The first record I ever bought with my own money was Revolver. I saw it on sale in the cutout bin in a department store, for some reason-- I was riding in the shopping cart and it caught my eye, and I begged my mom to stop and let me look at it. She probably let me get it because it was easier than listening to me carry on about it all the way home.
I was seven, and I had heard the Beatles plenty of times on the radio, but we didn't have any of their records. I still have it but I haven't been able to play it in decades, I wore it out. I started collecting their records and obsessing for months over each one, then I got ahold of Sgt. Pepper when I was nine, and that was all I listened to for a solid year. I was a latchkey kid and it was the 70s, so until somebody came home from work you were on your own. Mom worked second shift at the time, so this was hours of me running from the afternoon school bus into the living room, cranking the stereo as loud as it would go, and laying down on the floor with my head between the speakers with my eyes closed. When I wasn't playing it I was singing it around the house and driving mom crazy. It got into my bones, and made a profound and permanent impact. Then John Lennon died, and I couldn't bring myself to play it for years. But if you love that record you know it inside and out anyway, so you can call it up anytime inside your head.