When I was younger, any time we were in the car with my mom, she had the radio on. If we were close to home, which most times we were, it was tuned to 94.5. The local oldies station played music from the early days of rock and roll through the disco era. Artists like The Big Bopper, Diana Ross and the Supremes and Gloria Gaynor and hundreds of artists more. I loved that music. I wasn’t old enough to understand it. I didn’t know the stories behind the songs or the artists behind them. ? and the Mysterions 96 tears was supposed to be 69 Tears. Why? Well, you’re old enough to figure out. Bobby Darin’s older sister who helped raise him was really his mother?! Drug abuse. Adultery. Chaos. I didn’t know or care. Motown drilled a whole into my heart. Filled it with music and soul i never knew existed. The Beach Boys made me wish my mom would pack up us kids, head out west and stop at the coast. There was one group though, one that I kept coming back to. Their music was everywhere. John…Paul… George… Ringo. The Beatles.
Of course it isn’t life shattering that I loved the Beatles. I mean, they’re the Beatles! Who didn’t love them? When I first heard them, well before I can recall now, I can’t tell you what i thought. Did I love them? Maybe. Were they my favorite? Perhaps. I bounced around in my musical favorites when I was super young. The Beach Boys, The Temptations, The Four Seasons. No matter what, as I grew older, The Beatles were always lingering around. I knew more of their songs than anyone else. I knew their names, and who didn’t? There came a point in time where I really started listening to their albums. Mainly their last few. Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road were played over and over again. Their early music was what was played on that radio station all those years ago. Songs of love I didn’t understand but belted out in my head. Songs of heartache I didn’t grasp but felt their pain anyways.
Okay, so why does this matter? Well, it doesn’t. Not to you. It does however mean the world to me. Their music is the soundtrack of not only my life, whether I knew it or not, but to millions of people across multiple generations. I have three small children. They are nine, seven, and five. I have indoctrinated them into Beatlemania. With the help of movie soundtracks, they slowly pieced together that Beatles music was everywhere. From Across the Universe to Yesterday, movies based around their music, it made it easier to have their music on in the background. Amazon Prime and their catalog provides quick access to their favorite couple minutes of fun. When my seven year old son starts singing “Help!” for no other reason than he wants to, it melts my heart. When they want to hear “Blackbird” because it sounds pretty, I smile. My oldest sons first song he knew the words to were “Yellow Submarine”. A couple years later it probably would have been “Baby Shark”. Close!
Again, why does this matter? Because everyone, kids or no kids, young or old, Beatles fan or not, needs to have something they pass on. I’d love it if it were music. Music is in the DNA of the modern world. From classical music to Coldplay, from indigenous instruments to the Indigo Girls, from Beethoven to Beyonce, music should matter. It doesn’t hit everybody the same way. I can literally change moods, or be saved from a bad day, just by one song. We all have something like that, hopefully. You don’t need kids to have a legacy. You need to have passion. You need to let the world know what matters to you, what makes you tick. Scream out loud. Scream it out like Paul McCartney yells “She loves you yeah yeah yeah!”
