Free The Beatles Are Here! by Penelope Rowlands

were memorable and easy to sing along to. And I guess that was the first call-and-response I ever sang. The Beatles, however, were intriguing in a different way because I had a crush on them. And because the media introduced them to us individually, and we were encouraged to pick our favorite Beatle, I picked Paul. My sister and I would dress up like the Beatles for our family and perform with mops.
My sister, Elen, always wanted to be Paul, so I was John. Whatever my sister was doing, I wanted to be with her. My mom told me that I was born to be her friend, and I took that literally. Besides, I didn’t mind being John, because he was married to someone named Cynthia. And that was really my name, not just Cindy. And I had a dream once that I was brushing my teeth with John Lennon and spitting in the same sink. (Later, I told that to Sean Lennon, but I think it scared him.)
By singing with my sister like that, and listening to John’s voice, I learned harmony and the structure of songs. By the time I was eleven, I began writing with my sister. When Elen graduated from junior high school she got an electric Fender guitar and amp and I got her acoustic guitar when I was graduating from sixth grade. Our first song was called “Sitting by the Wayside.” I guess if I heard my kid write that now I’d be worried, but we were living in the protest era.
Before that, I was always singing along to Barbra Streisand from my mother’s record collection. I also performed for myself a lot with my mother’s Broadway albums: My Fair Lady, The King and I, South Pacific . I was Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. I was also Richard Harris in Camelot . At times when I sang I would act like my relatives, because they were always very dramatic. (They were Sicilian, after all.) But mostly I liked the way it felt to change my voice, and when I sang I could imagine the leading man right in front of me. My interior life and my play life were so real to me that I could make up anything. I guess the saddest thing about being introduced to the Supremes and the Beatles, though, was that all of a sudden there was a difference between my mother’s music collection and mine.
In high school I listened to Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Sly and the Family Stone, the Chambers Brothers, the Four Tops, and Cream. Motown was king, and, of course, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. When I got older, they came out with The White Album , and I put each of their pictures on the walls of my room. That’s where I’d daydream, write poems, paint, write songs, or play other people’s songs on my guitar. Sometimes I’d hear my mom call out to me to clean my room and I’d try to ignore her. Once I must have pushed her right over the edge because she finally came in and said, “I want you and all your friends (pointing to the pictures on the walls), to clean this room up right now .” It was not easy for her.
MY MOM WAS pretty cool. When I was eleven and the Beatles were coming to New York, my mother drove my sister, her friend Diane, and me to the Belt Parkway where the Hilton Hotel is, by the airport, so we could see the Beatles drive by, and she left us there for a while. She knew we weren’t going to run into traffic. So we waited. And waited. All of a sudden we saw cars coming and it was them . So I started screaming, and I shut my eyes, and by the time I realized I should open my eyes, I’d missed it. I was dressed all nice, too. I had dark jean clam diggers with pointy shoes and a sleeveless green blouse, and black plaid shirt with a man-tailored collar.

A Facebook Encounter

Vickie Brenna-Costa, fan
(the girl second from the left in the photo)
I WAS VERY young, only twelve or thirteen, when I first heard the Beatles. We were living in the Wakefield section of the Bronx. I don’t remember reading about them but I do remember the first time I heard them on my little pink Zenith transistor radio. I didn’t know what they looked like yet. I just wanted to