The Beatles changed Billy Bob Thornton’s life: “Everyone I knew wanted to be in a band”

Academy Award-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton and Grammy Award-winning recording engineer J.D. Andrew, founding members of American rock band the Boxmasters, joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about the hardest part of being a Beatles fan, their new album and tour and much more on “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Before forming the Boxmasters in 2007, Thornton and Andrew grew up in different areas and eras – with Billy Bob being a first-generation fan of the Beatles and J.D. discovering the band after their breakup.

Thornton, who said he was raised “poor” in Arkansas, explained to Womack that he was “thrilled to get anything from overseas,” which, after watching the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964, included magazines, puzzles and wigs. “I just lived and breathed the Beatles my whole life after that.”

With his uncle being a country musician, Thornton got his start in music by playing drums in that band before forming his own. “Everyone I knew wanted to be in a band after ‘Ed Sullivan’,” he said.

Andrew, who “wasn’t there at the birth of the British Invasion,” said he discovered the Beatles on 1970s radio.

“There was a show called ‘Solid Gold Saturday Night’ in Kansas,” he told Womack. “And they would have Beatles nights, so I’d get to stay up late for it. My dad and mom loved the Beatles – that’s just what we listened to. I wasn’t into anything current until much later in high school.”

His father started playing guitar in his 30s and, having gone to a “very musical school,” Andrew took the instrument and began playing himself. “The sounds, structures, chords I would play – everything that I loved in my life was influenced by [the Beatles’] music.”

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That influence is evident in the work created by the Boxmasters, which they describe as a “two-man full band,” and particularly in their experiences working with late Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick. According to Thornton and Andrew, they’d known him for a number of years and he’d wanted to produce something for them, and it finally happened in 2017, a year before Emerick’s passing.

“Working with him was astounding,” said Andrew. “But it’s hard to concentrate on what you’re doing when you want to ask about Beatles stories the whole time. He would share those stories. But not his studio secrets.”

As for their latest album, “’69,” which contains “A Big Sunshine” (the track Womack called the most “Beatlesque” of the bunch), Thornton and Andrew consider the songs to be “what they would sound like if we’d released an album in the year 1969.” Thornton sums it up by saying: “The Beatles changed my whole life. You can’t say that and sound like you’re some groundbreaking interview. But it’s true.”

Listen to the entire conversation with the Boxmasters on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you’re listening. “Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon.

Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His latest project is the authorized biography and archives of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, due out in November 2023.