Melanie Coggins remembers the first time she saw her mother cry.
It was a December morning in 1980. Coggins, 7-years-old at the time, was getting ready for school.
“She was getting me dressed for school and I said, ‘Mommy why are you crying?’” Coggins recalled. “She said, ‘Because this man, John Lennon, somebody bad hurt him and killed him.”
Coggins’ mother, Christine Nastri, has been a Beatles fan since her teens. She remembered giggling as the group performed “I Saw Her Standing There” on Ed Sullivan in 1963. She fell in love with those early songs and the Beatles’ startling personas — Chelsea boots, British accents, slim suits and, especially, their shaggy, mop-topped hair.
Sixty years later, Nastri said her favorite Beatle is still Paul McCartney.
“Seeing him is on my bucket list,” Nastri said. “This is my only chance.”
Nastri crossed that item off her bucket list Thursday as Sir Paul McCartney strode across the stage at Yale’s Woolsey Hall. The 80-year-old musician and activist — clad in white-soled, black sneakers and a blue suit with a bone-white dress shirt underneath a black hoodie — was on hand to discuss his new book, “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.” His suit was still a bit slim and his grayed hair still a bit shaggy. He was joined by the book’s co-author, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, and Yale professor Neil Gray Jr. McCartney holds an honorary music degree from Yale and one of his grandchildren recently graduated from the Ivy League university.
In his new book, >>> Read More
