Here, There and Everywhere

I have spent countless hours listening to them, tattooed one of their lyrics on my wrist and traveled across an ocean to learn about their lives. It has to be obvious at this point that my love for them has no bounds.

Like many people my age, the Beatles were handed down from my parents and worked into every corner of my childhood subconscious. I grew up singing along to “A Hard Day’s Night” in the car with my mom, knowing the melodies to their biggest hits and replaying them in my head like familiar memories.

Their music took on different meaning as the years progressed, but I hit the pinnacle of my Beatles fanaticism as I finished up my freshman year of college. Just one year ago, I was offered the opportunity to study my dear boys for a month in London and Liverpool.My inner music geek could hardly contain itself.

Landing at Heathrow Airport last May, I had “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” chiming through my headphones, I was wriggling in my seat, dying to explore England. I had no idea then how much the trip would change my perspective on their lives and, by extension, my own.

Weeks flew by and I was on Beatles overload: I walked across Abbey Road and, like a tourist, re-enacted the classic photograph, looked through the gates of Strawberry Field, watched a band perform in the Cavern Club. Hell, I even saw “the shelter in the middle of the roundabout” on Penny Lane.

However, it was stepping foot into Mendips, John Lennon’s childhood home, that was my moment of clarity.

Tears filled my eyes as sunlight streamed through the front window of his bedroom, and it was in that moment that everything clicked, not just about Lennon, but about the band as a lasting entity. Everything I had seen and experienced culminated in that single moment and fell into place. Realizing that they were people like you and me, not just monolithic music legends, made it all the more real and vibrant in my mind.

After the trip, I could easily quote lyrics or recall obscure facts about recording processes. I could explain meanings behind songs or debate the real reason for the band’s demise. I could do all of these things and completely nerd out, but that isn’t what really matters at the end of the day.

What matters is the warm and fuzzy familiarity of love that rushes through your head when you hear George’s earnest emotion in “Something,” the chills that run up and down your spine when John wistfully remembers “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the blissful smiles that emerge when Ringo sings “Octopus’s Garden” or the way your heart soars when Paul belts out the refrain of “Hey Jude.”

The permeating love, personality and true feeling in their music are, in these moments, most potent and most mesmerizing.  Those are the moments that take their music to incredible heights, and those are the moments I hope I never, ever forget.