The Beatles - the Best Band Ever

With all due respect to the many notable and successful bands of yesterday and today, my pick for favorite band is one made from pure sentiment and heart. It's the group I think of first when talking about bands, and it's the group that I believe has impacted the world even after their breakup. I'm speaking of The Beatles, the fabulous four from Liverpool who invaded the United States in the sixties and took us by storm.

John, Paul, Ringo, and George - four names that are famous on their own and ones that have rocked our world in so many ways.

As a kid, I loved Ringo Starr. He was just silly and crazy, and something about that grabbed me. As I grew up, though, it was Paul McCartney that I learned to love. I'm really not sure why my young heart shifted, but it did. Maybe it was the little things that I found important in my own crazy way. Paul was the last Beatle to grow his hair long and the first one to cut it. Honestly, I'm not even sure if that's totally true, but it's how my youthful mind saw it.

In those early days of The Beatles, everything was so simple. We were all still young at that point. She Loves You, Hard Days Night, Paperback Writer, Love Me Do, I Wanna Hold Your Hand - simple songs with emotions so basic that everyone could understand them. They weren't songs for those out to win some earth-shattering prize, but it was music to sing and dance by, minutes of pure pleasure and fun. They were freedom.

I still play those songs, their lyrics a part of my subconscious. I love them all and I accept them for what they were - music to have a good time with. Years later, after The Beatles had broken up, Paul McCartney was criticized for writing songs that weren't deemed all that meaningful, light tunes of love and happiness - silly love songs. What did he do? He wrote a chart-topping song appropriately called Silly Love Songs. That's why I like Paul McCartney.

Often, I find myself wondering what might have happened to The Beatles had John Lennon not had someone point out to him just how much he could impact the world. It was that little bug in his ear that was a part of the reason why, for him, silly love songs didn't cut it anymore. Frequently, I ponder how the future could have been different had John not married Yoko and Paul, his Linda. It seems the marriages were more the cause of conflicts, real and otherwise, that split the two for a time. What if? That's what I ask, and I ask it because I think it's clear the John and Paul loved each other, in spite of the problems, just as they did Ringo and George. I wonder. I just wonder.

The Beatles set the world on fire. Their long list of successes are available to read on any website andin most any book on the history of music, and that's why I'm not including them here because I'm writing more from my heart and the feelings the Beatles invoke in me, rather than the total number of number one records they had or the length of time such and such topped the charts. The Beatles go beyond the record books. They are a vital point in history, when we were young, and even when we realized we weren't young anymore. We grew up with the Beatles. As they changed, so did we transition.

Regardless of world events, political wars, and interpersonal conflicts, The Beatles stand alone for how they impacted our planet. Even when they parted, all four made an impact on the music world. Together in their hey day, they opened the door for others to follow, but they were the first, and in my mind, they still are the greatest.