Have you ever heard of this band called the Beatles?  I guess they're pretty okay.

I actually really like the Beatles and have a great respect and appreciation for their songwriting prowess and the ways in which they innovated and revolutionized popular music.  But I had a bit of a long road to reaching that point.

If ever there was a band that was ubiquitous, it's probably the Beatles, but I somehow managed to avoid hearing too much of them as a kid.  My parents are actually around the same age as the members of the Beatles, which made them just a smidge too old to fall into that crowd of adoring teenagers that became their initial fanbase.  As such, they never really got into The Beatles much themselves and weren't playing them around the house when I was a kid.  They weren't really rock and roll fans at all either.  They enjoyed some of the hits from the 50's that they remembered from their youth, but mostly my mom and dad seemed to prefer classical music.

I can respect classical music, but it's not my go-to when it comes to just listening for fun and it certainly wasn't  the way to connect with my peers as a youngster.  The Beatles weren't exactly that either when I was growing up.  I wasn't born until several years after they broke up and it was another decade or so after that before I began to pay attention to what was supposedly cool to like.  It's not exactly that it was ever uncool to like the Beatles, I don't think, I just don't remember too many of my friends or classmates ever talking about them.  At a certain age, I think you're just more focused on what's going on right now and I remember in the early 90's when Nirvana hit and all the subsequent grunge and alternative bands that followed in their wake, that was what everyone seemed to be into.

I do know that even back then I often heard the Beatles referred to as the greatest band of all time, but I didn't believe it.  I managed to avoid hearing a lot of their best stuff, but I had heard things like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" and, while those are deservedly considered classic songs, they weren't exactly rocking my world as  a surly teenager.  I also thought that's pretty much what all of their songs were. 

I've also always had a bit of a contrarian streak in me.  I don't like being told what I'm supposed to like.  So if someone tells me this is the greatest band of all time, my initial reaction is largely, "No they're not."  I feel like I came by this honestly.  I felt and continue to feel that a lot of super popular mainstream music is pretty terrible.  Even today I have no desire to listen to Top 40 music.  So to hear that some band is the most popular band ever was basically an advertisement to me "Jeez, they must really suck."

So not only had I not heard that much of them, but I kind of actively avoided them, and took it as a bit of a badge of pride to not be into them.  I figured they must surely be the most overrated band of all time, which some people probably still think is true.  I don't know, maybe it is!  How many times can a band be praised as the greatest of all time without being a smidge overrated?  But I digress...

The first cracks came in my Beatles hating facade when I was in college, although having a classic rock snob for a roommate my first year made me dig my heels in a little longer.  But as my mind opened a little and as I actually heard more of their stuff that someone would occasionally put on, my opinion slowly started to change.  It's not like they were constantly played.  I think the assumption was that everyone already knew the Beatles inside out.  But I didn't.  

I remember one time I was hanging out a small party and someone put on the White Album.  I'd heard of the White Album at that point, but I'd never actually listened to it and I didn't know that's what we were listening to.  I wasn't actively paying attention to it, but as little bits of it filtered through I remember thinking this must be some sort of greatest hits compilation or something, because every song I was hearing sounded good.  That was hard for me to admit at that point.

I also remember listening to a little bit of Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour and while I didn't fully convert to a fan on first listen, I remember discovering that certain songs off of them were getting stuck in my head.  So then I allowed to myself that the Beatles maybe had a few good songs, but they were still overrated.  

I think what finally and fully converted me to a fan was when I had to take a cross country car trip with my brother after college.  We were driving in a crappy old '87 Dodge Diplomat that had no capacity to play CD's, which were the preferred medium for music listening at the time.  It did have a tape player and it just so happened that one of my friends gave me a bunch of cassettes that he had taped Beatles albums onto.  I believe he gave me Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and the White Album.  We didn't really have anything else to listen to on that 20+ hour drive so we listened to those albums over and over again and I couldn't help but admit to myself that I really liked them.

That's when I finally just became a full-blown fan of the Beatles, and eventually a bit of an obsessive.  In a way I'm kind of glad I didn't know their music very well when I was younger because I got to discover them and get really into them right at the age that was kind of my peak for music enjoyment.  A lot of people seemed like they were already burned out on the Beatles by their early 20's because they had heard them a ton their whole lives, but I was just getting into them and it was pretty awesome.  

It's hard to maintain that level of obsessive enthusiasm forever.  I would still consider myself a Beatles fan, but I probably finally burned myself out on them a little bit, too, from listening to them so much for a while.  But it's not like I don't enjoy them at all anymore.  I do.  I just don't need to put them on every day or anything.  But pulling out Revolver every once in a while is for sure an enjoyable experience.