Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I'll Write Home Every Day

I awoke this morning to the news on the radio that Apple was going to make an announcement like none other today. It was helpful of the anchorman to let us in on the unofficial reports that they had finally struck a deal for the Beatles' catalog, and I silently thanked him as I yawned and rolled over.

This evening I happened to be on the iTunes store site and predictably, The Beatles were everywhere. I expected to maintain my resolute apathy, but my eye was immediately drawn to their first American release. On iTunes, it was called With the Beatles, but I remember it clearly as Meet the Beatles. In 1964, when Beatlemania swept the US and the band came to the states for the first time, I was only two, but my cousins were 16 and 19, the perfect ages to be caught in that popular tide. It is family lore that they were part of the screaming mob that met the lads from Liverpool when they landed here in Washington. Not wanting to leave me out of the fun, they bought me an album, undoubtedly the first I ever owned.

Oh, and I owned it all right. It was part of the soundtrack of my childhood. One of the few albums we were allowed to put on the console stereo record player ourselves, my brother and sister and I rocked out to the earliest Beatles for years. Oh, and I own it again, too. I clicked that Buy button without even thinking about it, and when All I've Got to Do came on, I sighed.

2 comments:

  1. With the Beatles is a different album, it was the second beatles album in the UK. Meet the beatles has some different songs, also the cover of that album lied to you, it was the second Beatles album released in America. Check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_The_Beatles

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  2. Good to know. (Although that Introducing the Beatles thing seems like a bit of a technicality.)

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