“I Heard the News Today”
George Harrison, R.I.P..

Stephen Moore is president of the Club for Growth.
November 30, 2001 1:00 p.m.

bout six months ago I bought my kids (eight and ten years old) the new Beatles CD "1" — which, of course, is the best-selling CD in a decade.

The kids were somewhat puzzled and disappointed by the gift and asked who the Beatles were. I said they were the hottest band back when I was growing up. They asked if the Beatles were bigger and better than the Backstreet Boys, and I said absolutely not, but you listen to the CD and tell me what you think. Big mistake.

They are now both unremitting Fab Four fanatics. I come home and they've got the CD player revved up to full-volume blasting "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," "Can't Buy Me Love," ""Hey Jude," or some other Fab Four hit. They're favorite is "Yellow Submarine," which if I hear one more time, I will smash that CD player into 1,000 pieces. But the great joy of kids is they allow you to relive your youth and I come home and I hear that music and I think , damn, I had forgotten how good a song "Day Tripper" is.

Justin was asked to write a poem in his fourth-grade class and he had writers block so he plagiaristically wrote:

Dear Sir or Madam will you read my book, it took me years to write, will you take a look….

He got busted. Justin didn't understand that EVERYONE, including his teacher knows the words to "Paperback Writer." But it was impressive that he could recite every word to the song.

Justin and Will represent the third generation of kids who think that the Beatles music is the best thing they've ever heard. For the Beatles to be the number-one band in America today, is the equivalent of the kids in the 1960s listening to the music of the 1920s on their record players. My prediction is that my great great great grandchildren will be listening to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and that in 2050 the best-selling album will be Abbey Road.

It's cliché to say that Lennon and McCartney wrote the soundtrack of the '60s. The truth is that they've written the soundtrack for every subsequent decade. They were quite simply history's greatest entertainers. Any arguments?

This morning it was painful to tell the kids at breakfast that George Harrison was dead. Will was adorable, he said, "But dad, I thought Paul was the one who was dead." And Justin thought about it and said: "Now I guess there can never be a reunion." That made me incredibly sad. I remember when I was in college and heard the news that John Lennon (my favorite Beatle) was dead and I felt the world had been raped. I wore black for a week.

Conservatives should forever appreciate George Harrison for a lot of reasons. Not the least of these is that he wrote our anti-tax anthem "Taxman." It goes like this:

Let me tell you how it will be, here's one for you 19 for me.
If 5% appears too small, be thankful I don't take it all.
Cause I'm the taxman, and you're working for no one, but me.

That was written when Britain had a 95% top tax rate (thus "one for you, 19 for me). George was one of the first supply siders.

George's "Concert for Bangladesh" in Madison Square Garden — a terrific soundtrack, by the way — was really the first rock charity concert and raised several million dollars for the starving people in that heart-breaking war-torn country. His song My Sweet Lord, for which he was unfairly sued for plagiarizing the tune of the Chiffon's "He's So Fine," is one of the great religious rock songs ever.

John and George are dead. They're in rock'n'roll heaven. And you know they've got a helluva band.