First encounter with the Beatles

[Liam OSM]

Well, my first encounter with The Beatles was through my mother. She was born in 1943, and so was there when it happened. I wasn't born until 1982, but she had some stuff of theirs - specifically, she had the "With The Beatles" LP, which I played to death. Lots of good stuff on it, although a few that I don't like. Then, in 1994, just after christmas, she got me Past Masters 2, and they had me. What a load of quality songs! Then in 1998, when we got a new computer, it came with all The Beatles' stuff on the hard drive!!!!! Needless to say, I played that to death - much to the annoyance of my mother - and then the last couple of summers, I collected the albums on CD, and on my laptop, which I bought a couple of years ago, I have a program whereby I can copy tracks off CDs onto my hard drive. Out of the 1073 songs I have copied onto my hard drive, 150 of them are Beatles - including both versions of Let It Be and Across The Universe. Needless to say, The Beatles have more songs on my laptop than anybody else! And, I might add, the second most prolific act on my hard drive is . . . Paul McCartney (& Wings)! John Lennon only comes in at 9th place, and George only has one solo song on there as it stands currently . . . still, give it all time, eh!

The difference between genius and insanity is merely the difference between success and failure.

[michael.riddles]

My first encounter with the Beatles was on December 9, 1980. I came home from school (age 6) and my mother answered the door and told me "John Lennon died". I didn't know who he was. We turned on the radio, which was playing nothing but Lennon/Beatles songs and I came to like them quite a lot that first day. My mother bought me a record player for Christmas a few weeks later and I listened to her copies of Abbey Road, the White Album, and Let It Be quite a lot. I didn't become a hard-core fan until March 1989, though, when I found a book about the Beatles in my parents' bookshelf. I flipped through it cover-to-cover and I could tell they were worth looking into! I got those LPs back out and bought Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and Revolver within the next couple months. Great stuff!