Strawberry Fields Forever

I've recently been hit by a freight train of admiration (to put it lightly) for The Beatles. Now, before you click away, I'm fully aware that I'm about 50 years too late. However, 1) I wasn't born then so I can't be faulted for that, and 2) being a Beatles fan isn't a given anymore in 2015. Take the release of Paul McCartney, Kanye West and Rihanna's single “FourFiveSeconds,” people (of the younger sort) genuinely believed that Kanye was helping an up-and-coming artist (Paul freaking McCartney) by featuring him on the song. Mind you these people also vote for our president, but that's a whole other story. My original point, was that being a Beatles fan isn't expected of teenagers like it was fifty, or even twenty, years ago.


I grew up with Beatles fans in my family but their music wasn't really pressed upon me like other artists or composers. When I got into middle school and began to expand my own musical taste independent of familial influence, I realized that I have to get into the Beatles. Which I believe was the beginning of my problem. There are some bands that have grown in such infamy that while their music lasts, their fame is continued because of people's yearning to claim they are fans not because they actually listen to the music. You can always tell which bands these are because they're probably on 16 year old girls' t-shirts that were bought at Forever 21 like Nirvana, The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, etc. I wanted to be a Beatles fan just to say I was a Beatles fan, so I could wear the t-shirt, and quote a song for an Instagram photo. But when I listened to them, I didn't like them so I swept them under the rug and moved on to another pseudo-hipster topic. It obviously wasn't the music that was the problem, although I fully believe that musical taste changes with age, I just didn't get it. I suppose it was a cynical response to something I believed at the time was over hyped.

That all changed after I visited Liverpool, the home of all four Beatles in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, I'm not a Rolling Stones journalist so I won't be able to accurately articulate the impact of the Beatles in the UK and around the world, the revolution (no pun intended) of their music and what it did for Rock n' Roll, or the cultural context from which they emerged from. But listening to a tour guide talk about how John Lennon's parents met in the park across the street from where his childhood home was on Penny Lane and how John asked Paul to join the group on a bike path created a picture that make me fall in love with them as people and then, their music. As I came back home and listened to their albums with a new perspective, it brought up a question that I believed I had answered. Can you separate the art from the artist? And it's follow up: Should you? A few months ago, my answer would have been “of course,” to both those questions. To some extent, I still think that it's necessary at times because if a person where to go into a museum and judge a piece of art based upon whether or not the artist cut off their ear rather than how it makes them feel and how it looks, than the art is reduced to a mere mirror of its creator. In this case however, what makes the Beatles so special, so relatable to all generations, is the whole package. The Beatles are more than the music they made. The songs they created are heard with new ears after learning more about them, I was able to pick out lines from songs that I could understand because I was now acquainted with the conditions in which they were born. Of course some people don't need the package to love the Beatles, and some know the whole package and still dislike them – but no artist can please everyone. I suppose this was all a long winded way of saying I love the Beatles, but my hope is that this will encourage others to think on a larger scale the next time they see, hear, or feel art. Comment below your thoughts and feelings, I'm always ready for a rousing discussion on whether or not Yoko broke up the Beatles (yes) and her bizarre relationship with John (but if you say they were soul mates I'll block you).