Sam Mendes will direct four films on the Beatles. Four. Four separate stories, one for each member of the band: Paul Mescal will be Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson will play John Lennon, Barry Keoghan will be Ringo Starr and Joseph Quinn has obtained the part of George Harrison. Hollywood has decided to reopen the Pandora’s pot of pop music. But why? I think about it for a moment, I grab a vinyl. Abbey Road. The cover is faded but the image is still there: four figures who cross the road as if they were walking on the story itself. I put the disc on the plate, the dot drops with a crackle. Part As a together.

And suddenly, everything comes back

The Beatles were the epicenter of a cultural explosion that still leaves the world today. Without them, the music as we know it would not exist. Every artist who has ever challenged a guitar, written a refrain, felt crazy harmony in the middle of a song, has a debt with them. Yet, despite this, every time someone tries to tell them, there is a risk of reducing them to a faded picture: the four boys in a jacket and tie, the helmet, the shouts of the fans. No. The Beatles were something else. They were a revolution. And it’s time to remember it.

Beatles fans listen to the new “Now and then” at the Cavern Club

From Liverpool to the world

Liverpool, late 1950s. A workers’ city, thrown by the Atlantic wind, dirty with coal and cheap dreams. In poorly enlightened pubs and in four -money rooms, the American rock’n’roll bounces between the peeling walls, arrived on the waves of post -war radio and in the vinyls imported by sailors. A guy with glasses and a sly sight, John Lennon, strumped a guitar forgotten with his band, the Quarrymen. He has a tough attitude, the sharp sarcasm and a deaf anger inside. One day, at a country party, Paul McCartney present him: face as a good boy, melodic talent out of scale, fingers flying on the guitar handle. John doesn’t say it, but he understands it immediately: this has something that is missing. He takes it in the group. Then comes another boy, more shy but with a perfect ear: George Harrison, the guitarist with his head in the clouds and a future as an innovator. Finally, after various drummers sacrificed on the street, Ringo Starr joins, the stroke of luck that cements the magic.

In Liverpool it is played in the basement. Literally. The city is full of cellars transformed into clubs, sweat that drips with walls, crooked amplifiers, beer poured on the floor. But the Beatles have one more weapon: the Cavern Club. A damp hole like a tomb, where they begin to make a name. Then comes the baptism of the fire: Hamburg. A wild period, between concert marathon in squalid clubs and nights passed to sleep in fetids fetids behind the stages. They play until they peel their fingers, they make their bones. When they return to Liverpool, they are no longer the kids of the Quarrymen. I am a real band.

Seeing the docufilm on the Beatles is like spying on them in their rehearsal room (after 50 years)

Beatlesmania

Brian Epstein enters the scene, the manager with the flair of success. He dresses them in elegant jackets, cuts off the fights from concerts, transforms them into something salable. But the real turning point comes with a man who will change their music forever: George Martin, manufacturer of Emi. He listens to them, he understands that behind the Rock’n’roll energy there is a rare compositional talent, and opens the doors of Abbey Road’s studies.

1963. Please please me scale the rankings. Then She Loves You. Then I Want To Hold Your Hand. It’s over. Or rather, it started. Beatlemania explodes. Screaming girls, full stadiums, fans who tear their hair, surreal interviews with journalists trying to contain the phenomenon. It is something nobody has ever seen before. Pop music has changed forever, it has become mass culture.

From pop to experimentation

In 1965 he came out Rubber Soul. It is different from everything they have done before. More mature, more experimental. There is inside folk, psychedelia, texts that speak of love but also of alienation, nostalgia, experiences outside the body. Then comes Revolver (1966). Here the Beatles are visionaries. Tomorrow Never Knows is pure sound hypnosis, on the contrary ribbons, tribal percussion. Eleanor Rigby is a Requiem for violins and solitude. Subsequently it is the turn of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). For some, it is the first real concept album of history (on their childhood memories) for others a psychedelic suite that seems a mental journey rather than a collection of songs. It is a masterpiece for everyone. The cover art is revolutionary, the sounds upset everything. From that moment, making a record is to build a world.

End

But the story of the Beatles is not just a climb. It is also a fracture that widens. After the mystical experience in India with Maharishi, tensions begin to weigh. Lennon detaches himself, driven by the relationship with Yoko Ono. McCartney tries to keep everything together, but the control escapes him. Harrison, increasingly spiritual, brings Indian music on stage and the desire for a freedom that the band does not give him. Ringo observes, laughs, is a peacemaker, but understands that time is going down.

In 1968 he came out The White Album. A schizophrenic, brilliant, chaotic album. Inside there is everything: hard rock (Helter Skelter), whispered ballads (Blackbird), sound experiments that challenge each rule (Revolution 9). It is the sound of a band that is flanked in opposite directions. And finally Abbey Road (1969). The swan song. An absolute wonder. The perfect harmonies of Bicausethe infinite sweetness of Somethingthe grandeur of the final suite that closes with “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” A year later, it comes out Let it be, recorded before Abbey Road. But the beatleas are already a myth.

The inheritance

The Beatles have never finished. It is impossible to fill in the list of musicians who have suffered their influence. They are root and fruit, tradition and innovation. Even today, their records sell millions, their songs are re -proposed in films, commercials, TV series.

Now Hollywood wants to tell them again. Mendes will make his four films. But the true story of the Beatles is not in glossy biopic. It is in their music. Is in that crackle of the dot on vinyl, in the hypnotic attack of As a togetherin the surreal choir of I am the walrusin the melancholy piano of Let it be.

In the end, the only possible answer to those who ask “who were the beatles?” It’s this: listen to them.