Kim Willis

USA TODAY

The '70s were a peculiar time to be a Beatles beginner.

The Fab Four were acrimoniously divorced, with John, Paul and George prone to sniping at each other in interviews (Ringo, always the peacemaker, managed to stay on friendly terms with everyone). Paul McCartney and Wings hovered high on the charts with unremarkable hits like Silly Love Songs. And fans were so fixated on their desire to bring The Beatles back, they couldn’t appreciate the extraordinary fact that the band had ever existed to begin with.

That’s where Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield parachutes into the story, laying claim to the moptops for a new fandom whose gateway would be dog-eared copies of Nicholas Schaffner’s 1977 The Beatles Forever bio and 2 a.m. reruns of Help! rather than the historic Ed Sullivan Show appearance or LSD-enhanced listens to Sgt. Pepper.

Sheffield's charming new collection of essays, Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World (Dey Street, 368 pp., ***½ out of four stars), begins with the familiar premise: Four Liverpool chums make a go of it as a group, climb to the toppermost of the poppermost, and break up dramatically at the height of their powers. Then here’s where the story gets really interesting: Everyone on Earth rejects that ending. Somehow, The Beatles just keep getting bigger.

“Our Beatles,” the author marvels, “have outlasted theirs.”

Sheffield, whose previous books include the excellent Love Is a Mixtape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time, is fired up about this concept. So fired up that entire chapters are devoted to irresistible arguments for the brilliance of Ringo Starr and Paul being the most Beatlesque Beatle, all written in a loose, genial mix of cool trivia, endearing (if occasionally off-topic) asides and hardcore nerding out.

The effect is that of tucking into a corner booth with a full pitcher and a bunch of buddies to debate whether “I think I’m gonna be sad” is the most portentous John Lennon lyric ever or why we still obsess over the identity of the Walrus when virtually all of us, as Sheffield notes, have heard I Am the Walrus more times than John possibly could have.

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“The Beatles invented most of what rock stars do. They invented breaking up. They invented drugs. They invented long hair, going to India, having a guru, round glasses, solo careers, beards, press conferences, divisive girlfriends, writing your own songs, funny drummers,” Sheffield writes in one of many smart insights. “They invented the idea of assembling a global mass audience and then challenging, disappointing, confusing this audience.”

If you buy into his post-split perspective that Rubber Soul should be your favorite album, or that George Harrison wrote “fabulously sulky songs,” you’ll have a fantastic, joyous time reading Dreaming the Beatles from cover to cover.

Sheffield’s observations reach a fever pitch of enthusiasm when he declares, "Being born on the same planet as The Beatles is one of the 10 best things that's ever happened to me.”

But for once, the writer might be underestimating how much we love them. Because it’s easily one of the top 5.