I'm an acknowledged Beatles fan.
Less charitable people might see it as an addiction. Perhaps they would say I am a "Beatles–a–holic." But I don't feel that way. To confess to being addicted to something is to admit to being powerless over a bad thing, something that is not healthy or desirable but over which you have no control.
I'll admit that I have no control over my affection for Beatles music. But it is not an addiction. True, there are days when I feel that I absolutely must hear a Beatles song — or a song that was released by John Lennon, Paul McCartney or George Harrison in their solo careers.
But I don't think that is a bad thing. It is something that has been a part of me all my life — and it has enriched my life.
Beatles songs have been enriching many lives for half a century.
The very first Beatles single, "Love Me Do," was released on this day in 1962.
Fifty years. Wow. As Tony Sclafani writes for NBC News, the Beatles "probably couldn't have imagined being age 50, much less anyone marking the single hitting the half–century mark."
Nevertheless, we are witnessing the first of many such milestones today. In the years ahead, all the other Beatles songs that you've been humming as you went about your daily business and singing in the shower all these years will be turning 50 as well.
But "Love Me Do" was — and is — the first. If you want to mark the date when the British invasion really began, it was on this day 50 years ago.
With a ditty that McCartney wrote in the late 1950s when he was about 16.
Actually, I guess, the invasion was more than a year away on Oct. 5, 1962. I suppose the invasion part occurred when the Beatles came to America and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show — and were greeted by wildly screaming Beatlemaniacs who had been watching the explosion of Beatlemania across the ocean.
After that, things would never be the same.
It all began on this day in 1962.
