Some saw potential in George but in 1964 it was Paul or John. I announced with the certainty of 13 that if I got a call saying Paul wanted to marry me — I had something like the annunciation by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in mind — I'd pack my bags.
Paul and John: two motherless boys. I was about to be a fatherless girl. One of the last things our family did together was watch The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 64. My father pronounced the music dreadful. My mother was somehow offended by the sight of four fresh-faced boys in suits and ties. Before Mum took us kids to New Zealand, my sister acquired Please Please Me, forbidden in the totalitarian state of our house. One day Dad bailed me up to talk as I clutched the banned vinyl behind me before backing nonchalantly into my bedroom. He knew. As our family disintegrated, I holed up in my bedroom with the album: "The world is treating me bad. Mis-ery!"
We queued for tickets to A Hard Day's Night, exquisite, black-and-white hormonal torment. I bonded with our handsome 21-year-old boarder over "she was just 17". I seemed under some sort of curse: we left Vancouver just before The Beatles played there and arrived just after they played Auckland. Misery.
More than 50 years ago today, I sat in Babel coffee bar in Victoria St and heard Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It possibly altered the synaptic plasticity or something of a generation despite featuring cosy cottages on the Isle of Wight and quaint pick-up lines: "When are you free to take some tea with me?"
The White Album: I was just 17, a student, mixed flatting. Our family was in pieces, my father lost. Blackbird on high rotate: "Take these broken wings and learn to fly/ All your life/ You were only waiting for this moment to arise."