MacDonald almost does the impossible. He makes you go back and listen to the amazing catalog of songs with new ears. But maybe even more impressive is his ability to put the Beatles and their music in the context of the 60's.
The essay about the 60's fronting the book is astonishingly great. Totally opens your eyes and head to the "revolution in the head," that resonates all these many years later. To hear the Beatles music, without understanding the times, the politics, the social upheaval, the rise of the counterculture, totally drains the Beatles songs of their power and resonance.
You can enjoy the music without the context, but so much is missing. The story of the times, the seismic changes of the culture are reflected and anticipated in the music. To really get it, you need to understand where the Beatles came from, and how they impacted everyone around them.
And MacDonald shows us that the 60's never died, that all that change and upheaval of that decade resonated through the 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's. The Beatles represented, reflected a time and place, they birthed Pop Culture as we know it. And nothing was ever the same again. They surfed the energy, and added to it, and strangely, almost impossibly helped mold it.
It's a story you think you know, but if you haven't read MacDonald's book, you don't really know the story. Really.