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<p>While certainly there were stars that aligned, I think that in an alternate universe where McCartney and Lennon didn’t meet one another at the Woolton Fete one summer day, I think Lennon would have probably not become a professional musician and McCartney might very well still have (though maybe he would have just become a professional local musician, or done something else but played music on the side for recreation, much as his father did). Lennon was kind of a goof-off rebel / Teddy Boy who didn’t apply himself, and McCartney was very much the strong-work-ethic-give-the-ladies-what-they-want type. This is not to dis either of their musical talents at all, as both are / were prodigiously talented. But I think *that piece of it comes straight from their backgrounds – Lennon from a broken home with a lot of childhood ghosts involving his mother and father and being raised by his aunt, whereas McCartney had a very stereotypically happy and warm childhood even after the passing of his mother.</p>
<p>Bay - re parents / children listening to the Beatles - my kids really don’t, but my mother was pregnant with me in the summer of 1964 when the Beatles played Atlantic City (where I was born), and she hung around the hotel, stomach and all to try to get a glimpse of them along with all the teenyboppers. She went with me to see McCartney this summer at Wrigley, and there were all ages there … from teens / twenty somethings up to mid-sixties (my mother’s age). There’s a great video on YouTube about some girl, I’m guessing early twenties, who got a Hofner bass tattoeed on her back and then at the concert, Paul signed it (which she then got tattooed as well). It’s really cute. I have gotten majorly back into the Beatles after seeing McCartney, and I continue to be blown away by the depth of their catalog. I admit I’m more of a Paul/George fan than a John fan, personally, as I think drugs did a lot of harm to him in the mid-60’s and I don’t like the nastiness of things like “How Do You Sleep.” But I can’t deny that both McC and Lennon were musical geniuses. Indeed, I think in any other band Harrison would have been considered a musical genius, but he had the misfortune to be stacked up against two of the very best and was therefore in their shadow.</p>