It Was Fifty Years Ago Today

Before Sgt. Pepper , the Maharishi, Yoko Ono, the internecine in-band haggling , there was an event so mesmerizing it was witnessed by 40% of the population on a mid-winter night in 1964. An event that in the expanse of three months had eclipsed the assassination of JFK in historic significance. The Beatles single-handedly expunged the malaise of a presidential assassination.

Timing is everything.  Many   have said that The Beatles filled a void at a particular moment  in  American history, transformed the American psyche –  it did. The naysayers at the time said it was a fad, a flash in the pan – another P.T. Barnum-like gimmick that would soon fade like hoola hoops  and coon skin hats. But 50 years later we are marking the event  with a myriad of celebrations worldwide.  But for most, The Beatles have been cosmic companions who we have  weaved  into the more intimate fabric of our lives.

The group guided myself and my pubescent friends  along the periphery of romance, much to the chagrin of Sr. Cecilia,  my  sixth grade teacher, who confiscated my pictures of the band, culled from the pages of Sixteen Magazine and meticulously pasted into the hard covers of a denuded writing tablet, I passed around to all the girls in class to demonstrate my coolness. Beatle boots would further attest this premise soon after.

 The Beatles provided   the soundtrack to our early lives. Local bands played their songs to the first dances we attended; their music provided the soundtrack  while we maneuvered our  first stolen kisses and touches;  they encouraged  our first thoughts of  rebellion and  independence from our parents.

Of course my friends and I   were part of the 20 million new bands that were formed on February 10, 1964. The fact that we didn’t have any guitars or instruments of any kind did little to dissuade us from our mission. That we too could be chased around by swarms of girls dying to get at us.

Eventually we did get those guitars; and more importantly learned to play them. And 50 years later we still get together from time to time, doing gigs or grabbing the acoustics and playing something from the Beatles’ catalogue.

So much has happened to us all since Ed Sullivan brought The Beatles to America. John and George are gone as so many of our own  family members .  I remember my mother hearing a DJ attributing something to the Beatles circa 1969. She looked at me and asked. “They’re not the same Beatles from a few years ago, are they?”  I simply nodded in the affirmative. And their music is still with us and I trust it will be for a long, long time.