How You Got Into The Beatles | Page 11 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I wasn’t much of a music listener as a teenager. When Punk Rock vs Hip Hop was a thing in the mid 2000s, I constantly changed my mind. Later I focused on swiss-german music, which was great because you could see them without having to go to a stadium, everything was in the relatable and understandable native language/dialect, just small scale. And the acts were still talented, I like some of them until today.

But the whole english-language pop and rock world was completely alien to me. You could have played me a song by the Rolling Stones and one by the Backstreet Boys and I probably couldn’t have told you, which was which. It was just a wild, weird world to me.

As for the Beatles, I heard knew a little bit about them. I remember telling my father how they all look exactly the same, and I remember wondering why they look all the same when Lennons later appearance was with long, fair hair and glasses and also wondering, when the change might have happened. I remember looking them up on Wikipedia at a few points and learning some basic facts about them, but without really checking out their songs. I only knew Let It Be , which we used to sing in music class at school, and later Hey Jude , which we used to sing for confirmation. I knew about the song Yellow Submarine , but don’t think I’ve ever really heard it. I also knew Live And Let Die because I’m a Bond fan and much later I realised I’ve known Got My Mind Set On You and Hope Of Deliverance for a long time, because they often played on the radio, but I had not known who the artists were. That’s it I think.

In 2015, age 20, I got my first office job (an internship) and people would often listen to music on their computers via headphones. Now comes the dumb part of the story, but whatever, I’m still grateful it happened. I felt it would be appropriate to listen to the english-language pop and rock music I knew so little about, because after all, in the office the others could often get a glimpse of what you’re listening to and I felt awkward about my very limited music knowledge. But where to start with this english-language pop and rock music, when there seem to be millions of possibilities and I couldn’t really distinguish between the Rolling Stones and the Backstreet Boys ? The Beatles came to mind. The first four songs, I listened to were Helter Skelter , While My Guitar Gently Weeps , Blackbird and Octopus’ Garden. I liked it and quickly went to an oldies shop to buy the White Album …

Since then, exploring and discovering both the music and the history of the Beatles has become a fascinating and entertaining hobby. Both of them are so vast and branch out into many different directions, be it via their solo careers or other bands of their time. The content and lore are as fascinating as any fictional universe, but here it’s all real. Fab Fourever.

Ahhh Girl said
Oooo, Hope of Deliverance getting some radio play time. Nice!

  

Yes, I’m pretty sure I had never consciously heard Maybe I’m Amazed , Band On The Run , My Love, Say Say Say or Calico Skies before I got into Paul, but when I listened to Off The Ground I immediately thought: Ooh, so that one has been a McCartney song all along!

According to Wikipedia it was a top 5 hit in Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Germany and ended up number 10 of the 1993 year-end charts in Switzerland.