Pulse!

April 2026

I wish I could claim I was swept up in the excitement that was in the air when the Beatles appeared live on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. I was seven years old and I’m sure I was aware of what was going on, but only vaguely. On the school bus, the older sisters of my friends were all talking about the upcoming, momentous event.

My parents didn’t listen to the one rock’n’roll station in town, so I had only heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand” once or twice when visiting friends. That Sunday, as we sat watching the show, I knew something was up. When Sullivan introduced the group, I could sense the pent-up energy in the theater. I didn’t really get what was going on musically—as I said, I hadn’t heard any rock’n’roll in our home.

But I could hear a lot of teenaged girls screaming. My parents, who were in their 30s, were appalled by all that emotion, by the long hair the band sported, and by the music itself. I found out later that it wasn’t just girls who felt so strongly about the Beatles and their music. A lot of teenaged boys soon bought guitars and started bands.

According to Philip Norman’s Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation (1981, revised 2003), 70 million people—60 percent of the television viewers in America—watched that show. On a recent episode of the podcast The Rest Is History, co-host Tom Holland stated that it was the second-most watched show in American television history. Guest Conan O’Brien agreed, noting that “some reality show” later knocked it off first place.

In fact, quite a few shows matched or exceeded the viewership of the first appearance of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, as we referred to it back then. The final episode of M*A*S*H, an episode of Dallas, an installment of Roots, and several Super Bowls pulled higher ratings. Lots of other events or shows since have matched its ratings. Holland and O’Brien got it wrong, but in an important way they are correct: none of the shows that drew bigger audiences than that Beatles appearance have had such ongoing cultural resonance.

But the story persists that the Beatles had a historically large and only recently topped American TV audience. It’s one of several stories—myths, really—that have followed the group for years. The Beatles have long dominated conversations about the 1960s and about rock’n’roll. The band’s prominence in the cultural conversation has, if anything, intensified in recent years. Books, documentaries, and an endless parade of expanded reissues of their recordings keep them in front of us.

I’m beginning to tire of them.

Let me be clear: I love the Beatles. I have multiple copies of their LPs, in both the US and UK versions. I also own pressings from Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands. I have seven copies of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on LP. Same for Rubber Soul. Nine copies of Revolver. And so on. I’ll spare you a tour through my Beatles CD collection.

Since the 50th-anniversary release of Sgt. Pepper in an expanded, deluxe package (which I bought), Universal Music and Apple Records have released remixed and remastered versions of the three Beatles albums that followed, then jumped back to give similar treatment to Revolver. Deluxe versions include outtakes and alternates. Lots of them.

Each year seems to bring a new Beatles reissue. In 2024, it was vinyl remasters in mono of the first seven Beatles LPs released in the US. Late last year, it was a remixed, remastered version of the Anthology series, originally released in 1995–96. Universal and Apple added a fourth volume to the series.

The reissue of the Anthology albums coincided with the streaming of The Beatles Anthology 2025 on Apple TV (which is not related to Apple Records). The original documentary series, broadcast in 1995, had six installments, and the subsequent releases on tape and LaserDisc had eight. The Beatles Anthology 2025 added another hour of footage and was digitally remastered to look cleaner on big-screen TVs.

The Beatles Anthology 2025 was the third Beatles event streamed on Apple TV. It was preceded in 2024 by Beatles ’64, which was a re-edit of The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit, a 1991 documentary by David and Albert Maysles. That 1991 film was itself a re-edit of a 1964 TV special the Maysles prepared for CBS TV in 1964.

In 2021, Apple TV streamed Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back. The lengthy, multipart documentary received near-universal acclaim, but I agree with the headline for Alexis Petridis’s review in The Guardian: “Eight hours of TV so aimless it threatens your sanity.” At half its length, it still would have been too long.

Jackson’s source for Get Back was the many hours of footage Michael Lindsay-Hogg had shot in 1969 for the film Let It Be, released in 1970. Jackson changed the aspect ratio of the source material to widescreen (16:9) for Get Back, which gave the viewer a bigger visual perspective than the 4:3 aspect ratio of Let It Be.

While it should have been edited for length, there are some good moments in The Beatles: Get Back, and it cleared up some misperceptions. Let It Be catered to the idea that Yoko Ono was an interloper in the Beatles’ recording sessions and contributed to the group’s breakup. The wider screen and the additional footage in Get Back make it clear she was just one of many distractions. George Harrison’s Hare Krishna friends were off to one side, various music executives of one kind or another wandered in and out, and friends and relatives dropped by for a visit. It’s a wonder the group got anything done.

As I noted, Get Back got raves. Everything about the Beatles is treated reverently. Overstatement is common when talking about the group. “The Beatles are a complete break from what happened before,” O’Brien opined on The Rest Is History. “They are singer-songwriters. They wrote their own music.”

Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry wrote their own music. Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard wrote several of their own hits. By the time the Beatles made the charts in America, the Beach Boys had been there several times since 1962, with songs that Brian Wilson wrote. Wilson also arranged and produced the group’s records.

A persistent assumption over the last 60-plus years is that the American charts were a wasteland of sappy pop before the Beatles arrived. It’s true that both Bobby Vinton and Bobby Rydell were in the upper reaches of the charts in December 1963. So were the Kingsmen, at number 1 with “Louie Louie.” Jan & Dean were at number 9, Dion at 10, and the wonderfully strange “Surfin’ Bird” by the Trashmen was in the number-11 spot.

A little further down, the Ronettes, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, and Shirley Ellis were making sure soul music continued to hit the airwaves. Lesley Gore’s proto-feminist “You Don’t Own Me” was beginning its move up the charts. Ray Charles was still making a respectable showing. Yes, there was plenty of lightweight pop on AM radio. There always would be. In 1967, Englebert Humperdinck’s “Release Me” kept the Beatles’ double A-side single of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” from reaching the top spot in the UK.

None of my grumpiness so far changes the fact that the Beatles were truly significant. And I don’t want to leave the impression that O’Brien didn’t bring some insight to the discussion about the group on The Rest Is History. He pointed out that with the arrival of the Beatles, rock’n’roll began to be thought of as something created by a group, rather than by a singer up front backed by other musicians.

People knew that the Crickets were Buddy Holly’s backing group, but only the truly devoted knew the names of the musicians. Same with Elvis or any of the early rock stars. After the Beatles, the rock band as a unit dominated the charts. There were plenty of popular solo artists in the classic-rock era, such as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Joni Mitchell, but it was bands that defined rock.

The Beatles also kicked open the door for the British Invasion in America. To people who say that would have happened anyway, I counter with Star Trek’s prime directive. History happens and any alteration to events would lead to different outcomes. When the Beatles made the US charts at the end of 1963, Dusty Springfield was the only other British pop act there. A year later, the Zombies, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, and Gerry and the Pacemakers had joined them. The Who would take a while to conquer the US, but by the end of 1966 they were on their way.

A couple of times during his appearance on The Rest Is History, O’Brien made the point that the Beatles benefited from timing and luck. If the group had arrived in the US a few years earlier, they might not have clicked. America was ready for them because of the lingering sadness of the Kennedy assassination.

The Beatles and other rock musicians of the ’60s also benefited from the fact that rock fans were eager to let them grow and change. The screaming teens that made performing live so miserable for the Beatles settled down after the band quit touring in the summer of 1966. Soon, bands were playing to attentive audiences and using improved sound equipment.

As those teens went off to college and careers, they didn’t abandon rock music. Earlier rock musicians often saw their careers fade as fans moved on. College students dropped rock’n’roll for jazz or folk music. By 1966, rock’n’roll fans were staying with the music as they got older, and they wanted it to address issues that were important to them.

They also expected rock musicians to keep moving forward. It’s possible that the Beatles set those expectations because they pushed themselves to try new things. In a short recording history of about eight years, the Beatles released 13 studio albums and quite a few non-album singles and EPs. Their output was so varied and showed such growth that we can refer to early-, middle-, and late-period Beatles.

Fans accepted those changes, as fast as they came. Other musicians also ran with the freedom they were granted. Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson both said that hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was a key moment for them. About a year later, Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home. The Beach Boys soon began to move away from surf music and released Pet Sounds in 1966. The Beatles freed them both to try something new.

The influence went both ways. Dylan’s music already impressed and challenged the Beatles, and Rubber Soul carried hints of Bringing It All Back Home. Paul McCartney and producer George Martin were inspired by the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds during the recording of Sgt. Pepper.

The Beatles set a high standard that other pop musicians had to meet. In turn, those musicians also pushed the limits of what rock could accomplish. In 1967, the year the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper, the Who gave us The Who Sell Out. Something Else by the Kinks continued a run of great albums. The Jimi Hendrix Experience debuted with Are You Experienced. Love delivered a masterpiece with Forever Changes. The Stones hit the charts with two albums that year, Between the Buttons in January and Their Satanic Majesties Request in December.

Some of those records are as good and as artistically successful as Sgt. Pepper. Well, maybe not Satanic Majesties, although it’s a better album than its reputation suggests and a dark answer to the overall cheeriness of Sgt. Pepper. The upbeat “summer of love” moniker for 1967 came from Sgt. Pepper and other music from the time. That positive mood was not universal. The Doors and the Velvet Underground brought in 1967 with a darker tone, and even Sgt. Pepper has some less-than-happy moments.

A series of singles from Motown, Gordy, and Stax/Volt helped ensure that soul music continued to have an impact on pop music in 1967. The songwriters from those labels were vibrant and innovative. Holland-Dozier-Holland, Isaac Hayes and David Porter, Smokey Robinson, and many more were cranking out songs that lit up the hit parade.

A few weeks ago, I put together a quick list of songwriters from the ’60s who I thought were as much a part of the fabric of the time as the Beatles. Here are a few, in addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned:

• Paul Simon
• Neil Young
• Gene Clark
• Chris Hillman
• Curtis Mayfield
• Marvin Gaye
• Gerry Goffin and Carole King
• Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry
• Leonard Cohen
• Joni Mitchell
• Robin, Barry, and Maurice Gibb
• Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil
• Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson
• Burt Bacharach
• Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong
• Jimmy Webb
• James Brown
• Sly Stone
• John Fogerty
• Laura Nyro

I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of people. My point is that the Beatles had other great bands and songwriters nipping at their heels, ensuring that they stayed at the top of their game.

So much mythology and so many assumptions surround the Beatles that it can be hard to really be sure of their place in the ’60s, a decade suffused with romanticism and myth. Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn dispelled a few myths in The Beatles: All These Years, Volume One—Tune In. He’ll probably bury a few more by the time he has finished the remaining two volumes.

One enduring conviction among Beatles lovers is that the group was the embodiment of the 1960s. Dylan fans would challenge that assumption. He began as a protest singer, but was moving into something more complicated and personal by his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. However, Dylan has always refused to be pegged as a spokesman for a generation and an avatar of the ’60s.

Aside from Ringo Starr, whose enthusiasm for the values of the ’60s remains unabated, the Beatles had a complicated relationship with the era. George Harrison became committed to Hare Krishna, a strain of Eastern spirituality that gained popularity in the ’60s. Paul McCartney is happy with the Beatles’ place in history and the band’s identification with the ’60s, while at the same time believing that both he and the band transcend the era.

John Lennon hated that the Beatles represented the ’60s for so many people. He scoffed at the idea in his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone and in his final interview, in 1980, with Playboy. Lennon was a complex guy whose persona in interviews was probably, at least in part, a mask. He wanted the world to see him as an avant-garde intellectual in much the same way that McCartney was eager to project an image of a smiling showbiz personality.

Lennon was consistent, however, in wanting the Beatles to represent nothing beyond the music they gave the world. His debut solo album, John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band, makes that clear: “I don’t believe in Beatles,” he sang. “I just believe in me.”

Another discussion among Beatles fans is whether the world will still be listening to the group’s music in 50 or 100 years. Maybe, but it’s hard to know to what extent. We still listen to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra, but those artists are not part of the fabric of the culture now in the ways they were when they were at the peak of their popularity.

The Beatles and other musicians from the 1960s, including Dylan in particular, will go through a reappraisal when the last of them leaves the scene. When massive cultural figures die, the current generation often shrugs them off and chooses its own heroes.

That’s how culture works. If you had asked me 15 years ago if John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth would always have a secure standing in American literature, I would have said “Absolutely.” Since each has died, they have taken a drubbing from critics. In time, the world will look at them again and choose which of their works deserve to survive, if any.

Same goes for the Beatles, Dylan, or any of the shining lights of ’60s music. I think “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “A Day in the Life” are exciting, groundbreaking examples of the Beatles taking great risks and moving rock forward. It’s possible that people will look back in another 50 years and think those songs are curiosities of their era.

I just don’t know. No one does. And it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I can listen to the Beatles now and still be thrilled and moved by them. As I was coming to the end of this article, I did what I often do when I need some perspective on the Beatles: I listened to their music. I chose their fourth album, Beatles for Sale (1964).

The Beatles were exhausted when they recorded Beatles for Sale. They had endured a relentless schedule of recording, touring, and filmmaking, and the result is the group’s weakest album. Yet it opens with three thrillingly good tracks. “No Reply” and “I’m a Loser” venture into folk rock and “Baby’s in Black” veers into country rock a couple of years ahead of the Byrds, Moby Grape, and everyone else. Later in the album, “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party” also leans into country music.

There are 14 tracks on the album: six are covers, and one, “Mr. Moonlight,” is a dud. I assumed it was a bad song until I heard the original, a minor hit in 1962 for Dr. Feelgood and the Interns. For whatever reason, the Beatles couldn’t pull it off. Two Carl Perkins covers and a medley of “Kansas City” and “Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey” are affectionate and enjoyable but not revelatory.

On the other hand, the band’s take on Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music” is as good as anything they ever recorded. Lennon delivers a throat-shredding vocal as strong as the one he did on “Twist and Shout” and the rest of the group plays with grit and fire behind him. Any arguments about Starr’s skills as a drummer can be settled by playing this track.

The group’s debt to Buddy Holly and their love for his music courses through their interpretation of “Words of Love,” a song Holly recorded in 1957. Lennon and McCartney bring a little more fullness to the harmony vocals, and the instrumental arrangement gives the song a fresh, bright, new sound while retaining the essential outlines of the original. “Words of Love” and “Rock and Roll Music” show how much the Beatles had learned from their heroes and how they embraced what they learned and made it their own.

“Every Little Thing” is a direct acknowledgment of Holly’s influence. When I hear “What You’re Doing,” I wonder if it might have led to Roger McGuinn adding the 12-string guitar to the Byrds’ sound. “Eight Days a Week” is the one Beatles song on the album that is rooted in the excitement of Beatlemania. The other originals are deeper lyrically and show the band moving into its next phase, which would come to fruition the following year with Help! and Rubber Soul.

It turns out that the weakest Beatles album is still very, very good. Playing their albums, even Beatles for Sale with its endearing faults, refreshes my admiration for the Beatles and reminds me that much of the fuss around the group is fully deserved.

The Beatles remain in front of us because we baby boomers continue to be such a part of society and culture. Many of us (and our children) still buy music in physical formats, so we are offered endless repackagings and remixes of the Beatles, along with the work of other musicians of the ’60s and ’70s.

There’s more to come. A projected series of film biographies concentrating on each member of the Beatles will soon hit theaters. Mark Lewisohn’s second volume of the group’s history should appear any day. Universal Music and Apple Records will find additional ways to recirculate Beatles recordings.

And on and on. The commodification of the Beatles will continue, as will discussions about their greatness and their place in history. Some of the ongoing conveyor belt of Beatles material will set my teeth on edge, but I’ll rediscover my love and admiration for the group by playing their records.

. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com