Justin Smith-Ruiu at The Hinternet:
A journal entry from me, dated January 1, 1984, records a list of what appear to be New Year’s resolutions. Most of them are unimaginative, and only testify to the common hopes and aspirations of an 11-year-old child. One however stands out: “No Beatles from after 1965”.
What was that all about? I have trouble reconstructing the whole scene, but a few additional facts can help us at least to contextualize this enigma. Along with a pair of friends, whom you can still track down in Tucson and Long Beach respectively if you wish to do some independent fact-checking, I was, from the ages of eleven to thirteen, absolutely obsessed with the Beatles. At the time of John Lennon’s assassination a few years before, I had been musically oriented towards more plainly childish tastes, Kenny Rogers, say, or Sha-Na-Na, but the news of his death insinuated itself into my burgeoning sensibility, and became a sort of foundational tragedy that soon enough led me to seek out any and all Beatles resources. A profile of “Paul and Linda at Home” in a 1983 issue of Marie Claire? If I saw that at the Safeway check-out counter, you could be sure it was going in the cart.
More here.