【Zoe Voss Archives】

How do Zoe Voss Archivesyou get your arms around this four-headed phenomenon we call the Beatles? How do you put into words the entirety of their influence on our music, our politics, our entire culture? It's too big a task. It would be like a fish trying to explain water.

The mop tops are here, there and everywhere -- more so now, half a century after the band's heyday, than ever. Millennials are no less immune than the teenyboppers of the 1960s: witness the fact that 10 million people listen to Beatles tunes every month on Spotify alone, putting them on par with Jay Z.

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The dozens of Beatles books written over the decades have never quite hit on a complete explanation for the Fab Four's endless appeal. Oh, they make a half-hearted stab, usually in the introduction. But they swiftly move on, either to an all-too-familiar biography (Liverpool, Hamburg, the Cavern, EMI, America, Pepperland, Abbey Road) or a lengthy breakdown of the songs in the order they were recorded (Love Me Dothrough I Me Mine).

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Dreaming the Beatles, a book out this week from veteran rock journalist Rob Sheffield, does not take either of those long and winding roads. It takes a Beatle-esque delight in randomly bouncing around in space and time, starting with the very last words spoken on a Beatles record: "Thanks, Mo," Paul's barely audible acknowledgement of Ringo's wife on Let it Be.

From that strangely appropriate beginning builds a passionate and eloquent book all about how Beatlestuff make us feel, in the 21st century as much as in the 20th. Here is Ethan Hawke in the 2014 Oscar winner Boyhoodmaking his estranged son a post-Beatles playlist; there is Prince playing the best ever live version of While My Guitar Gently Weepsand Kendrick Lamar calling himself a "black Beatle."

In this way, it may be the first book to encompass the entire Beatlegeist. If aliens land tomorrow, and demand to know why we keep on pumping this particular brand of music into space, this is the first book you would hand them. The clue is in the subtitle: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World.

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For example, Sheffield doesn't really wade far into the eternal question of whether Rubber Soul, Revolveror Sgt. Pepperis the best album ever. He knows there will never be a definitive answer; everyone has a different favorite. (Some even say it's the White Album, which suggests they have infinite patience.)

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Rather the author wades into the surprisingly long history of people eagerly debating the best album question, which actually started 50 years ago in early 1967 when the Beatles arrogantly set out to write the best album ever in the form of Pepper. (For the other two contenders, they were really just mucking about.)

"The Beatles invented most of what rock stars do," Sheffield points out in a typical passage:

They invented breaking up. They invented drugs. They invented long hair, going to India, having a guru, round glasses, solo careers, beards, press conferences, divisive girlfriends, writing your own songs, funny drummers. They invented the idea of assembling a global mass audience and then challenging, disappointing, confusing this audience. As far as the rest of the planet is concerned, they invented England.

And what becomes clear time and again in this book is one essential truth: they didn't really intend to do any of it. As a young lad, John Lennon used to tell his mates they were going to the "toppermost of the poppermost," but what did that mean?

They had no idea, and when they found out -- especially when it dawned in their 30s and 40s that they would never escape the shadow of the band that broke up when they were all 27 -- they were horrified, alternately dismissive and afraid of their legend. They could see all the years of being asked Beatles questions every day that stretched out ahead of them.

But so what, says Sheffield. In 1970, ownership of the Beatles (in a cultural rather than a financial sense) effectively passed to the entire world; we've had control over their legacy for about four times as long as they did.

We shouldn't be apologetic about this; we should celebrate it. So what if the bestselling album of both 2000 and 2001 was 1, yet another Beatles' greatest hits collection? So what if The Muppetsand Sesame Streetintroduced generations of kids to Beatles music as much as Yellow Submarine?

That part of the story is just as legit as talking about all the speed they took in Hamburg. (Yet there's plenty of trivia here that even I, a lifelong Beatles fan born in Liverpool, learned many things: did you know what the audience in Sgt. Pepper's title track were actually laughing at? Didn't think so.)

A book like this could easily slip into the kind of pretentious music critic twaddle that the Beatles used to make fun of. But it doesn't, partly because Sheffield is a pro (he also wrote the New York Timesbestsellers Love is a Mix Tapeand Talking to Girls About Duran Duran), and partly because he's clearly enjoying himself.

His enthusiasm is so infectious, Sheffield even gets away with slipping Beatles lyrics into the prose throughout. This is one book that won't let you down.

Topics Books Music