The airport had a new name: John F. Kennedy. Just three months earlier, the President of the United States had been shot and killed. And so, in the city of New York, the powers that be had rechristened the airport in his honor. This made sense, in some weird karmic way: If President Kennedy had symbolized a generation's aching hunger for vitality and beauty and the thrill of newness, well, so did the airport. It was postwar America's Ellis Island, the glass-and-chromium portal through which global seekers caught their first glimpse of a new world.

On this particular day--Feb. 7, 1964--four seekers from the Old World were preparing to pass through customs. They landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport on a Pan Am jet called the Clipper Defiance. Which also made a lot of sense: Zany and jubilant, their arrival would defy the gloom that had enveloped the United States all winter.

Radio stations were trumpeting their arrival as if demigods were descending from Mount Olympus; thousands of kids were showing up to greet them with howls and shrieks. Intrigued, an enterprising young reporter from The New York Herald Tribune cruised out to the airport to see what all the fuss was about.

"I was there at Kennedy Airport when the Beatles arrived," Tom Wolfe remembers. "I'll never forget the sight of hundreds of boys, high school students, running down a hallway at the international arrivals building with their combs out, converting their ducktail hairdos into bangs. they'd just seen the Beatles. They were packed onto this balcony watching the Beatles arrive. They saw these haircuts, and they started combing their hair foward so it would fall over their foreheads like the Beatles. I will never forget that scene. That was symbolic of a big change; the last semblance of adult control of music vanished at that moment."

From the vantage point of popular culture, you'd be hard-pressed to find a day more flushed and fervid with the prospect of change, a moment more electric with mondo-seismic shift, than Feb. 7, 1964. At the precise instant those American kids whipped out their combs, a global metamorphosis ratcheted into high gear. It spread. Fast. It would tear across the landscape like a brushfire.

First, there was that famous press conference. Winking at the media madness that would eventually swallow the century, the Beatles spent their first few minutes in the New World fielding goofball questions from the Manhattan scoop patrol. What people saw from this publicity contrivance was important: four grinning lads in matching suits with these shockingly symmetrical, draped-down-to-the-eyebrows haircuts. But what people heard was way more profound.

A reporter: "Will you sing something for us?"

John Lennon: "We need money first."

We need money first. That didn't sound like something Elvis Presley would ever say. Those four simple words--"We need money first"--quaked with a whole new mutant strain of celebrity energy. They were delivered in a liquidy Liverpudlian brogue; they were funny, sarcastic, brash, self-deprecating, and true--all at the same time. Clearly, John Lennon, a man who would become a pop-culture martyr one day, was not going to use this moment in the spotlight to bow and scrape and profess his undying adoration for his mum. No, the press would take its cue from him.

A reporter: "Was your family in show business?"

John Lennon: "Well, me dad used to say me mother was a great performer."

Elvis would never say that.

This was just the beginning. Already gargantuan in their homeland, the Beatles had come to America to cross the Rubicon; the high-pitched hysteria of Feb. 7 wound up being a mere prelude to a cataclysm. Two days after their arrival at Kennedy Airport, the Beatles performed on The Ed Sulivan Show.

Seventy-three million people watched--at the time, the biggest audience in TV history. One was a 13-year-old boy whose name upon birth in Israel was Chaim Witz. Years later, as Gene Simmons, he would breathe fire and spit blood and play bass in a band called Kiss. "When the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, it was probably one of the milestones in human history," Simmons says now. "There are what scientists call singularities. They happen every once in a while and have a quantum effect on life as we know it on the face of the planet. When the Beatles first appeared, it really changed the world.

"I remember watching," he goes on. "It was as poignant a moment as when the monolith appeared in front of those apes in 2001. It changed my sense of being. I mean, it was close to a religious experience. I remember watching it and initially thinking, Oh, they look kind of sily. To myself. But when my mother came in and put the food on the table, I remember her comment was 'Oh, they look silly.'

"At that point I realized that they were cool. Because as long as my mother thought they were silly, of course I'd have to think they were cool."

If all the Beatles ever did was whip up a teen froth in the early 1960s, they'd still rank among the most amazing acts of the century. Beatlemania, after all, has become the gold standard against which all youthquakes are measured, whether the source of the tremor is Michael Jackson or Leonardo DiCaprio. But what the Beatles accomplished before, after, and in spite of the gale-force squeals--that's what qualifies John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as the greatest entertainers of our time.

Hell, the Beatles deserve to top the list purely for the creation of "A Day in the Life," the billowing climax of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a song that seems to carry all the sadness and tumult and folly of the 20th century in the gentle limbs of its melody. They deserve to conquer the list for that morning in 1964 when Paul McCartney rolled out of bed at the George V Hotel in Paris, plopped down at a piano, and wove the cobwebs of a dream into "Yesterday," a ballad that according to folklore would later be recorded by more singers than any tune in the history of popular music. They deserve to rule the list for getting away with lyrics as simple as "All you need is love" and "We can work it out" and "Let it be," and for getting away with lyrics as psychotropically convoluted as "Semolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower" and "Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies" and "He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola."

"The obtuse, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that I write definitely come from the John Lennon stuff, especially around the White Album," says Robert Pollard, leader of the Fab Four-drenched indie band Guided by Voices. "Stuff that doesn't make any sense--just complete gibberish--is always more interesting."

Still, you won't catch a whiff of such radical experiments in early Merseybeat documents like Please Please Me and With the Beatles. The Fab Four started out as little more than an adrenalized frat-party band, roasting R&B chestnuts in some of the most putrid sweatboxes in England and Germany. Their scorching covers of other people's songs ("Twist and Shout," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Boys," "Dizzy Miss Lizzie") nearly eclipsed their own. But not for long.

Quickly, they began to crank out hits. Impeccable hits. "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," "Can't Buy Me Love," "Ticket to Ride," "Day Tripper," "Hello Goodbye," "Something," "Here Comes the Sun," "Help!" They wrote songs for children, loony jingles that seemed to swing on some spectral circus trapeze: "Maxwell's Sliver Hammer," "Rocky Raccoon," "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" They wrote songs to scare children--songs surging with the fires of hell: "Helter Skelter," "Revolution 9," "Happiness is a Warm Gun." They composed ballads that can still make you weep like a child every time you come across them: "In My Life," "Blackbird," "If I Fell," "Hey Jude," "For No One," "She's Leaving Home," "Julia."

The Beatles grew too big for the century that bore them: Revolver, a creative turning point in 1966, seems to catapult through time itself, whirling from a 17th-century chamber suite ("Eleanor Rigby") to a 19th-century sea chantey ("Yellow Submarine") to a 21st-century cyclone of cosmic musings, freek feedback, and rhythmic hypnosis ("Tomorrow Never Knows").

It's this legacy, this mountain of work, that stands as sturdy and mythic as Westminster Abbey. Even after the shameless Nike commercials that used "Revolution" to hawk rubber soles. Even after "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," two drippy mediocrities that Paul, George, and Ringo tried to claim were "new" Beatles songs amid the Anthology hype of 1995. Even after Linda McCartney's curious embellishment of "Hey Jude." Even after the Broadway musical. "Let's be honest here," says Simmons. "I couldn't shine Lennon and McCartney's boots. I couldn't shine George Harrison's boots when it comes to songwriting. They're clearly the most popular songwriters of all time. That's bigger than Gershwin, bigger than all of 'em."

"Every band, even when they don't want to admit it, has to be somewhat influenced by the Beatles," says Pollard. "There are some people who have a kind of anti-Beatles stance, but I just can't imagine that. Most people acknowledge that the Beatles were the greatest band of all time."

A reporter in 1964: "John, is it a fad?"

John Lennon: "Obviously. Anything in this business is a fad. We don't think we're going to last forever. We're just going to have a good time while it lasts."

For once, the guy was wrong.

Between July 6, 1957 (when John and Paul first scoped each other out at the St. Peter's Parish Church Garden Fete in a Liverpool suburb), and April 10, 1970 (when Paul announced that he'd quit the band), the Beatles did the following: Sold over 100million albums. Scored 20 No. 1 singles. Persuaded millions of kids to pick up electric guitars. Formed an alliance with brilliant and buttoned-up producer George Martin, the prophet who advised them to "think symphonically." Captured the essence of joy on celluloid with A Hard Day's Night. Experimented with drugs. Offended the church. Inspired people to burn vinyl in bonfires. Stopped going on stage--at the crest of their fame--in order to cloister themselves in the fertile womb of Abbey Road. Grew beards. Went in search of spiritual enlightment in Indian ashrams. Pioneered the notion of "music video." Paved the way for Saturday morning's shimmy-pop cartoons with an animated movie, Yellow Submarine. Established the concept of rock-as-art with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album and Abbey Road. Flirted with various modes of revolutionary thought. Captured the essence of frustration on celluloid with Let It Be.

Then they broke up, leaving a scar on the face of the world. (Our consolation: magnificent solo albums like George's All Things Must Pass, Paul's Band on the Run, and John's Imagine.)

"It was spiritual music," Simmons muses. "It was a gentle prodding to open up your eyes. They weren't heavy-handed about it. They didn't lead you. They put a spotlight on a point of view. I mean, if they had run for Kings of the World, I'm sure they would've been voted in. Lennon was really right, you know--about being more popular than Christ. No question about it. It was a new way of thinking, that's what it was. When you heard the Beatles, it was not the language of your mom and dad. It was clear, it was clean, like a breath of fresh air. They said the same things that Mom and Dad said, because Mom and Dad said, 'I love you.' The Beatles used the same words, but somehow in different ways. It just sounded true. What it sounded like was 'That's from the heart.'"

Beyond the music, though, the Beatles deserve to dominate this list because they serve as a Rosetta stone for your own identity. They force you to choose. If you grew up in the latter half of the 20th century, at some point you came to a fateful fork in the road; you had to proclaim your allegiance to John, Paul, George, or Ringo. You knew what their first names stood for, at least the stereotypes. John: the firebrand, the caustic Socrates, the guy who always answered by firing back a question or a pun or a scalding quip.

A reporter in 1965: "How do you feel about teenagers imitating you with Beatle wigs?"

John Lennon: "They're not imitating us because we don't wear Beatle wigs."

Paul: the Cute Beatle, the doe-eyed softy and master melodist, the lover of sheepdogs and Penny Lane and vaudeville ditties. ("But the truth is, it was McCartney who was much more the edgy art guy," Simmons offers as a corrective. "The pop guy who likes cornflakes and wears sweaters? Wrong.") George: cool and quiet and distant and inward, prone to Eastern mysticism and apt to wheel a sitar into the studio. Ringo: the jester, the reality check, the bloke with the big schnozz and the "How the hell did I get so lucky?" grin on his face.

One way or another, they were us.

How far did the Beatles go? And how far did we go with them?

Here's a picture: The date is Jan. 30, 1969, almost five years to the day since the Fab Four--beaming with those big smiles and dark Reservoir Dogs suits and that Wildean moptop wit--touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport for the first time. Only five years, and yet a chasm has been crossed.

Now sporting stringy Nazarene hair and Wild West muttonchops and baggy eyes and mismatched clothes that might've been plucked from the two-shilling bin at the Haight-Ashbury Goodwill, the beatles look washed-out and bedraggled. They look grown-up. They look...spent. Which is precisely how they feel.

On Jan. 30, 1969, the Beatles and John's joined-at-the-hip soul mate, Yoko Ono, are crawling toward the climax of the notorious Let It Be sessions. For four harrowing weeks, they've been fighting against fragmentation, torpor, and each other. If they came off like cuddly quadruplets on The Ed Sullivan Show, well, "by the time Let It Be happened they were four very different men," says Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who directed the documentary film about the making of that album. "And they just wanted something else."

Just 20 days earlier, in fact, George Harrison had quit the band in disgust. His departure was followed by a session of primal screaming that's never been played for the public, even though Lindsay-Hogg caught it on film. "When George left the group, the other ones went back down into the studio and they started to play this really demonic riff," he recalls. "And then Yoko sat on George's blue pillow, and she sang her kind of crazy caterwauling singing, and they played for like half an hour. I mean, just desperate music. Desperate, desperate. They had this outburst of anger--anger at him leaving, anger at their needing him, anger at maybe where they'd gotten to."

George came back, eventually. Nevertheless the Beatles were exhausted and edgy on Jan. 30. Let It Be's film crew needed a spry coda for their documentary--"something kind of oomphy to go out on," Lindsay-Hogg says--so they wanted the Beatles to climb the roof of Apple Studios, plug in their amps, and strafe the stuffy London precinct of Savile Row with their first live blast of rock & roll since 1966. "Typical of the Beatles, we were supposed to go up on the roof at 12:30, and they were still arguing at 12:25 about if they would do it at all," the director remembers. "Of course, I was tearing my hair out, because I knew there was something up there--there was something golden on the roof."

Then suddenly they said yes. Lennon smirked at his band mates. "Oh, fook it," he said. "Let's do it." They walked up a narrow staircase and opened a door to the roof. Under a sky the color of milky Earl Grey, surrounded by steeples and chimney pots, the Beatles played for a small, bemused audience--a crowd not unlike those they used to encounter in Liverpool and Hamburg.

They had a couple of tender songs in their new repertoire--tearjerkers like "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road," both of which sounded like omens of their own demise. But they didn't play those songs on the roof. As bankers and tailors and secretaries and old ladies--characters straight out of "Penny Lane" or "Eleanor Rigby"--gazed up from the street in confusion, the Beatles launched into the solar-baked boogie of "Get Back." The stripped-to-the-bones blues of "Don't Let Me Down." The lung-busting gospel purgation of "I've Got a Feeling." And "One after 909," a long-lost rockabilly rave-up that Lennon had written when he was 17.

They grinned at one another. They laughed. "This lovely thing happened. They enjoyed it," Lindsay-Hogg remembers. "It was like they were 17 again. The last time was like the first time. Which doesn't always happen in life."

And at the end of this, the Beatles' final performance, just as London cops were marching to the roof to shut it down, John Lennon leaned into the mike and cracked a joke. "I'd like to say thank you on behalf of the group," he said, "and I hope we passed the audition."

--JEFF GORDINIER
Entertainment Weekly
#510 - Winter 1999