It Was Forty Years Ago Today
Social studies classes were a mixed bag for middle schoolers. You’d get a mix of history one year, government or civics the next, and maybe geography or economics the year after that.
I can’t remember how my sixth grade social studies class was configured, but there’s one moment that matters in my mind more than all the other moments put together.
It was toward the end of our sixth grade year, and Mr Fuller (I might be making this name up) decided to let us watch a couple of videos to wind down the remainder of the school year. Of course, these videos were ostensibly teaching us history, but I also think the kids viewed them as babysitting (not that anyone was complaining).
Sitting in history class and watching Beatlemania: the Movie probably isn’t how most people have been introduced to the Beatles, but for the first time in my life, I was truly drawn into a band—hypnotized, even— and my life had just been changed forever, even if I didn’t quite know that for sure just yet.
This film is an adaptation of a Broadway show that ran from 1977 through 1979. I can only imagine my history teacher must have seen that play, because he picked the movie made from the play for us to watch in class that day. Then again, maybe the VHS and laser-disc library at my middle school wasn’t all that robust in the first place.
The gist of the film is that the fab four play their biggest hits in chronological order, but they’re played by actors in a tribute band. Think about this for a moment: I was first exposed to the music of the Beatles by way of a second-rate cover band. That’s how powerful their music is.
It’s really hard for me to articulate just how magical this moment was for me. Since the movie is more than an hour long, I can only imagine that we must have split the film over two days of watching, but all I remember for sure was wanting to know more.
I’m confident that my very first Beatles album purchase was 20 Greatest Hits released by Capitol Records. I was a very, very frugally-minded kid, and I knew value when I saw it. I wanted exposure to this band, and I wanted to hear all their best songs right now. I didn’t really know number one hits aren’t always the best song a band makes, but The Beatles would teach me that soon, among many other things.
I had caught my own Beatlemania. It was spring of 1987, and I immediately bought a book called It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, which came out in advance of the 20th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper. Clearly, I needed to have purchased the Sgt Pepper record itself (tape, really) by this point, so I think Sgt Pepper was my second Beatles record, but I can’t be certain.
To say that this record set my life on fire might be too much, but what I can say for sure is that I felt cognitive dissonance around something I really enjoyed listening to, and something I was supposed to think. I was trying to conform to some ideals set by society, but the Beatles were playing a different tune for me.
This slightly uncomfortable feeling would stay with me for the rest of puberty, only finally being vanquished by the age of 17 or so, and only with the clean sweep that punk brought into my life. It took being introduced to the Beatles for me to realize that I didn’t really want to follow society’s rules, and another six years before I realized that I didn’t have to.
It was Beatlemania that first opened that door.
I remember taking note how clever it was for It Was Twenty Years Ago Today to time its release, so that it really would have been twenty years ago, today, when Sgt Pepper was released. May 26th, 1987 came and went without too much fanfare at my end, because I had already finished the book by the time the anniversary came around.
It was forty years ago today, give or take a couple of years, when brand new pathways forward in my life first seemed to open up for me.
Quick note here at the end: there was something about the way the story and the music of the Beatles intertwined. They experienced real-world drama from the world they were living in, and they wrote about what was happening. Learning about this enriched my love for the Beatles—the music alone was nowhere near as powerful.
If you’d like to enrich your own Beatles experience, you might want to check out
’s , where Faith is giving the Fab Four the scholarly attention they deserve. I am able to tiptoe into some of the cool memories, but Faith is really doing the work.Quick shout also to
and , who both run music history substacks! Go check them out if you’re interested in deeper dives.
Thanks for the shout! I'll second your recommnedations of both Brad and Faith. The latter is my go-to source for anything Beatles-related.
It’s interesting how the Beatles constituted a defining moment in so many people’s lives. They seemed to represent joy in the midst of pain as well as change in the midst of long standing tradition. They played the paradox well.