Albums That Impacted Me • The Beatles 1962–1966
My First Album
I began purchasing 45s (singles) at the age of 12 in 1972. But the first full-length album I bought (in 1973) was the double-album The Beatles 1962–1966, also known as The Red Album. Basically, it was the first of their greatest hits packages. Of course, there weren’t many Beatles songs that weren’t hits, but there were 26 great songs on the album.
It may sound odd now, but I didn’t really know much about The Beatles when I bought the album. They broke up when I was 10, so I had missed that phenomenon. My music knowledge was limited to what I heard on the Top 40 radio station CKLW out of Canada (I lived in Michigan.) The Beatles had fallen out of the Top 40 by then, so they were played only sporadically.
I had saved up enough money to purchase a full-length album, and we were going to Meijer (a Midwest store similar to Walmart or Target) to go shopping. So as was my usual habit, I went straight to the music department to browse the albums. I loved looking at the album covers. There were so many cool ones. I rarely knew the bands or music they contained, but I enjoyed looking at the covers just the same.
I didn’t know what I wanted to buy, so I checked out the New Releases section, and there it was. The bright red cover with the photo of the mop-top Beatles…
