The Beatles: Getting back to where they once belonged

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Beatlemania 2.0 looks and sounds a lot like the '60s prototype. Only crisper, clearer, shinier.

The shrieking girls, the shaggy Mop Tops and their scores of indelible pop hits are digitally reborn in The Beatles: Rock Band video game, which hits store shelves Wednesday along with the band's newly remastered catalog, a long-awaited sonic upgrade of 14 titles.

"We're quite fussy," Paul McCartney tells USA TODAY, explaining why fans had to wait so long for the refurbished sounds of the iconic band that broke up nearly 40 years ago. "It's not as if we were going to crap out or sell out."

Ringo Starr serves up a cheeky pitch.

"The game is great, the music's greater and, animated, I look gorgeous!" the drummer says of his video-game debut, The Beatles' first big marketing splash since 2006's Cirque du Soleil spectacle Love.

The masses remain mesmerized because "the music stands up," Starr says. "It's not the silly haircuts or the shoes or the suits. New generations of musicians and fans are still talking about that music."

Embedded in our cultural DNA, The Beatles (McCartney, Starr and the late John Lennon and George Harrison) have never lost their standing as the world's most influential and popular band. They've sold more records than any act in U.S. history, with 170 million shipped, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. They've sold 57.7 million albums since SoundScan began tracking U.S. sales in 1991.

The new projects required the blessings of Apple Corps "shareholders" Starr, McCartney and Beatles widows Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, each of whom has veto power over any band output. All four were interviewed by USA TODAY when they met in June at the E3 Expo video-game trade show for Microsoft's preview of The Beatles: Rock Band, appearing briefly before 700 reporters from around the globe.

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