Listen To The Band

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My first job was being the newspaper delivery boy for my neighborhood. I wanted to deliver for The Press-Courier, the local newspaper in my city, because it had the largest circulation (which meant making the most money), but I had to start off delivering papers locally for The Daily News, a newspaper from a smaller neighboring city (with a smaller customer base) while I waited for the Press-Courier route on my street to become available. Every few weeks I would call or ride my bike to the P-C offices to see if there were any routes opening up near me. One weekend the newspaper held a flea market in the parking lot behind their office building, and being interested in working for the company I decided to ride my bike downtown to check it out and hopefully meet someone responsible for hiring paperboys. There were dozens of tables filled with various items for sale and I think that the proceeds were going to help some sort of charitable organization. I remember that it was a bit of a carnival atmosphere, with food and game booths and top-40 music blaring out of the speakers that circled the parking lot. But what I remember most about that day is a song I heard over the parking lot speakers, a song called All My Loving. It is the first song I remember hearing by The Beatles.

Discovering The Beatles had a tremendous impact on me. Listening to the radio, I began to recognize that several of the songs I liked were Beatle songs, which led me to buy one of their albums… I believe the first one was “Yesterday… and Today”. This led to more Beatle album purchases - “Rubber Soul” and “HELP!” came next, and quickly after that the rest of their available catalog. I would lay on my bed in my room for hours with my headphones on, playing Beatle albums over and over. For me, listening to their records was like going to school - I studied what they were doing, the makeup of their songs, their instrumentation, their recordings, their songwriting style. As a teenager I would learn to play guitar, piano and bass guitar and also begin to write songs, and The Beatles would be my biggest musical influence - and they still are. I still listen to and enjoy those records CDs.

And I finally got that paper route with the Press-Courier, although The Beatles didn’t help much with that.