for you if you don't get it, but I'm also a little envious. If you've never really listened to the Beatles, you're in for a journey of discovery. Trust me on that one. We've only got Paul and Ringo now (and as evidenced by the Grammys collaberation on some bullshit "new song" of Paul's, there's not much left there to get excited about), but the music itself is better than anything else about them (even if you share a birthday with one of the dead ones and wish he'd been your dad). The Beatles still matter. How the fuck could they not?