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By Root 293 0

dark moments, particularly my father, but they worked hard to build a family and give their children a promising future. My mother loved to sing and write; my father loved to dance, play the mandolin, and tell stories. My Uncle Mike told jokes, squeezed the accordion, and belted out either a song he wrote or a popular tune. Our home was a variety show, and whatever gave us kids joy, my parents supported.

My mother Judith and my father Chonon.

The Levitan clan with my uncle Mike.

Me at 14. Photo by Haim Riback

As I approached my early teens, I had fully embraced everything the Beatles represented. From music to clothes to hairstyle to outlook on the world, they were the standard bearers. Before then I was familiar with their songs and had seen the films Help! and A Hard Day’s Night. Adults talked about them all the time, mostly with alarm, so I knew they were important. For most people, the phenomenon that was the Beatles became very much an individual identification with each member of the group and wanting to please them. When George said jelly babies were his favorite candy, the Beatles were showered with them on stage and in the mail. Starting in 1963, the Beatles made it a practice to send a six-or seven-minute Beatle Christmas record to fans of the official Beatles fan club. The recordings were improvisational and comedic and once included an appearance by Tiny Tim.

Paul had this to say in a 1963 Christmas record the Beatles sent to their fans:

Oh yeah, somebody asked us if we still like jelly babies? Well, we used to like them, in fact we loved them and said so in one of the papers, you see. Ever since we’ve been getting them in boxes, packets, and crates. Anyway, we’ve gone right off jelly babies, you see, but we still like peppermint creams, chocolate drops, and dolly mixtures and all that sort of things. (Yes! Yes! Oh yes!)

Girls would go to concerts and wave signs that read “I Love You Paul.” It took a bold boy in those days to let a specific alignment to his favorite Beatle be known. But as time went on, even boys would “choose” the Beatle they liked best and have arguments and discussions about why. Paul was the cute, lovable one, always aiming to please. George was reserved and mysterious.

Ringo, fun loving and forlorn. John, witty, wry, and otherworldly. The four personalities that were the Beatles were under such scrutiny individually and as a band that the screaming fans and the relentless marketing of Beatlemania unwittingly contributed to the group’s disintegration by the end of the decade. No other rock group, not even the Rolling Stones, ever experienced anything like that.

Though I loved them all, and was particularly reverent of the songwriting partnership of Lennon and McCartney, I idolized everything about John: his courage and cockiness, his humor and whimsy. Intelligent, always on a quest, and fiercely original, John was who I wanted to be. He had an imagination that captivated me. There was honesty and real pain in his songs, no matter how upbeat the sound was. I think I related to that. John confronted the hardship of life and morphed it into messages of hope and joy.

Early on I developed a passionate identification with John, though I could never have predicted where that passion would eventually take me. One of my friends was adamant that George was the best in the group. We would argue vehemently about that to the point where I would not speak to him for weeks. The truth is that I would have proclaimed my admiration and loyalty for each of them to the outside world. I loved George and Ringo and idolized Paul. But I had to let it be known, in a missionary way, that John was unquestionably the leader, that he was the best, and that the other Beatles knew it too.

As I got older I was witness to the evolution of the Beatles and their constant preeminence in pop. My siblings would buy the new albums, and I would sneak into their rooms and listen to them when they weren’t there. They did a lot of covers in their first few records—tributes to their favorite artists—like