From left, Paul, George, Ringo and John never looked so good.
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So MTV turns to a band that made records under its own name for just eight years, at the bright high noon of rock 'n' roll, and broke up nearly four decades ago. Another anomaly: only in their earliest gestation, playing in Germany and in Liverpool's Cavern Club with Pete Best as their drummer, were the Beatles truly a Rock Band. For 40 years and more, that term has been applicable to the Rolling Stones and their spawn, whose songs are easily reproducible in their indefatigable concert tours and whose appeal is as much theatrical as musical. Truth is, the Beatles, even in their touring days, didn't care much for performing; they couldn't hear themselves play over their fans' screams. From 1966 on, they were studio musicians, and when McCartney composed his artful melodies, he often did it not on guitar but on piano.
Recognizing that the Beatles were more a vocal group than a Rock Band, the game includes opportunities for three-part harmony, so you can try out those castrati woooos on "She Loves You." (It's as much karaoke as music video game.) The 45-song playlist emphasizes guitar-heavy songs — things the Beatles could have sung live. Some of the most infectious are those early, primitive classics from their first album, Please Please Me, which was released in 1963. As you start playing, especially if you're a novice, you may share Lennon's testy frustration, heard on the earliest of the box-set minidocs. "Get that bloody little mike out of my way," he grumbles, and McCartney soothingly replies, "Don't be nervous, John."
The five folks trying out the game at MTV headquarters were nervous too, though they had varied musical credentials. Christopher Porterfield, TIME writer and editor emeritus, had played jazz in college and, as a young TIME staffer in 1964, traveled with the Beatles on their first American tour. He played bass. On drums was Leo Sacks, a Grammy-nominated music producer of vintage R&B who is making a documentary on the New Orleans gospel icon Raymond Myles. TIME writer Gilbert Cruz, the only participant who knew his way around the Rock Band platform, took lead guitar. The vocals were shared by TIME Arts editor Radhika Jones, whose father Robert was a folksinger in the '60s and whose mom once dined with George Harrison, and yours truly, who saw the Beatles perform at Philadelphia's Convention Hall in 1964 and for months afterward affected an unintelligible Liverpudlian accent.
We got a quick master class from an MTV exec, Paul DeGooyer, and four Beatle stand-ins, who directed us to "gems" cascading down the screen. The color of the gem tells you which fret to hit on your guitar. "If you don't hit it," DeGooyer explained, "you'll hear some dissonance or you won't hear anything at all." (It's a very forgiving game.)
Chris, Leo and Gilbert assaulted their instruments, which take some getting used to. After the first song, Chris said, "I'm so concentrated on getting those notes, and loving it when a note comes through as it should, that I'm not really into the song. If I did this for a while, I'd relax a little more and probably miss a few notes. And it'd be worth it." Same with the vocals. Radhika and I dutifully read the lyrics passing before our eyes — until we realized, hey, these words are in our muscle memory. Then we could loosen up and have fun.
We learned that our vocals may not sound as great as they do in the shower or the car, and in the Beatles' instrumental interludes, we may not play their guitar as well as our air guitar. Mercifully, Rock Band doesn't record your amateur Beatling (though an incriminating video of our session will be available at time.com/video) But even if your performance is less Beatles than dung beetles, it's hard not to get into the spirit of the game. Leo told us, "I'm going to be a first-time father at 52 in a few weeks, and I can really see this as a wonderful teaching tool in our home." And video-game veteran Gilbert announced, "I'm going to buy the game the day it comes out." That's three — make it five — satisfied customers.
We'll never be zillionaires, or bigger than Jesus, but for one afternoon, the team from TIME was, kind of, the Beatles. And we felt fine.
The original version of this story misstated the location of the Beatles’ final gig in 1969; it was on the roof of Apple, not Abbey Road, Studios. The story also wrongly said that the box set The Beatles in Mono features every Beatles song; in fact, the box set omits those songs originally mixed only in stereo.