The Fool on the Hill

Paul McCartney

My father was 34 years old when The Beatles signaled “The British Invasion” of American popular music with their (now iconic) string of performances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Let’s just say that Dad didn’t find that first appearance musically inspiring. My father, whose mother was a classically trained pianist and organist, was not a fan of Rock and Roll. No Elvis. No Chuck Berry. No Mick Jaggar. None of these made our household hit parade. Like my mother, my father preferred the crooners (his all-time favorite singer was that tremendously talented, Nat “King” Cole), and tight harmony groups such as The Mills Brothers, The Four Aces, The McGuire Sisters. There were dozens of such popular harmony groups selling hit records in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and by the 1960’s such groups as remained, among them The Lettermen and The Kingston Trio, contributed to the resurgence of folk music. But The Beatles? Dad didn’t know what to make of them. Not in 1964, that is. Still, Dad loved…