All Together Now. The Beatles are back. Ask Me Why. Because. On Wednesday their digitally remastered albums will be released. And so will the first computer game playing with them. This game zooms over Liverpool from Genesis at the Cavern Club, down The Long and Winding Road, to Revelation on the roof of Apple HQ. You can strum and drum and hum along to 45 songs with simplified chords on a plastic-buttoned guitar. In the Saturday Review we sing the story of the Fab Four. All Together Now: the world is about to be engulfed in a fresh tsunami of Beatlemania.
All Things Must Pass, but in the long eye of rocking history, not the Beatles and the Swinging Sixties that they helped to create. In any history of the United Kingdom of the 20th century, the Beatles will play a leading role.
Why were the Beatles such cultural revolutionaries, more than other bands that came after and before them? First, it was the music: the Rock of the Roll, the Rhythm and Blues, the astringency of the guitar, the wit and pathos of the lyrics. They captured the mood of the Sixties for liberation into a new world. Second, they were unashamedly working-class boys, with no cronyism with the musical or social establishment. With their mop tops and clothes (and lyrics) they gently teased it. Third, they came (of all unfashionable places) from Liverpool: Only a Northern Song. Fourth, the intensity of Beatle-worship helped to generate our Age of Celebrity.
They’ll Be Back. Though, of course, they never left. They have always been Here, There and Everywhere. But next week a new generation will rediscover the excitement of the original music that enchanted their parents and the world.