"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box"-on celebrating Sgt. Pepper's 40th Anniversary!

I must have heard The Beatles in the womb and fell in love with them then. I was going to marry Paul McCartney or John Lennon when I was a kid. When my parents told me that John Lennon had been killed a couple of months after I was born I cried as if it had just happened, though it was 7 years after the murder.

My Mom loved the early Beatles when the songs were all about love and were thickly laid bubblegum rock. I love these songs too, don’t get me wrong.

“I stopped listening to The Beatles when they got into drugs and their music changed,” my Mom told me.

“That is when I started listening to them,” my Dad said.

I smiled, because at 13 I knew what my Dad loved in the later albums-Revolver, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band , Abbey Road, The White Album -all the lovely things and the pain too. I will never forget how I felt that first time I heard George Harrison croone “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” on the White Album, it all but blew my teenage mind as I sat there in my hormone ridden bedroom, my head back, just soaking up the scratchy tune coming off the record.

I wrote poems and journal entries about the greatness of The Beatles. I proudly wore my band shirts to school, T-shirts of “Help,” “Yellow Submarine,” and the 25th Anniversary of “Abbey Road,” an Anniversary that I celebrated my freshman year of high school-a tortured year that was improved by listening to songs like, “She came in through the Bathroom window,” and “Here comes the Sun.”

Yesterday marked the 40th Anniversary of one of my favorite Beatles’ albums, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, which after nearly six months of work, was released in England June 1, 1967. One of the album that changed the way Rock was perceived it was still rated number 1 on the The Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003.

I want to toast one of my favorite records of all time; remembered for all the hype that surrounded it: the cover which showed more than 70 famous people, including writers, musicians, and actors; or the theory that the cover in some way communicated that Paul was dead, or the lyrics and acronym for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which was supposed to be about an acid trip, though Lennon alleged it was an idea taken from his son Julian Lennon’s drawing. (Pictured left)

Here are some of the lyrics for my favorite songs on the album,

“Well on the way, head in a cloud The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud But nobody ever hears him Or the sound he appears to make And he never seems to notice But the fool on the hill Sees the sun going down And the eyes in his head See the world spinning around…” ~The Fool on the Hill

“Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun. If the sun don't come, you get a tan From standing in the English rain. I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob g'goo goo g'joob.” ~I am the Walrus (Does anyone get this song?)

Here’s to my favorite band and all the great memories. Thank you Fab Four!

For a complete listing of every Beatles song, check out this link.