In a recent publication of great rock moments, the Beatles hold several places in the "100 Greatest Moments In Rock & Pop". These places are detailed below.

2. BEATLEMANIA!
9 February, 1964

To most outside Britain in 1963 and early '64, the Beatles were an English oddity. We knew they had weird hair and one's name was Ringo, but not much more. Then, in February, Beatlemania was global and it happened literally overnight. On their first US tour, they played on TV's The Ed Sullivan Show. The gig was tuned in to by a monster US TV audience - 73 million people - and is still one of the most celebrated and literally hysterical rock zeitgeist moments of the pop century. The studio audience squealed and cried as the Fab Four powered through "All My Loving", "'Til There Was You", "She Loves You", "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand". And for viewers at home it was the same. "I just sat there in my living room in Phoenix with a huge smile on my face," recalls Alice Cooper. The wild scenes of the Beatles' US tour were repeated when they toured Australia in June. Those who saw the shows cherish the memory. Seems like yesterday.


15. JOHN MEETS PAUL
6 July, 1957

Paul McCartney, 15, hears a skiffle group called the Quarrymen at a church fete in Woolton, Liverpool. Singer-guitarist John Lennon, 16, lubricated by several beers, leans into the Del Vikings' "Come Go With Me". McCartney, impressed, shows the group how to play "Twenty Flight Rock". John thinks, "He's as good as me." Two weeks later Paul joins the band.


21. SGT. PEPPER USHERS IN ALBUM ROCK
1 June, 1967

Until then, pop LPs were collections of singles. But the Beatles established the album as art form by refusing to release a single from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, while fans passed word that the only way to hear it was straight through. "They played it at midnight," remembers Patti Smith. "When "A Day In The Life" came on for the first time at 12.30... I'd never heard anything like that." Neither had we. The Beatles had traded B&W suits and ties for Technicolour garb, studio trickery, sitars, music hall burlesque, affirmations of old age and acid and the world ending with an orchestral bang.


34. CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH
1 August, 1971

When sitarist Ravi Shankar wanted to raise $25,000 for starving Bangladesh, his student George Harrison rallied friends such as Eric Clapton and Dylan to throw rock's first major fundraiser. But while the Madison Square Garden show and the album anbd film, would gross more than $9 million, legal and tax wranglings kept most of that from those in need until 1981, a lesson for Live Aid and Band Aid.


43. BRITISH INVASION
1964

The Beatles kicked down the doors of US and Australian music markets and scores of British beat bands stormed through. The music of the Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield and Ray Davies' Kinks endures. Now many acts from the era when anything Brit was a hit are largely forgotten. But who cares if Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits and the Searchers were brazen Beatles knock-offs offering no more than dippy ditties with happy hooks, floppy hair and infectious energy? In their brief day, says rock writer Mike Saunders, they were "excellent purveyors of good, healthy, enjoyable schlock." There are worse crimes.


47. LENNON SLAIN
8 December, 1980

The report was blunt: "Man shot. One West 72nd." When police arrived at New York's Dakota apartments, they found John Lennon bleeding from seven bullet wounds; Yoko Ono, desperate to save his life; and murderer Mark Chapman, 25, calmly reading Catcher In The Rye.


66. JOHN MEETS YOKO
9 November, 1966

John Lennon was perplexed by the avant-garde exhibit at London's Indica Art Gallery. Pounding nails into a white board - this was art? The artist, Yoko Ono, thought Lennon "beautiful" but was put off by his behaviour. "I had a poetic piece, a fresh apple on a stand," Ono recalls. "He grabbed the apple and bit into it." And so began their 14-year relationship.


73. UP ON THE ROOF
30 January, 1969

Touchy and exhausted near the end of the Let It Be sessions, the Beatles hit the roof of Apple Studios in London's Mayfair and let out their last live gasp. "We wanted it to detonate like a bomb," says director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who captured the catharsis on film. Until bobbies shut them down, the Beatles got back to where they once belonged.

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