My mother thinks it’s strange that I’m writing to you. It wouldn’t work between us, she says. You’re too old. Too successful. But she’s got it all wrong. I love you, it’s true, but not in the way she has in mind. It’s a different kind of love, one you never really wrote about much but one I think is just as sincere as any romantic love can be. The kind that doesn’t make me want to say ‘I love you’, but ‘thank you’.

I should probably explain. Although I was only seventeen when we first met (if you know what I mean), I’m convinced it was an experience that profoundly changed my life. My dad introduced us, remember? You were scruffy and hadn’t gotten much action in years. The silence before you spoke was awkward, mostly because I didn’t really know who you were, yet somehow felt like I was supposed to. Then something profound happened, when you started to sing. It was as if all the disconnected pop culture references and radio snippets that had drifted unnoticed within and without my short-lived life fell together in a way that completed something in me I didn’t know wasn’t whole. The way marijuana was your gateway drug to LSD, your music marked the beginning of my own, mind-altering addiction to rock n’ roll.

I must admit that when I first met you I was cautious. When you started singing I was confused and uncomfortable. Why did every song have a different vocalist? Why was one of them so nasally? Is that harmonizing? Yet what struck me most deeply about your music was your scream. I’d never heard someone scream the way you did, with such energy and release. I felt as if I were intruding on something too personal, an intimate expression of feeling I didn’t know you well enough to overhear. But you just laughed (you and your dry British humour) and asked if you could take me down to somewhere I’d never been before. I haven’t left since.

This is why I’m saying thank you. Before we met, I thought the kind of life I’d always known was all I could ever hope for, the best I could expect. I thought to be young was to have nothing worth sharing with the world, nothing meaningful to say. I thought the path to success lay in changing oneself for others, guarding your true self close for fear of losing it. Your music showed me the boundless potential of youth, the fulfillment gained through a belief in oneself and the limitless capacity for people to create art. My life has never been the same since I met you, and I’m glad.

My mom says it’s creepy that I spend so much time with you, but I don’t mind (I think she’s crazy). It’s funny, though; when we first met I thought I was the only one who really knew you, as if you were a secret I could keep all to myself. One Google search later and I thought I would be sad to know how many other people loved you, probably more than I ever could. But I wasn’t. It makes me feel like I’m part of something much, much bigger than myself. You’ve given me somewhere to belong.

So before I go, I’d like you to know, that in my life, I thank you more.

Thank you, Beatles.

This article appeared in an edited version in The Strand here.