I’ve got hugely into the Beatles recently. Enormously, madly, deeply – I can’t stop talking about them. It’s crept up on me, this fascination. I’ve always liked their music, of course – who doesn’t – but for most of my youth it was just the obvious ones: Hard Day’s Night, Help, Yesterday, Twist and Shout, I Want To Hold Your Hand, that sort of thing. Growing up, they were a warm-sounding, upbeat, jangly guitar band with pleasing harmonies and interesting nasal voices. That was their appeal to me, and it was enough.

Last year I took a 3-hour bus ride to Bristol, to stay with my friend Vic for a few nights. On the coach, bored and pawing around on Spotify, I listened to a couple of Beatles songs. With nothing better to do, I went to Wikipedia to read about the composition and background of the songs. Three hours later, I was still reading. Every song I put on had its own Wikipedia page – and each song, it seemed, had since its creation been covered, parodied, referenced, remixed any number of times. I remember reading about the song Helter Skelter, and how it started the trend towards what would eventually become heavy metal. I was astounded.

I visited Liverpool a couple of months ago and did the Magical Mystery tour there, visiting the Beatles’ childhood homes, as well as Strawberry Field and Penny Lane – and later the Cavern Club itself. What was exciting to me about this trip was that I’d found something to be excited about in my own country, for a change – something swinging, something groovy, even if the whole movement is decades passed by now. Typically it’s always been the USA or France or wherever else that piques my curiosity – they’re bigger, sexier, and of course far less known to me.

Sometime after Liverpool, I was in a bookshop in Leeds train station and saw a book called ‘John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs’. I didn’t have much money in my bank account, but I bought it almost before I’d blinked. I’m not usually one for non-fiction – I struggle to stay invested without a narrative – but I was hooked from the first page.

I’ve made this spiel to so many people recently that it’s almost a pain to write it now, but I’ll try: I never realised how much the Beatles changed when they came on the scene. The way they wore their hair was an act of rebellion. The clothes they wore. The fact they wrote their own songs. The fact they didn’t have a lead singer. The subject matter they chose to sing about. Their accents. Their attitude. Their wit. The book makes a powerful point in the introduction. It notes that when we watch footage of the Beatles in the 60s, the way they talk and act seems weirdly modern, contrasting incredibly with the stiff, RP-accented folks around them. The book makes the case that this is not a coincidence – that popular culture and society in general has been so immensely affected by the band that they forever altered the way we express ourselves.

I was enamoured by the idea, of course. I then watched Peter Jackson’s 3-part, 8-hour documentary ‘Get Back’. In this beast of a doc, we watch the band over the course of two weeks as they struggle to write songs for the album that would eventually become ‘Let It Be’. They bicker, they despair, they argue and sigh and break up the band and pull it back together again – all in a basement studio with no windows. The finale of the documentary is their final performance together as a band – on the roof of Apple Studios, 3 Savile Row.

The whole documentary, they’re arguing about what the gig should be, where it should take place. Half of them don’t even want to do it. They play their new songs badly, they struggle to function, they’re messed up and depressed. And then comes the moment when they finally decide on the rooftop, and the next morning – a cloudy day in January – they stride out onto the roof in fur coats and beards, and they look like them again, bold and nervous and excited. They plug in their guitars, and without any introduction to the people of London far below, going about their days unawares, they launch into the heavy throb of ‘Get Back’.

For me, this was an almost spiritual moment. I felt something shift inside – a passion so great it made my hairs stand on end. Down in the street, a cameraman interviews pedestrians stopping to crane their necks. For the first time, we see the wider world of 60s London beyond the studio basement: a world of old men in flat caps and suspenders, little old ladies in shawls, sooty workers in overalls, police officers in tall hats and black coats with round shiny buttons – it’s an almost Dickensian scene, everything brown and grey and drab as the clouds above. And then the camera cuts back to the Beatles in a wide sweeping shot, four slim, colourfully-dressed characters, wild-haired in the wind, playing songs nobody had ever heard before over the endless brick chimneys of industrial London.

You see, in that moment, how light years ahead the Beatles were. The contrast between the roof and the street is absolutely awe-inspiring. Passersby, interviewed on their opinions on the gig, look and speak like stock characters in a play:

“Do you know who’s playing on the roof?” asks the interviewer.

“No, I don’t,” replies a drab, posh-looking man in a pea coat. “But it’s causing a nuisance. It woke up my mother from her afternoon nap.”

“It’s the Beatles,” says the interviewer.

“Oh is it? Well I don’t know why they think they can make such a terrific racket. There’s no cause for it at all.”

Then we cut back to the roof again – music flooding in, singing and laughing and hollering – and this time, I was met with a new emotion: a bone-deep, almost painful combination of sadness and immense respect for John, Paul, George and Ringo, in realising what they were up against. They look so joyful up there on that little roof, surrounded by the crowds below – but so isolated, so lonely. And so brave – a bastion of colour and light against everything straight, everything bland, everything indifferent, everything corporate and inhuman. Hair blowing back in the wind, howling and barking and laughing across the cityscape – man, that’s the sort of thing that just makes me fall to pieces. I cried.

The secondhand joy I got from the book, the film, the music, lasted for weeks. Riding the Tube to work, usually a cramped and sorry experience, suddenly became a pleasure. Listening to ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ as I rode the escalator up to Bank Station – usually such a sigh-inducing activity, set amongst all the bankers and finance men in their stiff white shirts – suddenly became a great pleasure. I felt as though I’d discovered – or remembered – a part of me they’d never wear down, never have access to. It felt like I had a secret, like when you’re in a new relationship, evenings filled with fantastic sex, and nobody around you knows what a joyful, wild time you’re having behind closed doors.

This is one of many obsessions I’ve had over the years. There was the Beats, obviously, and the Lost Generation, the Cuban Revolution, the 60s hippy counterculture, the 70s punk counterculture, the Golden Age of Piracy, the Wild West, and likely more besides. There was a time in my early 20s when you could name any famed pirate and I could tell you their life story.

It’s funny – it’s taken me a very long time to recognise, but there’s a common theme. It’s community: stories about a group of people creating an alternate reality together. And, in realising this, a lot of things have slotted into place in my understanding of myself, and my continued frustrations with my lifestyle currently.

It’s why I still pine for Berlin from time to time, and why I still miss the blueberry farm. Those were the times in my life when I felt part of something bigger. A scene, a movement, a little gang of rebels banding together against the world.

And, in realising this, I am realising why I’ve been having such a difficult time in London: I’ve taken the advice of everyone I know, starting therapy, getting medicated, finding steady work, saving money, taking holidays – all that sensible stuff – but I’ve never addressed the core of it. It’s all very good and proper eating your vegetables, exercising, meditating, working on yourself, but doing all of those things alone is what I can’t abide.

I don’t want to work and exist in a vacuum, grinding away in solitude to eke out an existence. I want a group, a collective filled with like-minded people with big ideas. I want to find people like me, who, rather than look at the world or the city and say ‘Well, it is what it is’, say ‘How can we make this better, prettier, kinder, groovier?’

A tribe – that’s what I want more than anything. And that’s what I’ve been sorely lacking. That’s when life begins to flow properly, entering that exciting state where one day doesn’t just meld mindlessly into the next, but builds on itself, deepening and expanding in all directions. That’s what makes me feel the most alive, most inspired, most creative, and most fulfilled. I hesitate to say ‘happy’ – because of course that’s a rather transient state – but of course happiness comes easier, more naturally and deeper.

I might not agree with the conventional world on much, but that’s okay if I can build another, freer little world inside of it. Just like the Beatles on that rooftop.