My First Love

Beatles The WITH THe beaTles

The Toto guitarist relives the moment he fell for the loveable moptops.

“The album changed my life? I don’t even have to think about that. It was With The Beatles [released in the US as Meet The Beatles]. That album was the ‘on’ switch for me, and fifty years later I’m playing in a band with Ringo Starr. It’s pretty crazy.

“The music on that record touches me deeply inside, more than everything else that came after it. And the song that really did it for me as a kid was I Saw Her Standing There. When I heard the guitar solo, George’s solo, I wanted to be that guy. When I saw The Beatles on TV, that was it. For so many people of my age, that was a game changer. There was something that resonated within me.

“I ended up working with Ringo, I worked with Paul [McCartney], and George was a friend and we played together. To know those guys and work with them is so weird, but wonderfully weird.

“When my mother was pregnant with me, this psychic friend put her hands on my mom’s tummy and said: ‘It’s a boy. He hears the music. When he’s seven years old something’s gonna change. And the world is going to know who he is.’ When I was seven years old, I heard The Beatles, got a guitar, it changed my life, and here I am. So that’s freaky shit – I wasn’t even born and it was all figured out.”