I was a fourth grader, and had spent Sunday at my grandparents’ farm.  I didn’t care whether we left and got home BEFORE The Ed Sullivan Show started, or whether we watched it at Baba’s and left after.  All I knew was – my ten year old self just had to see what the hype was all about.

By this time, I already was aware of how influenced we could be by our friends or the cumulative roll of public opinion.  I couldn’t articulate it in those terms, but it made me cautious.  Excited but cautious.  Like … all this hoopla could be a crock.

So I waited.  Ed did his introduction, calling them “youngsters from Liverpool.”  I remember that he pronounced their name funny – everyone else said it as though it was spelled Beadles, but he said it, either as Bea Tells or Bea’les,  I found that odd.

Girls screamed their way through the intro while my parents and uncles cracked jokes.  The camera switched to the performing stage and there were the Beatles. Weird hair (for the times) combed forward, matching suits, looking pretty much like they did in photos we’d seen.  Okay, let’s see what this —

“one, two, three four…”

“Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you, remember I’ll always be true…”

From the first three words, I was transported.    Where?  I don’t know.  It wasn’t just that I developed an immediate crush on Paul. It was about the whole experience.  All these years later I still cannot explain it.  The best I can do is say this – some gut-deep part of me that I didn’t know existed was opened, awakened.  It was exciting.  Scary exciting.  We had laughed at the photos of British teens fainting in a state of hysteria but as I watched them, I understood.  As dramatic as this might seem to those who were not “there” – it was a true paradigm shift.

And the first of many such shifts, I have to say.  For the next six years, they did it over and over again.  Every Beatles album took us someplace new, someplace we hadn’t even imagined.  And the musical world followed.

As the band broke up, I continued to listen to them individually.  Loved Plastic Ono Band, thought All Things Must Pass was heaven. Switched loyalties among the four of them over the years, thought they all went on to great individual careers.  But I always missed the alchemy of “The Fab Four.” When I later learned what the word synergy meant, I understood it by thinking, “oh, like the Beatles.”  Alchemy, yes.  The universal elixir, turning base metals to gold.  That’s what it was.

In the past twenty years or so, younger friends have asked in in total earnestness:

“What was so great about the Beatles?”

When asked that, I pause.  I can tell them that everything they ever did, they were the first ones to do it.  I can site classics like Yesterday and rattle off a dozen tunes from the Lennon/McCartney song writing team.  I can point to George’s superior guitar skills, even at the young age of 22, or John’s cutting edge insights or Paul’s ability to know an audience.  But the truth is, I can’t explain it.

You had to be there.  You simply had to be there.