The Beatles Are Here!: 50 Years After the Band Arrived in America, Writers, Musicians, and Other Fans Remember

As a teenager, journalist Rowlands greeted the Beatles 50 years ago by holding a sign begging “Beatles Please Stay Here” with five fellow screaming Beatles fans outside the CBS studios where the group was performing on the Ed Sullivan Show. In this compulsively readable personal history, Rowlands gathers the recollections of fans, writers, musicians, and artists about the deep ways that the Beatles and their music affected them. For Joe Queenan, “She Loves You” is “the greatest song ever written… it is and always will be the song that changed the world.” “Cousin Brucie” Morrow reflects on the power of the Beatles’ music to bring change to the American music industry. Writer Verlyn Klinkenborg recalls upon listening to “Ticket to Ride” and “Help” that the songs “contain… a feeling I can’t name or describe, the language of regret, the urgency of despair. But above all they contain the love of music.” Finally, fan Linda Belfi Bartel (one of the women in the book’s cover photo) concludes that, “The era of the Beatles is so special…their music talked to you.” (Feb.)