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''60s for sale: a new let it be and the coming 40th anniversary (!) of the Beatles'' U.S. invasion will bring waves of nostalgia. Too bad; they deserve better.

Article Excerpt
SINCE DECLARING THEMSELVES DEfunct more than 30 years ago, the Beatles have alternately receded and loomed as figures of cultural authority and musical influence. While their spirit has hovered over and coursed through reinventors as diverse as David Bowie, Funkadelic, Elvis Costello, Prince and Kurt Cobain, there are other shifts of the pop paradigm to which they were never issued an invitation. (They're hard to find in hip-hop, unless we trace, as some have strained plausibility to do, a lineage from the word salad of "I Am the Walrus" to freestyle rap.) But the Beatles have never quite gone away--nor are they likely to, since their continued popularity is due less to boomer nostalgia than to the band's timelessness.

Like friends, the Beatles are never far from a fan's thoughts; like family, they loom largest when an anniversary approaches, as it does now. Things are falling into place for their latest commercial resurgence. The Great Beatles Revival of 1976--compilation albums assembled, old singles set loose on the charts, magazine covers, a new sub-generation of fans hoovered into the happy fray--set the pattern for all subsequent bonanzas, including the 1995-96 release of the multimedia Beatles Anthology project and 2000's midsized flurry attending the ascension of the I album to the top spot on the album charts of 29 nations.

Presently we are entering the runup to the 40th anniversary of the band's arrival in America, which will fall on Feb. 7 of next year. No doubt in the months...