Our family arrived in the US in 1964 or in the middle of what they used to call Beatlemania.
My Beatles story is probably similar to yours. I bought their Mono & Stereo LPs, Reel to Reel Tapes, 8-track cartridges, cassettes and, more recently, on digital. (In my opinion, “Paperback Writer” sounds better on my old 45 than the digital super clean version. Maybe I’m just a fan of 45s and that AM radio that we grew up listening to.)
The Beatles broke up this week in 1970. Nixon was President, and the Kent State shooting and the incursion into Cambodia were in the news. It started with Paul McCartney officially leaving the group but the guys had not played together for about a year. In other words, the Beatles had not really been a group since they recorded Abbey Road in the spring and summer of 1969.
This is what Rob Sheffield wrote:
Like everyone else, John, Paul, George, and Ringo watched the Beatles’ disintegration with shock and disbelief, with no idea how to apply the brakes.
I remember back in 1970-72, many fans thought that the band would be put back together. It was strange listening to the radio without our favorite band. It did not happen. One guy said that George and Ringo would eventually realize that they just didn’t have enough of their material to survive as solo artists. By the way, it turned out to be true. George and Ringo were out of the radio by the mid-1970s. Sadly, it took John Lennon’s death to put a Harrison song (“All those years ago”) back on the charts.