The Beatles: How Great They Were!

I've been sick in bed with the flu and listening to the Beatles through earbuds from my iPad. Live at the BBC is so wonderful!

I was "there" when it all happened, all those years ago. But then again, I wasn't. As an American teenager at the time, I only found out about how the Beatles became the Beatles after the fact.

They were appearing a lot on the BBC after several smash records in the U.K. made them a household name. That was after years of virtual anonymity, playing to small audiences in Hamburg, Germany. At the Cavern Club in Liverpool, they'd developed a rabid following. Then in 1963 they went supernova.

But in America, not as much ... until they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. Their "I Want To Hold Your Hand" was by that time all over American radio, and so a nation watched transfixed. Then, suddenly, you couldn't turn on an AM radio without hearing their music.

Most of it was composed by John and Paul especially to be ear candy and thrill audiences of rapturous young girls. But the group's main repertoire was a lot rougher than "P.S. I Love You." The music on Live at the BBC captures that.

What impresses me is how good they sounded on covers of rhythm and blues songs and early rockers. The list is huge: "I Got a Woman" (originated by Ray Charles), "Too Much Monkey Business" (Chuck Berry), "That's All Right, Mama" (Elvis Presley), "Baby It's You" (The Shirelles), and on and on.

This is important to me now because the early Beatles repertoire is like a distillation of earlier rock. A lot of their songs had come from minor hits or B-sides, or were nearly drowned in the tide of parent-friendly music that was predominant.

Don't get me wrong: I loved Perry Como's "Round and Round" and Jimmie Rodgers' "Honeycomb" when they were hits in the 1950s. But they weren't subversive. John Lennon singing "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" is subversive. Even if the song itself really isn't.

When Paul McCartney sings "Long Tall Sally," it's raunchy ... but not subversive. Same with "Lucille." Paul is a great raunch 'n' roll singer, and super on ballads and just about anything else. But if John were to sing "Happy Birthday to You," it would be insidiously subversive.

They all do such wonderful harmony singing. George's guitar work is a revelation, as is Ringo on drums. But John ... John was maybe the best rock 'n' roll frontman ever. There was a edge there that I frankly was deaf to back in the day. I was distracted by the haircuts and the cutesy images, I guess.