" The Beatles, Are They Any Good? "

Help, The Fab Four have become The Unknown Four...

I should have known first off when I saw the new English text book for the school year. The first chapter was obviously an exercise in musical expressions and terminology and they chose The story of the iconic Beatles.

Assumptions are bad things indeed and about halfway through the homework exercise I asked:

Oh, by the way, you have heard their songs, haven't you? "

" No, are they any good? "

To say that I was speechless for a moment is an understatement. The Beatles are as much part of our background as some of our family members. Haven't they been there accompanying us through our life, either on the radio or on the turntables of our youth.

Who doesn't get transported back to their younger days when hearing a song by The Beatles on the radio? Just reading the story and stumbling over the various song names, made me hum the entire song in my mind, almost word perfect. Need I say more than...

Yesterday / Help! / Can't Buy Me Love

Beatles in Mono [Ltd.Release]

Clearly, Yesterday is an aptly named song of theirs as even to translate the term Record Label into German posed a problem...the teenagers of today have never seen a record and if only it had been named a Disc Label..!

I tried to explain the magic, revolutionary and just plain nice music of the Fab Four to him and asked him to download ( it even hurts me to write this, as the music sounds more authentic if heard via the medium of a record player ) one of their songs, and make up his mind if he liked their music.

The funny thing about the Beatles is that when I first heard their songs, they were already classics of an older generation. Bowie, Madonna, The Cure and ELO, Status Quo and Wham! were more with it, but still the magic of any song by the Beatles was trans-generational, at least for me. But then, as Bob likes to point out to our friends, I love Frank Sinatra and his music too.

Biggi