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So my personal Beatlemania has had two phases in my life.  I am American, a male in my mid-40s.  I first fell in love with The Beatles in my pre-teen years.  My mom had an American-version vinyl recording of Revolver .  I remember staring at both sides of the cover, transfixed.  The front side was wild and groovy and creative, and the back side showed four dudes who wearing sunglasses indoors.  I knew virtually nothing about them, but I knew that somehow these guys embodied the height of coolness.  Then the music.   Groovy exotic Indian music.   Jazzy bands.  Orchestral arrangements.  Acidic guitar grooves. And that uber-cool intro to Tax Man.  It was….magical.  I knew that in my hands I was holding a portal to the adult world, to something creative and wild and thrilling.   And I fell in love with them.  I considered myself a junky, though it turns out I had no idea how many albums they had put out.  I only owned a few.   It also helped that my young romantic love interest at the time as well as my closest male friend were Beatles crazy.  It was a mania that fed on itself.    But eventually that mania slipped a bit.  It died down.  I would always hold The Beatles as first in my heart–and bizarrely they felt like solid friends to me–but I certainly ended up listening to them less and less over the years.  First classic rock and then Indie rock eclipsed them.  There would be years between listens.   

But then decades later Beatles Love came out and I ended up hearing all of these great songs again, somehow as though it were for the first time.  My wife bought me the stereo Box Set, and i realized there were dozens of songs I had not heard before, or heard only once or twice.  And I became, now in middle-age, even more infatuated with them.  Beatles obsession, phase II.   Except this obsession was now fueled by more stuff– by new albums, the Anthology CDs, the internet, and Youtube.  This time around I loved them just as much (and I finally began to appreciate Ringo for his own genuinely huge contributions), but I noticed a real difference in how others perceived them.  Everyone has always had a favorite Beatle.  (I admit to changing my favorite over the years.  First Paul, then John, then George, and now back to Paul.) But what I’ve been kind of shocked at is how much negativity folks share about their favorite Beatle’s “competitor.”  How sad.  My take:  The Beatles were by far the greatest band ever.  No competition.  I also think that Paul, John, and George each deserve incredible kudos for their post-Beatles careers.  Shoot, I’m being stingy.  Ringo deserves his props, too.  Without The Beatles, these four guys continued to make huge musical contributions.  But it’s sad to me that Paul’s advocates are so prickly and defensive and John’s and George’s fans are so dismissive and quick to belittle Paul.  The truth is they weren’t even The Beatles without Ringo.  Despite their individual genius all the components had to be there to make The Beatles the group they were. 

As for me and my personal life, there is nothing really to add.  I have a family, and it’s been so much pleasure having my kids beg to hear Beatles songs and, even better, telling me to “turn it up!!!” when i turn on a Beatles song in the car.  

I teach at small college in Georgia. 

I’ve learned SO much from this web site, and I offer my kudos to its author.  (Joe???)  I’ve also learned tons from all the contributors.  I took a few years of piano, but I’m not an accomplished musician.   I will offer opinions, but I’m no authority on anything Beatles related.  I’ve read a fair bit about them, but the more I’ve read the more I’m confident that:  (a) we’ll never know exactly who did what in every single instance (such as who wrote the music for “In My Life “); and (b) we’ll never fully be able to understand, or explain, what makes The Beatles so magical.

An example of their magic.  It was about 25-30 years ago.  I was at a friend’s house, sitting on the floor in the sunshine eating grapes and just shooting the bull.  My friend was a huge Beatles fan.  He put on Rubber Soul , which I had never heard before(!!!).  I had heard the singles from that album and the songs on the “Red Album ,” but I hadn’t heard the “fillers.”  The music was kind of on the background.   Then “You Won’t See Me ” came on.   I had never heard this song.   I stopped talking, and listened to it.  My lord, I wondered, what IS this song?  I knew I had never heard it before, and yet it seemed as though I had been hearing it since birth.  Though it was rich and interesting and full of nuance, it was immediately accessible at some primal level.  Plato talks about how some knowledge is more like “remembering” rather than “learning.”  We’ve “always” known it, and we’ve just forgotten that we’ve known it.  That’s how that song felt.  I had always known this song even though I had never heard it.   I experience that kind of perfect fit, that perfect recognition, only with The Beatles.