This poem attempts to capture the incredible allure of the Beatles to a child growing up in the 60s. The trigger was seeing Paul in a modern day interview and wondering why I still felt such a visceral reaction. Knowing that my kids, and many friends who came to music later, find this quasi-religious devotion quite baffling, I take the reader back in time to my childhood and hopefully evoke something of the enchantment of the Fab Four in the mid-sixties
The Fab Four Inside Me
An ageing moptop is a chatshow guest,
It’s Paul with a new album, a whimsical blandfest.
Yet I'm a rabbit in headlights, a fool on a hill,
A Beatle’s onscreen, and I'm feeling the chill,
The frisson of recall, the prism of wonder,
Juke Box Jury, ‘64, my little heart a’thunder,
Six years old, (star-kissed flashbacks they evoke,)
Barely breathing as they crack joke upon joke,
The Fab Four are inside me, I can’t let go,
Queuing outside Smiths for the release of Rubber Soul,
Studying the sleeve notes on the clanking bus home,
Racing to the gramophone in glorious mono,
The Fab Four are still inside me, it’s hard to convey
How they pervade my thoughts, day after day,
They set the cultural agenda, they crested the wave,
They styled my hair, told me how to behave,
Yes, four arty Scousers really did rock my world,
Made suburban life tolerable, helped me love girls,
The Fab Four still inside me, as I stare at Macca’s dyed hair,
With half of them dead, the thrill still there, ..yeah, yeah, yeah …