Fate Followed the Fab Four From Start to Finish

Fifty years since the official break up and release of Let It Be

It has been said, “a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare”.   Perhaps.   But it did take a million garage bands banging on a million guitars to produce The Beatles.  Their soaring rise to stardom required a certain gravity defying je ne sais quoi to keep them aloft in the harsh cross-haired epicenter of the entertainment and cultural worlds for seven uninterrupted years, leaving behind a music catalogue etched in a generation’s psyche 50 years after their final album’s release in May of 1970, the aptly named Let it Be.

Four score talent wired the electronic impulse that energized Beatles’ fans in a way that surpassed anything seen before or since.    But from the band’s beginnings, and throughout their skyward journey, fateful links and propitious timing acted like a booster rocket that propelled the four lads from Liverpool to an unparalleled level of fame that no one could have possibly predicted.  Called the Fab Four, they could well have been deemed the Fated Four as their meteoric course aligned with the stars from start to finish.

Timing is everything, and the Beatles serendipitously alit on fate’s sweet spot when the jet that carried them from England touched down at the recently re-named JFK airport on February 7, 1964, a mere 11 weeks after the horrific assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  A huge crowd craving something beyond the black pall of mourning greeted them with a primal scream not unlike the jet engines that lifted the Beatles across the sea to America.  

Television firmly but only newly embedded in American homes broadcasted the arrival and the live interview that followed, which introduced America to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr whose fame would grow so great that they would be referred to by their first names as if foremost friends.  Like freshly minted gold coins, the four glowed with an aura of something new highlighted by quaint British accents, good looks, and youthful wit and irreverence.   The fuse was lit two days later when the boys strapped on their guitars and strode onto the national stage on The Ed Sullivan Show.

In retrospect, Sullivan’s Sunday evening variety show that aired acts ranging from vaudevillian dish spinners and jugglers to crooners and schmaltzy balladeers seemed an unlikely vessel from which to launch a juggernaut.   But in those days of yore with only three broadcast channels, the Show was prime time viewing for most American families.  Over 70 million watched when Ed Sullivan introduced four young men who just weeks before were virtually unknown on this side of the Atlantic. 

Despite their youth, the band members were already old hands in show business as demonstrated by their energized aplomb that captivated viewers with just five songs.   Paul and John alternated as lead singer, individually singing to one microphone, while the other joined George on another to provide vocal backing, closing in together to sing in unison, shaking their heads, woo-wooing the screaming audience.   Their first number one hit in America, I Want to Hold Your Hand consisted of innocent lyrics with an undercurrent of pulsating sexual energy.  The girls shrilled in ecstasy, each dreaming that she could somehow be with one of them. The boys, awed to silence, each wishing he could be one of them.    

The Fab Four were swept away in a wave of Beatlemania hysteria, a mob-crushing phenomenon that chased after them whenever they appeared in public where they seemed the only sane ones viewing the storm from the eye of the hurricane.   Seemingly an overnight American sensation, the Beatles had been banging away on their instruments for years.

The Road to the Toppermost of the Poppermost

            The Beatles achieved success the old-fashioned way:  They earned it, albeit with a little help from their friend fate.   Their well chronicled story bears repeating if only to underscore the fortuitous nature of their beginnings.  Lennon’s skiffle band, the Quarrymen, was playing at a small fete that McCartney happened upon by chance.  After the show, Paul met John and strummed a few cords that impressed the sixteen year-old Lennon who then asked him to join the group.  Thirteen year-old Harrison linked up with the fledgling group because he rode the same bus with Paul whom he impressed with his precocious guitar picks.   In time, these backwater ripples grew to a tsunami.

The amateur musicians grappled to find their groove rehearsing in small rooms, and filling in the roster card at amateur gigs and festivals.   From there, the teenaged band members found luck backed by pluck when they were offered and accepted a continuous engagement in Hamburg, Germany, a rough post World War II seaport city where they performed at seedy nightclubs playing eight days a week, a hard day’s night schedule from half past dusk until quarter to dawn.   They subsisted on cornflakes and slept in flophouses.  Yet, they thrived with a reserve of youthful energy playing eight hours a day—a cram course in instrumental and vocal training that bootstrapped their musical acumen to a preternatural level—as they honed their skills, covering everything from jazz standards to Chuck Berry rockers, picking Carl Perkin’s rockabilly and singing Everley Brothers harmonies.   

They returned to Liverpool a tight group both in terms of musicianship and camaraderie, imbued with a cross-pollinated brand of music that they performed at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, lauded by locals in the backwaters of the music world where oblivion seemed more likely than stardom.   But their karma proved irresistible.

A local record shop merchant named Brian Epstein decided to listen to the Beatles perform at the club after a few patrons had asked him if his shop carried any records for that unknown group.   Though not a musical agent, Epstein acted on his theatrical and business instincts, and asked the rudderless band if he might man the steerage as their manager.   The foursome demurred but then ultimately agreed.   To make the group more acceptable to the music establishment, Epstein convinced them to ditch their leather jacket bullyboy look, and outfitted the lads in jackets and ties and creased slacks and had their hair neatly coifed albeit long by the standards of the day.  Landing high profile gigs may well have proved problematic without this external transformation.  

The newly anointed manager searched high and low for a record deal but was ignored or worse rejected by record labels almost to the point of despair.  When things looked bleak, Lennon would rally the boys with his homespun aphorism that they would rise to the “toppermost of the poppermost”. 

Epstein’s persistence finally succeeded when he landed a record deal with EMI Records, a good fortune that yielded still another providential benefit when a classically trained musician named George Martin—a British patrician with a posh accent who heretofore produced jazz and comedy records—served as their producer.  Fifteen years their senior, Martin seemed an unlikely collaborator with four working class lads from Liverpool, yet the group developed a rapport with Martin who smoothed their rough edges and schooled the band lacking experience in studio recording.   Martin’s musical acumen and influence expanded the Beatles’ repertoire in succeeding years, which added tone, color and range to their sound that none of them foresaw when this four-piece group began their ascent. 

For his first order of business, Martin mandated a change of drummer, an essential but oft underrated position within a group.  The unfortunate Pete Best was sacked, and the trio looked for a little help from their friend, a local star in his own right in Liverpool playing drums for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes under the stage name of Ringo Starr.  

Musically, this hometown drummer played a rhythmic, rock solid hi hat style that held the band’s sound and tempo together much like the drum beat holds together the march of soldiers on parade.   Starr possessed a natural feel for percussion that supported a song with a feel good sound by adding just the right amount of chops rather than overplaying it.   He could also drive a song with a primal force when needed as evinced by his intro tom roll in She Loves You that kick starts that rollicking tune.   The other members of the group viewed this newcomer as an equal, underscoring the adage that a band is only as good as its’ drummer. 

By nature a regular bloke with a winsome personality, Ringo’s easygoing nature meshed with his mates, his non-ego persona lubricating inherent friction that bands endure when endlessly working together in tight quarters.  The Beatles’ future implosion under the strain of seven unrelenting years of near stifling fame and the incumbent pressure that comes with it may well have occurred sooner but for their new mate’s tempering influence.  Future fans would view the affable drummer as a relatable ‘everyman’, especially when he sang Act Naturally, a Buck Owens’ country and western tune that fit within his limited yet confident vocal range that became his touring signature piece reflecting his role in a band filled with larger than life personalities.

With Ringo in tow, the Band’s lineup was complete.   McCartney manned the bass guitar, again demonstrating fate’s intervening hand.  When bassist Stuart Sutcliffe—an unfinished musician more artist than guitarist–left the band to dedicate his talents to painting, George and John refused to play the backing instrument so Paul, a gifted musician, took up the bass by default.   Instead of plucking the instrument in a pedestrian backbeat manner, McCartney gamboled the strings of his violin-shaped Hofner with panache, playing bouncy, creative rhythms that bolstered the group’s sound.  Paul’s bass and Ringo’s rock-solid drumming bedrocked the beat in Beatles’ music.

Upfront, Lennon played rhythm guitar, an underappreciated supporting role, whose steady rhythm, cord changes and sense of harmony grooved the band’s sound.   John’s guitar work revealed his unique artistic sense with atypical phrasing and rhythm and his penchant for unorthodox meter changes.

George played lead guitar, whose strumming melded with John’s until he stepped up with punctuated trebled leads that fit the melody’s harmonic composition rather than overwhelm it.   Harrison‘s fluid style revealed a wide range of influences —country, jazz, blues and rock developed after playing a beaucoup of covers in Hamburg—that he creatively melded into the band’s tunes performed with an economy of notes painstakingly measured to the last fret that accentuated the song’s melody rather than overbear it with flash and dash guitar licks.   George’s guitar carried a song’s bridge to the next chorus or punctuated the song’s denouement so live performances placed him front and center where a missed note could not be hidden, an onus that led to his serious, onstage persona.

With the instrumental lineup settled, a record label in hand, with Brian Epstein managing their chaotic schedule, and George Martin acting as musical choreographer to harness the band’s creative forces, the Fab Four stood poised to capture the music world.  Ringo Starr put it best:  “First we conquered Liverpool; then England; then on to other countries.”

Fab Four Fame

Beatlemania swept across America like instant karma after the Ed Sullivan Show performance.   In a sea of one hit wonders, the Fab Four rode the tidal wave of fame like an expert surfer hanging ten as it were with a cross-pollinated talent pool buttressed by an unfailing mix of a youthful esprit de corp.   No matter how strong their musicianship, the band’s internal framework could only work if the four proved collaborative, capable of meshing their individual talents within the group as a whole, not only musically but also with the daily grind of constant touring and the Beatlemania beast of burden fame where everyone wanted a piece of them.   In this respect, the band members possessed an affinity for each other that allowed them to battle through the rigors of the heavy load of fame, of being concealed in tight quarters of hotel rooms, all the while confronting the constant demand for musical production.   So tight were they in the early days of fame that outsiders labeled them the four-headed monster.

Within that heated crucible, the Fab Four bloomed with an ever-expanding musical repertoire created by old-fashioned hard work.  As Thomas Edison once said, success equals 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration.   Indeed, the Beatles might as well been called The Antz, because they worked.  From 1964 through the summer of 1966, they performed live in well over 200 globetrotting appearances staged in hundreds of cities and dozens of countries plus endless photo shoots and interviews, and all the while finding time to act in two movies.  Their prodigious musical output totaled 22 singles, an EP and 13 albums by the time the band officially called it quits.

The Lennon-McCartney axis powered the group, demonstrating the maxim that the best partnerships combine dissimilar talents.  The loosely wired, edge-walking Lennon needed to be reeled in; the tighter wound, disciplined McCartney needed slack.   Together, their lines proved taut and balanced.  

John, whimsical, iconoclastic and rebellious was the band’s intrepid leader in the early days when the Fab Four embarked on their high wire act atop the world stage.    Lennon possessed fearlessness, inner conceit and an attitude to stand front and center, legs splayed in defiance with a voice that cried out with primal force and emotion.   In the early days, this natural rock and roller carried a majority of the Beatles songs, and proved a fan favorite with the band’s male following. 

Paul, pragmatic, grounded and goal oriented, contrasted with his impulsive partner.   No less talented than Lennon, McCartney’s balance and focus on details channeled the music’s direction while his saccharine voice and good looks made him the ladies’ favorite.   And when Lennon’s enthusiasm flagged, McCartney’s work ethic, his inner drive to succeed and quest for recognition stoked the foursome’s fanatical pace of musical production in the band’s later years.

Though both strong in the other’s domain, John mused poetic and generally proved the better lyrist.  Paul mastered melody and proved the better overall musician.   Supportive yet competitive, the duo vied internally for lead song and voice, which compelled each to keep pace with the other.   Their diverse talents created tunes as different as Paul’s Yesterday and John’s Tomorrow Never Knows.

In the early days of Beatlemania, the recording industry demanded new songs every couple of months to maintain record sales momentum that required the band to pound out singles during brief two-day interludes between touring dates.  Despite the hectic pace, Lennon and McCartney created a procession of songs released on so-called 45’s—named for the small record disc’s rpm rate with “A” and “B” side songs, but could just as well been the .45 caliber bullet speed in which the duo bulls-eyed hits—as each new release surged to Number One on the music hit parade an unprecedented 11 consecutive times.   

  The demand for new songs and the time limits to create lighting in a bottle in such tight windows of opportunity required the song-writing duo to ‘play in each other’s nose’ as Lennon wittingly put it.   Sitting side by side guitars in hand—even being blessed with the good fortune of John playing right handed and Paul left handed, which made it easier for them to follow the other’s experimental strums and picks—the dynamic duo trial and erred their way through lyrics and melody.  When they hit the studio, George with his selfless dedication to melody and Ringo’s innate ability to quickly sense the song’s rhythm played significant roles in the band’s fast-paced musical productions.

Providence also graced the group with varied vocal ranges that filled harmony in so many ways, and served as one of the group’s strongest assets.  Indeed, their blended harmonies would be the one thing that the individual band members could not replicate with others during their respective solo careers.   

Individually, Paul sang in a higher-pitched tenor with a mellifluous voice that proved a natural as a romantic balladeer; his voice spanned up to four octaves that gave him a vocal versatility that ranged from bluesy tunes to anthems with power to spare to belt out straight rockers.

Though lacking McCartney’s overall range, Lennon’s high baritone contrasted with Paul’s silky voice, which girded the band’s broad vocal variety.   John’s singing mirrored his straight from the shoulder persona with a voice that released his inner angst, at times vulnerable, sometimes dreamily, and oft times charged with a primal rasping release of emotion that made him a natural rock and roller.  

The duo’s different vocal styles gave the band’s albums a varied sound from song to song depending on the lead.   Their duality allowed one singer to hit notes the other had difficulty carrying as Paul did in John’s lead in Hard Days Night.   Together, their harmonic voices chorused songs in different, but blended keys as heard in their duet, If I Fell, or sung seamlessly together in backing harmonies for the other to add lift and oomph to songs, whether it was Paul adding higher lilting notes, or John adding supporting base to Paul’s melodic warbling. 

Block harmony fueled many a song, and George’s vocals—though lacking the range and depth of his band mates—segued seamlessly in support where his voice could be found in the middle range, higher that John’s, lower than Paul’s.   His underappreciated vocal support filled dozens of Lennon & McCartney tunes, underscored by his par excellent backing refrains heard in sympathetic vocal support of John’s pleas in Help, and his added harmonic ballast supported the three-part harmony in This Boy.  The youngest band member, Harrison would gain prominence on his own accord as a songwriter as he and the band matured.  No rock band before or after could boast of three such singing and writing talents.

These self-taught musicians—none of them could read sheet music— possessed an ear for melody, a conduit from soul to song.  In the initial years, this four-piece band hooked listeners with inventive cord progressions and rhythms backed by Ringo’s driving drums that revved their sound with infectious energy.  Their three-minute thematic songs of ‘l love her, she loves me, or we love each other’ were joyously sung with elevated and varied vocal styles enlivened with supporting harmonies.    Despite this basic thematic lyrical structure of those first waves of songs, the Fab Four’s early music retains a timeless feel-good charm that remains fresh today.  

However, if the Beatles remained stuck like a needle in a record groove in this genre, they would have merely gone down in music history as wunderkinds rather than overarching musical and cultural figures that stand transfixed in a generation’s psyche.

The Middle Eight

By 1965, the group’s music matured with more daring and varied songs released in Rubber Soul, a pivotal album written, rehearsed and recorded in a mere seven weeks, albeit longer than their first album cut and recorded in a single 12 hour recording day session.   Lyrically, Lennon, the once scorned student who read Oscar Wilde and Lewis Carroll rather than rote school lesson plans, and McCartney, now immersed in London’s avant garde scene, progressed from electric love songs to broader introspection.   They expanded their basic quartet sound when Harrison’s eastern influence found an outlet when he introduced the sitar on John’s Norwegian Wood.  Paul waxed poetically in I’m Looking Through You, and jammed a mean fuzz bass guitar on Harrison’s Think for Yourself.   George Martin himself played a piano that sounded like a baroque harpsichord in Lennon’s reflective song, In My Life.    Under Martin’s tutelage, this trend of adding instruments to individual songs that ranged from cellos to a piccolo trumpet and even orchestral scores, expanded the Beatles’ musical repertoire throughout the balance of their reign.

Meanwhile, fame and the record labels’ demand for continued exposure to maintain sales kept the Fab Four on the road, shuttled from here, there and everywhere in pseudo musical settings performed to frenzied crowds whose screams drowned out the music.  Between performances, they found themselves locked down in hotel suites two to a room, prisoners of their own fame until the Beatlemania boiler finally blew.  In Japan, the group endured riotous protests for the ‘sin’ of performing in an arena previously reserved for martial arts.   This debacle followed another in the Philippines because of the perceived snub of that nation’s empress, the shoe hoarding Imelda Marcos.  

Their return for an American tour provided no relief when John’s off the cuff comment that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus (not better as he later explained) resulted in threats of violence and album burning in the country’s Bible belt.   Amidst the hubbub, the group recorded arguably their best album, Revolver, a disc that rotated at 33&1/3  turns per minute that kicked off with its’ first three songs that lodged Harrison’s complaints against the Taxman;  McCartney’s sympathy for the lonely Eleanor Rigby; then went dream tripping with Lennon’s I’m only Sleeping.  The album continued in its revolving and evolving eclectic path with songs that went far beyond the Can’t Me Love genre of earlier song releases.  George emerged with the placement of three songs within the platter’s grooves that helped distance the Beatles from the budding rock and roll competition that followed vainly in their wake.  

John, Paul, George and Ringo once hunted fame now grew weary of being the hunted.  Having reached the upper stratosphere of celebrity, the Fab Four no longer needed nor desired to promote their music like circus animals released from hotel room cages to perform unheard above the roar of hysterical crowds.   To remain in the public eye, the Beatles returned to the Ed Sullivan Studio but rather than performing live, the band pre-recorded the first music video, a precursor to MTV, to promote their new single releases, Paperback Writer and Rain.  

The Fab Four straddled the musical divide when they found fame in singles spun on mono 45’s discs that were later supplanted by stereo albums.  In 1967, the band did both, releasing John’s Strawberry Fields and Paul’s Penny Lane on a double “A” sided 45—who today can envision such classic songs not being incorporated into an album or CD—followed shortly thereafter by the band’s seminal recording, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.   On that album, a Lennon tune inspired from newspaper stories fused with an unrelated McCartney’s musical musing on morning rising to create the classic and oft-voted fan favorite, A Day in the Life.   Such was the Lennon & McCartney alchemy.

By then, albums covers had become canvases, with the hand-sketched art on Revolver followed by the colorful palate on the cover for the Sgt. Pepper’s album.   With the Beatles on the forefront, bands were now viewed as artists rather than mere pop stars, and their fans handled record platters like sacramental discs—only novices allowed their fingers to smudge the record’s internal grooves—the music now amped by progressively better stereo systems.

The Fab Four evolved into strictly a studio band, yet remained entrenched in our cultural milieu for reasons that extended beyond their considerable musical talents.   Carried by fortune to the right place and time, John, Paul, George and Ringo proved up to the task as they radiated charisma and urbane cool.  Always hip, quick with quip delivered with their breezy British inflections, their interviews individually or together enthralled their followers.  Blessed with lustrous locks—no small favor given the times—even the length of their hair became fashion statements, and like Sampson, they seemed to grow stronger as their hair grew longer. Mustaches, then later beards followed.   They shunned suits, ties and pressed slacks, donning colorful cuts of psychedelic 60’s garb coinciding with coming of age of America’s emerging youth and counterculture, and their fans followed suit.  The head of the ship adrift in a sea tide of change, the four lads from Liverpool may not have engendered the sixties’ carefree culture, but as they put it were in the crow’s nest with a bird’s eye view of what might lay ahead.

Straight off the heels of their release of Sgt. Peppers, the band reached out to their audience via a live satellite transmission, a technical advance on which they hooked an ageless message All You Need is Love that was watched by an estimated 100 million viewers.   Music critic Richie Unterberger observed that the performance was “the best footage of the Beatles in the psychedelic period (that) captures Flower Power at its zenith, with enough irreverence to avoid pomposity, what with the sandwich boards of lyrics, the florid clothing and decor, and celebrity guests.”  The group would later follow suit with its mega hit Hey Jude, recorded, then aired on national television.    Take a sad song and make it better.  Indeed.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote that with aging comes a certain dryness of the mind.   Conversely, the Beatles youthful minds were continuously hydrated with the new and experimental, all of which kept them motoring on high octane.  Marijuana and LSD became a source for inspiration, and an indelible part of sixties’ lore.   The Fab Four’s dabbles in yoga and transcendental meditation, and their trip to India with the Maharishi all were assiduously chronicled by the press.  Where they went, we followed—figuratively if not always literally. 

The Coda

By 1968, living in the fish bowl of fame began to take its toll.   Their trip to India inspired a wealth of new songs found on the band’s next release, the so-called White Album, which highlighted the members’ individual talents albeit lacking their communal esprit de corp so evident in their earlier efforts.   This double platter of amazing breadth could almost be described as an ostensible Beatles release with the lead singer performing his solo creations backed by the others acting as his session men.  Yet, it remains the favorite Beatles production to many.

The band hit the breaking point in 1969.    Looking to make a change from the studio sound with separate recording tracks and overdubs fused together in song, the Beatles strove to put together an album that sounded more like a live performance, which worked well when they played live on a Savile Row rooftop in downtown London.  But for the most part, the band members were burned out after seven grueling years with only McCartney wanting to soldier on as he directed and cajoled the reluctant others at the studio that only aggravated simmering resentments that would later explode in future battles over the band’s management with three against Paul.   The unfinished canned studio session tapes would sit idle for nearly a year as no one had the desire to finish what could only be described as a band on the rocks.

With unfinished music on the shelves, the four band mates found it in themselves to give it one more try back at Abbey Studios, this time with George Martin back as producer.  It was as if John, Paul, George and Ringo knew that this would be their last hurrah, so that they put their differences behind them and produced perhaps their slickest album beginning with the lead-off song, the fittingly named Come Together, a Lennon tune backed by McCartney’s supporting vocal and swampy bass lead, punctuated by Harrison’s lead guitar rifts and supported by Starr’s solid drumming.   George stepped forward with perhaps the album’s best song Somewhere, and added Here Comes the Sun, two great cuts that underscored that the band just was not big enough for three talented egos vying for space and independence.   The balance of the second side of the album consisted of cobbled together snippets of harmonious songs punctuated by The End, that climaxed with Ringo’s thunderous drum solo, the trio exchanging guitar licks and a concluding harmony, “the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Except they were not finished yet, at least not officially.   In January of 1970, the band minus Lennon put the finishing touches on another song aptly titled I, Me, Mine, and left to embark on solo careers.  Meanwhile, producer Phil Spector polished the rough drafts of a collection of songs that were pasted together for Let It Be, the “last” Beatles’ album released in May of 1970, which came on the heels of the official announcement of the band’s de facto liquidation, although the liquidation de jure took several years of acrimonious litigation to resolve the substantial monetary disputes.

The fact that the foursome stayed together so long reflects on how tight they were as kindred spirits who produced an unequaled quantity and quality of music in a short, but spectacular seven-year span.    Though not planned as such, their legacy stands stronger because they providentially called it quits when they still stood on the ‘toppermost of the poppermost’ rather than trudging on with what may well have become stale musical retreads.   A supernova only burns so long.

Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey written some 75 years earlier may have best answered those who wanted the Beatles to continue on and on:  “The one charm of the past is that it is the past…..{but some} want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.  If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce.”   In retrospect, their breakup that seemed a calamity back in 1970 actually preserved their exalted reputation, a fitting denouement to the wonderful theater and music that was the Beatles.

The details of the band’s acrimonious break up now seems like every bit of the 50 years ago when it occurred, but their music remains timeless when played on countless car and home stereo systems, and even on the Beatles’ dedicated satellite radio station, a true testament of greatness.   Beyond their lilting voices and creative musicianship, their positive themes perhaps explain our enduring attraction to their music catalogue.  Ringo’s catchphrase that he still uses today—‘peace and love’ says it succinctly.   Paul agreed with that sentiment, and added that “there was a good spirit behind it all, which I am very proud of”.  George elaborated:  “We gave hope to Beatle fans….a positive feeling that there was a sunny day ahead”.  Finally, while the group may have disbanded and even two of its members have left us, their music endures as John prophetically declared shortly before his death:  “The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo live on.”  

Fifty years after the breakup, the Fab Four’s music remains fresh and indelible, fated to continue on for our listening pleasure, and for the generations that follow after us.  Like piped pipers, The Beatles walked in with suit and tie onto the Ed Sullivan Show and walked out via the Abbey Road crosswalk, all decidedly looking different.   So were we.     

By Paul W. Lore

Copyright 2020