Who got you into The Beatles?

[hmxsean]

Hey everybody,

I've been thinking lately, and let's be honest that is a rare occurrence, about how people got into The Beatles. For some it may have been as easy as hearing a few songs on the radio, or being alive when they were popular, or just accidentally stumbling on them in any number of other ways.

But for a lot of you, probably the majority, it goes beyond that. There was someone, probably in your childhood who was a big Beatles fan. Someone who knew every song by heart, for whom the songs went well beyond being music to an irreplaceable part of their lives. And that person made damn sure you listened and you understood. They probably hoped that by doing this you would become more enriched as a person but also so you would understand more about them. Maybe it was your parents, maybe an uncle, maybe a good friend, maybe an almost complete stranger but if this happened I bet you remember this story. And I bet it's a good one.

And I want to hear it.

You see the holidays are coming. People will be visiting their families and friends and more than likely seeing these people who introduced them to the world of The Beatles. A lot of you are probably thinking about going out and buying TB:RB for this person (and you may want to get on that - Limited Edition bundles and all!), not only to give back to them for sharing their love of this band with you but also so you can share a little bit about your passion - video games.

I want you to write about this person and how they got you into the band. I want you to write about WHY you want to give them The Beatles: Rock Band. I want a whole thread of awesome stories.

And when its all over I want to find one of the best and do something nice. This isn't a contest. And I am not going to define what this nice thing might be (as I probably haven't even thought it through entirely). I just kind of want to know these stories you have in you.

Best,
Sean

PS If you do write a story and hang out on the twitters make sure to post a link to your story from Twitter with the #BeatlesRockBand tag. We're gonna trend this game again. Believe you me.

[kid_icarus_]

My Dad played The Beatles non stop when I was
a kid. When I was in Junior High, I was completely
obsessed with them. They were the start of a
big passion for me with music and even at a
young age I wanted to be in a band. They will
forever be one of the greatest rock bands of
all time. TBRB is total nostalgia for me. Every
time I play it, it takes me back to those days
of JH and high school. I never would of believed
there would ever be a video game like this.
Sometimes I wish I didn't have to work so I
could just play rock band all day. LOL

[gershwin_27]

My mother is the first one that introduced me to the Beatles. She died from breast cancer four years ago. I wish she were here to see the game. She was a die-hard Beatles fan.

She and her two sisters drove from Massachusetts to New York in August 1965 to see the Beatles play at Shea Stadium. I enjoy playing the Shea Stadium venue songs, seeing the girls screaming, and imagining that it's them.

I remember her playing her Help! album to no end on our record player. I think she eventually wore out the groove. Having the Help! album as DLC would bring back a lot of good memories.

This winter I plan on visiting my Aunt and will bring my PS3 and Beatles: Rock Band set up. I really hope that she gets a kick out of it.

[DaynaT]

One of my earliest memories is of sitting on the couch with my mom's Beatles LPs. I would 'read' the Magical Mystery Tour comic book and I was fascinated by the picture on the Sgt. Pepper cover. She would take the four portrait posters out of the White Album and let me look at those, very carefully. Mom played those albums while she did housework, so their music was always around.

In a mad fit of trying to make space for my half-brother to come live with us in our small house she decided to get rid of all her vinyl LPs. All of them, probably close to 100 albums. She has regretted it every day since. She has an iPod now and can pretty much listen to whatever she wants whenever she wants, but nothing can replace the feeling of opening up the White Album and pulling out those alabaster disks.

[InsoFox]

In a way it was my mother, but in another way it really wasn't.

I'm actually holding the very same audio cassette tape that got me into the Beatles. It belonged to her, and she has written a date on it - 15.10.73 - presumably when she got it. It was the 1962-66 compilation and I found it in a box of forgotten tapes.

The only reason I listened to it is that I'd heard 'grown ups' sing 'Yellow Submarine' at me like any nursery rhyme, and at the age of around 7 it amused me that there was an actual band that recorded it. I'd never heard of the Beatles before this point. For a couple of weeks I just listened to 'Yellow Submarine' but eventually I got curious and listened to the rest of the tape - and that was that, from then on I was a massive fan.

The thing I like about this is that although I can thank my mother - it was her tape, after all - nobody told me I should be listening to the Beatles. Even as I grew to love their music more and more it wasn't for years that I'd begin to understand their contribution to music, how immensely popular they were, and so on. I liked them purely and simply for the joy of finally having discovered music I could really get into. Turned out I had pretty good taste.

[SquirrelSF]

Seeing Across the Universe a couple years ago reminded me how much I liked the Beatles. That soundtrack would make a great DLC for Rock Band.

[GuyMonkey]

It was my dad. When I was just a youngster, 2 or 3 years old, right up until I was 6 or 7, my dad and I would always go cruising in his Firebird. It didn't matter where we were going, just that we were hanging out, father and son, having a good time. The Beatles would always be playing. He liked the stuff from the touring years - I would've asked him to play the studio years, but I didn't know any better.

I remember the first time I ever saw my dad play the guitar. I'd always seen the thing hanging up on the wall and wondered what it sounded like. I don't know what I was doing at the time, probably playing Super Mario Bros. or something, but I heard this music coming from upstairs, in my parents bedroom. I went to check it out, and he was just chilling out on the bed, playing (and singing [poorly, I might add]) Yesterday. It was the coolest thing in the world, to know the words to this song and how it went, and to see my dad playing it. That one pivotal moment in my life would form the basis of who I would eventually become. A lover of music who feels more at peace with the world than the Dalai Lama so long as he's got a six-string and comfy place to sit.

But then something happened. I still don't understand it to this day, but something happened within my dad that changed him. He became an angry person. Our relationship deteriorated as I got older and he got colder. Words were said, things were thrown. We were more like warring countries than family. He didn't play The Beatles anymore. After awhile, I grew to hate my dad, so much so that I couldn't wait to get away from home. I graduated high school, moved a province away, and started my new life.

In the months leading up to the move, I saw yet another change happening in my dad. It was as if he was finally realizing that he'd wasted all the years that he could've spent actually getting to know me, to find out who I was growing up to be, being an actual f*cking DAD for once, and I think it made him pretty sad. He started taking an interest in what I was doing, started making an effort to get out and do a few things.

And then I moved. It wasn't something that was always on my mind, but every now and then I'd think about my family back home and I'd feel glad that I was able to move away on at least decent terms with my father. It was a comfortable feeling. I came back to visit during Christmas Break of my first year of college. When I got to my family home, I had barely dropped my bags in my old room when my dad came up to me, really excited about something that he had bought, pulling it out of the closet and hooking it up to the TV. It was a karaoke machine loaded with a couple thousand songs.

Take a guess at the first song he picked to sing.

[Suprmallet]

As a child, I was not much into music. I adored film and literature, but had never heard too much music that really grabbed me. It didn't help that my mother often listened to musicals, most of which to this day I still cannot stand. My dad, however, used to play a soft acoustic song that he had taught himself on guitar. I didn't know it at the time, but it was in fact "Blackbird" off The White Album.

When I was around 11 or 12, my grandparents got the family a CD player for the holidays. My dad seized upon the opportunity and purchased A Hard Day's Night, his favorite Beatles album (he had seen the film seven times in the theater as a child). From the moment he put it on the stereo, I was entranced. Who had come up with these catchy hooks and melodies? How could they possibly sound so jubilant? Why did it seem like I knew each song intimately, even though I was hearing them for the first time?

Every week my dad would bring home another Beatles album. Sgt. Pepper, Rubber Soul, Please Please Me, and so on. It was a little strange for him, having grown up in America, to hear the albums in their British formats, but for me, each new collection was a revelation, especially Abbey Road and The White Album.

It was around this time that The Beatles Anthology premiered on TV. My father let me stay up late to see each episode, and it become a bonding activity for the both of us. He picked up the Anthology CD sets, which I pored over, listening for the slightest deviations from the studio version, and rejoicing at unheard versions of solo tracks like "Teddy Boy" and "Not Guilty."

In all, I spent a year listening to nothing but The Beatles. My fervor culminated with a Beatles-themed Bar Mitzvah, where each table had a different Beatle figure for a centerpiece. To this day, they are still one of my favorite bands, and their boundless creativity has inspired me in my own life.

To thank my dad, I recently purchased the Beatles in Stereo box for him (I grabbed the Beatles in Mono box for myself). He now listens only to classical music, but still clearly has a soft spot for The Beatles, because he put on a few of his favorites from the box set and said he enjoyed them immensely. I still plan on bringing him to my place to show him Beatles Rock Band, but I feel he would only get mild amusement out of it. Still, I'm curious to see his reaction.

And then one day I found a copy of David Bowie's greatest hits, which really changed my life, but that's another story for when Rock Band: Bowie comes out...

[CCDaDon]

My mom is a huge Beatles fan and just to annoy her I would always say stuff like "The Beatles Suck" and so forth. Then I really listened to the Beatles' music till... The game was announce. So I guess you can say Harmonix got me into the Beatles.

Yay!

[MajorDannykilla]

Well i used to hear the music all the time never really knowing it was them, it all came to me about six months ago i was looking through my uncles old cd collection and i found abbey road i burned it into itunes and put onto my ipod i left it there, i put my ipod on shuffle one day and 'Mean Mr Mustard' just came on i was hooked on that song mainly beacuse the lyrics were so weird yet awesome! So it started from there , then i got the rest of the albums and so on. Now The Beatles are a main part of my life i may be 15 and im one of the only people probaly in my school apart from my history teacher (who kicks ass) and other teachers who like the beatles....but what do i care they're the ones missing out!

I would also like to thank Harmonix for making this game it's as if they made it to coincide with my musical virginity(which the beatles took with Mean Mr Mustard) i also plan to try and get most of the dlc =] ROCK ON!!!!!!!!!!!