views on the HJH when I first joined The Word community I have learned to appreciate their work and properly understand their influence. To your point, one of my 14 year old twins, after borrowing my copy of 1 is becoming more and more fascinated by them. He, like his brother enjoy indie and anything with a guitar and perversely this original interest has led him to listen to The Beatles and the wheels keep turning. He now understands The Kooks, Green Day, Fall Out Boy etc far better and hears HJH influence in everything. Something in my youth made me see The Beatles as the establishment, excess radio play, press coverage, Mull Of Kintyre I'm not sure but they were my Dire Straits. My son sees them as something special, where it all began I think he is far nearer the truth than I was.

I love your family vignettes. Always beautifully observed and written.
Although for some reason I get Bisto and Oxo all mixed up in my head and am convinced you lot look exactly like the family from the old ads with Lynda Bellingham.

that they span the generations like no others (but an honourable mention here for the efforts of Bacharach/David and Abba).

My teen daughter (18) loves mainly hardcore dance music, my pre-teen one (11)is very fond of Gaga/Michael Jackson pop but is well appreciative of older stuff. I play a lot of music at home, often at realistic volume, often off vinyl, covering rock, pop, jazz, classical,...just music!

When we listen together, and we regularly do, we gravitate towards the HJHs, always a sure thing to get us singing along. A particular hit at the moment is the 11-year-old's grasp of the words to Come Together (What's a toe jam filter, Daddy?). Should be doing it tomorrow again, after breakfast. Just great fun...

Having grown up with them, never really doubted that the group were very special. Time of course has shown us how far ahead they still are. I'm 55.

And it's not just because of Thomas the Tank engine. I think it's his funny name and kind-looking face.

or musician will ever be as all-conquering as the Beatles again for a number of reasons, most of them too metaphysical and complicated to go into here.

But one explanation is down to the way the music industry - and business itself - operates these days. If The Beatles appeared now they simply wouldn't be allowed to be as generous - and, let's be honest, joyously wasteful - with their talent as they were between 1962-1970.

Imagine a present day meeting between The Beatles and the EMI bosses:

What's that lads, you don't want to include any of your massive hit singles on your albums?

These songs of yours, Penny Lane and, er, Strawberry Fields Forever. They're not bad, you know. In fact any band in history would sell their mothers for a tune half as good, yet you want to effectively give one of them away by releasing them together on the same single?

And this other song of yours, Rain? It's a certain worldwide number one, yet you want to hide it away on a B-Side, is that correct?

And all these double A side singles you keep releasing. You do realise they all could be individual hits, thus doubling the revenue they bring in and taking the pressure off you as a band?

So, to sum up: you intend to record two timeless albums and four earth shattering, non-album singles with unique B-sides a year for eight years in a row. There will be no merchandising rights to speak of and you agree to accept the worst royalty rate in history? Well, if you insist Mr. Epstein.

Well, that all sounds perfectly reasonable. Any other business? Carry on lads and see you all again next year.

The journalist John Harris was on 'Great Lives' on Radio 4 last week talking about John Lennon.

He argued that the prolific nature of the Beatles' catalogue in the 60s gives a complete lie to the asumption that we live in fast changing times now or, certainly, that the music industry is any way near as dynamic.
Remember also The Beatles' huge number of songs written for other artists, live appearances, radio broadcasts, TV broadcasts and the five (five!) films, quite apart from solo ventures in the decade.

And consider that in the career-suicidal move of waiting 18 months between the release of the double-LP 'Blonde On Blonde' and 'John Wesley Harding', Dylan laid down over a hundred tracks at Big Pink with The Band!

The new Mojo is rather fab.

Best of all is the CD which is an array of cover versions of the 'Let It Be' album.
Against my natural instinct I've quite enjoyed these releases over the last few years.
The double 'White Album' spread over two issues was particularly good and I'm going to try and find it in the spare room (i.e. a room filled with books, vinyl and CDs!) today.

I was born in 1982, so well after the Beatles had been and gone. Aside from the odd track here and there (I'm told my favourite song as a toddler was 'Karma Chameleon'), I'd never really had an enthusiasm for music as a child. It was only when I got to the age of about 9 or 10 that our primary school music teacher started a school choir, and the first thing we did was a concert of Beatles songs. Something about them caught my imagination - I can't remember exactly which songs we did, 'Michelle' was certainly one of them.

My Uncle had all the albums on CD, and would post cassettes of them over to me, each one received with great enthusiasm and played to death. The day of the concert, I fell ill on the way back from school in the afternoon, but when I arrived home I found a cassette of 'Sgt. Pepper' had arrived for me. A lie down and a listen to that had me back on my feet and ready for the concert. Even on a hissy, slightly wobbly second-generation tape, it was without a doubt the most amazing thing I'd ever heard.

Not long afterwards, I got my first CD player, and the first albums I bought were all Beatles ones - and as a result of liking their stuff, I started to listen to other artists of a similar vintage, and the rest, as they say, is history. Put simply, the Beatles are the reason I'm interested in music.