Good points all - we could obviously go on talking Beatles 'til the walruses come home! I do find it interesting about CW's and Ben's ages, since I was also born in that providential year of 1964 (a little too late, if you're into the stuff I am), but was given my first Beatles records around the tender age of 6 or so (Rubber Soul first, then the Blue and Red 2-LP collections in that order).
In fact, permit me to tell a story about my first conscious exposure not only to The Beatles, but also to stereo equipment. Although my father was a classical and jazz record collector who frequently played music in the house during the evenings after dinner, when I was still young enough to go to bed before he started listening, his system and music never made much of an impression on me that I can remember, other than waking me up from time to time.
Back when I still had yet to receive the first little portable record player of my own, at a time when I would have been only 3 years old, my family (with me still as the only child) took the longest trip I had yet been on to see old friends of my father's. This couple had a son, who was probably in his late teens or early twenties at the time (my Dad remarried late) - the Summer of Love. He listened to headphones in their living room, and the sight of him with this contraption over his ears and long hair (remember how large 'phones were then? The coiled stretch cords?) apparently fascinated me.
He indicated he would put them on me and let me try them, and in one of my earliest memories at all of any kind, he got up and removed them from his head and placed them over mine, adjusting them as small as they would go. I didn't hear anything yet, but he went over to the record player and cued up something, which turned out to be the thing I had overheard him talking about with the assembled adults, and I recall hearing the phrase "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and not knowing what that meant. Apparently it - whatever it was - was something worthy of discussion however, and seemed be known (at least in name - my folks didn't listen to Rock) to everyone there but me.
Having cued the turntable, he walked back past me where I was on the middle of the floor, telling me that the music would begin in a moment, and turned to sit down and face me on the couch, in between his mother and my parents as they all watched and waited to see my reaction. Not knowing exactly what to expect, I was awestruck when sound so loud I could see the adults laughing but not hear them, filled my head to what seemed like the extent of the whole world.
It was a kind of music I had never experienced before, and it affected me greatly. "Picture yourself in a boat on a river...Marmalade skies...Kaliedescope eyes...Boom! Boom! Boom!" He had cued up "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", and I was being thoroughly psychedelicized! I thought it was just the most incredible thing I had ever heard.
I have no memory myself of the next part of the story. I just remember listening, enraptured, until the headphones were removed and I could hear once again the adults for whom I was such a source of amusement. But my parents told me in later years that after the music began, and my eyes grew wide and my mouth went open, that I became so excited that I went and totally astonished them by literally turning a cartwheel right there on the carpet in front of the sofa, with the headphones still on me!
Now, understand - I do not know how to turn a cartwheel. I have never turned a cartwheel in my life, before or since that day. But I guess that there in that moment, hearing The Beatles for the first time, I was just moved so intensely by the spirit of the music that details like actually being able to perform this kind of stunt were rendered completely irrelevant. Anyway, it was, as they say, a very auspicious beginning to my future relationship with The Beatles and their music, and they have always been my favorite musical group ever since, and I'm sure always will be.
P.S. - The best book that I know of to read about the phenomenom the was The Beatles is called "Shout! The Beatles In Their Own Time", written by a journalist from an older generation who covered the group for a British newspaper during their heyday, and which was published in the 80's.
In fact, permit me to tell a story about my first conscious exposure not only to The Beatles, but also to stereo equipment. Although my father was a classical and jazz record collector who frequently played music in the house during the evenings after dinner, when I was still young enough to go to bed before he started listening, his system and music never made much of an impression on me that I can remember, other than waking me up from time to time.
Back when I still had yet to receive the first little portable record player of my own, at a time when I would have been only 3 years old, my family (with me still as the only child) took the longest trip I had yet been on to see old friends of my father's. This couple had a son, who was probably in his late teens or early twenties at the time (my Dad remarried late) - the Summer of Love. He listened to headphones in their living room, and the sight of him with this contraption over his ears and long hair (remember how large 'phones were then? The coiled stretch cords?) apparently fascinated me.
He indicated he would put them on me and let me try them, and in one of my earliest memories at all of any kind, he got up and removed them from his head and placed them over mine, adjusting them as small as they would go. I didn't hear anything yet, but he went over to the record player and cued up something, which turned out to be the thing I had overheard him talking about with the assembled adults, and I recall hearing the phrase "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and not knowing what that meant. Apparently it - whatever it was - was something worthy of discussion however, and seemed be known (at least in name - my folks didn't listen to Rock) to everyone there but me.
Having cued the turntable, he walked back past me where I was on the middle of the floor, telling me that the music would begin in a moment, and turned to sit down and face me on the couch, in between his mother and my parents as they all watched and waited to see my reaction. Not knowing exactly what to expect, I was awestruck when sound so loud I could see the adults laughing but not hear them, filled my head to what seemed like the extent of the whole world.
It was a kind of music I had never experienced before, and it affected me greatly. "Picture yourself in a boat on a river...Marmalade skies...Kaliedescope eyes...Boom! Boom! Boom!" He had cued up "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", and I was being thoroughly psychedelicized! I thought it was just the most incredible thing I had ever heard.
I have no memory myself of the next part of the story. I just remember listening, enraptured, until the headphones were removed and I could hear once again the adults for whom I was such a source of amusement. But my parents told me in later years that after the music began, and my eyes grew wide and my mouth went open, that I became so excited that I went and totally astonished them by literally turning a cartwheel right there on the carpet in front of the sofa, with the headphones still on me!
Now, understand - I do not know how to turn a cartwheel. I have never turned a cartwheel in my life, before or since that day. But I guess that there in that moment, hearing The Beatles for the first time, I was just moved so intensely by the spirit of the music that details like actually being able to perform this kind of stunt were rendered completely irrelevant. Anyway, it was, as they say, a very auspicious beginning to my future relationship with The Beatles and their music, and they have always been my favorite musical group ever since, and I'm sure always will be.
P.S. - The best book that I know of to read about the phenomenom the was The Beatles is called "Shout! The Beatles In Their Own Time", written by a journalist from an older generation who covered the group for a British newspaper during their heyday, and which was published in the 80's.