What does it take to be a die hard Beatles fan?

A while back I invited my 18-year-old grandson over to listen to music.

Right off he said: “I don’t get The Beatles.”

i was visibly shaken, and it took a few moments to recover and remind myself that I love my grandson more than I love the Beatles.

Guess that makes me a die hard Beatles fan?

fyi- 60 minutes later he “got” The Beatles.

... to believe Sgt. Pepper’s was their best album?

I get that it was groundbreaking at the time -- I loved it when it first came out (I was eleven years old) -- but in terms of songwriting craft, a majority of the tunes are mere ditties dressed up in psychedelic regalia, hardly examples of their writing at its best. However, this doesn’t seem to matter to its legions of admirers. By this rubric, therefore, I’m far from a die-hard fan.

At this point, the White Album is the one I still list to the most, followed by Abbey Rd and Revolver.   

I've probably mentioned this a couple times on this website, but when I refused to agree that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was not only the Beatles' finest album but the finest piece of music of all time, all my high school friends unceremoniously dumped me.

@edcyn 

So, you were thrown out of a cult -- maybe not such a bad thing, in the long run!  

Musical taste is a funny thing. For example, I've read numerous reviews on Amazon by folks who "love" Clapton. They disparage Cream, Blues Breakers and Derek & Dominos while loudly proclaiming "Lay Down Sally" and "Wonderful Tonight" to be EC's best work. Apparently they don't enjoy his guitar playing very much, given their rejection of those recordings that feature him at his best in this regard. What can we deduce, then -- that they like him mostly as a vocalist ? I do not comprehend but boy, are they passionate! 

Somehow this got on the most tiresome of tiresome things: Eric Clapton.

I get it.
“There but for the grace of God go I.”

I too could have been a Baby Boomer.
I too could have been brainwashed by the Baby Boomer Music Media Industrial Complex, that festering, fetid ideation and myth-making that brainwashed people into thinking Clapton was an exceptional guitar player.
He wasn’t. He was a bit above average, no better, no less.

Spare me your Jann Wenner regurgitations, i.e. “he brought the blues to the masses,” “he was a sincere, serious student of the blues” (a hilarious thing to say about learning a I-IV-V chord progression and peddling stock minor pentatonic licks - a person is a ‘student’ of such for a month after they begin learning to play guitar, and that’s all folks…it’s like saying a guy who still mans the fry station at McDonalds after 25 years is a ‘serious student of the fry station.’), or “Eddie Van Halen said, ‘(blank),’” or “(so-and-so) once said, ‘(blank),” or, for the love of Christ, spare me, “have you ever heard Riding With the King?” (sweet bastard…puke).

That’s cute and all that Rolling Stone told you he was #2 all-time (patently preposterous) after they deified him for 50 years prior, but he ain’t.

I’ve never been good at self-promotion.
If I had any sense, I would just photograph a spray painted message on a wall that said “TYLER MUNNS IS GOD.” Just get that puppy well-circulated, and I’d be in business.

Clearly people believe anything they read.
An observably bad, observably incompetent person with no credentials or qualifications of any kind, no credibly whatsoever when speaking on a particular matter, can go on TV and address the matter in question thusly:
“I’m the best, the smartest, I’m tremendous, I’m YuGe, no one knows more about (blank) than me, no one is better at (blank) than me…” and people just…believe the words.

I might have to stop by the hardware store tomorrow and pick up some spray paint…