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Hi all you Beatles People. I am what you could call a total Beatles fan. I don’t want to hear any criticism of them. Even now, fifty years later, I am still deeply offended if anyone disses them. If you are going to say anything negative about The Beatles, you might as well insult my mother. My cousin used to make fun of my devotion to The Beatles and was always predicting their break-up or that they were about to be overtaken by everybody from the Rolling Stone to the Dave Clark Five. The American media thought if they kept saying the Monkees’ new album was going to rob the new Beatles album of first place, it would come true. That new Beatles album being Sergeant Pepper. Really.

I, however, never wavered in my loyalty. I was born in South Africa but thanks to the tentacles of the British Empire we had a mainline on anything British, including the Beatles. My older brothers and sisters were Elvis fans (thanks, and I mean it, to American cultural imperialism) and taught me to rock ‘n’ roll at five. I was fourteen when the Beatles broke in South Africa, just the right age, a Baby Boomer. When I heard Can’t Buy Me Love on the radio I bought it the next morning. As I grew up, the Beatles music progressed with every album and challenged my musical boundaries every time. On the last day of school in 1964 we could all bring music and our class teachers would let us play it. I took Beatles For Sale . I was like the Beatles’ encyclopedia in school. The teacher said the Beatles sound okay and he was sure none of us, as the A class, would be “Beatles Mad”. I put my hand up and confessed that I was indeed Beatles mad.

In 1966 I remember reading in a local mag that the Beatles new album Revolver was the most advanced music ever made. What’s changed? My mother was exasperated with my Beatles fixation and my hair that got longer with each album cover, certain that it was a portend of imminent teenage delinquency. Then my brother in law had a talk with her and told her to cool it, he also likes the Beatles. One day I went into a record shop with her to get her the new Jim Reeves. I picked up the prominently displayed Sgt Pepper and was reading the lyrics on the back when Mom said, “What is that?” I told her and she said “Oh it’s your birthday soon, want it?” Her buying me Sgt P went a long way to bridging the generation gap between us.

Here’s a nice little anecdote: Just after Let It Be was released we were sitting in church with all the windows open because it was a hot day. Just as the minister started his sermon someone in the block of flats next door put his hi-fi on full volume and put on: ‘You know my naaaaame….’ All around the church you could hear teenagers snorting as they tried to surpress their laughter. A deacon ran out to smite the Philistine and the sermon went on. But half way through you could every Now And Then hear someone sniggering.

Of course my mom was right, the Beatles’ influence on me was going to extend way past the musical. They were to be my voice; the voice of my generation. It was the early sixties and the post war gloom was making way for the sixties economic miracle. The Baby Boomers with their numerical supremacy were about to challenge all conventional wisdom and the Beatles were going to lead the charge. A year before the Summer of Love they were already singing “Have you heard, the word is love.” With each new twist in their philosophy I had to scurry to adjust my world view. I was a devoted fan of both cannabis and LSD without ever managing to get hold of it or even knowing what it was all about. When I read in a magazine that Transcendental Meditation was The Beatles new philosophy, I went to my fifteen years-older brother-in-law and said, “What is transcendental meditation.” He knew nothing of transcendental but he said that meditation is thinking very deeply. I thought, What the…?

The hardest thing ever for me as a Beatles fan was when The Beatles themselves stopped being Beatles fans. When I heard that George had said after the Candlestick concert that he had stopped being a Beatle, it was to me a contradiction on a cosmic level.  When John sang on Plastic One Band ‘I don’t believe in Beatles’, it was apostasy, okay auto-apostasy, but apostasy still. So given this frame of mind, I was mightily impressed and gratified when I recently read Oregano Rathbone ‘s review of Paul’s Egypt Station album, where he says the following:

For my part, I’m a lifelong Beatles apologist, so I tend to filter everything through a sticky mist of hot love, and get fidgety whenever disbelievers start firing up the chainsaws.

This was poetry to my ears; proof that there are other die-hards out there just like me. The choice of words is just extreme enough for my taste: Lifelong; apologist; get fidgety; disbelievers; and best of all – filter everything through a sticky mist of hot love. Not even any pretence at being measured, or balanced, or rational; all these years later. Love is not rational, it doesn’t have to be, it is better when it is not. Love is liking something enough to never let go, never give up on it. Love is being committed without ever trying to be – it just comes naturally; it is an imperative.

So that’s me. Drenched in Beatlemania to this day. I listen to the Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, whatever, but when my iPod is on shuffle, lots of Beatles come up. I’m looking forward to sharing with all of you Fab people…

Hello fab fiends. I live in the midwestern United States and have been a fan since hearing them on the radio or seeing them on The Ed Sullivan show. I can’t quite remember which as it’s been a loooong time. But, I was instantly hooked. Especially after hearing I Saw Her Standing There . Anyway, I have been a lifelong fan and my way of making friends when I was a kid was all about the Beatles. If you liked them, you were my friend. My parents took me to see them in ’66 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri. My most cherished show in my concert going career but pretty lame by today’s standard. I think they played about 20 minutes. It rained, people were screaming, the sound came through metal horns used for the sports commentators. But, very cool nonetheless. 

I live near Benton, Illinois, where George visited in the summer of ’63 with his brother Peter to visit their sister Louise. I’ve met her several times. George bought a Rickenbaker guitar in Mt. Vernon, which isn’t far from Benton. He also visited the radio station in West Frankfort and gave them a single to play. I think it was From Me To You (not certain). I’ve read that it was the first time a Beatle song was played on the radio but that just might be local lore. George apparently enjoyed his stay except for the Midwestern summers that we endure here. He went back and told the rest of the boys that it wouldn’t make much sense going to America as we have “everything” here. What would America want with them. Glad they didn’t listen to him and the rest is history. 

I could go on and on but I won’t. Anyway…hello to everyone! I have been reading the quips posted to Twitter for some time now and thought I’d join the group. I hope I passed the audition!