ABC/Image Group LA Forty years ago today, Star Wars premiered in theaters across America. For Brad Paisley, it was a film that rocked his world.

“Well, I saw it the first time when I was five,” he tells ABC Radio, “and I was blown away and my life was changed like everyone else who has that story.”

Fast forward to release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, and the stage was set for Brad to realize just how profoundly he’d been affected.

“I rented a theater for the… first showing in Franklin, Tennessee, for my band and crew as our end-of-the-year Christmas party” he recalls, “and we all brought our kids…”

“I was sitting between my two kids,” Brad continues, “and the credits start… with ‘Episode 7: Luke Skywalker has vanished,’” he says, referring to the opening crawl. “So I’m watching this, and I look down, and I’m like ‘OK, Jasper, Episode 7: Luke Skywalker has vanished. The rebellion has… whatever.’ And as I’m reading it, I start to cry, because my dad did that for me.”

In that moment, Brad says it hit him just how much the sci-fi classic had become a rite of passage.

“Think about the circle of life! I mean it was just a crazy… I’m sitting there reading the scroll on a new Star Wars movie to my child, who’s sitting there wide-eyed like I was and I know his life’s about to change, the same way mine did,” he observes.  

Brad and Jasper will have a new installment to share when Star Wars: The Last Jedi premieres on December 15 of this year.

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