A Yellow Stinky Sock

So it's been 50 years since the Beatles came over to America.

One of the coolest things now is to listen back and to imagine those days. Howard Stern has a lot of the old rock stars on now and they talk about it all...every single romp and drug-fueled song.

I still think The Beatles would go to number one if they debuted today. Their music struck a chord with the people. The melodies were simple a lot of the time. Love was the word. They were out of the ordinary.

Donovan was the latest old rock guy on Howard last week. He told a story about walking through a room and coming across McCartney. He asked Sir Paul what he had.

"Just this," McCartney said, and he began strumming the guitar for "Yellow Submarine."

And my mind played a trick.

I thought of my sister Corinne singing the chorus as perhaps a ten-year-old. She had changed up the words.

"We all live in a yellow stinky sock, a yellow stinky sock, a yellow stinky sock."

And we had laughed back then.

Problem being...now...I can get the song out of my head.

That's the way Beatles songs worked. They just sort of hung there to be sung over and over.

Except I have Corinne's words stuck...not Paul's.

"We all live in a yellow stinky sock, a yellow stinky sock, a yellow stinky sock."

I've been a fan of The Beatles, of course. Not a rabid fan like I am with the Stones or Bruce, but I love to hear the process behind their writing.

"They wrote, played and recorded 'A Day in the Life' all in about 5 days," Donovan explained. "John was sitting there reading the newspaper looking for words that he could use as lyrics and he just said:

"I read the news today, oh boy."

And that in particular is one song that I think, if released today, would still go to Number 1.

Love that lyric.

So simple.

These days I wonder a lot about Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and how they feel about doing what they did. They changed the world with their songs.

Did they know they were doing that?

Paul plays it all off, of course. They were just musicians who got lucky. He laughed, saying that they sang songs about Yellow Submarines.

(Which was a metaphor about being sunk away from the rest of the world as fame isolated them a bit).

Paul is just lucky Corinne wasn't involved.

"We all live in a yellow stinky sock, a yellow stinky sock, a yellow stinky sock."

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