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Beatles become the bond.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

This is the story of a father and son, Kent and Gregg White, and the music that moved them from birth to the crystalline moment when each, in his time, found its source: John, Paul, George and Ringo.

It's the mystery of a baby sitter's stack of records, a chintzy Sears guitar, a two-piano family, a storage box of albums and the special language musicians know as "trading fours."

It's about members of Eugene's Number 9 Band wailing away on Beatles tunes at Cozmic Pizza in Eugene last month in celebration of John Lennon's birthday, and then somebody spoke and they went into a dream.

It begins with the father:

Kent White is born in November 1960 when the Fab Four are in their larval stage, developing from Quarrymen to Silver Beetles to Beatles. They will soon thrill the kids at Liverpool's Cavern Club.

White's mother sings in her high school choir but never publicly after that. His father can whistle. "He had a great whistle but he'd whistle entirely off key," Kent says.

Still, the couple filled their house with recorded music.

In seven years, when the Beatles release "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," see Kent on the floor in front of the family's huge console stereo, listening to a stack of records a baby sitter brought over and conducting an inch-by-inch examination of the album covers.

The music is arresting. Think of "A Hard Day's Night."

"You know that first chord at the beginning: Br-an-gg," Kent says, strumming the air with his right paw....