I was born in 1960. My parents didn't approve of rock & roll, or of anything the youth was doing back then, and I remember they tried to shield me from a lot of it. I didn't really understand it at that age. I only know there was a lot of them making sure I didn't see or hear or wear certain things, and they always said, "I hope Carrie doesn't grow up like them". They always made sure my skirts weren't too short before they let me buy them. And they were very strict about which radio stations I listened to. So I went through that whole decade never hearing about the Beatles.
Now I'm grateful I found them before it was too late.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. It really all started when I was about twelve, and stopped wanting to do whatever my parents said. My friends wore different clothes than I did, and they listened to rock music, and I wanted to, too. I went shopping with them and I bought whichever records they said were the best - "Oh, you just have to listen to this, Carrie!" - so in about a year, I knew quite a lot about rock for someone whose parents never allowed her to listen to it.
My parents weren't happy at all about my sudden taste for rock music. But I loved it. The sound was like nothing I had ever heard before, and it was so - groovy, I just wanted to get up and dance. And yet, the more I heard it, the more I felt that a lot of the groups were - how should I put this? They were trying too hard. They paid too much attention to what they could do with the music, and not enough to what it was really supposed to be doing, which was making me feel something. I loved rock, but what I really wanted was something simpler. Something that felt, when I listened to it, like the musician cared about me, and only me.
My friends laughed when I told them. "That music's boring, Carrie," they said. "That's what your parents would've listened to!"
My parents? Hmm... I wondered. They had never let me listen to rock as a child. What sort of rock music were they trying to stop me from listening to?
That day, after school, I went to the record store. The man behind the counter smiled and waved at me. His name was Marvin, and I was in there so often that he knew me.
"What are we looking for today, Carrie?"
I knew it would sound a little strange. "What do you have from the sixties?"
Marvin frowned, not expecting that answer. "From the sixties? I thought you'd only want the newest music."
I shrugged. "I'm trying something new."
Marvin still looked puzzled, but didn't object. "Let me see what we have. We usually only carry the latest records."
He disappeared into the back. I waited a long time for him. I was starting to wonder what could possibly be keeping him when he came back.
"Only one sixties band left," he said. "We wouldn't even have them, if they weren't so popular," he added, smiling at the cover. "Quite good, too - I almost hate to sell this. This one's from 1969," he added, sliding the LP across the counter to me. "Only a few years old."
I thanked him and paid for it. I didn't need to look first. It wasn't the first time Marvin had recommended something to me, and I trusted him.
"Now you take good care of that!" he called to me, as I was about to leave. "That's a very special band you've got there!"
I was very curious. What sort of music could this possibly be? I peeked inside the record-store bag to see my LP.
The cover showed four young men, hippies, with long hair and beards. They were very cute. I could hardly stop looking at them. And promising - they were no one I'd ever heard of. The cover said, "The Beatles: The Long and Winding Road and For You Blue".