[MikeNoun]

Originally Posted by PonchoV8

EDIT: I always appreciated Ringo the most as a person. I didn't care a lot for John. I don't care a much about Paul now.

No one dismissed it. You just made that part up.

First live concert for me was Alice Cooper when I was about 8, which was my favorite artist at the time. So, no I wasn't 'there' in 1964, but I was a Beatles fan even as a kid. That's how much things changed in that amount of time.

Well, that's pretty cool, I was a big Alice Cooper fan myself, up until his original band left and Alice went solo, then I lost interest. Alice Cooper was a huge Beatles fan too, and many of his songs are direct nicks of classic Beatles tunes.

Black Sabbath....Ozzy was (and still is) a huge Beatles fan.

Lennon was not religious, and he had a lot of personal problems. The image his fans conjure up is one of a peace loving saint, but John was not a very nice guy. Often moody and irritable, he was the bad kid around the neighborhood, the hooligan. His dad abandoned him early in life, and his mom (Julia) gave him away to his Aunt Mimi, who was a strict disciplinarian. As a teenager, Lennon was shocked to learn that his mom was living within a mile of his home. He managed to strike up a relationship with her once again, but tragically his mom was run over by an off duty police officer, all within earshot of John. A couple years later, his best friend and soul mate, Stuart Sutcliffe (the fifth member of the early incarnation of The Beatles), died of a brain injury. It seemed like everyone in John's life either died, or abandoned him. Lennon had some serious issues.

The Beatles were rough kids. Many outside observers don't understand this, because they think The Beatles were squeaky clean, and The Rolling Stones were the bad boys. That was all marketing hype. The Beatles were hard rock before there was hard rock. No one played rock and roll like they did, and their attitude and stage presence was unique. They got into fights, they drank, they swore, they smoked, they were looked down upon by everyone as being degenerates. Liverpool was the armpit of British society, and no one expected anything relevant to ever come out of that miserable city.

And they changed the world.