Bibliophile Rock: Paperback Writer

Growing up, The Beatles were one of my favorite bands and my dad owned a few of their albums on cassette tape. (Yes, I said cassette tape.) I used to love running errands with him because it meant listening to music! It wasn't unusual for me to sing along to the songs which would typically elicit a smile from dad as he shook his head and laughed. My favorite song to sing was Paperback Writer. (I think I've always been a bibliophile!) I especially loved belting out the end of the song...

I often get asked by other musicians, "what music influenced you?" Definitely, without a doubt, The Beatles. As you can imagine Ringo was my favorite Beatle. When we'd get home, I'd often run downstairs and via my trusty silver drum set I'd imitate the beats I heard earlier -- those beats evolved into others which would later turn into long and drawn out drum solos. In the fourth grade, I actually played one of those solos in my school's talent show. 

Being in library school and all, I have to share something about the actual paperback...
From Literature for Today's Young Adults (2009):

"Despite the success of dime novels and libraries of paperbacks  in the late 1800s, paperbacks as we know them entered the mass market in 1938 when Pocket Books offered Pearl Buck's The Good Earth as a sample volume in mail-order tests...Avon began publishing in 1941; Penguin entered the U.S. market in 1942; and Bantam, New American Library, Ballantine, Dell, and Popular Library began publishing in 1943. By 1951, sales had reached 230 million paperbacks annually."

 P.S. When I got older, I had a crush on the quiet one: George.