Revisiting the Beatles

It's amusing to me that teenagers - like my daughter - feel like they discovered the Beatles. Since "Across the Universe" came out (the movie that ties Beatles songs together into a storyline), the young generation is obsessed with the Beatles. My daughter has the movie sound track in her car and all of her friends know every word of every song. Old news. I've known them for years.

This week, I was driving her car and listening to the CD. And reminiscing. I was in junior high when the Beatles first came to America and created a stir. Some of my friends in Tallahassee drove to Jacksonville to see the first Beatles tour. I heard all about the stories of their adventures and marveled that they got to see Paul in person. He was the cutest one, of course.

Looking back is so much different than living in the moment. When I was a kid, I heard the lyrics about the people living next door to the Yellow Submarine (how DOES that work?), and Lucy in the sky with diamonds, and the walrus and Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. I didn't think much about it. Assumed some of it was written on drug trips and didn't really question it. Listening to the songs now, I wonder how we went from "I wanna hold your hand" to "he likes to keep his fire engine clean. It's a clean machine." And why were we so enamored with it all? What deep truths did we really gain?

The Beatles were a big part of my generation. They shaped fashion, music, culture. What if Jesus were that influential in our world today? Life would be very different. And "all the lonely people" would be gone.