Still Feeling Good, 50 Years Later- Remembering the Beatles

Music can be a perfect antidote to sadness and that’s just what the Beatles were to America, 50 years ago next week. Still reeling after the assassination of our young president, the U.S. was hit with the British Invasion, which helped to snap us right out of our doldrums.

My parents used to have the old black and white Zenith on while we ate dinner and I remember the evening news report of the Beatles landing at the recently renamed JFK airport that day. I didn’t understand what all the screaming was about but I knew enough that it was a good kind of screaming. A couple of nights later we watched them on the Ed Sullivan Show (which my family watched every Sunday night). More screaming, more excitement and some really great feel good music. Young as I was, I just loved the way they made me feel. They were also adorable, even to a little girl like me. I liked everything about them: their hair, their accents, their clothes, and, most of all, their music. Like everyone else in America, I was mesmerized by the Fab Four.

My cousin Andrew, who lived around the corner on Strong Place and who was 10 years older than me, had every single Beatles album. His half of the bedroom, which he shared with his brother Santo, looked like a Beatles shrine. Whenever I thought of Andrew, I thought of the Beatles. He even started to look a bit like a late-sixties Paul McCartney, with his dark mustache and long sideburns; Andrew was hip!

The Beatles’ early songs like "She Loves You," "Twist and Shout," "A Hard Day’s Night," and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" can instantly transport me back to the early, magical days when I first heard them. There were sweet love songs like "Do You Want to Know a Secret" and their rendition of The Music Man's "Till There Was You" and more contemplative songs like "Yesterday," "Hey Jude," and "Let it Be." The list goes on and on. My cousin Michele was born in March 1966, and I am pretty sure she was named after the Beatles song of the same name, which came out in late 1965. 

We watched the Beatles cartoons on Saturday mornings and their madcap movies and, somehow, everything seemed right with the world, at least our world, for a little while. Then the sixties became turbulent: more assassinations, the escalation of the Vietnam war, and the passing of some of our very dear relatives, including Andrew’s mom and Michele’s young dad. One evening in 1970 my dad and I went to pick up Chinese food from our family’s favorite Chinese restaurant, Joe Yee’s on Flatbush Avenue, and I remember hearing on the radio of my dad’s Buick that the Beatles were breaking up! How could something so good come to such an early end? 

Last week we had a sendoff for my older son who is spending his spring semester in London. I picked up some Union Jack napkins and a poster of the Queen and my sister brought a “Keep Calm and Have Fun Matty” cake. We decided to have a strictly American meal: fried chicken, sliders, and macaroni and cheese. But right before we sat down, I put on a Beatles CD. I was trying hard not to cry all day. As soon as the opening harmonica riff of "Love Me Do" started, I forgot about crying. I thought back to those exhilarating, happy days of the mid-sixties and thought forward to the adventures that Matthew will be having in modern day London Town. And, yes, 50 years later, the Beatles can still make me feel good.