Most people who knew me during my early adulthood would probably associate me with the Beatles as I had a very long connection to them. For most of my life, I often said they were my favorite band. I've been exposed to the Beatles music all my life as both of my parents are fans, especially my mom who liked Paul McCartney. Although I had been playing their singles on my toy record player as a young child, I really didn't get into them until I was handed Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band when I was about twelve years old.
I clearly remember listening to the whole album straight in the winter of 1987/88 in my bedroom performing each song kind of like a kid's interpretive dance as it played on my record player. I did this about once or twice a month probably until spring. From this time until 1994, I'd say the Sgt. Pepper's album was my favorite. A close second was their follow-up album, Magical Mystery Tour.
It was also around this time where the Beatles replaced the Monkees as my favorite band. The Monkees, as I mentioned in the earlier post, represented my early childhood, and the Beatles represented my adolescence. The connection between the Beatles and my adolescence was made clear when I was interested in a girl who was in my Spanish class in 9th grade. She was a Beatles fan as well and introduced me to a book about the Beatles. It was Beatlesongs by William J. Dowlding, which was kind of like my Bible for the next few years.
During this time as I was interested in the girl and the book, my interest in music became a key part of my identity. I became so engrossed into the Beatles that it trumped my previous obsession, watching television. For the next few years, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the Beatles through their music and books about them. Perhaps subconsciously I thought that would help me gain acceptance to a cooler group of peers, one that was hip to the countercultures of the past.
By my senior year in high school, I guess I could have been considered an expert on the Beatles. I was definitely obsessed in that I would often have dreams that I was John Lennon. By the end of my senior year, I wanted to embrace the Beatles' look, so I started to grow my hair longer. This trend of emulating the Beatles continued through the first two years at college, although I changed my attention from the Beatles to the styles and fashions of 1967.
During my first year at college, some people in dorm started calling me Beatle Boy, which I had mixed feelings about. I wasn't really teased, so it didn't really bother me. The biggest instigator of this nickname didn't return to college our sophomore year, so the nickname died then, fortunately for me. It was either in my sophomore or junior year that I bought a World War I trenchcoat that resembled one of the outfits the Beatles wore on the Sgt. Pepper's album. I still possess it today as I occasionally bring it out for special events like Halloween in 2008.
Also during my sophomore and junior years, the Beatles' Anthology CDs were being released and ABC aired the Beatles' Anthology videos. For me, 1996 and 1997 were the peak years of my personal Beatlemania. For those years, I felt the world, or at least the media, was acknowledging my craze. So afterwards, my obsession ended and my interest toned down. I began to realize that I needed to move beyond the Beatles to develop my own personality. I would say that removing my Beatles' image was finally acknowledging that I was comfortable with my own identity. I didn't need to pretend to be or look like anyone else. I'm pretty glad that happened or else I would have ended up a nutcase.
It's no coincidence that I became comfortable with myself when I started "going steady" with my future wife. I "introduced" my wife to the Beatles during our first years together, and so their music highlighted another great time in my life and our lives.
After college, I started listening to the Beatles less and less, although I listened to them very much to begin with. It wasn't until I left my second teaching job in Korea in 2005 where a month or so would go by without me listening to the Beatles. Since 2005, I listen to the Beatles only to remind myself of my earlier years or just to reacquaint myself with them.
In 2007, a Russian friend and fan of the Beatles was the first to inform me of the new Beatles album that came out just for Cirque du Soleil's new Beatles act. So for about a month or so, I had a brief relapse into Beatlemania.
The biggest problem I have these days is that many of my friends and family still think I'm very much into the Beatles. This only shows me that they don't know me as well as they did, so it saddens me a bit. Sometimes I'll pretend I'm into the Beatles just to keep the relationship going, but I don't like doing that. My Beatles days are over. I'd be happy to listen to them with friends or family, but they shouldn't expect me to be as excited as I once was.
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