Even now, in middle age, with their Beatles LPs gathering dust and the memories of a rebellious youth buried under the same hard life pressure that made their parents seem so pathetic all those years ago, a generation's guitars gently weep at the passing of George, the Quiet Beatle.
For while Elvis Presley died of celebrity excess and John Lennon was taken by the bullet of a madman, George Harrison, the youngest of the Fab Four, went the way, statistically, many of us will end this life.
And to the post war baby boomers once so haughtily scornfull of such indulgent bourgeois concepts as morality - they had, after all, a world to change and only so many mind altering drugs to help them do it - this may have been the most frightening death of all.
For there is no obvious villain, no comfort in the knowledge that "it won't happen to me". This is the very fight for life most of us will one day engage in: a pitched battle against a foe that can never be defeated, only - at best - delayed.
"This just seems more real," says Jeffrey Morey, a 47-year-old from New Jersey. "It is the way most of us will die. It makes me feel like, well, like I'm getting older. Like we're all getting older."
Dan Dromm, a 46-year-old teacher also from New Jersey, suddenly felt the pangs of his own morality as well upon hearing the news that Harrison had died of cancer. "Back then I could never imagine (the Beatles) growing old," he says.
"I couldn't imagine it of myself. But I've been a teacher at the same school for 18 years now and I remembered when I first got that job how I thought I'd never hit 20 years in the same place."
The Beatles music went hand in hand with the tumultuous 1960s, reflecting the mood of a generation that scorned conformity, challenged authority and was hell-bent on changing the world. For those who came of age in the '60s, the soundtrack to their lives was, in large part, provided by the Beatles. And while he may have been in the shadow of bandmates Lennon and Paul McCartney, the true savaants understand that without Harrison, the magic of their potion would have been significantly less enchanting.
It was his hauntingly beautiful ballad, "Something" - which no less an authority than Frank Sinatra called the greatest love song of its time - that played in the background as countless baby boomers fell in love.
The sense of loss among this generation has so far known no boundary.
At the White House, President George W. Bush, at 55 three years younger than Harrison, was reportedly melancholy when he heard the news. He remained silent for a few moments and his first reaction reportedly was to note that there are only two Beatles left.
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys echoed the sentiments of many baby boomers when he pondered the passing of Harrison. "I am horribly saddened by the death of George Harrison," he says. "While we were not personal friends, I think that, just like everybody in the world, I have always considered all the Beatles to be my friends... their music has always and will always mean so much to me."
The death of Harrison will also put an end to the yearning of a Beatles reunion concert tour, with one of Lennon's sons stepping in for his father.
Such a concert, for those who were there the first time around might have served to magically, for a few hours at least, melt away the years.
Of course, no amount of rock will roll the years back and the irony is that no one understood this as well as Harrison, who once wrote:
"None of lifes strings can last... all things must pass away."