MEET THE BEATLES

"It was really just pushing frontiers, that's all we were doing," Paul McCartney told an interviewer in 1988. But exactly which frontiers did McCartney and his band mates in the Beatles -- founder John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr -- pushduring the eight years they recorded together, beginning in 1962? What was it about the brilliant lads from Liverpool, their backgrounds, personalities, appearance and outlook, that enabled them to succeed so wildly? And what effects did their challenge to the established order unleash across the universe, both in their own time and over the three decades that have passed since their acrimonious breakup in 1970? These and other inherently elusive questions about modern history's most influential entertainers preoccupy Meet the Beatles, by Steven D. Stark. An acclaimed pop culture commentator for NPR and CNN, Stark has produced a volume worthy of his subjects, treating the band with the seriousness that a phenomenon of its magnitude warrants. Thus highbrow literary allusions (Keats, Wordsworth, Paglia) find easy companionship alongside quotations from rock periodicals such as Mersey Beat and Crawdaddy. Stark also spent considerable time in Liverpool and conducted more than 100 interviews with figures ranging from Yoko Ono to screaming fans relegated to the upper tiers of Shea Stadium (both surviving Beatles declined to be interviewed).