Historic timing

So I want to try to make clear my original
point regarding the pivotal importance of
The Beatles.

Part of it was the extremely high quality
and appeal of their music. Yet it's true
that other groups have produced and
will produce great music.

Part of it was their incredible ability to
be so much in touch with their times.

It was all that, but more -- it was their
timing. No other group will ever duplicate
what they did -- because they've already
done it.

If the young John, Paul, George and Ringo
were to get together today they might still
make great music, but they couldn't achieve
the historic importance they held by doing
what they did in 1964.

In 1964 the music industry and especially
the "teenage" (rock and roll) part of it was
still small and basically unified yet in
the doldrums.

Whether because the first "Day the Music
Died" (the plane crash in February 1958)
killed the remaining great rock and rollers,
there was a conspiracy to repress rock and
roll or whatever the reason -- by the
early mid-60s it just wasn't the same,
although it had some bright spots.

Those 4 lads from Liverpool seemed to come
out of nowhere. Until that first broadcast
on Ed Sullivan, nobody knew that the
spirit of real rock and roll was
being kept alive and well in England.

They brought it back to us, just long enough
after President Kennedy was assassinated that
we appreciated feeling good again and could
without feeling guilty.

They paved the way for a burst of new talent --
first from the unexpectedly large pool of
English bands that became known as the
British Invasion. Then for the best of
the British Invasion and a new wave of
American talent that was unexpectedly
waiting in the wings and may never have
gotten so successful so fast -- or at all --
without the success of The Beatles.

They were not the whole story, but they
were the point of the wedge -- they
brought a fresh way of looking at the
world that was just what a huge mass of
baby boomers were waiting for.

Youth, good humor, sarcastic humor,
sexuality, a willingness to question and
shake up the powers that be. Yes, they
paved the way for the revolution that was
the 60s.

Great Highway travel book