There's been some chat here in r.m.b. If that's the case, both Hertsgaard and MacDonald would seem to have widely missed the mark. I don't accept Mr. Gopnik's thesis that the Boys were so good because they were funny. Of course they were funny, but that's hardly all of it. The Beatles did not pull such stunts.
Patterns are as gossamer as paper, utterly tenuous in their shadowy evocation of what's real.
They were palpably in tune with the intricacies of love. Lennon and McCartney didn't write about shadows. Happy one moment, sad the next, Mr. Gopnik complains, with none of the tortures of the damned as revealed by Sinatra or Patsy Cline. Of course he admits, too, that their very popularity is what made the Beatles so universal. And in that sense there's an artistic firewall of sorts surrounding them, perpetuating the enigma of their craft.