A year ago, George Harrison died. I wrote this:

If I hadn�t slept on the couch last night, I probably still wouldn�t know that George Harrison is dead. But Neil and Mark and I fell asleep in the living room in front of The Hunt For Red October, and when I woke up at six this morning, the local news was doing a montage of Beatles clips, and I suspected what the news was before they actually said it.

Whatever questionable decisions my parents might have made in my upbringing, one of their best moves was getting me started on the Beatles at an early age. The Beatles inform my earliest memories of music. By the time I was three I knew how to operate the turntable, and I�d pull the LPs off the bookshelf in the dining room, marveling at the surreal, hilarious, and often terrifying cover art.

Something about the Beatles was decidedly scary to me, as a child. The best example is probably �A Day In The Life��epic and sad and apocalyptic from beginning to end. Even a four-year-old knows the line �he blew his mind out in a car� can�t be good news. And the supersonic wind-up and subsequent piano crash gave me the willies every time, and still does, if the mood is right. And then, �Tomorrow Never Knows��what were those squealing sounds in the background, anyway? And �Maxwell�s Silver Hammer� scared me because my mother�s name is Joan, just like the girl he kills in the first verse. And so on.

But I know for a fact that, thanks to the Beatles, I started my drumming career twenty-two years ago. My mother was repainting parts of the house, and I would bang on paint cans with stirring sticks, playing along with Revolver while she tried to ignore me and watch "Guiding Light."

I don�t remember where I was when John Lennon was shot. I remember being at the babysitter�s for one assassination, but that might have been Reagan. I have a very unpopular suspicion that, had Lennon lived, his artistic integrity and critical reception would have declined considerably, just as his surviving colleagues have received their share of drubbing in the music press for their occasionally ill-advised musical ventures. I think Lennon is my least favorite Beatle. He was kind of an asshole.

I was much more fond of George. I think he was the Beatle that underdogs indentified with�soft-spoken, sort of waiting in the shadows with his sitar while John and Paul hogged the spotlight. Sometimes the best contribution a person can make to a band is to give the bigger egos their room, and George seemed content to let the Lennon/McCartney powerhouse steamroll its way across all those albums. When he did contribute, it was inspired, and rarely as embarrassing as Ringo�s attempts. �Something� was mistaken for a Lennon/McCartney composition by Frank Sinatra when he covered it.

Sure, Harrison�s not flawless (�I Got My Mind Set On You,� anyone?). But I did get Cloud Nine on tape when I was eleven and that song was receiving endless airplay and even a Weird Al parody (�This Song Is Just Six Words Long�). The album was decent 80s pop, though; no worse than Wings.

Now, Harrison�s passing is more bad news in a year that has been pretty shitty already. The other night I heard a Spice Girls song and actually got nostalgic for the Nineties. That decade was good to me. I had no idea�we all had no idea�just what was coming around the corner. And now this. I mean, come on.

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