“What would have happened to your lives if there had been no Beatles?”
My mother-in-law posed that question earlier this year, with no inkling that the alternative reality feature film “Yesterday” was on the horizon.
She was not being dismissive, simply curious. Over the years she had met so many people in my professional and personal circles with strong Beatles threads that to her it was an obvious question. How might our lives have turned out without the Beatles? Would we have intertwined at all?
After all, I first met future writing partner Harry Castleman in college through his radio show about The Beatles. There are countless others in my life like that, easily identified with a quick check of the editorial listings in Beatlefan or the guest lists at the Fest for Beatles Fans.
Yet I thought she posed an intriguing puzzle. Was an interest in The Beatles the only thing that connected us? Or were they the hook that opened a door that might well have opened anyway, if not in quite the same way?
What should have been cut?
As Batman turned into an instant smash of the mid-1960s, it was within this guise. There were instant books and countless other cash-ins –even an album of songs “inspired by Batman” from one-time surfer singing stars Jan and Dean.
Walter "Wally" Podrazik 