In the middle of the twentieth century, there was a thing called shared popular culture. If it was on TV or the radio, everybody knew about it. And among all the figures who defined popular culture, none were ever better known in the English-speaking world than John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—the Beatles. In under a decade, the Beatles produced twenty-seven #1 hits on the UK and US charts, and their influence impacted not only pop music but the whole idea of celebrity, resonating to the present day. In a March 1966 interview with Maureen Cleave, just before the overworked Beatles stopped touring to work exclusively in the recording studio, John Lennon uttered the shocking but entirely true statement that the group had become “more popular than Jesus.” By the start of 1969, despite being rich…