I’m beginning to appreciate the Beatles more.
They were rather before my time. And I really don’t like what I’ve read about Lennon.
But, listening to the long and winding road … what an arrangement!
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I think you are hearing the magic touch of producer George Martin there - the so-called Fifth Beatle.
But yes they were an amazing band with a huge influence on popular music.
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As I get older, possibly my favourite Beatles track is from Rubber Soul, - Christmas 1965, my first Beatles LP. There were many other subsequent favourites, but these days this is the one, though originally I was too young to be nostalgic
There’s a line -
‘Some are dead and some are living’
Which is especially poignant this week with the death of the photographer Martin Parr, who was in my year at Manchester and with whom we used to to play bicycle hockey in Chorlton Park on Sunday afternoons. However, Daniel Meadows, who was in the same year is still around. After graduating many of the cohort moved to Hebden Bridge which was transforming from a former mill town into a northern arty place and looking back on that time it’s interesting to see how English documentary photography moved north with them and the likes of Chris Killip in Newcastle.
Days gone by…
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They were not long before my time, but they always sounded a bit boring to me as a teen. Much more recently I’ve found myself enjoying the subtle complexities of their music much more, rather than wanting the relentless energy and emotions of hard rock.
Lennon wasn’t a particularly nice character, but that’s true for quite a lot of people.
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Anyone believe in synchronicity ? Today I commented on the post about Christmas adverts - esp the popular one by Intermarche this year. In my post I referred to another ad - running in the UK - about Amazon - and 3 mature ladies tobogganing down a snowy slope - which has as background music the ‘very’ piece of Beatles music mentioned by Dr MarkH (above) - Beatles - In My Life - as a soft piano piece playing in background. Weird !!
Your post made me remember that the LP which was released in December 1965 and was presumably targeted at the Christmas market, is this month celebrating its sixtieth birthday.
Rubber Soul was released sixty years ago - how old does that make you feel?
About 12. 
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See also Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, for example. He may have mellowed a bit now, I don’t know, but according to the biography of the band that I read he could be a bastard to those around him, especially Rick Wright for some reason.
Back to the Beatles, I remember my parents (who were not particularly into music of any kind, let alone pop music) having a copy of the Beatles’ first EP:
I played this lot on our “gramophone” which was a Garrard turntable (with a bakelite tone arm!) rather precariously wired up to a Bush valve radio!
So I got Beatleised at an early age (I was six when that EP came out).
I don’t play their music a lot these days, but once in a while…
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Is that Chorlton cum Hardy? My beloved grandparents lived there and I had many happy holidays there, less happy, though I hardly remember it, was spending nights in the groundfloor replica cellar dodging German bombs. 
As far as the Beatles was concerned they were at the tail end of my teenage and pop music appreciation world, but I liked them so much that they extended my youth into the '60s. 
I don’t think he has changed a lot, even now.
Neil Young is another one with a bad reputation.
The Beatles were a brilliant group. Their music evolved from fairly basic pop to some extraordinarily complex music. “I wanna hold your hand” to “A day in the life”.
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I remember seeing the Beatles live at a cinema in Southend at about the time they released “Love Me Do”. During this period the resident band at our local Mecca in Basildon was the Dave Clark Five.
To start the thread drift…
In the mid-80s I spent over two months fitting up Dave Clark’s mega-flop West End musical ‘Time’ at the Dominion Theatre. Cliff Richard was in the lead role, & Larry Olivier appeared as a hologram (so-called; it was actually projection).
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It is indeed. I left Manchester in’77 and last visited Chorlton twenty years later, when England played S Africa at Old Trafford. Chorlton Green had become rather chi-chi in my absence, and I presume it’s even more so today.
I never visited a Green, our playground was the open ground between Buckingham road and the railway line (houses there now) which contained the rented garages. In the days before we had a car (our first was inherited from Grandpa when he died) Grandpa and Grandma would walk across that space so we could all wave to each other as we raced past to Nottingham. 
I lived a few blocks away in Whalley Range for four years and learnt to drive in suburban Chorlton, though the BSM office was in the heart of the city. There was a small hill that went over the railway line (possibly the only hill in south Manchester) and there’d often be a line of learners queuing up to practice their hill starts, so if it was busy, you only got one chance.
Rubber Soul/Revolver/Sgt Pepper/Abbey Road. Every song on every one a masterpiece. The White Album rather patchy.
A colleague of my dad’s [Royal Signals] was in Brunei over Chrismas 1963. Our Gov had sent a few chaps to help The Sultan sort out a bit of trouble with restless natives 
. His two sons and I belted out ‘She Loves You’ into a very basic cassette recorder …
I had a 45 of The Beatles ‘Christmas Record’ for the fans. Sleeve signed by Macca. Long gone 
I can recall bits of it
Lennon. "Thanks to all who bought me book [In His Own Write], 'specially those that read it… "
Ringo "Happy Chri ... CRASH!* … who’se droppin’ that?..* "
Paul Mc Cartney’s Blackbird always gets me.
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Time to dig out my copy of Sergeant Pepper on CD I think (yes I know I really should have it on vinyl) 
.
I also have their “1” compilation (all no.1 singles) but that’s it for my Beatles discography.
My friend in the UK was an ardent Beatles fan and had a copy of every record they ever made. For my 50th birthday he copied his entire collection onto DVD’s for me, which I now treasure.