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GREENSBORO — When Michael Frontani was a kid, he’d skip school the day John Lennon or Paul McCartney released a new record. He’d go to a store in Dayton, Ohio, and gaze at the album’s cover and devour its liner notes all the way home.

By the time he got to his stereo and let the needle drop, the anticipation was almost unbearable.

This week, Frontani, 47, had that feeling again as he waited for delivery of the new boxed set of remastered Beatles albums along with the new The Beatles: Rock Band video game. All came out Wednesday.

Now an associate professor at Elon University teaching classes on rock ’n’ roll and culture, he said most young people don’t have that feeling about music anymore.

“But they do have it when a new video game is released,” Frontani said. “So in a way this is kind of perfect — whole different generations are getting that same experience together now on the same release day.”

So, it will be in the Frontani household when his package arrives — 46 years after the band released its first album. Frontani will play The Beatles: Rock Band with his teenage son, who is also a fan.

Frontani examined the band’s cultural impact in his book, “The Beatles: Image and Media.”

He said the Fab Four were likely the last group that could command this much attention this many years later.

Frontani said that over its 10-year career, The Beatles showed the media the power of baby boomers as they went from phenomenally popular teen idols to ground-breaking taste makers.

“They became almost a thermometer for what was happening in the society,” Frontani said. “Other musicians followed their lead, but really a whole experimental generation looked to them for what to think politically, what to believe spiritually, how to dress, how to wear their hair, everything.”

The group, its music and its “All You Need is Love” message remained important to him through the years. He even harbored hopes they might reunite.

“I think that, like a lot of people, the last time I believed anything in the world was really possible was the night John Lennon was shot and died,” Frontani said. “That changed me. It changed a lot of people.”

A new generation’s cynicism began to express itself in the late '70s and '80s, Frontani said. Rap and punk rock made the Beatles’ music and sentiments seem outdated.

“But they’ve been able to reassert themselves now into the center of youth culture again,” Frontani said. “And as they’ve done that, they’ve kept that message central to the things they’ve done — like the Love stage show and now Rock Band.”

Frontani points out that in all other Rock Band games, the crowd boos players when they don’t play well. But The Beatles’ version has no booing.

“That’s not The Beatles,” Frontani said. “That’s not the feeling they give you.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com