How did someone who grew up in the 60’s hating the Beatles come to be contributing to a Beatles fansite? I remember being five years old in 1964 and hearing “She Loves You” jangling out of our crappy, little, white, plastic radio. I hated it! It was so repetitious! Yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah! At the time I didn’t understand that that’s what music is: repetition. At least in popular terms, music is made of patterns and patterns require repetition. Repetition makes patterns and patterns make music. Without repetition there is no music, because there is no pattern — and therefore no music (because of the lack of repetition).

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Okay, more than likely it was really our crappy, little, white, plastic radio that I hated. After all, I don’t remember liking any other music it played either. The Beatles, being the biggest group at the time, were the easiest target for my learned five year old scorn for this noisy “jazz” music. (I was pretty confused.) Consider: “Worst-Dressed Lists” don’t include your mother-in-law (unless she happens to be Goldie Hawn) and that Leafs defenseman who “sucks” is, after all, in the N.H.L. and you never will be.

It was only out of curiosity that our family, having only recently emigrated from England in November ‘63, tuned in to see our compatriots on Ed Sullivan. I have no recollection of either scorn or admiration.

My next Beatles memory is of fishing at age fourteen with “Little Hal”, my Dad’s secretary’s son. Floating in a boat on the lake, he asked me, if I liked the Beatles.

“Nope.”

“Not even ‘Strawberry Fields Forever?’”

“Haven’t heard of it.”

“What about ‘I Am the Walrus?’”

“Never heard of it either.” What a little ignoramus I was!

But at some point I discovered the Red and the Blue albums my older brother had, for some reason, given as a gift to my Jazz and Classical listening Dad and decided to give them a listen. Soon I was familiar with Little Hal’s favourite songs and beginning to understand his enthusiasm.

My next Beatles memory is of my leaning over our old Sears huge-but-allegedly-portable record player with the volume cranked singing the “Yeah … yeah … yeah”s along with George at the end of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! … Oh, hi Dad.” Boy, did I feel like an idiot.

Those same copies of the Red and the Blue albums made it somehow into my LP collection and I still have them. A few years ago we replaced them for my Dad with CDs. He was glad to get them. He likes the Beatles, too.