"If I Needed Someone" was. essentially a tribute to The Byrds by George Harrison who was deeply impressed by their songs; conversely, The Byrds had been very influenced by The Beatles, leading Roger McGuinn to take up the 12-string Rickenbacker as his main instrument in emulation of George. Harrison sent a tape copy of the song to The Byrds before it was ever released by The Beatles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Needed_Someone
The academic analysis of the song in the Wikipedia entry reminds me of a book published at the height of the Beatles career titled "Twilight of The Gods: The Music of The Beatles". It was a very dry, very academic, very ponderous analysis of the Beatles' songs and their structure; it was somewhat odd since none of the Beatles could neither read nor write musical notation and. to this day, can't...
I'm basically right behind you on the timeline, given I'm just a few months younger than you. I also got a guitar after watching the Beatles; I mean, think about it: a young guy watching TV, seeing a bunch of rather ordinary looking guys having fun and with swarms of teenage girls falling all over them. Sure got my attention. When I got my first guitar, I couldn't also afford lessons or the tutorial books available at the time (although, given they were written to mainly teach classical or jazz style, it was no great loss). I tried to tune it the way I thought it might be tuned; my musical education was vocal music in Catholic school and I was more familiar with hymns and Gregorian chants. Therefore, my first attempt at tuning resulted in an open chord, minor key tuning not very well suited to rock and roll. Eventually, I got my hands on one of those guitar pitch pipe tuners and got it all sorted out. Lately, though, I've been dabbling more in open tunings...
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