The Beatles have profoundly changed music and culture in ways that most of us don’t even begin to realize. In Beatles ‘66, Beatles expert Steve Turner zooms into the crucial year of their development as musicians. This was the bridge year when the Beatles shed their mop-top image and went from being entertainers-traveling the world to adoring crowds of screaming teenage girls-to serious studio-based musicians and true artists exploring new dimensions in popular music and increasingly being seen as spokesmen for a generation.

1966 was the year in which the Beatles played their final concert and recorded the first songs that were not intended to be played live. It was the year George Harrison married Pattie Boyd and John Lennon met Yoko Ono. It was the year in which John made his controversial statement that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” It was the year in which the group first visited India and George Harrison met Ravi Shankar, the year in which they wrote and recorded Revolver, the year in which John cut his hair and Paul explored London’s world of avant-garde music, poetry, art, and film and took LSD for the first time.

At a time when there were no role models in pop music for an act that could shift from stage to studio, from entertainment to art, and from hysteria to reflection, the Beatles became pioneers who have served as a template for pop acts from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2, and have profoundly changed the art-and the business-of making music.

In this illuminating and timely exploration, veteran music journalist and Beatles insider Steve Turner reveals for the first time how the group moved from first-class entertainers and heirs to Elvis Presley to become, in Timothy Leary’s words, “philosopher-poets of the new religion,” and wove themselves inextricably into the fabric of pop culture while achieving something like artistic world domination.