He calls it his "aha moment": When Pádraic Gilligan was nine years old, the Beatles released a new single. "I remember hearing 'Get Back' and thinking this was the most wonderful, liberating sound ever," Gilligan recalls. "That was probably my rock 'n' roll baptism."

Gilligan, who lives in Dublin, Ireland, has been a die-hard Beatles fan ever since. It probably helps that Gilligan is surrounded by a group of close friends who share his passion for the Fab Four. "There's a bunch of us," he says. "I play in a band with a bunch of my best friends; we're lifelong friends. … The Beatles have always been, for us, a great force of influence and so on."

And the imprint the Beatles have left on the lives of Gilligan and his friends transcends music. "The Beatles have spanned 50 years of time that have really represented unbelievable progress and unbelievable milestones in the whole history of humanity, let alone music," Gilligan says. "So for many of us, a Beatles song also recalls a particular moment or time in our lives or a moment in history."

With Beatles music playing such a significant role in their lives, Gilligan and his friends have developed a special way to commemorate the band who mean so much to them. Beginning in April 2013 with Please Please Me, Gilligan and others have been gathering to celebrate the 50th anniversary of each Beatles' studio album release. Last weekend, they marked the release of the Beatles' sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, released in the U.K. and Ireland on Dec. 3, 1965, and in the U.S. on Dec. 6 of that year.

The celebrations organized by Gilligan and company go far beyond small gatherings of friends listening to a record. First of all, attendance numbers 50 or so. Secondly, the participants make the music their own. "Generally what we do is divide out the tracks in advance," Gilligan explains, "so individuals or groups of individuals take responsibility for a particular track and it's their job, then, to introduce the track when we're all together, and then perform it.

"And we've got a very wide berth in terms of musical competency," he continues. "We've got some people who are professional musicians and we've got some people who are still learning. But everybody is welcome and everybody gets listened to and everybody is in a way charged with actually coming up with some nugget of wisdom or story about the particular track that they're about to play. The explanation of the track becomes almost as important as the track itself that's performed."

The instrumentation at the gatherings generally doesn't allow for note-for-note, tribute-band-style performances; but that's just fine. Gilligan says some will take great care to reproduce the sung harmonies on certain songs; other participants, he says, will do a track in an entirely unexpected way. For example, one of Gilligan's friends, visual artist Joe Dunne, wrote an additional verse to his assigned track, "Nowhere Man," for the Rubber Soul celebration. "There's a lot of interesting things that emerge beyond the actual surprise of hearing the track performed in a slightly different way," Gilligan says. "You sometimes get it deconstructed, reconstructed and rewritten, and that's a lot of fun."

Gilligan explains it's his friend, Andrew Basquille, who is the "pivot" for the entire series of Beatles celebrations ("He knows more about the Beatles than the Beatles know themselves," Gilligan says). Basquille also lives in a Georgian-style house with a large upper-floor room with a high ceiling, a piano, and room for 50 people. Those with instruments gather around the perimeter, while singers, observers and other revelers take up the space in the middle of the room.

Among the attendees are Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick, artistic directors of the Dance Theatre of Ireland. Yurick, who is originally from Minnesota, and Connor, who also grew up in America, bring a slightly different point-of-view to the party. "It's always interesting to hear [Robert and Loretta's] perspective because they remember the order of the songs slightly differently because they were different, often, in the particular release as it happened in the United States," Gilligan says, adding that the U.S. release dates and even album titles were different than their U.K. and Republic of Ireland counterparts.

Considering the Beatles' discography continued to 1970, Gilligan says he and his friends are happy to know they have 50th-anniversary parties planned until 2020. "So a lot to look forward to," he says, "and a lot of wonderful challenges coming down our line as well. I mean, I'm not really sure how we're going to do 'Revolution 9' off The White Album, how that's going to happen. Certainly some of the tracks from later on have a level of complexity that's beyond the skills of the average guitarist or pianist."

Not that the technical requirements are at the heart of the gatherings. "It's a fantastic opportunity for a group of us to actually come together on a regular basis and sharing, then, this common love of the Beatles and their music," Gilligan says. "It's a great kind of hook for bringing us together in that regular way."

[Editor's note: Along with Andrew Basquille and Eugene Murphy, Pádraic Gilligan plays in the Dublin-based band, Factor One, who recently featured on Ireland's nationally televised program, The Hit.]

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