Let It Be Known that Today Is Paul McCartney’s 80th Birthday

(Don Boudreaux)

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Perhaps this post is written for no one but me….

My earliest clear memory the length of which is greater than that of a jpeg shared on Facebook is the assassination of JFK. I’d turned five just two months earlier. My next such memory, from just weeks later, is of the news made by the Beatles’ arrival on the international music scene. My grandmother and great aunt showed me a cover of Life magazine featuring a color photo of these strange men with long hair. I can’t today say why – I couldn’t then say why – but as a young child I got caught up in the hype, the “Beatlemania.” This new music, and the band playing it, were revolutionary, and very exciting.

I remember well sitting on my maternal grandmother’s lap, at my grandparents’ home at 1337 Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans, watching on television – black-and-white, of course – the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. (Sunday, February 9th, 1964, to be exact.) I remember someone giving me, as a gift, the album “Meet the Beatles!” and me wanting to hear it played over and over again. I’ve been a fan ever since. (I also remember wondering, whenever I looked at the album cover, if there was something wrong with Ringo’s neck – a tumor, perhaps? – that my young eyes didn’t realize was simply a consequence of the way the photograph was posed and shot.)

(Many memories are flawed, especially long-ago ones and more so if they’re from early childhood. In my memory, I saw the cover of Life before watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but that can’t have been the case because that issue of Life didn’t appear until August 1964.)

Anyway, today is Paul McCartney’s 80th birthday. Happy Birthday, Sir. You’ve given the world much happiness. Pasted below the fold is what I wrote here at Cafe Hayek 16 years ago, when McCartney turned the age that I will turn in three months: 64.

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