Beatles Love Song Quotes

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you.

You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.

It was fucking weird. They had gone from a sickening, "in love" couple doing a duet to the complete opposite in the span of two songs. Who knew the Beatles were still so controversial.

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, “Ce n’étais pas moi!” What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboard down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can’t hide. Every single successful love song of the past fifty years can be traced back to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding. Trust me. I’ve thought a lot about this. About "I wanna hold your hand" by The Beatles

In the summer quiet. Just be. Joshua liked the Beatles, used to listen to them in his room, you could hear the noise even through the big headphones he loved. Let it be. Silly song, really. You let it be, it returns. There's the truth. You let it be, it drags you to the ground. You let it be, it crawls up your walls.

You told me mornings were the best time to break your own heart. So here I am, smoking your brand of cigarettes for the scent. I wonder if you still sing Beatles songs as you make coffee. You said your mother used to sing them to you when you couldn’t sleep, nineteen years before we met, twenty before you moved your clothes out of our closet while I was at work. By the way, I hate you for leaving all the photographs on the fridge. Taking them down felt like peeling off new scabs, like slapping a sunburn. I spent so many nights carving your body into pillows, I can promise you nothing feels like sleeping with your arm around me and your breath in my ear. Still, it’s comforting to know we sleep under the same moon, even if she’s so much older when she gets to me. I like to imagine she’s seen you sleeping and wants me to know you’re doing well.

And when at last I find you your song will fill the air.

All you need is love...love is all you need.

Then, lifting me up, his head fell back and he opened his mouth wide. “Once I let Lucy Larson into my heart! I was able to take my sad, shitty song and make it better!” he sung, off key and at full volume. Some of the students around us tipped their beers at him, some broke in during the “Nah, nah, nah,” chorus, and a few looked at him like he was a crazy man. But I just laughed—I already knew he was crazy. And I loved him for it. “I think that’s called taking creative liberties with the lyrics.

It was a ridiculous question. Did I _love_ Char? Did I feel about Char the same way I feel about the Beatles, string instruments in pop songs, the way Little Anthony sang high notes, the way Jerry Lee Lewis played piano?

The Angel Of Almost Then I was somewhere else, and it was bright. A voice said "If you'd carried on practicing that song you almost got right, you would've been great. Bigger than the Beatles." It continued "If you'd carried on working on that book you almost finished, it would've changed the lives of many, many people." Then it said "If you'd tried to reach the one you loved just a little bit more, when you almost had them, your life would've been completely different." And I asked "Is this what happens when I die?" And the voice said "Almost.

The Beatles.” “What about The Beatles?” “They nailed it.” “Nailed what?” “Everything.” “What do you mean?” Dev takes his arm and puts it right against mine, skin to skin, sweat on sweat, touch on touch. Then he glides his hand into mine and intertwines our fingers. “This,” he says. “This is why The Beatles got it.” “I’m afraid I’m not following…” “Other bands, it’s about sex. Or pain. Or some fantasy. But The Beatles, they knew what they were doing.You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?” “What?” ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can’t hide. Every single successful love song of the past fifty years can be traced back to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know.

They rode the tramway to the top of the mountains, watched the watermeleon-colored sunsets, and danced in Mom's little studio to Beatles songs.

He’s not a pretty boy. Is he?” Nico’s about thirty feet away, and for once I’m grateful that the jukebox music from the house speakers is just a little too loud. But I lower my voice anyway. “I mean, he’s pretty and he’s a boy, but he’s not a pretty boy.” “Please. I bet his semen is sparkly and it sings Beatles love songs while shooting out of his perfect penis.

Walter Benjamin, in his prescient 1923 essay “One Way Street,” said a book was an outdated means of communication between two boxes of index cards. One professor goes through books, looking for tasty bits he can copy onto index cards. Then he types his index cards up into a book, so other professors can go through it and copy tasty bits onto their own index cards. Benjamin’s joke was: Why not just sell the index cards? I guess that’s why we trade mix tapes. We music fans love our classic albums, our seamless masterpieces, our Blonde on Blondes and our Talking Books. But we love to pluck songs off those albums and mix them up with other songs, plunging them back into the rest of the manic slipstream of rock and roll. I’d rather hear the Beatles’ “Getting Better” on a mix tape than on Sgt. Pepper any day. I’d rather hear a Frank Sinatra song between Run-DMC and Bananarama than between two other Frank Sinatra songs. When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free.

At its core, the collection is built around a very wise line from a Beatles song: I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand with no further expectations. I want to hold your hand instead of telling you I understand when I don’t. I want to hold your hand although we don’t always get along. I want to hold your hand despite the calluses, scratches, and scars that get in the way. I want to hold your hand knowing I’ll have to let it go one day.

The world couldn’t have been hungrier for Anthology, with a ten-hour documentary and three huge-selling volumes of outtakes, turning into a joyous global celebration. The Anthology double-CD packages might have been more purchased than played (everybody back then bought more music than they had time to listen to). They included two new songs, Lennon tape fragments that the others finished: “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.” The flaw was Jeff Lynne’s production—George Martin wasn’t invited, because Harrison flatly refused to work with him. It’s ironic that when you watch Anthology, the only music that sounds dated is from 1995. But no matter how blasphemous the idea seemed, both songs were disarmingly beautiful, as was the documentary, to the point where you could drop in on any random hour (or binge all ten) and enjoy. One of the wisest decisions of Anthology was

There was a Ringo album coming down the pike, and a reunion, at least by the three of them (Harrison, Lennon, and Starr), that was all planned out. That was going to be Lennon’s next move after the world tour,” Douglas continues. “He talked fondly about McCartney every night, and he always wanted to redo certain Beatles songs, but he really spoke more like he really loved those guys. The only person that he was pissed at was George, because George put out this memoir [I Me Mine] and John was really, really pissed about that. I remember him saying, ‘How do you write about your life and not talk about the guy whose band you were in?

PAUL IS SOMEBODY WHO DOES THINGS WITH ENTHUSIASM, which makes people feel appalled and insulted at things he chooses to do. If you’re under thirty, you have never heard of a song called “Spies Like Us,” and I am a horrible person for being the one to tell you. It was the theme for a big-budget Hollywood spy comedy starring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. Nobody saw the movie, but Paul’s theme was worse than the movie could have been. MTV played it constantly during the 1985 holiday season, though radio wouldn’t touch it. Paul does a rap that goes something like, “Oooh oooh, no one can dance like you.” In the video he plays multiple roles as members of a studio band, mugging and biting his lower lip. The drumming is where his cheeky-chappy act gets profoundly upsetting. You see this video, you’re going to be depressed for at least ten minutes about the existential condition of Paul-dom. His enthusiasm makes you doubt the sincerity of his other public displays. It makes you doubt yourself. You might think it’s a cheap laugh but it will cost you something.

Like I told you, Sam and Patrick love their big song, so I thought I'd read it to have something to discuss with them. In the end, the magazine compared him with John Lennon from the Beatles. I told that to Sam later, and she got really mad. She said he was like Jim Morrison if he was like anybody, but really, he isn't like anybody but himself. We were all at the Big Boy after Rocky Horror, and it started this big discussion. Craig said the problem with things is that everyone is always comparing everyone with everyone and because of that, it discredits people, like in his photography classes. Bob said that it was all about our parents not wanting to let go of their youth and how it kills them when they can't relate to something. Patrick said that the problem was that since everything has happened already, it makes it hard to break new ground. Nobody can be as big as the Beatles because the Beatles already gave it a "context." The reason they were so big is that they had no one to compare themselves with, so the sky was the limit. Sam added that nowadays a band or someone would compare themselves to the Beatles after the second album, and their own personal voice would be less from that moment on.

But if you listen to outtakes from the sessions, you can hear the Beatles worked out harmonies for “Eight Days a Week”—beautiful harmonies, in fact. Yet they cut the harmonies and sang in unison, to make the song sound like it took less work than it did. They spent seven hours in the studio tinkering with “Eight Days a Week,” adding and subtracting, until they got that unrehearsed feel. So much guile went into making the song sound like a moment’s exhalation.

You know...give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. All we need is love. I believe it. it's damned hard but I absolutely believe it. We're not the first to say 'Imagine no countries' or 'Give peace a chance' but we're carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it from hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation. That's our job...I've never claimed divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answer to life. I can only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can, but only as honestly as I can, no more, no less. "I used to think that the world was doing it to me and that the world owed me something, and that either the conservatives or the socialists or the fascists or the communists or the Christians or the Jews were doing something to me, and when you're a teenybopper that's what you think. I'm 40 now. I don't think that anymore, 'cause I found out it doesn't fucking work. The thing goes on anyway and all you're doing is jacking off and screaming about what your mommy or daddy or society did...I have found out personally...that I am responsible for it as well as them. I am part of them.

I often tell my students that there is creative reading, creative thinking, not just creative writing. He said a basketball game was just like the rest of life, the minutes and days and years played off the court. What miracles swirl within a single teardrop! I imagined the feeling I had had to be something like what a plant must feel when it rains: no intermediary, no translation; just deep stillness, and growth. There are moments in a life that are the seeds of all later fruit, the fulcrums on which everything else depends. My book ends with this quote from a Beatles song: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

He knew he was in love with her the moment he realized what love was. It was just like what you read in books, what you see in Shakespeare, what you hear in Beatles songs. Honestly, it was even better than all that. It was perfection; she was. There wasn't a moment he didn't think of her. Every time she spoke to him, he tried to replay her voice in his head over and over again. He wouldn't stop smiling. It was all he needed to be happy. She, was all he needed. He fell asleep at night thinking of her. He saw her in his dreams, her jet black hair and her brown eyes. Her long eyelashes. And that smile, oh that smile. She was all the motivation he needed. He didn’t understand how it was possible for someone to be so obsessed with another person. How could anyone possibly care for someone else the way he did for her? But it was all happening, it was real. He would do anything for her, absolutely anything. He knew he wouldn't ever force her to be with him. He would never put her on the spot; he would never risk losing her. In fact, he will give himself time, to become a better person, to grow into a more mature human being, the kind of man she deserves. He hoped, with all his heart, that someday, someday she'll love him the way he loves her. Let it be ten or twenty years from now, he didn’t care, he will wait for her. Until then he will love her, more and more, every day.

You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn’t. He had to move on, and when he did, by going electric in 1965, he alienated a lot of people. His 1966 Europe tour was his greatest. He would come on and do a set of acoustic guitar, and the audiences loved him. Then he brought out what became The Band, and they would all do an electric set, and the audience sometimes booed. There was one point where he was about to sing “Like a Rolling Stone” and someone from the audience yells “Judas!” And Dylan then says, “Play it fucking loud!” And they did. The Beatles were the same way. They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That’s what I’ve always tried to do—keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.

Danny’s Song” by Kenny Loggins “Reminder” by Mumford & Sons “Barton Hollow” by The Civil Wars “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Waters” by Simon and Garfunkel “I and Love and You” by The Avett Brothers “Make You Feel My Love” by Adele “Can’t Break Her Fall” by Matt Kearney  “Stillborn” by Black Label Society “Come On Get Higher” by Matt Nathanson “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz “This Girl” by City & Colour “My Funny Valentine” by Ella Fitzgerald “Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong “Stormy Blues” by Billie Holiday “I would be Sad” by The Avett Brothers “Hello, I’m Delaware” by City & Colour “99 Problems” by Hugo (originally written and performed by Jay-Z) “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons “Let It Be Me” by Ray LaMontagne “Rocketship” by Guster “Don’t Drink The Water” by Dave Matthews Band “Blackbird” by The Beatles

Both the date of Lennon’s murder and the careful selection of this particular victim are very important. Six weeks after Lennon’s death, Ronald Reagan would become President. Reagan and his soon-to-be appointed cabinet were prepared to build up the Pentagon war machine and increase the potential for war against the USSR. The first strike would fall on small countries like El Salvador and Guatemala. Lennon, alone, was the only man (even without his fellow Beatles) who had the ability to draw out one million anti-war protestors in any given city within 24 hours if he opposed those war policies. John Lennon was a spiritual force. He was a giant, like Gandhi, a man who wrote about peace and brotherly love. He taught an entire generation to think for themselves and challenge authority. Lennon and the Beatles’ songs shout out the inequalities of American life and the messages of change. Change is a threat to the longtime status quo that Reagan’s team exemplified. On my weekly radio broadcast of December 7, 1980, I stated, “The old assassination teams are coming back into power.” The very people responsible for covering up the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, Reverend Martin Luther King, for Watergate and Koreagate, and the kidnapping and murder of Howard Hughes, and for hundreds of other deaths, had only six weeks before they would again be removing or silencing those voices of opposition to their policies. Lennon was coming out once more. His album was cut. He was preparing to be part of the world, a world which was a worse place since the time he had withdrawn with his family. It was a sure bet Lennon would react and become a social activist again. That was the threat. Lennon realized that there was danger in coming back into public view. He took that dangerous chance and we all lost!

One story sums up their magical quality. On June 30th 1968, at the height of Apple optimism, Paul McCartney and Derek Taylor were driving back to London from Saltaire, Yorkshire, where they had been recording the Black Dyke Mills Band on a song of Paul’s called ‘Thingummybob’. They were in Bedfordshire. Let’s pick a village on the map and pay it a visit, said Beatle Paul. He found a village called Harrold, which they found quite hilarious, and turned off the A5. Harrold turned out to be a picture-perfect village, with a picture-perfect pub at its heart. The pub was closed, but when the villagers saw there was a Beatle at the door they opened it up. Soon the whole village was in the pub, listening to Paul McCartney on the pub piano playing the as-yet-unreleased ‘Hey Jude’. Every Harrold resident danced and sang along, and the revelry went on until 3 a.m. It was beautiful, perfect, spontaneous and full of love. Harrold. You couldn’t make it up.

I imagine you not telling me to whisper. I imagine you not saying oh don't say this literally. You want me to evoke as opposed to mere describing. You want me to be an invisible scribe that an octoepoose was hiding. I'm not sure if my facial features are an autograph that your Picasso smile is signing. Infamous for the mirror I shook when my sock puppets were pining? I am not just a fish that you gave wings to! I don't simply flop in the air whenever you brush some mannequinn's hair. There is a reason for the bad timing. Exquisite imbalances. A child enjoying the pink sky. I won't say that is my clue! Playing The Beatles on a kazoo is beautiful oooh ooooh Your laughter is a woman with alot of eyeballs on her stomach that pretends that she doesn't see the colors of all them songs. In the pre dawn hours we dance with delusions and illusions. The eternal seamstress does not care for Frakenstein's dress(she still loves our unique caress ) She loves and laughs despite some so-called scientist. Where is that emperor and his nakedness! Darling, our atoms need never split. We compliment in so many ways that all our night's and days have become one swirling sunrise/sunset that only true lovers can scoff at(those who shhhhh) The flower is not passive or apologetic. It blooms through the fractured net. Floating magnetic(eep eeep) You are not just some seductress. You are the leader of an elite group of intergalactic seductress impersonators who reveal corruption but then choose to love. We embrace conclusions that make the puddle heart awake with ethereal drum beat gongs. You think of a heroic poodle in the dark. We both know that the trapeze artist that followed us was not a cliche. He smelled differently. He had never met a floating lady that showed him how to appreciate a symphony without taking away his love for a good rock n roll melody. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities.-

If you tell people you’re writing a book about the Beatles, at first they smile and ask, “Another one? What’s left to say?” So I mention “Baby’s in Black,” or “It’s All Too Much,” or Lil Wayne’s version of “Help” or the Kendrick Lamar battle rhyme where he says “blessings to Paul McCartney,” or Hollywood Bowl, or Rock ’n’ Roll Music, or the Beastie Boys’ “I’m Down”—but I rarely get that far, because they’re already jumping in with their favorite overlooked Beatle song, the artifact nobody else prizes properly, the nuances nobody else notices. Within thirty seconds they’re assigning me a new chapter I must write. And telling me a story to go with it. Every few days, I get into a Beatles argument I’ve never had before, while continuing other arguments that have been raging since my childhood. And though I’ve spent my whole life devouring every scrap of information about them, I’m constantly learning. I guarantee the day this book comes out, I will find out something new. Things like that used to pain me. But that’s what it means to love the Beatles—you never run out of surprises.

She asked the girl for a guitar. “Sure,” said the girl, switching off the radio and bringing out an old guitar. The dog raised its head and sniffed the instrument. “You can’t eat this,” Reiko said with mock sternness. A grass-scented breeze swept over the porch. The mountains lay spread out before us, ridgeline sharp against the sky. “It’s like a scene from The Sound of Music,” I said to Reiko as she tuned up. “What’s that?” she asked. She strummed the guitar in search of the opening chord of “Scarborough Fair.” This was apparently her first attempt at the song, but after a few false starts she got to where she could play it through without hesitating. She had it down pat the third time and even started adding a few flourishes. “Good ear,” she said to me with a wink. “I can usually play just about anything if I hear it three times.” Softly humming the melody, she did a full rendition of “Scarborough Fair.” The three of us applauded, and Reiko responded with a decorous bow of the head. “I used to get more applause for a Mozart concerto,” she said. Her milk was on the house if she would play the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” said the girl. Reiko gave her a thumbs-up and launched into the song. Hers was not a full voice, and too much smoking had given it a husky edge, but it was lovely, with real presence. I almost felt as if the sun really were coming up again as I sat there listening and drinking beer and looking at the mountains. It was a soft, warm feeling.

24. The Rutles, “Cheese and Onions” (1978) A legend to last a lunchtime. The Rutles were the perfect Beatle parody, starring Monty Python’s Eric Idle and the Bonzos’ Neil Innes in their classic mock-doc All You Need Is Cash, with scene-stealing turns by George Harrison, Mick Jagger, and Paul Simon. (Interviewer: “Did the Rutles influence you at all?” Simon: “No.” Interviewer: “Did they influence Art Garfunkel?” Simon: “Who?”) “Cheese and Onions” is a psychedelic ersatz Lennon piano ballad so gorgeous, it eventually got bootlegged as a purported Beatle rarity. Innes captures that tone of benignly befuddled pomposity—“I have always thought in the back of my mind / Cheese and onions”—along with the boyish vulnerability that makes it moving. Hell, he even chews gum exactly like John. The Beatles’ psychedelic phase has always been ripe for parody. Witness the 1967 single “The L.S. Bumble Bee,” by the genius Brit comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, from Beyond the Fringe and the BBC series Not Only . . . ​But Also, starring John Lennon in a cameo as a men’s room attendant. “The L.S. Bumble Bee” sounds like the ultimate Pepper parody—“Freak out, baby, the Bee is coming!”—but it came out months before Pepper, as if the comedy team was reeling from Pet Sounds and wondering how the Beatles might respond. Cook and Moore are a secret presence in Pepper—when the audience laughs in the theme song, it’s taken from a live recording of Beyond the Fringe, produced by George Martin.

I Saw Her Standing There’ is the best first song on a debut album, ever.

Shiloh’s Recommended Listening Tears for Fears. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” By Olzabal, Roland, Stanley, Ian and Hughes, Chris. Somerset, UK: Fontana/Mercury/Phonogram. Songs from the Big Chair. 1985. Joey Ramone. “What a Wonderful World.” By Thiele, Bob and Weiss, George David. Sanctuary Records Group. Don’t Worry About Me. 2002. The Moody Blues. “Question.” By Hayward, Justin. London, UK: Threshold Records. A Question of Balance. 1970. The Church. “Under the Milky Way.” By Kilbey, Steve and Jansson, Karin. Australia: Arista. Starfish. 1988. The Pixies. “Where is My Mind?” By Francis, Black. Boston, MA: 4AD. Surfer Rosa. 1988. The Beatles. “All You Need Is Love.” By Lennon-McCartney. London, UK: Parlophone Capitol. Magical Mystery Tour. 1967. Styx. “The Grand Illusion.” By Dennis DeYoung. Chicago, IL: A&M Records. The Grand Illusion. 1977. The Flaming Lips. “Do You Realize??” By Coyne, Wayne, Drozd, Steven, Ivins, Michael and Fridmann, Dave. New York, NY: Warner Brothers Records. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. 2002. The Beatles. “Across the Universe.” By Lennon-McCartney, London, UK: Regal Starline. No One’s Gonna Change Our World. 1969.

But “God” is the best song any Beatle wrote about religion, with all due respect to George’s “My Sweet Lord.” Both were produced by Phil Spector the same year—with Ringo on drums. (Talk about ecumenical.) “God” is where John does his most beautiful singing, reaching for a doo-wop tremble straight out of his beloved Rosie and the Originals, with that “Elvis echo” on his voice. It’s one of the two or three songs I’d play if I had ten minutes to convince a jury that John was the greatest of rock and roll singers-as-singers. Along with “Girl,” and maybe “Ticket to Ride.” Or “You Can’t Do That”? “Money”? “I Want to Hold Your Hand”? “Happiness Is a Warm Gun”? “Oh My Love”? “I’m So Tired”?

Give Me Love” was a hit around the same time as Cat Stevens’s “Morning Has Broken,” a superficially similar hippie-dad prayer, yet I violently hated “Morning Has Broken,” just hated it, despised the choked sobs and prissy whispers, still hate it, because it sounded to my ears (and might still sound, if I had the stomach to investigate) like a phony version of what “Give Me Love” does for real. All four Beatles were surrogate dads to Seventies kids, which partly why we fantasized about them so much, and if George was the dad who’s perpetually disappointed in you, “Give Me Love” is a song that did and still does make me fantasize about what a world fathered and raised by George might look like. Yet it’s the kind of song George distrusted—a song that could get people’s hopes up, making promises he was scared he couldn’t keep.

13. The Chemical Brothers, “Setting Sun” (1996) Everybody’s favorite song in the fall of 1996, uniting rockers, ravers, clubbers, druggers, all factions of the pop massive. The Chemical Brothers turn “Tomorrow Never Knows” into a banging techno loop, warping Ringo’s block-rocking beats into something new. “Setting Sun” is unaccountably obscure these days, considering what a fact of life it was for a year or so, but it’s a song that accurately predicted the future. There was nothing retro about it; instead of capitulating to the past, the Chemicals complimented it enough to ransack it. In this song, the Beatles aren’t legends or saints or icons—they’re a nasty drum break. The vocals were by Oasis’s Noel Gallagher, then Britannia’s biggest rock star, yet he sounded more antique than Ringo’s drums did. It was the ultimate Nineties statement of the Beatles as a right-now thing as opposed to a good-old-days thing.

20. Bob Dylan, “4th Time Around” (1966) Right after Rubber Soul dropped, Bob Dylan recorded Blonde on Blonde, where he sang this scorchingly funny parody of “Norwegian Wood.” Dylan unkindly played “4th Time Around” for John in London. As Lennon recalled in 1968, “He said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I don’t like it.’ ” Yeah, well—talk about the anxiety of influence. All over Blonde on Blonde, you can hear how hard Dylan was feeling Rubber Soul—especially in songs like “I Want You,” “Just Like a Woman,” and “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” So he probably wrote “4th Time Around” as a diversion to keep people from noticing how much “Norwegian Wood” there was in “Visions of Johanna.

The other songs they recorded that May were silly ones—“All Together Now,” “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number).” “It’s All Too Much” might seem silly too, but it rocks, which the Beatles weren’t much interested in doing in 1967, a chance to hear all four Beatles concentrating on a single idea for a stretch of time. They show off individually (at any moment, you can pick out what any particular Beatle is doing) yet slip into the collective groove.

Silly Love Songs” wanders on for a bizarre and very unpop six minutes. Paul was passionate about music-making, which is different from being passionate about music.

For many of the people in my immediate vicinity, it was clear that the Beatles (to say nothing of McCartney’s solo career) ceased to be a going concern once the Summer of Love commenced. Anything in the set list that was even mildly psychedelic—“The Fool on the Hill,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”—went over like Timothy Leary at the 1968 Republican National Convention. Apparently, there are still people for whom Sgt. Pepper is a radical—perhaps too radical—musical experiment. This wasn’t a classic-rock-radio crowd, it was an oldies-radio crowd. I, too, was hoping to hear my favorite Beatles hits. But I also secretly wished that McCartney would play “Temporary Secretary,” one of the battiest tracks from one of his battiest solo albums, 1980’s McCartney II. I believe that “Temporary Secretary” is a legitimately great song, even if it is totally bonkers. “Temporary Secretary” sounds like a businessman discussing his staffing practices while also imitating a car alarm. It’s genius! But the main reason I wanted to hear “Temporary Secretary” is because I knew that it would confound all of the boomers in the house who stopped following Paul McCartney’s career after he wrote “Michelle.

John didn’t score his first Number One hit until 1974, the fourth Beatle to reach this milestone (Ringo beat him twice), but he got over with “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” with a big assist from Elton John. It’s not a famous song anymore, for the understandable reason that the final line is “Don’t need a gun to blow your mind.” After December 1980, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night” dropped off the radio and hasn’t been heard since. But the most shocking thing isn’t the gun line—it’s the lush pop feel. The song it really resembles is the Wings hit “Listen to What the Man Said,” with the same yacht-rock studio sheen. Both serve love-is-the-answer platitudes, though attractively warmhearted ones: “Whatever gets you to the light, ’sall right” vs. “I don’t know but I think love is fine.” Both hit Number One, for just one week. John’s sax solo is Bobby Keys, Paul’s is Tom Scott, though they could have traded places without anyone noticing. Yet I loved both songs as a boy, and still do—Elton, always the kindliest-sounding of rock megastars, sings on John’s hit, and sounds like the guiding spirit of Paul’s, as if he’s a yenta nudging them together.

Dandelion” is easily the best faux-McCartney song of the Sixties.

One of the things I love about the Stones is that whenever they aimed for Beatle-style warmth—as in “The Singer Not the Song” or “Wild Horses”—they still sounded fabulously surly. That’s what made them the Stones. They never got close to the unzipped exuberance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “I Feel Fine” or “Eight Days a Week”—part of Mick’s vast intelligence was to understand he didn’t have that kind of sincerity in his empty heart, and he was too crafty to make a clown of himself trying to fake it. He knew he couldn’t out-Beatle the Beatles. So the Stones chose different turf to conquer. The Stones were Stonesier. The Beatles were merely better.

(five). The Esher demos are a real treasure trove; they mined it for years. Songs that got worried to death on the album are played with a fresh one-take campfire feel, just acoustic guitars and handclaps

Despite all the solo vocals, each using the others as a back-up group, the White Album still sounds haunted by memories of friendship—that “dreamlike state” they could still zoom into hearing each other sing. They translated Rishikesh into their own style of English pagan pastoral—so many talking animals, so many changes in the weather. One of my favorite British songwriters, Luke Haines from the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder, once told me in an interview that his band was making “our Wicker Man album.” He was miffed I had no idea what he meant. “You can’t understand British bands without seeing The Wicker Man. Every British band makes its Wicker Man album.” So I rented the classic 1973 Hammer horror film, and had creepy dreams about rabbits for months, but he’s right, and the White Album is the Beatles’ Wicker Man album five years before The Wicker Man, a rustic retreat where nature seems dark and depraved in a primal English sing-cuckoo way. They also spruced up their acoustic guitar chops in India, learning folkie fingerpicking techniques from fellow pilgrim Donovan, giving the songs some kind of ancient mystic chill.

He laughed as a song came into his ears. “All you need is love.” Playing The Beatles always made him feel more hopeful about the world. Good art did that, that’s why people loved it. It made you feel connected to something greater than yourself, and remember your own purpose in this mad play called the cosmos.

I've only ever been loved like a Top 40 song- the latest hit, the hot new thing. Something fleeting, bubbly and fun; nothing serious. But just once, I'd like to be loved like a poignant, timeless ballad. With a melody that moves you and lyrics that burrow deep in your heart. Like Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" or "Something" by the Beatles or "Speak Now" by Taylor Swift. But that never seems to happen.

bought a pristine copy of Man on the Run, a biography of Paul McCartney that began not with the Beatles, but with what McCartney did after they broke up. Parker had always preferred McCartney’s work to John Lennon’s, whatever effect it might have had on his standing with the cool kids. Lennon could only ever really write about himself, and Parker felt that he lacked empathy. McCartney, by contrast, was capable of thinking, or feeling, himself into the lives of others. It was the difference between “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”: although Parker loved both songs, “Penny Lane” was filled with characters, while “Strawberry Fields Forever” really had only one, and his name was John Lennon. Parker might even have taken the view that Lennon needed to get out of his apartment more, but when he did, an idiot shot him. He’d probably been right to spend the best part of a decade locked inside. Ross appeared just as McCartney