"'Hey Jude,' now that’s beautiful. That should be what music is all about. The Beatles were great performers, too; we worked together in Hamburg before they were famous. You could tell they had something, you know. Because they didn’t sound like nobody else. They really did not sound like no other group that was around at the time — nobody. "But what they had was songs. The best. Never dirty — just beautiful songs you can play to your grandmother and your children alike. 'Hey Jude' has that quality. It don’t get any better than that." --#RayCharles #TheGenius #Soul #Country #RhythmAndBlues #BrotherRay #Grammys #HallsOfFame #Influence #Beatles #TheBeatles #Unicorns #Songwriters Sources: Uncut magazine, 2001; "Soundtrack of The Century," Ovation, 2006

"They were just out in front. There was the Beatles — and then there was everyone else. And everyone else could be great, but the Beatles were leading the way. And that’s just irrefutably true. I mean, if you just look back and follow the history of the music, that’s clearly what was going on. And it was obvious at the time. "It’s hard to explain to somebody that wasn’t there at that time how profound it was. I think that they were just hungry for anything that would inspire them, and they weren’t musical snobs at all. Having that kind of open-door policy of 'let’s try anything' was really revolutionary. You know, I don’t know if people really understand how incredibly, just, bold that was. To kind of just leave the format that you arrived in, and invent another one. It’s just unbelievable. "You know, before the Beatles, you didn’t really see rock stars trying to evolve. They were quite happy to have a hit, and often the follow-up was almost exactly the same. That’s what I’ve always really been amazed at — the Beatles had that incredible success and really could have put anything out, and it would have been a hit. But they kept their head and weren’t affected by all that going on around them and focused on music. "And they had such great taste, you know? When you think about the hideous things people did with the Moog synthesizer, the Beatles used it so tastefully [on Abbey Road] that you hardly noticed it, it was just part of the texture of the record. They had such a great sense of sound, of textures — I think it’s one of the reasons those albums still hold up." "It’s just strange, isn’t it, when you think about it, how all the perfect pieces of the puzzle were there. This really starts to get into a spiritual level of perfection [sighs]. What are the chances of that falling together, those kind of singers being in one band, let alone being great players and writers, you know? It’s startling, it won’t be done again. It’s a force of nature bigger than all of us." --#TomPetty #Heartbreakers #TravelingWilburys #Songwriter #Grammys #HallOfFame #TheBeatles #Impact #Influence #Evolution #GOAT Sources: "Conversations with Tom Petty," Zollo; "Here, There and Everywhere," syndicated radio special, 2009

"I first saw the Beatles in Manchester of all places. They were scheduled to play that night. They came through the front door about three in the afternoon to set up their equipment, and every girl in there stopped dead in their tracks.  It was like four Marlon Brandos had walked in.  They had an innate, primordial swagger.  Aside from the raw energy they put out, they looked fantastic.  A total coolness emanated off them, like a Young Riders kind of vibe. You know, they’d swing the door open and they’d all be standing there while the dust settled around them.  They hadn’t even played a note, and the girls would swoon and faint.  Fuckin’ fantastic . . . "In general, that band was flat-out amazing, and everybody knew it. They played a molten, scruffy brand of rock ‘n’ roll. And they had attitude in spades. They’d swear and smoke onstage, tell off the audience, all of which just added to their mystique. The Hollies didn’t have that kind of power. "They were very protected by a filtering system between the four of them.  They were always together, even if there was a room full of people and they were all separated.  I got to see it all unfolding before my eyes.  And I was aware that it was historical.  It was almost spiritual.  When you saw the Beatles, and saw the effect they had on people, you knew something special was happening. "I don’t think there’ll ever be another Beatles. I think that the universe put those four kids in the right place at the right time, and gave them the right talent, to be able to move the hearts and minds and spirits of billions of people. The Beatles were the best band in the world, there’s absolutely no question about it." --#GrahamNash #Hollies #CrosbyStillsNash #CSN @TheGrahamNash #Songwriter #OBE #HallOfFame #TheBeatles #Influence #Charisma #GOAT Sources: "Wild Tales," Nash; Interview with James Rosen on "The Foxhole," 2015

"The Beatles came out, and there was life to what they were playing. Rock & roll seemed viable — it seemed less like prepackaged marketed pap, and more like there was some expansiveness to the music. I thought the Beatles' music had an incredible economy about it, and at the same time went just about anywhere you could want music to take you. "We were thinking, 'These guys are awful good.' But also, 'they look like they're having an awful lot of fun.' "So we became a rock & roll band. The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock ‘n’ roll band. What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn’t think of anything else more worth doing." --#BobWeir "It was like the Beatles were saying, 'You can be young, you can be far-out and you can still make it.' They were making people happy. That happy thing — that’s the stuff that counts — was something we could all see right away. "They're at least as responsible for us being here as anybody else is. They were real important to everybody. The Beatles took rock music into a new realm and raised it to an art form." --#JerryGarcia "I come from classical music, so my roots run back to Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Mahler, Chopin and Ives. It's a kind of larger scale of thinking. I personally think that with tunes — that is, songs with lyrics — you can hardly ever develop them. All it usually is, really, is a melody and lyrics and a chord change and you have to more or less be musically repetitive. "But there are some people who do tunes very well. The Beatles managed to put a lot of development in their stuff. There's nobody yet who has equaled what they did with a tune." --#PhilLesh "'Strawberry Fields' . . . god, it was just beautiful. It made your heart beat a little faster. And the content, the lyric content, was so powerful. The arrangements were perfect. It couldn’t have been better. [And] ‘Fool On The Hill’ — I can remember the room, we were in New Jersey, me and Jerry, listening in a tiny room. And there was no heat. It was the middle of the winter, and so we were in gloves and coats, and you could see the breath. And there it was, ‘Fool On The Hill' . . . we just looked at each other and said, ‘Oh boy, this is great music'. "The Beatles were really something to come to grips with. Because we really weren’t ready for a Beatles. They were big for The Grateful Dead and everybody who was listening to music in the '60s. When Beatles records came out, everybody went out and bought ‘em and went home, and listened to the Beatles. It was Beatles — Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." --#MickeyHart #GratefulDead #TheDead #Deadheads #JamBands #Improv #Psychedelia #HallOfFame #TheBeatles #Songwriting #Fun #Influence