The Band That Changed the World: Musicians, Artists, and Public Figures of the Past 60-plus Years Celebrate The Beatles
- Suzana Jurcevic
- Aug 31, 2025
- 61 min read
Updated: 10 hours ago
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Every Beatles fan seems to have a Beatles story. Mine doesn't start with my parents' or an older sibling's record collection. Instead, it began with a random Sunday morning when I was 18. Two songs came on the radio, back to back, that sounded so fresh and urgent — even in 1992 — that my first thought was, "Who is this?" When the DJ announced it was The Beatles, it sparked an obsession that lasted for several years. It made me realize something fundamental about the band: part of their genius, and the joy in exploring their entire catalog, lies in their boundless variety. They also made making music and being in a band seem like the easiest and most fun thing in the world.
I remember exactly what songs they were: "Leave My Kitten Alone" and "Slow Down," early R&B/rock 'n' roll tunes by Little Willie John and Larry Williams, which the Beatles covered with John Lennon's impassioned lead vocals. At the time, my favorite band was Queen; however, the Beatles soon replaced them, though I still love Queen. As a kid, I heard popular Beatles songs on the radio and liked them, but I was still a decade away from discovering their remarkable range and body of work.
I've personally met and read about people over the years who have a similar story—a Beatles conversion or discovery moment. They thought they had the band pegged from a few famous hits or a surface knowledge of their catalog and career. That perception is then upended by the ferocity of "Helter Skelter," the searing melancholy of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," or the raw, primal emotion of "Yer Blues." Others listen to the full Abbey Road medley or see the exuberant "back to basics" rooftop concert, and that narrow view gets shattered. There's a common experience among listeners who suddenly stumble on a lesser-known track, performance, or album that reveals the depth and diversity just beneath the surface. It's when you realize the band that made "When I'm 64" also unleashed "Revolution." Or that huge chasm between, say, "Please Please Me" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)."
That's partly why their legacy endures. You might think you have them figured out, but then you hear a song that flips the script. Someone once called them "genreless." It's the most accurate description I've heard so far.
This very idea — that The Beatles were so much more than any single box you could put them in — is the heart of this post. What follows are eloquent and passionate expressions by some of the most significant musicians, artists, and public figures from the past 60-plus years across every genre: metal, rap, punk, funk, hip hop, R&B, soul, country, pop, rock, blues, classical, and even film. In their own words, they share how the Beatles' work as songwriters, musicians, and artists didn't just impact them personally. More than that, it changed the world and influenced the very fabric of so much of our culture.
-Suzana
On the evening of December 8th, 1980, a distraught Stevie Wonder interrupted his concert at the Oakland Coliseum to announce to his audience that John Lennon had been shot and killed. The following night, Bruce Springsteen opened his show at the Spectrum in Philadelphia by telling the crowd, "The first record that I ever learned was a record called 'Twist and Shout.' If it wasn't for John Lennon, we'd all be someplace very different tonight."
Brian May from Queen said the following: The Beatles were our bible. Absolutely at every stage in their career and their music development, they were models. And they still are to me, I must say. I love all those albums. To me, they are the greatest. They are the pinnacle of writing, performance and ethos of rock music. They broke down so many barriers, they changed the world many times.
Freddie Mercury: The only person I wish I had met was John Lennon… He was the greatest, as far as I was concerned. He's the one that I did idolize and I just thought he was a very beautiful human being and I'm sad to say that I didn't get to meet him. [He] was larger than life, and an absolute genius. Even at a very early stage when they were the Beatles, I always preferred John Lennon’s things. He just had that magic.
AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, when asked if he’s ever met somebody famous that he was in awe of: Yes, and it was Paul McCartney. I didn't know what to say to him. For the first time I was absolutely tongue-tied. I couldn't speak. And then we became friends, which is even harder to describe. [When asked to name his favorite song in the world] The thing that makes me smile every time I hear it is "Get Back." And if you listen to Ringo's drumming on there, it's sensational.
Lemmy Kilmister (Motörhead): I did like the Stones, but they were never anywhere near the Beatles — not for humor, not for originality, not for songs, not for presentation. Brian Epstein cleaned [the Beatles] up for mass consumption, but they were anything but sissies. Ringo's from the Dingle, which is like the fucking Bronx. All [the Stones] had was Mick Jagger dancing about. The Stones made great records, but they were always shit on stage, whereas the Beatles were the gear.
Keith Richards: The Beatles forced us to write songs. [They] were the first to actually find that middle path between the artistic and the intellectual and at the same time still be on the street.
Mick Jagger: Their success in America broke down a lot of doors that helped everyone else from England that followed, and I thank them very much for all those things. They gave us our first big hit in England, which was a song they wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man.” And we were very grateful for that because it really broke us in England.
Smokey Robinson: As a black person, I loved them because they were the first white group to come along who had that much impact, who were that popular, who were that world-renowned to say, hey man, we grew up and we listened to black people.
They were like this enormous life force... I'm a huge Beatles fan, man. They wrote some of the greatest songs ever in life - just great, great songwriters. Those songs are going to live on and on and on, they're going to be like Beethoven, you know… The Beatles came along and acknowledged that they'd grown up listening to black music and loved it and were inspired by blues and R&B… A lot of bands had the same experience but they didn't say it. Man, we at Motown were so excited about that... because we were all Beatles fans. Who wasn't? We appreciate them so much.
Chuck D (Public Enemy): My #1 favorite groups of all time: The Beatles in Rock & Roll, Run DMC in Hip Hop.
At the time, when the Beatles are coming from a whole different country with a different admiration and respect for black music, the Beatles — and the Rolling Stones — opened the eyes and the ears of many young people that tried to find out where did these songs come from, and the Beatles would let you know.
The Beatles' whole career was part of the soundtrack of my life… [they] have written songs that you'd experience and [go], "Wow, that says it all," so Lennon/McCartney songs [were big influences as a lyricist].
Dr. Dre: Here with one of my heroes!! Paul McCartney is cool AF!! I’m chillin with one of the fucking Beatles!!
Sinéad O'Connor: I have this theory that the Beatles were actually the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse, insofar as they changed the entire face of the planet.
Lennon had a sense of everybody's right to stir shit. He was very brave and vulnerable, and saw that it was brave to show one's vulnerability. He would probably love the rap movement. In a lot of ways, rap is where his voice can still be heard. People underestimate the subliminal impact of not just his music but the things he was doing publicly, like the shit-stirring. All of that had a huge influence on rap, and on little, bold, big-mouthed Irish singers.
Alice Cooper: The Beatles, they are the standard. You measure everything by the Beatles. Every musician I know... I've talked to Ozzy and Steven Tyler. We all look at the Beatles and go "That's how to write a song." So as scary as Alice Cooper is, [producer] Bob Ezrin would never let us put a song on the album that wasn't a song. It wasn't just a riff with a bunch of lyrics on it. It had to be a song with a verse, a B section, and a chorus to it. Because that's what the Beatles did. Now, we could twist it into an Alice Cooper song, we learned how to write listening to McCartney and Lennon... I’m still pretty sure they’re aliens. I don’t think they’re from this planet.
Gene Simmons (KISS): We wanted to be the Beatles on steroids… We were completely inspired by them. There is no way I’d be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for the Beatles.
The Beatles on Ed Sullivan was like a combination of religion and music and I don't know what else. The clock stopped for me; everything stopped. It was probably one of the milestones in human history. Scientists call them singularities. They happen once in a while and have a quantum effect on life as we know it on the planet… It really changed the world. It was like in the movie "2001," when the apes went up to the monolith and touched it — a quantum leap forward.
The Beatles are above and beyond anything that anybody’s seen in music in over, oh, 200 years? Easily. Not since the Renaissance.
Ernie Isley (The Isley Brothers): When the Beatles came on Ed Sullivan, on the left side of the couch was me; on the right side of the couch was my younger brother Marvin; and in between us was Jimi Hendrix. Ed Sullivan said, "Ladies and gentleman, the Beatles!"... and after that there was a meeting with all the band, and my eldest brother Kelly took the floor and he said, "These guys have changed everything. And it's legit." It started to sink in that these guys had actually changed popular music. They had actually changed rock and roll. This was not hype. This was not somebody's publicity agent. They were the genuine page-turner of music. It was just their destiny to fulfill and they fulfilled it in a marvelous way, in a way that will forever be.
Steven Van Zandt (E Street Band): It transformed America. On February 8th, there were no bands in America; on February 9th we had Ed Sullivan, and on February 10th, everybody had a band in their garage. It was literally overnight.
The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show was the biggest bang of my life [and] the most important event in rock 'n' roll history — a phenomenon that hasn't been seen before or since. It was a new world of infinite possibilities that began for us on February 9, 1964. I believe a thousand years from now history will be divided into Before The Sixties B.T.S. — and After The Sixties — A.T.S. The reason being that the Sixties changed us fundamentally: the way we live, the way we interact, and the way we think. And the Beatles had everything to do with that. They were the Big Bang. And the ripples from that explosion will never stop.
Bruce Springsteen: This was different, shifted the lay of the land. Four guys, playing and singing, writing their own material… Rock ‘n’ roll came to my house where there seemed to be no way out… and opened up a whole world of possibilities.
Joe Perry (Aerosmith): The night The Beatles first played the Ed Sullivan Show, boy, that was something. Seeing them on TV was akin to a national holiday. Talk about an event. I never saw guys looking so cool. I had already heard some of their songs on the radio, but I wasn't prepared by how powerful and totally mesmerizing they were to watch. It changed me completely. I knew something was different in the world that night... The Beatles did everything long before anyone else. They were experimenting long before Zeppelin, long before Hendrix. In 200 years, when you look up 'rock 'n' roll' in the dictionary, it'll have a picture of the Beatles next to it.
Tom Petty: You just knew it, sitting in your living room, that everything around you was changing. I remember earlier that day, a kid on a bike passed me and said, "Hey, the Beatles are on TV tonight." I didn’t know him, he didn’t know me — and I thought to myself, "This means something." This was the thing that made me want to play music. You saw that it could be done. There could be a self-contained unit that wrote, recorded and sang songs. And it looked like they were having an awful lot of fun doing it. Within weeks of that show, you began to hear the sounds of garage bands on the weekends leaking through the neighborhood — of kids out in the garage playing.
Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders): I remember exactly where I was sitting. It was amazing. It was like the axis shifted. It was kind of like an alien invasion… I honestly didn’t think the Beatles were from this world.
Billy Joel: That one performance changed my life… Up to that moment, I’d never considered playing rock as a career. And when I saw four guys who didn’t look like they’d come out of the Hollywood star mill… who played their own songs and instruments, and especially because you could see this look in John Lennon’s face — and he looked like he was always saying: "Fuck you!" — I said: "I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys. This is what I’m going to do — play in a rock band"... I don’t think there will be anybody like the Beatles. They will be played 100 years, 200 years from now, I have no doubt about that, just like Beethoven.
Joe Walsh (The Eagles): I took one look on The Ed Sullivan Show and it was "Fuck school. This makes it." I memorized every Beatles song and went to Shea Stadium and screamed right along with all those chicks… I was a senior in high school… and I was screaming and crying.
George Thorogood: After The Ed Sullivan Show, Feb. 9, 1964, at approximately 8:04pm, after that moment every album, every guitar, every set of drums that was ever sold…10% should have gone right into their pocket. And I mean everybody, I'm not just talking about rock. Because the whole world got turned on all of a sudden. All of a sudden everybody was buying record players, guitars... and it hasn't stopped. If I ever get a chance to meet [Paul McCartney] I’m just going to say two words: Thank you.
Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) when asked who he considers a genius: It’s so obvious, but the Beatles. When I was growing up, the people who liked the Beatles, I didn’t like, so I didn’t pay attention to them. Around The Downward Spiral, I really started digging White Album-era Beatles, and it expanded outward from there. They were so far ahead of the game, it’s just not fair.
Mark Stoermer (The Killers): With "Helter Skelter" the Beatles rocked as hard as Led Zeppelin ever did, one year before [Zeppelin’s] first album came out.
Ali Campbell (UB40): Listen to this track and you can hear the whole next ten years of pop music — the whole glam rock thing, it all came from the fuzz guitar on the Beatles' "Revolution."
Guitar World on placing "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" in their list of the 50 Heaviest Songs Before Black Sabbath: John Lennon's rarely heard lead guitar shines in this bluesy rocker from Abbey Road; the "heavy" part kicks in at the 4:37 mark, then builds and builds into something a twisted DJ would play as the pillars of the earth are tumbling down around him. Also, this song may have inadvertently started doom metal.
Noel Gallagher (Oasis): Ask any cutting-edge musicians in London, like the Chemical Brothers or Prodigy, if you trace all that music backwards, it all stops at "Tomorrow Never Knows." It was 1966 when Lennon wrote that song. He's probably still 20 years ahead of his time.
DJ Spooky: "Tomorrow Never Knows" is one of those songs that's in the DNA of so much going on these days that it's hard to know where to start. Flaming Lips? Check. Radiohead? Check. Sonic Youth? A Tribe Called Quest? Check. The song has one of those kind of cinematic breakdowns that artists like Danger Mouse and David Lynch could check out again and again.
“Tomorrow Never Knows” (instrumental version - no vocals) from the Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver.
Questlove (drummer, producer): You have to understand the way the Beatles created records. They had only four to eight tracks to work with, technology wasn't like it is today. They would lay the music down, manipulate it, fuck with it, try to push it. Which is the hip hop aesthetic... Rubber Soul basically started the idea of the record as a complete statement. That's really a game-changer.
Darryl McDaniels (Run-DMC): Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band — listening to that record is like watching all the episodes of the "Star Wars" journey. Close your eyes and listen — it's so visual. Innovation in the use of sounds, noise, music, instruments. And the storytelling and the lyrics is... phenomenal… The actual title track is really hip hop. DMC just sang the intro to it. And the beat is dope.
[On his biggest influence, besides family] John Lennon. Because he showed me he could use his rock and roll to make change and have an impact in this world.
[When asked if he could pick one person in the entire industry to do a song with] Looking to collab with Sir Paul! One of the Beatles with one of the Beatles of hip hop??? PMC and DMC! Legendary!!! Game changer!!!
Diallo Riddle (writer, producer, actor): One of the great tragedies of John Lennon's death - among all the tragedies of it - is that he dies in 1980 in New York. I feel like John would have had such a great time with Hip Hop… I think he would’ve loved the attitude of it. Almost all the great John songs have, like, this real percussive quality to the singing... he comes with that force... I think he would’ve loved Hip Hop, and he was almost there.
Bob Dylan: They were doing things nobody was doing… I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go. Lennon, to this day, it’s hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was… I mean, I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. He’s got the gift for melody. He’s got the rhythm. He can play any instrument. He can scream and shout as good as anybody and he can sing a ballad as good as anybody. His melodies are just effortless. I’m in awe of him maybe just because he’s just so damn effortless.
Elvis Costello: The Beatles arrived sounding like nothing else. Every record was a shock when it came out.
Black Francis (the Pixies): The main guitar riff [on "Yer Blues" on the White Album] is just scary. Call me a stupid white guy, but that guitar line is as scary and provocative as anything you're going to hear on a Howlin' Wolf record. It's totally legitimate. There's nothing white about it at all. It has so much attitude and confidence. That combination of strength and swagger is what makes it so powerful. The lyric is beautiful, contemporary and modern. That line, "If I ain't dead already / Ooh girl you know the reason why" is just so fucking bad. It's sexual, but references death at the same time. It just doesn't get any better than that.
Andrew Farriss (INXS): The Beatles captured everybody's imagination because they could rock as a band but they could also go into this melodic stuff; it was almost unique to them. I can't think of another band quite like that, that could jump from raw rock into super melodic music. Incredible.
Stewart Copeland (The Police): You've got to give it up: the Beatles were heavier than any heavy metal band; they were happier cheerful pop music more than any other happy cheerful pop music; they had deep angst... they had it ALL. Every aspect. They did it 100,000%.
Peter Gabriel: [Their first album I ever bought] sounded far more radical and revolutionary than punk did in its day, you know. It was rough and raw, exciting... What people forget, I think, is that at the time it was really rebellious, rough, mischievous — and full of life. Irresistible to any young person. The Beatles were a huge influence.
Joey Ramone: In the days of the Silver Beatles, Paul McCartney would go check into a hotel room, using the name PAUL RAMON. Dee Dee was a big Paul McCartney fan, so he changed his name to Dee Dee Ramone. We decided to call the band The Ramones.
Joe Strummer (The Clash): It’s as miraculous as the Beatles were — four guys lying around in Liverpool after the war. It almost seems like the hand of God had to have been in there and got them to meet each other.
Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day): I've always been a huge Beatles fan. It's just those melodies you know? They were sort of the blueprint for everything that a band goes through as far as evolving and songwriting... [and] I think that some of the Beatles' songs are way more punk rock than most punk songs written today.
The melodies [in American Idiot] are based on the tradition of Lennon and McCartney. That’s where we were trying to push our stuff and take our melodies and the whole idea of Green Day — pushing it to a level that we thought could be our Tommy moment, or our Sgt. Pepper’s.
When we got inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Ringo was doing a sound check and we’re standing next to Paul McCartney’s bass amp and he was re-learning how to play the bassline to "With a Little Help From My Friends,"… I just sort of looked over at Mike [Dirnt] and I was like "I can’t even believe what is happening right now."
Chris Cornell (Soundgarden): A lot of Beatles songs were heavier than most so-called metal tracks… they influenced me hugely and it took me years to understand that I was doing things a certain way because I loved the way they sound on Beatles records… I had stolen a stack of Beatles vinyl that covered their whole career. I listened to it all but I gravitated toward the later stuff. Even though I was 9 years old, and had no way of knowing, it was influential in every way as a songwriter and as a singer.
The Beatles were what I learned a rock band was supposed to be. Sing any way you want, sing about anything you want, and write a diverse selection of songs from super whispery and personal like "Julia" to something like "Helter Skelter" which is over-the-top aggressive and screamy. That's what being a rock musician is.
Tommy Lee (Mötley Crüe): The Beatles, man. I grew up on the stuff. Those guys were fuckin’ pioneers in so many ways. Their span was just all over the place musically. They’d do fun stuff, dark stuff, orchestral stuff. I can’t say enough about the Beatles. We covered "Helter Skelter" because covering a Beatles song is cool, and it also just fit with where we were at at the time.
Beastie Boys’ Mike D, when asked about possible legal backlash after sampling Beatles tracks in the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique: What's cooler than getting sued by the Beatles?
Kurt Cobain (Nirvana): I've always loved the Beatles… For the first eleven years of my life I did nothing else but listen to the Beatles. Their influence on how I write the chords of my pieces, it’s undeniable… My favorite period is the Rubber Soul period… the guitar and simple melodies are my favorite.
Dave Mustaine (Megadeth): Megadeth has a lot of melody which I think sets us apart from a lot of the other metal bands, and you gotta really know how to do that. And by having good influences, that is much more possible. Being a big Beatles fan… stuff like that helps you become, I think, a better songwriter. I love the combination of McCartney and Lennon, although it’s really easy to see the difference between John’s writing and Paul’s writing. I love them both.
Paul Weller (The Jam): Their influence on me is just kind of constant... I only had four teachers at school — John, Paul, George and Ringo. I used to keep my Beatles albums in my chest of drawers, my whole fucking bedroom was a shrine to them. They opened up another world. They really changed the world, man. And it's not just my generation that thinks so — young people are still discovering them. It's just going to go on and on.
George Michael: Pure quality, simplicity and heart — that is really all that great music needs. But those three elements in combination are not easy to find these days, which is why generation after generation come back to the Beatles and look to them for inspiration. The Beatles remain the strongest force in popular music simply because they were the best.
Frank Ocean: I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.
Billie Eilish: The Beatles were what raised me. My love for music I feel 95 per cent owes to the Beatles and Paul.
Patrick Carney (The Black Keys): We are huge fans of The Beatles, they're our favorite band. You go listen to the first record, "I Want To Hold Your Hand," and then you hear side two of Abbey Road, you can hear it's the same voices, but everything's changed. That's the benchmark of success to me, and one day hopefully, Dan [Auerbach] and I can make a record that is somewhere on that scale. We haven't yet, and I don't think we ever will, but just knowing that exists — that you can see this band in eight years go from point A to point Z — is a reminder of why I want to make music.
Lady Gaga: In 1968 I would have probably been like any other crazed Beatles fan... I don't know if anyone knows this about me but when I wrote The Fame I listened to Abbey Road obsessively. I had it on repeat for probably about six months. It's so incredibly brilliant — an innate sense of joy. They really had that down. Full of joy with a hat tip to the melancholy.
Without the Beatles I don't think women would be taking their cardigans off in hallways. They were responsible for the birth of the sexual revolution for women.
Singer Meat Loaf: You're dealing with two guys who were incredible, incredible writers. But what most people never realize is how incredibly great as singers John and Paul were. These two guys were great, great, GREAT singers.
Ray Davies (The Kinks): I remember how I was a 17-year-old student at art college and heard "Twist and Shout" on the record player, and how I was blown away by John Lennon's directness. How his voice cut through all the nonsense and sent a message to me that said, 'If I can do it then so can you, so get up off your backside and play some rock 'n' roll' — as if to throw down a musical gauntlet. Even though the Beatles were from Liverpool, they seemed to speak for the whole nation of young people.
Billy Idol: I just love, love, loved the Beatles. I was a super-mega fan and I still am. They are a beacon of light. When things are bad, you've always got the Beatles… [Their] irreverent humor spoke to a generation of youth sick of being ground up and used for workplace fodder by the rich and powerful. It motivated us to believe that our destiny was in our hands, if we so chose… [They] just got better and better, revealing the depth of their talent. I loved the music, the sound, the fashion and style, and the crazy element they brought to the scene. They cared about being songwriters and musicians; they were innovative, but also wild and crazy. The Beatles were the single most important band in my life.
Roger Waters (Pink Floyd): I learned from John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison that it was OK for us to write about our lives, and what we felt — and to express ourselves. That we could be free artists and that there was a value in that freedom… They'd transcended all the nonsense [of Beatlemania] to making really smart, clever, beautiful, musical songs. I believe they freed a whole generation of English men and women to be given permission to write songs about real things — and have the courage to accept your feelings.
Chuck Berry: Why are the Beatles good? Because they were geniuses. They're writers, and boy, two heads are better than one, but three heads? Genius.
Sting: The reason I'm a musician is because of the Beatles. They conquered the world with their own songs, and therefore gave permission to a younger generation, a decade younger, permission to try the same thing [and think] "Oh we’ll try that, I know those four chords — I could do that, probably." And we all tried. We owe a lot to the Beatles. They really were an amazing influence on all of our lives.
Greg Lake (King Crimson): With The Beatles coincided with my becoming a professional musician and I thought, this is what I'm in competition with. It was daunting — depressing almost.
Colin Hay (Men at Work): There were other bands that I loved and songwriters that I loved - Ray Davies, Townshend, lots of people. But when it's all said and done there was the Beatles and then there was everybody else. They were the band of all bands.
Filmmaker John Hughes: I grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly girls and old people. There weren’t any boys my age, so I spent a lot of time by myself, imagining things. And every time we would get established somewhere, we would move. Life just started to get good in seventh grade, and then we moved to Chicago. I ended up in a really big high school, and I didn’t know anybody. But then the Beatles came along and changed my whole life. My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on.
Jimmy Iovine (Interscope Records): Lennon's voice was arguably the greatest in rock 'n' roll. It never gets talked about. That guy sang his ass off. He was an extraordinary singer, very, very spontaneous, never needed a lot of takes, but always with such feel. This is if he was completely straight, or not!
Little Richard: The Beatles did one of the best versions of "Long Tall Sally" I've ever heard... they're the greatest guys I ever worked with in my life. They are one of the most talented groups, I think, that has ever, ever been — from any place or any time… Paul was the closest to me. Paul is like my own blood brother. I believe if I was hungry, Paul would feed me. We're that tight. And Paul is a humanitarian.
Soul singer Solomon Burke, when asked to pick his #1 song of all time: "Let It Be." The message still stands today. The Beatles had an inner soul not even they were aware of.
Songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (Elvis, Ben E. King, The Drifters, The Coasters): [Jerry Lieber] I love the Beatles' work. I think they're the best songwriters. It's all original. It comes out of their culture and their experiences. It's like watching Picasso. Over a period of time, you see the work change. It comes out of another state that's on a higher plane and communicates more completely. [Mike Stoller] The first time I heard the Beatles, I loved them. I was crazy about them. And of course later, when they started to do more interesting stuff, "Eleanor Rigby," the Rubber Soul album... I love their work. They never ceased to amaze me.
John Legend: I love the Beatles. I’ve loved them for a long time and I’ve met Paul and Ringo a few times. One of my favorite memories was a Grammy memory when I sang “Ordinary People." My first big Grammy was when I won Best New Artist. And when I was sound checking, I stepped off stage ad Paul McCartney came and told me what a good song "Ordinary People" was, and I was like [sighs with relief, bows, and laughs]. It was pretty cool getting that kind of compliment from one of the great songwriters of all time.
Dennis DeYoung (Styx): What they did in just seven years — it doesn’t make sense. It was a bolt of lightning that put John and Paul and George and Ringo in the same spot, close enough together that they could make that music. It’s one of the mysteries of the universe… When I first heard "Golden Slumbers" through "The End" on Abbey Road, I thought, "OK, nobody can compete. Everyone quit playing music." I've said many times, l've been trying to do that ending my entire life. Whether it was Paradise Theatre, Grand Illusion, everything, I tried to make what they made… They said, "no limits, anything is possible"… and I believed them.
Robert Lamm (Chicago): We used the Beatles for everything. They were responsible for turning rock music upside down. We used them as models for what was possible.
Kenny Loggins: I was a folk guy, Bob Dylan was my main hero — up until I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. When [they] showed up, it was a whole different atmosphere. It was life-changing for every musician I've ever spoken to from that era. I bought an electric guitar and tried to write in their style.
Melissa Etheridge: They wrote every song. We're basically rewriting all their songs, is what we're doing. How can you be in music and not be a Beatles fan?
Composer Burt Bacharach: When people ask me which composers I think have had the greatest influence on the sound of today's music, four names automatically come to mind: John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac) in 1977: Rock and roll is not the beginning & end of all life. It's 95 percent bullshit. Rock in the '70s is boring. It's not happening. In the '60s, rock was a change of attitude — a drastic change which I think the Beatles were hugely responsible for, praise the Lord. Their influence was just phenomenal.
Rick Springfield: I still can’t believe they were, like, a real band... it was so staggering what they did. I was a Paul guy. I had a boy crush 'cause I loved the way he looked, plus he was amazingly talented, he had a voice like a fucking god, he could play every instrument, and for me he wrote the best songs. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve understood Strawberry Fields and the great John songs that really stick to the wall. "Revolution" was one of the first examples of distorted guitar and they didn’t put it through an amp they put it through a board. We’re still copying the Beatles. I hear songs now where they’ve taken snippets and snuck it in.
They looked like they were from the future. I screamed like a girl from the moment they walked on stage to the moment they left. It was like aliens had landed on the planet — they just looked so modern, with the hair and the clothes and the guitars… It changed everything for me.
Lou Gramm (Foreigner): What I remember was that I couldn't sit still, that I was dying with anticipation, and totally euphoric when they took the stage. I was shouting, I know that. I couldn't believe what l was hearing. I was the drummer in the high school band, and the Beatles were just different than anything l'd ever heard before. It was a world-changer for me.
Art Garfunkel: There's no greater group than the Beatles. There's no funnier group than the Beatles. I've spent certain nights socializing with each of the four lads in my life, they're some of my greatest experiences. There's no doubt why they were so good. They're just so earthy and funny... and so damn musical. They are tuned human beings.
Rob Halford (Judas Priest): I’ve always been a big Beatles fan and always will be… and particularly as a lifelong John Lennon fan because he touched me in so many ways outside of the music that he made… And add to that the incredible music he wrote with Paul McCartney, for me, musically and personally… and the way he had that incredible indestructible self belief, he is a big one. He always had this great gift, this great oratory gift to engage people and explain his feelings. I’m sure he’d still be doing great music and making a difference today if he’d been able to.
Here we are - Priest has come up a world tour in the late '70s, and we're taking a little break… and it was suggested that we make British Steel at this beautiful house just outside of London, which was the former home of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. And John Lennon had sold it to Ringo, and Ringo was renting out the house while he was living away. Bands could go in there and make a record… and oh my god, we're actually here, walking inside, so we were literally walking in the footsteps of these incredibly powerful, talented musicians, and I think we picked up some Beatle magic in there because British Steel turned out to be a really important album for Priest and for metal.
That's just nuts that myself and Glenn — lifelong mad Beatles fans are suddenly in the home of two of the Beatles! You couldn't write this stuff! Art imitates life, life imitates art - whatever it is.
I still listen to them now, and I find their music very inspiring. They were a direct influence on "Breaking The Law" and "Living After Midnight." Those two songs are straight out of the Beatles songbook as far as simplicity and getting to the point goes. Short, little songs that sail away in a short space of time and are packed with hooks, melody and riffs.
George Clinton (Parliament Funkadelic): Beatles? Goddam, that shit is unbelievable! They're my all-time favorites. I got lots of inspirations — Sly [Stone], Curtis Mayfield, all that. You know, I worked at Motown. But when I want to get inspired, I always listen to the Beatles shit. That'll always wake your ass up.
Firstly, the Beatles are my favorite all-time group. I tried to pattern some of my ideas on them, I admit it. I also patterned myself on James Brown and Sly, by the way. But the Beatles had such tremendous spiritual power. What made the Beatles so good, they could do everybody's folk music. They knew all of it: R&B, Indian, they had a world receptivity to everything. Put 'em together and that's a magical mystery tour for real.
Actress Whoopi Goldberg: I’d never seen anybody that looked like them. And when you’re a little kid, you don’t know it’s a revelation, but it was like the whole world lit up. Suddenly I felt like I could be friends with them… and I’m black! I never thought of them as white guys. They were colorless, you know, and they were fucking amazing! The Beatles gave me this idea that everybody was welcome. If you weren’t the hippest kid in the neighborhood, it didn’t matter because you could be a Beatles fan, and I liked that. And that sort of carried me into these older days where it’s like I am my own person. I can look the way I want, I can be the way I want, and it’s okay. And I got that specifically from them.
Edgar Winter (The Edgar Winter Group): I stand in total awe of the Beatles. I don't think their greatness can be overstated. To me, they're bigger than music: they changed the mindset of an entire generation and brought about a revolution without ever having to fire a shot. Because it was a revolution of the mind, of the heart, of the spirit. The Beatles were a class unto themselves.
Rapper Coolio: I could probably sing almost every Beatles song ever made. They went to a place where you'd never think music could go. And they reached such a massive amount of people of all races, creeds, religions. It upsets me sometimes, to think of what they could have done — how much more music they could have made if they'd stayed together... it's a travesty, it's a tragedy. At least we did have them for a short period of time. But imagine if the Beatles had made as many albums as the Stones. You feel me? There would have been a lot of groups never made it [laughs] — there would have been no room for 'em! Why would I listen to these other motherfuckers when I could listen to the Beatles? Why would I do that?
Muhammad Ali: People don't realize what they have till it's gone. Like President Kennedy — nobody like him. Like the Beatles, there will never be anything like them.
Musician Emmylou Harris: They were like gods. Really. You just couldn’t get any higher than the Beatles as far as what music meant.
Nick Mason (Pink Floyd): They were God-like figures to us. They were in a strata so far beyond us that they were out of our league… without the Beatles, we wouldn’t be here.
Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd): For me [While My Guitar Gently Weeps] was the song of the century… the Beatles were like gods to me as a kid. Not literally, of course, but it was like they were more than human in some way. This was the point where they embraced heavy blues-based guitar, which made musicians realize you could write modern songs with cool chords that weren't necessarily blues-based and still stick some heavy guitar in them.
My favorite song to play and learn was "l Feel Fine." It just freaked me out, that feedback they hit at the beginning... I thought that was the coolest thing l'd ever heard. That was before Hendrix, before any psychedelic music. It really inspired me.
This incredible music [A Day In The Life] just overwhelmed us. When it came to the middle of the song, where the orchestra rises, it sounded like a plane taking off in the room. It just killed us. And when it ended with that incredible chord, we all sat there stunned.
Bono (U2): We still look to [the Beatles] as models of what can be achieved when four people get into a room and start experimenting. It’s always worth reminding ourselves how lucky we are to be alive at a time when we grew up with the Beatles. They wrote the blueprint for really any rock ’n’ roll band. They raised the standards for everybody, because they are miracles, those songs. [On John Lennon] He's my favorite songwriter. I remember listening to the Imagine album... it changed the shape of my bedroom, it changed the shape of my head and it changed the shape of my life. It just widened the aperture so much it was as if I was seeing the world for the first time. I learnt off the lyrics to "Gimme Some Truth" and that, in a way, was the template for all that followed.
Blues musician Keb’ Mo’: You have to understand where I was back then, when the Beatles came out. You're talking about a 12-year-old kid who just basically listens to the radio. And then when the Beatles came, everything just changed. Everything got different, the bar was set way higher. You look at their discography... it's mind boggling. How do you pick your favorite Beatles song when their catalogue is just excellence bar none in rock & roll?
Composer Danny Elfman (Edward Scissorhands, Batman): "A Day in the Life" and "I Am the Walrus" stayed with me my whole life, redefining for me what a song could do. My influences in terms of orchestra are Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Beatles’ producer George Martin. [George Martin’s] string arrangements really became part of my musical vocabulary. With "A Day In The Life" I realized you can tell a story in a way that never seemed possible before. Most songs were about love found or love lost, like people had been singing about for centuries. Then along came these stories, a whole different approach to songwriting.
Record producer Butch Vig (Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins): I'm a MASSIVE Beatles fan. They're still for me the pinnacle of pop and rock songwriting. It's as good as it can get and probably always will be. [Sgt. Pepper] blew my mind. I'd put it on with headphones and listen to it four or five times in a row on a Saturday night. I couldn't figure out what they were doing. And I don't think it was just a mystery to me — Sgt. Pepper is probably the most influential pop album of all time. Back then, nobody did anything like that. To any young producer or artist I say put headphones on, listen to that record and you try to figure out how they did it.
Eddie Kramer (record producer & engineer): Olympic Sound Studios was one of the leading independent recording studios [in England]... within a week or two of opening we had Jimi Hendrix, the Stones. Then in the middle of '67, we get a phone call: it's the Beatles. They couldn't get into EMI Abbey Road, so they booked the best independent studio, Olympic, and I got the gig to record them. That's the only time I was scared. I'd never been scared on a session before. Working with Hendrix? Fabulous, fantastic. Working with the Stones? Yeah, that's cool. The Beatles? That's a whole other different story. It was an amazing session. I've never felt so comfortable. Within a few minutes they were so cool and casual; they were so relaxed. They just knew what they were doing. They were wonderful. So disarming... and so great in the studio. You could not believe how tight they were. Unbelievable.
Sheila E. (musician & drummer): Prince loved experimenting with different sounds and rhythms. And he really, for real, appreciated the Beatles, Earth, Wind & Fire - band bands, that had more than just a singer. He really admired the way that the Beatles were able to change from album to album to album, and it was still them. I think he was tremendously influenced by that, 'cause we talked about it, you know — for him to want to be that [kind of] songwriter, like the Beatles. And that came out in his music.
D'Angelo (R&B singer, songwriter, & producer): I don't know who was not influenced by The Beatles. And the thing about them, what they were the masters of — and Prince too — was all these interesting, different, eccentric ideas that they were able to fit into a pop format. To be able to fit all of that and your vision into this simple format, whether it be a pop song or a 12-bar blues or whatever — I think that's the challenge. And they were the best at it. They were the best.
Photographer Bruce McBroom (who later shot the iconic Farrah Fawcett red swimsuit photo): I can tell you this, it was a mind-numbing moment to see all four of them right in front of you… John was steering the boat back to its mooring and I called out to them, “Hey, guys, could you do that again?” And John said from a distance, “Look, people are always asking us to repeat ourselves but we never do. So, no, we won’t be doing that again.” And I totally got it. I suddenly realized why they hadn’t wanted to tour anymore and why their music always had to progress.
Country singer-songwriter Garth Brooks: Everything they did was so different from what they did before, and I think that’s what makes your longevity.
Charlie Benante (Anthrax): The Beatles were the blueprint for everything. It all started with them. There wouldn't be other forms of music if it wasn't for them. I know people will read this and say, "Oh, come on, that's rubbish — how can you say something like that?" But I can tell you exactly what forms of music came after the Beatles... I always have these fantasy conversations with my Beatles friends. We always say, "What if all the Beatles had lived?" and "What if they got together to do a tour — what price would a ticket be?" I always tell them that I would pack up and follow that tour everywhere it went.
Corey Taylor (metal band Slipknot): I’m a massive Beatles fan. I love the Beatles. I study them like the Zapruder film sometimes 'cause I feel like they were really kind of the progenitor for so many different vibes. [They] were so instrumental in really kind of planting the seeds for so many different genres. I push those people down by their fucking face when they talk shit. [Their catalog], it’s unmatched. Even bands like Zeppelin, who are massively fucking influential, you know? They don’t hold a candle to what the Beatles were able to do.
[Peter Jackson’s Get Back docuseries] is one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen 'cause it challenges everything we thought we knew about them, especially that period. But at the same time, it reinforces what we thought we knew. To me, it's cool watching their dynamic knowing that they'd been together since they were teenagers in one form or another... Especially watching Paul figure out “Get Back” and watching that happen was so cool, dude... If you wanna know how to write a song, there's your blueprint right there.
Steve Perry (Journey): I’ve seen [Get Back] twice to be honest with you. I love it so much. For me, emotionally, when they finally got to the rooftop and were finally performing… you’ve got to remember that they came into a time where ‘live’ was not gonna work for them because musically they wanted to grow. These days every group has a laptop. There was no laptops back then. Their laptop was Abbey Road. But the idea of replicating that live became even more difficult because of they layers in which they put everything into the studio in.
These days… all the groups you see live have layers of sound, layers of ambience, layers of rhythms and backgrounds, and the drummer gets a click track — I hate to break anybody’s bubble — but the drummer gets a click track. And as long as they stay in the arrangement, that stuff plays along with the live music. That would've been something the Beatles could’ve used… they just decided to go back to being raw — the only addition was Billy Preston — and I just thought it was some ballsy shit right there to be honest with you.
Actor Mike Myers: The Beatles influenced everything that I’ve ever done. They made fun an art form. They created a sense of, come and join the party. I always remember crying at the end of "A Hard Day’s Night" 'cause I liked these guys so much and I wanted to go and have fun with them… [Watching Get Back] was like seeing the God particle, to be honest. My parents are from Liverpool, England, and the Beatles represent the best of our gene pool. That kind of brilliance — of being an entertainer that just at once everybody can love — you know, I think they're underrated… it just makes being a creative person seem like a noble endeavor, watching the Beatles.
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese: For those of us who were alive when they were on the airwaves, just the mention of their name brings back an entire world — not just "the 60's", but something else, something mysterious, exhilarating. The more you listened to the music (and we all listened to it a LOT), the more your connection to it strengthened. A few years ago, the critic Geoffrey O'Brien wrote that the Beatles' music possessed "a beauty so singular it might almost be called underrated." It's an odd thing to say about anything produced by what was the most popular band in the world. And yet, I knew exactly what O'Brien meant. We counted on them to make one truly great album after another, to release singles with masterpieces like "Penny Lane" on the A-side and "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the B-side, to follow Rubber Soul with Revolver… and "We Can Work It Out" and "Day Tripper" in between for good measure. We EXPECTED it. But we didn't really stop to think of the wonder of it.
Musician Bob Seger: Every six months, a new Beatles album. I mean that's just SICK by today's standards. Every six months, AND they got better and better. It was staggering... the factor that stands out and makes them historic — and makes them last — is the creativity. Just the song structures, the chords; the way they are so unusual and intricate and different. And so pleasing. The creative surprises just kept coming, and that's what made the Beatles so fascinating to me.
Songwriter Diane Warren: This is what blows my mind about the Beatles, it's what I tell people and no one can believe it: you realize that it was only 7 years between "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "Let It Be." 7 years. And in those 7 years is Rubber Soul, and Sgt. Pepper, and Abbey Road, and the White Album, and Revolver... I mean, it's mind blowing. Because in that time now, you might get one or two albums from somebody, right? Artistically and commercially they were geniuses.
Brian Setzer (Stray Cats, Brian Setzer Orchestra): "Penny Lane" is just such an incredible song. I find myself singing it all the time. That's an A-flat minor 7th flat five... G major 7th ... F-sharp sustained. Man, those aren't rock chords — those are jazz chords. What I like about that is the Beatles snuck them in and nobody knew. I can't get over 'Penny Lane'.
Filmmaker Spike Lee (on what he cared about as a kid): Sports… Motown, the Beatles.
Eddie Murphy: I love the Beatles. Growing up, I liked all the stuff that everyone else was listening to, like Motown, but the biggest group of all was the Beatles.
Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi): One of my earliest memories was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the living room… and watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was five years old and I remember thinking, 'Wow! That's what I want to do.’ … most five-year-old boys say they want to be firemen or policemen or baseball players, or even the president. Not me. I wanted to be one of the Beatles. They were the most incredible thing I ever saw… I knew, even at that young age… that I was witnessing something truly life-changing. And not just for me, but for everybody as well. I used to stand in front of my bedroom mirror and play their records, doing air guitar before anybody even knew to call it air guitar. They made people feel good. They gave people hope. They brought people together. Forty, almost 50 years later they're still doing it… Beatles albums are weird, beautiful things: they seem to change when you're not looking. You can play the White Album, then you might put it away for a few months. When you come back to it, it's like a whole new record and you hear all these different parts that you never heard before. That just doesn't happen with other bands.
Sir Gary Oldman: What always amazes me about the Beatles is you think you know a song, you think you've heard it a hundred times, and then there's something in there and you go, "oh wow — they're doing that." Or "I never heard that before." They always surprise you; you never quite know what's around the corner. Especially if you're learning or playing the music, and you deconstruct — you pick out the keyboard and the guitar and the bassline, you just have a much, much deeper appreciation of what they achieved and what they were doing. And so young! I think Paul, what was he, 28 when the Beatles disbanded? Just remarkable. There's a reason why they're as amazing as they are.
Michael McDonald (singer-songwriter): I was also a Beatles fanatic… [On Rubber Soul] This is where The Beatles started to become much more experimental. There’s so much of the older stuff that - albeit well-crafted - seemed aimed at "What does a hit song sound like?" Here they started to become enigmatic, and that rekindled my whole appreciation for this band. They had strange aspects to the arrangements and harmonies that were really different from much of anything I’d heard before, and yet they reminded me of old rockabilly records. You really sensed that they were becoming their own entity.
Jon Bon Jovi: The Beatles were everyone's Mount Rushmore. The Beatles were beyond Mount Rushmore; they were heaven.
Director John Carpenter: The Beatles were the definitive thing for me. It didn't start that way. But I got curious — who are these guys, what is this band about? Then I got into it, I started listening to their songs. And they were so great. I just fell in love with them. I was a raving maniac all the way to the end.
Jim Carey: The Beatles r the greatest antidepressant ever created. Right now I’m listening to Rubber Soul and bathing in serotonin.
Actor Danny Trejo: In 1968 l was in the hole in Soledad State Prison. The hole is a place where you go to make noise and scream and yell. So it's always noisy. And this song came on — Hey Jude, don't be afraid... the hole got quiet! And quieter. And quieter. Pretty soon, all you heard was this song. Until the Beatles started [screaming] Ju-Judy, Judy-Judy-Judy-Jud-AAAHH! And then the whole place just blew up. So "Hey Jude" will be in my heart forever. Every time I hear it, I remember that wonderful day when we became free for a minute.
Musician Jeff Buckley: The Beatles, they were geniuses, you know? Music's like a sign language between people. When a guy from Iran or America hears the Beatles, they go "Wow!" They don't think of killing each other.
Carlos Santana: Jesus and The Beatles — certain people come to this planet to create a bridge over the yawning gulf between God and humanity.
Dr. Yury Pelyoshonok (Soviet Studies professor): The Beatles had this tremendous impact on Soviet kids. The Soviet authorities thought of the Beatles as a secret Cold War weapon. The kids lost their interest in all Soviet unshakeable dogmas and ideals, and stopped thinking of an English-speaking person as an enemy. That’s when the Communists lost two generations of young people ideologically; totally lost. That was an incredible impact.
Actor Sean Penn: When the Berlin Wall came down, I think it had a lot more to do with Levi's 501’s and the dream of wearing them, and the Beatles' black market records than it did Gorbachev or Reagan. It’s just human dreaming having a power to make a change.
George Martin (Beatles producer): Brian Epstein walked into my office with a record of this group called The Beatles, which I thought was such a stupid name. You know, so corny with an “a,” and they weren’t very good. It was raucous. I said, well if you bring them down to the studios, I’ll have a look at ‘em and see what happens. I was very blasé about it. And they came into the studios — and it was like electricity. They had tremendous charisma. They had no great songs with them, but they gave you the feeling that you felt so good for being with them, and when they left, you felt as though something had gone away. I thought, well if they have this effect on me, they’re gonna have an effect on everybody else. So I signed them. Of course, eventually, they proved themselves to be tremendous songwriters.
Some funny moments from The Beatles: Get Back docuseries. (Edited clips from TheBeatlesLyrics on YouTube.)
Fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger: When the Beatles came around everybody freaked. They just loved the look, they loved the music. It really revolutionized the way people dressed, it revolutionized the way people wore their hair, it started a revolution in America, and this sort of "I don’t care" look is still very cool today… and it triggered an idea in my mind to start a business.
Eric Idle (Monty Python): The Beatles came along and everything changed. It suddenly became about young people will decide what goes on, young people will decide how we dress, young people will decide the music we make. All of that culture which we now take for granted happened for the first time then.
Composer Michael Kamen (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon): We didn’t wanna be like the Beatles. We wanted to BE the Beatles. We wanted to be as energized, we wanted to be as irreverent, we wanted to be as funny, and we wanted to be as important.
Barry Gibb (The Bee Gees): There's been so many groups that have influenced us, Maurice and Robin and myself. But above all, the Beatles. I think to this day, people not of our generation do not realize how huge the Beatles really were. Whatever they did to the world, they did it to all ages, they didn't do it to one age. Everyone loved the Beatles... and everyone wanted to be the Beatles.
Lionel Richie: We [The Commodores] did an interview… In the interview they said, “who are you guys?” and we said “we want to be the Black Beatles. We’re going to take over the world.” When the article came out it said, “Look out world, the Black Beatles are coming.” That’s the greatest thing you could ever write. We only had two hit records. So, it was just hilarious.
Steven Tyler (Aerosmith): As a kid, I used to go down to Greenwich Village all the time and fantasize I was going to bump into one of the Beatles or Stones. The Beatles taught us to fly, and John taught us to free-fall back to earth. When I heard the news [that he was murdered]... it ripped out a piece of me. I was physically angry for years after that fucker shot him. It felt good to have a cry because I was so fuckin’ pissed off… Jesus, what part of John or the Beatles did not get inside every one of us?
Reverend Al Sharpton [on John Lennon's death]: I was home, and I heard it on the news. I had met Lennon through some of his peace efforts, and through the fact that I was close with James Brown. So it stunned me. People don't realize how much of an icon Lennon was even for those of us who weren't in rock 'n' roll. He also was one of the white artists who identified with black artists, and that's why a lot of black people had respect for him. He was giving Billy Preston and others opportunities before crossover was an understood thing in the music industry, and that was a big deal to black artists.
Stevie Wonder: There were two people who stirred a kind of emotion in me like no others: Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon. For years after Lennon was killed I could not hear Imagine without crying, because I could feel his soul in that song. I knew he would be the Beatle that would die first. I feared it for a long time. The reason I knew it was there was the song "God" — "God is a concept." I thought in my mind that the song could cause him trouble. It didn't bother me what he expressed in that beautiful song. But it only takes one person not to understand. If there's anything that made me cry so much when John Lennon was killed, it was to know that someone with their fucked up-ness stopped so much potential to make a difference in the world.
Every time one of their records came out, I wanted to have it. I dug the writing, the effects they got. I just said "Why can't l?" I wanted to do something else, go other places. The Beatles made me feel I could do some of the ideas that I had.
Billy Preston: It’s such a glow when all four of those guys are together. Like, the room glows… What was instantly obvious to me was that the Beatles weren't like the other bands around then. Their harmonies, the way they dressed and their personalities set them apart from the others. They were also unique in the way a bunch of white guys handled black music and were able to add to it.
William King (The Commodores): Add to [their music], charisma and magnetism. That is what the Beatles had in abundance. They glowed. They clicked together. We wanted to have that.
Ozzy Osbourne: My son says to me, "Dad, I like the Beatles, but why do you go so crazy?" The only way I can describe it, is like this: Imagine you go to bed today and the world is black and white and then you wake up, and everything’s in color. I owe my career to them because they gave me the desire to want to be in the music game.
They broke the fucking doors down for so many people, and they gave freedom to the world… When I first met Paul McCartney, it was like meeting Jesus Christ… I just know that every time I heard something from the Beatles, it made me feel better that day. Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols once said to me, "I hated the Beatles." I said, "There is something fucking wrong with you." To me that's like saying you hate air.
Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin): The Beatles are the only group I can think of in rock ‘n’ roll history that improved to such heights from their early days. It was incredible the way they kept improving; it was like an avalanche. I don’t see how anybody could not have been touched by something that they did, even if they were cynical. From all the songs they did, from their beginnings right up through the end, there’s no way that you could not have been touched by that.
David Coverdale (Whitesnake, Deep Purple): I remember thinking a lot of my youth was black and white, you know, monochrome in post-war England. Everything seemed to be black and white, and then the Beatles came along and everything looked like fucking rainbow colors! [On hanging out with George Harrison] He was terrific. I never stopped pinching myself, really, because he was the man. George invited me to Friar Park and ribbed me about my fondness for Beatles memorabilia and trivia. Then he took me into his studio and showed me the Fender Stratocaster that he'd played on Magical Mystery Tour, plus his Sgt. Pepper suit. It was magical.
FiImmaker Cameron Crowe: I’ve often asked actors to sit down and watch "A Hard Day’s Night" with me just to get an idea for energy and enthusiasm and a way to embrace life. I keep trying to rip off "A Hard Day’s Night," frankly.
Actor Mark Hamill: When The Beatles came out, everything changed, where you go, "I'm not spending any money on comic books anymore. Gotta save up money for the records." The Beatles' generation, I'm telling you, it just rocked our world. I mean, they talk about going from black and white into color. The day after they were on The Ed Sullivan Show, there was nobody at school who had not seen 'em. And then "A Hard Day's Night" — we couldn't believe it, how funny they were and it seemed like a documentary, you know, we'd never heard those accents before, and Lennon was so acerbic and all of it, it was just perfect.
Nancy Wilson (Heart): The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me the first time we saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. There’d been so much anticipation and hype about the Beatles that it was a huge event, like the lunar landing. That was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians. I was seven or eight at the time… Right away, we started doing air guitar shows in the living room, faking English accents, and studying all the fanzines.
Composer Leonard Bernstein: I fell in the love with the Beatles’ music (and simultaneously, of course, with their four faces-cum-personae) along with my children, two girls and a boy, in whom I discovered the frabjous falsetto shriek-cum-croon, the ineluctable beat, the flawless intonation, the utterly fresh lyrics, the Schubert-like flow of musical intonation and the Fuck-You coolness of these Four Horsemen of Our Apocalypse, on The Ed Sullivan Show of 1964.
Christine McVie (Fleetwood Mac): My parents bought me With The Beatles for Christmas. I was one of the Beatlemaniacs — must have been about 20, I guess. Oh, I played this record until there was nothing left of it, over and over and over again. It was all about the melody, the songs, the harmonies. The voices were so up front and so crystal clear. I think that their use of space in the music was crucial. Just brilliant, brilliant songs, one after the other.
John Travolta: The Beatles meant everything to me growing up, and John was part of that. I loved Lennon's persona. He knew who he was and he knew what he represented to a worldwide public. John knew he had the floor; he knew he had to parlay that into something. I think he incited and inspired a whole group of youth to speak out and say what they felt… every man and woman represents a Beatle. You're either a Paul type, a George type, a Ringo type or a John type.
John Ritter: Yes, I got the Beatles poster and made them put it up [above Jack Tripper’s bed]... There's a book called The Last Days of John Lennon by Frederic Seaman. He said [Lennon] was a couch Beatle who sat there with the sound turned off [his TV] all day; and he had three favorite shows: The Tonight Show, Dallas, and Three's Company. Reading that almost made me pass out. He was my idol. And the fact that John Lennon knew who I was and maybe I made a difference in his life — maybe he cracked up or maybe he said 'Who are these idiots on Three's Company?' But whatever it was, he must have seen that Beatles poster. I was always obsessed with John Lennon; I loved his work and listened to and read everything he did.
I got to work with Ringo on his NBC TV special, which was a dream come true. He is genuinely hysterically funny without even trying. And I got to meet George Harrison. I ran up to him on the beach on Hawaii and said, 'Mr. Harrison, I'm sorry to bother you, but look...', and I pulled out one of his solo recordings on tape that I was listening to on my headphones, and he was really thrilled.
I've never met Paul, but I saw John Lennon record one night, and he looked over at me. I tried to smile, but I was so nervous and excited that my face looked like a bad Peewee Herman imitation. I was trying to nod and go, 'Hey, guy.' But it was 'HAWEEGEEGUIEEEE!' And he looked away. Probably called the cops.
Elton John: I couldn’t meet John without being awestruck, and I knew him quite well. He’s the only person in this business I’ve ever looked up to, the only person. I’ve met my equals. I’ve met people who are great, like Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend, who I admire tremendously. But they are not in the same league, I’m sorry.
Marianne Faithfull [on John Lennon]: His legacy? It's hard to put into words. I mean, it's nothing really: He just changed the face of popular music forever, didn't he?
Record producer Richard Perry: John Lennon was the most exciting person I’ve ever been in the studio with. His energy was overwhelming. The natural force and strength of his personality, he lifted everybody in the room up. I can remember very distinctly every minute with him; it was probably the greatest thrill of my career.
Eric Carmen (singer-songwriter): John Lennon was the most charismatic person I’d ever met. Period. Bar none. I’ve met a lot of rock ‘n’ roll people over the years, some that I had idolized... and some were cool and some weren’t, but they all seemed pretty much human. John was really just overpowering in person.
Don Henley (The Eagles): I admired John Lennon more than anybody in the music industry. I loved his voice, I loved his sense of humor, I loved the songs he wrote, the lyrics he wrote. I loved what he stood for, what he believed in, everything about him, really. He was my biggest hero.
David Bowie: It's impossible for me to talk about popular music without mentioning probably my greatest mentor, John Lennon. I guess he defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fabric of pop and imbue it with elements from other art forms, often producing something extremely beautiful, very powerful and imbued with strangeness.
Musician Bonnie Raitt: I was a John Lennon nut, I just thought he was it. A whole wall of pictures, a picture of him on my pillowcase so I could kiss him goodnight, it was sick, really.
Lenny Kravitz: It’s the music. It’s the bottom line. If the music wasn't good, we wouldn't be sitting here talkin’ about ‘em right now... The Beatles' music was revolutionary. The combination of those four players was one in a billion. The way that worked out, the time that it happened. It has changed the planet. And I don’t know that will ever be repeated.
Today, I think John would be doing some cutting-edge hardcore music. His first solo record is one of the most hardcore pieces of music ever recorded. And at the end of "Mother," when he's saying, "Mama, don't go, Daddy, come home," his soul is just spilling out; it's so hardcore.
[McCartney’s] a modern-day Mozart. Let's be real. I'd like to see the best writer today write his worst song. A lot of people [who give him grief] don't have ears. They don't realize what it takes to write a great song. It's like people [who] say Ringo can't play drums. He's amazing. He's a lyrical drummer. He moves with the music. How can you not love the Beatles and McCartney?
Kenny Aronoff (session & touring drummer): [Ringo’s] the reason why I play drums… the reason why I play in rock & roll bands. I consider him one of the greatest innovators of rock drumming and believe that he has been one of the greatest influences on rock drumming today... Ringo laid down the fundamental rock beat that drummers are playing today and they probably don't even realize it. [He] always approached the song more like a songwriter than a drummer. He always served the music.
Drummer Steve Smith (Journey): Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity. Ringo's popularity brought forth a new paradigm in how the public saw drummers. We started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. One of Ringo's great qualities was that he composed unique, stylistic drum parts for The Beatles songs. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and still identify the song.
T-Bone Burnett: Ringo was the fire, totally the fire underneath that band. I think of what McCartney said, that the first song they played with Ringo, they all just looked at each other. Because he was the soul of rock ‘n’ roll, man. That cat, his energy was so beautiful and so exciting and wild — just his whole, his spirit is the thing he had. He played with Sister Rosetta Tharp, you know? He played with all of this ecstatic music that would come through Liverpool. And he is an ecstatic musician. The Beatles were all ecstatic musicians, you know, but Ringo was the fire under it... To me, he has as good a claim as anybody to the greatest rock ‘n’ roll drummer of all times, with his tones, the way he hit the drums, the type of beats he played, the way he would construct drum parts where nothing would be playing straight through... Ringo was an extraordinary musician.
Steve Gorman (The Black Crowes): Ringo Starr's drumming is infallible, untouchable, and he is quite simply the greatest drummer in the history of rock 'n' roll music.
Guitarist Joe Satriani: [The most underrated guitarist is] George Harrison without a doubt. Just think about this, here’s a young kid at the start of a movement. Not someone who ever thought he’d be a virtuoso on the instrument, he was an all-round musician, and he was destined to write two of the most popular Beatles songs of all time, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun." I want to shout this, I want to put this in capital letters — HE WAS ALWAYS, ALWAYS MUSICAL! Most people can get good physically on the guitar, it’s not really that hard, but to be musical? That’s the real trick. There are a thousand other guitar players that could play rings around George, but what have they played that you really keep in your heart?
Brian May: I hold George in such reverence… everyone raves about people who play fast, but if you look at the catalog of stuff he’s produced, it’s colossal. [He] was a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous guitarist, and a wonderful example of what a rock star should be. I totally revered him as an innovator. He was always fresh, daring, magnificently melodic, full of spiritual quality… and he had the courage to play simple. He never took refuge in effects, or tried to impress with speed. I hope he knew how much we all loved and respected him.
Robbie McIntosh (The Pretenders & session guitarist): As far as most musicians were concerned, until the Beatles arrived, the lead guitarist didn’t exist. George Harrison defined that role. No one should underestimate his achievements. He's often overlooked because his guitar parts are so finely tailored, but if you listen carefully you conclude that they’re perfect. His lead on songs like "All My Loving" is so finely considered, it simply can’t be improved upon. His guitar style came from an era that's probably gone forever, before guitarists starting taking up loads of tracks for different solos. It’s almost impossible to find his sort of discipline these days. His slide work too, is outstanding. It’s unique and his pitching is so precise you can spot it a mile off.
Mike Campbell (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers): My favorite guitarist of all time: George Harrison.
Guitarist Gary Moore (Thin Lizzy): George's solos were constructed like mini masterpieces. I loved his inventiveness, things such as using the volume knob to create the guitar sound you can hear in "I Need You." He didn't just show off, he actually thought about what he was going to play, then composed something unique that became part of the song. The introduction to "Here Comes The Sun" is one example; another is the "Hard Day's Night" solo. That one is actually very fast for its time. To me, George was a phenomenal musician.
Frank Sinatra: Now I’d like to turn to a great song [Something] by George Harrison of the Beatles. It’s one of the best love songs to be written in 50 or 100 years, and it never says "I love you" in the song... but it really is one of the finest.
Slash (Guns N' Roses): Pretty much all my contemporaries have a thing for the Beatles. Like, really hard-core Beatles fans. I was actually just listening to Abbey Road today. I was heavily influenced by that record. One of the reasons why the Beatles are the standard for songwriting is that, as experimental as they might have sounded, the notes that they chose just seem totally perfect... I think that a hundred, two hundred years from now they will still have that sort of influence… This was a band that changed the world completely.
Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers): The Beatles never cease to amaze me with their prolific genius.
Dave Navarro (Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers), appearing on VH1's countdown of greatest rock artists of all time: If the Beatles don't come in at #1, there's something absolutely wrong with this show and this entire network.
Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains): You can't top The Beatles. They are the kings. It's the stuff that you strive for; it's just great music. To this day, there's rarely a time when somebody puts something out that can compare to what they did. You hope to be around even a fraction of the time that they were, because their music's going to be around forever. That's the hope, man: to get a piece of immortality.
Ed O'Brien (Radiohead): You have to say about the Beatles: they still are the greatest band. Their music is absolutely extraordinary. What they had in abundance was a kind of magic — magic in the music, magic in the characters. There's something almost divine about them.
Thom Yorke (Radiohead): God, I'm a Beatle obsessive.
Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam): I read somewhere that empathy is part genetic. That some people are genetically wired to have more empathy than others. So, it may be predisposed — but I think it's also taught. And I can go back and say that my empathy "muscle" was worked out by Beatles songs. Things like "I'm So Tired," or "Norwegian Wood." Or "Eleanor Rigby" — now that's a song that will put blood into the muscle that is empathy. I think I was taught that through their music.
Michael Hutchence (INXS): I always had a soft spot for the Beatles, especially John Lennon.
Dave Grohl (Nirvana & Foo Fighters): If it weren’t for The Beatles, I would not be a musician. It’s as simple as that… I jumped at any opportunity to play with Paul, not only because he will forever be the reason I became a musician, but because he's really fucking fun to jam with… The Beatles really created the blueprint for the rock band. They were four members, and each of them were brilliant musicians and songwriters. As a kid, that’s just how I learned how to be a musician. I had a guitar and a Beatles songbook. And still, to this day, I think that’s all a kid needs to learn how to play music.
Duff McKagan (Guns N' Roses): The first song I learned how to play was the Beatles' “Birthday." Your first song always remains a musical touchstone and this one not only taught me finger dexterity, but also included the rudiments of the whole blues major scale, a scale that I would use and use again in my later career in Guns N' Roses.
When we played Live 8, and we hit the stage and there’s Paul McCartney. And he looks at me and he goes, "Hey, Duff." And so, you gotta hit your nut, you gotta be comfortable, but all I can think is like, Paul McCartney knows my name. How the hell did that happen?! I’ve really been able to, like, meet my heroes and it’s been a pleasure to find out that those guys who are still around, they’re around because they work hard and they’re good guys.
Snoop Dogg: I had never met [Paul McCartney] before but I’m a fuckin’ fan of the Beatles. They told me, “Sir Paul would like to meet you.” He gave me a hug and I’m like, fuck, Paul McCartney knows who the fuck Snoop Dogg is. This is Paul McCartney, he knows who I am. That’s the experience that I Iove… when the people that you respect, respect you.
Scott Ian (Anthrax): I got to meet Paul McCartney one time. [It was] like being in the presence of a god… If you're not listening to the Beatles, you're not listening to music. If you don't educate yourself on the Beatles... whether you're a fan or a musician, there's nothing better.
Zakk Wylde (Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society, Pantera): McCartney? Musicianship and singing? You go from "Yesterday" to "Helter Skelter" to "Maybe I'm Amazed" -- that's talent from another planet.
Elle King: I sing "Oh! Darling" every night of my life and it's one of my all-time favorite songs ever. I think I would literally give all parts of my body to sing it with Paul McCartney.
Wayne Sermon (Imagine Dragons): I've never even thought of Paul McCartney as an actual human being. He was more like a transcendent vessel of amazing music.
Krist Novoselic (Nirvana): Dave [Grohl] had sent me an email asking if I wanted to record with Paul McCartney in L.A. And I said, "Dude, I’ll walk there from Washington if I have to." So I flew down and we were standing around figuring out what to do, and I kept thinking, please don’t make me play bass guitar, please don’t make me play bass. That’s like being asked to do karate with Bruce Lee — you’re going to get your ass kicked. Yep, I’m going boxing. Who’s your sparring partner? Muhammad Ali. Good luck with that!... He said he liked my basslines. Paul McCartney said that! You can put that in a pull quote.
Singer-songwriter Don McLean: If Paul McCartney today has a billion dollars, in my opinion he should have ten times that for what he gave the world.
Joe Elliott (Def Leppard): I’m told by relatives that when I was three, four years old, I was pretending to be Paul McCartney with a plastic Paul McCartney guitar, stood on a little stool singing "Love Me Do" to whoever would listen. I was obviously well aware of who the Beatles were and was a huge fan of the singles as a kid. And I’m a huge fan of them now with the new perspective from my sixties.
I think it was probably "Live And Let Die" and "Jet," all the stuff from around ’73 when [McCartney] was rockin’ again. The Band On The Run album, it’s fantastic, my favorite McCartney album. If I want to rock out and I want to listen to McCartney, I’ll be listening to Band On The Run. If I want to sit in the bath with the candles on, I’ll pick Red Rose Speedway.
With the greatest respect to everything he’s ever written in the world ever… I’m going for "Little Lamb Dragonfly" off Red Rose Speedway [as my favorite McCartney song]. It sounded the furthest away from what you’d expect the Beatles to be doing. It wasn’t "Helter Skelter" or "Strawberry Fields Forever" where they were pushing boundaries. It was just a guy, a gentle guitar part, really beautiful melodies. Still, to this day, when I hear it, I get all kind of… squidgy. It’s a beautiful lament, almost like a nursery rhyme.
Joan Jett: Oh my God… it’s really cool to see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. I remember getting Paul’s [self-titled solo] album and listening to it in my bedroom, and then all of a sudden I’m onstage with him. And it’s very surreal. And amazing. That shows that you can make your dreams come true.
Madonna: When I was told I had to introduce Paul McCartney, something strange happened… I actually got nervous. Now, it takes a lot to impress me, l've met a lot of incredible people. But talent like this comes along about once in a century.
Michael Jackson: I think melodies are always important… especially the Beatle things. The melodies are beautiful. And they're structured so perfectly. That's what makes them stay around so long. "Here Comes The Sun," "Fool On The Hill"— the lyrics are beautiful too, but you don't even really need them.
Angus Young (AC/DC): Even a great band like the Beatles goes off on a detour and does a bit of cabaret for awhile. But you’ll find that the truly great ones always come back to playing real rock and roll... those bluesy fills and huge riffs [in "I Want You (She’s So Heavy)" from Abbey Road] showed they were still terrific rockers right to the end.
Booker T. Jones (Booker T. & the M.G.’s.): I wanted to pay tribute to the Beatles because they were doing earth-shaking, groundbreaking things. They were making music that was timeless. They had crossed boundaries and reached heights that no one else in rock 'n' roll had done. They had written timeless melodies.
They had become socially significant. They had become spiritual. They had become funky. And they had done all that in six years! Musically, they had really lived. And then they made Abbey Road on top of everything, which was a complete courageous turnabout musically. I was just struck by it. I would listen to it from start to finish, it was completely creative, everything about it just spoke creativity. At that point, financially, creatively, they didn't have to do anything; obviously, they were doing it for the love of it... and they didn't compromise, they didn't do a commercial album and I thought that was so brave and a big statement.
They're incomparable. It was just such a great gift, that we had them and that the world appreciated them so much. They were so valuable — and so much fun.
Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns: I'm an American filmmaker and all of my subjects have been in American history. But I would, in one second, stop and do a series on the history of The Beatles. l've been a Beatles fan all my life, and I would just dive into it with great relish. I think the great sadness would be that I wouldn't have a chance to talk to John or George... but l don't think that would stop me from getting involved in trying to tell the story of the greatest band ever.
Apple founder Steve Jobs: My model of business is The Beatles. You know, they were four very talented guys who kept each other’s, kind of, negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. And that’s how I see business. You know, great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people... If the vault was on fire and I could grab only one set of master tapes, I would grab The Beatles.
Larry King (American television and radio host): I came to understand the Beatles' music through the conductor Arthur Fiedler. He said that The Beatles had produced the greatest pop music in centuries. He predicted that their songs would still be listened to in five hundred years. People had no idea of the amazing things they did with chords and arrangements, he said, and to prove it, he'd made an album of their music with The Boston Pops. 'You mean,' I said, 'they're gonna be Beethoven?' 'Yes,' he said."
Steve Hackett (Genesis): I couldn’t help but be greatly influenced by all of that — the fact that musicians had assimilated the Beatles' approach and were coming up with their own versions. I guess we were all splinters off the big tree.
Sources: The Beatles Revolution ABC TV Documentary (2000), original sources from interviews found online, and https://x.com/BeatlesPraise run by Perry Gartner https://perrygartner.substack.com/
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