Their very own Moptops

John, Paul, George, and ... me?

By Robert Klose

My 9-year-old son broadsided me the other day with one of his unanticipated announcements. "Dad," he said, "I'm going to start a band."

"Really?" I remarked.

He gave a vigorous nod of his head and then swept the horizon with his outstretched arm.

"Yeah," he said. "There's gonna be four of us. I'll play drums, and then we'll have a piano, violin, and flute."

The only complication I could see at the moment was that my son didn't have any drums. Nor did he know how to play them. In fact, his musicianship ranged only so far as the C scale of his plastic Yamaha recorder.

But I had no intention of raining on his parade. After all, I had had a band when I was about his age, and it was a jolly good one, too.

It was 1964. Our inspiration had been - who else? - the Beatles, who had just made their American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Beatlemania was sweeping the land, with garage and basement bands forming everywhere. Guitars were flying from store shelves, and Beatle haircuts and collarless blazers were de rigueur. (My hair was too wavy for a mop top, but with monumental dollops of "hair trainer" I was able to take a bristle brush and muscle my hair into a temporary helmet of Lennonesque locks.)

Read the rest at The Christian Science Monitor